年初二 開年, 財神倒 . Rebel Of Dah Neon Gods.

Today, we pay tribute to our Ancestors & Deities. It's believed that the second day is the birthday of all dogs so it's tradition to be extra kind to dogs and feed them well (instead of eating them...LOL!). So Bailey, it's your lucky day!

We Cantonese make 開年 'Hoy Neen' offerings to start our business on the 2nd day, burning Joss Sticks & offering food (usually 白斬雞 a whole steamed chicken or 烤魚豬 roast piglet) to our Ancestors & Deities. We pray to be blessed with good luck and prosperity in business for the year. This is also a Cantonese custom done at the beginning of every Hong Kong Teli/Film production. It's treated with utmost priority if not @ least with equal importance to any other pre-pro issues! 

財神; Choi Sun (red face dude in 1st drawing) is the Deity of Prosperity. Though he started as a Chinese folk hero, later deified and venerated by local followers and admirers, Taoists and Buddhists both came to venerate him as a god. 

財神's name is often invoked during the Chinese New Year celebrations. He is often depicted riding a black Tiger and holding a golden rod. He may also be depicted armed with any one of several iron weapons.

Several versions of 財神's political affiliation and subsequent deification have circulated. It is unclear whether he is a genuine historical figure, though the vast majority of stories agree that 財神 lived during the early Qin Dynasty...

 

ChinesePod?...no it's not the cuzzin of Godzilla...LOL! If you can ignore her annoying Rice King sidekick Ken, Jenny is a funky online Mandarin tutor podcasting out of Shanghai. If you like this, check out the Superbowl podcast from Feb. 3rd below. Jenny's a real hoot!

年初一, 新年的回憶...New Year Memoirs

…centre of the table sat a circular wooden dish, enameled and gilded, in whose compartments were oranges no larger than a hickory nut, air dried in sugar, and very palatable; an assortment of rock candies, small Chinese fruits, candied; betel nuts sliced and looking like nutmegs, and melon seeds–as inevitable in their theatres as peanuts in the pits of ours. A dish of mammoth oranges, a saucer of melon preserved in syrup, and many delicacies of which even through our accomplished interpreter, we could not learn the nature, only that they were all to be nibbled, and were not quite offensive to our unsophisticated palates. A saucer of American tobacco and another of the saffron-colored fine-cut Chinese tobacco always stood side by side...

Lunar New Year, Quesnel Forks, Cariboo Gold Rush circa 1890's.

I posted this because like everyone else at the time, my Great Grand Father had gone up to Quesnel Forks initially for gold, but saw an opportunity to provide food for those too busy looking for gold. He opened the only canteen/food store in town. I sojourned to Quesnel Forks in '93 & found the only building left in semi collapse with 年画 faded Chinese New Year idioms throughout, 菜乾 dried preserve vegetables still hanging intact from the ceiling & what appeared to be two fire pits for large woks in what would have been the kitchen.

My fondest memories of Lunar New Year were those growing up in 長沙灣 Cheung Sha Wan, my old hood in Nine Dragons 九龍. The smell of Joss Sticks conjuring spirits to summon me back to a long lost land. I'm guided through winding alleyways carpeted with firecracker flakes & the scent of burning offerings from the sprinkling of Buddhist temples dedicated to various Deities. 

長沙灣 was a congested, poor ghetto full of cottage industry factories (where Li Ka-shing 李嘉诚, now the richest man in Asia started out with his modest plastic flower manufacturing) & government housing projects with Mah & Pah whore houses fronting as barbershops. We didn't have much 紅包 (lucky money). But we always took time out & indulged with food over the Lunar New Year Holidays.

I remember gorging out on all sorts of deep-fried things like 芋头角 (taro grenades as we kids use to call 'em), and Mah & Granny always made these rock hard dumplings filled with sugar, coconut and peanuts inside then deep-fried. They were so rock hard you can throw them against the wall & cause some damage for sure! She doesn't make them anymore & now I miss them...perhaps only becuzz they were called 角仔, which sounds like my name sake in Cantonese.These taste memories lasted over 45 years in my mind until, one day, I realized the deliciousness was not from the taste but from the deep rooted memories of my soul to the land that raised me.

Today, we welcome Deities of the heavens and earth. Like many Buddhists, we abstain from meat consumption on the first day because it is believed that this will ensure longevity for them. But I thought it mirrored my Western New Year resolution which was to get healthy just so I can wreck myself good all over again with booze, drugs & dark angels LOL! Some also consider lighting fires and using knives to be bad luck on New Year's Day, so all food to be consumed were cooked yesterday.

Most importantly, the first day is a time when we visit the oldest and most senior members of the family. So I'm enjoying 羅漢齋 (Buddha's Delight) at Mah's house after my teaching day in the great white north (Seneca@York not Nunavut). Watched Asian game shows on teli (a contemporary NY tradition) with Mah tonite. This was a hilarious tribute to The Beatles.

恭喜發財 GONG HEI FATT CHOI...you dirty rats!

It's Lunar New Year's Eve 年夕tonite & I'm busy helping or more like watching my Mah make Lorr Hon Jai (Buddha's Delight) Hoh Sie Fatt Choi (sounds like 'great life, great fortune or propserity' in Cantonese. But essentially a Sea Moss Stew with Oysters... yum) & Lorr Bak Goh (Daikon Puddin). All Chinese New Year tradition yummies. We Cantonese don't care much for recipes. But for all the Chinese Foodie Virgins, here's my abberation on foodie buddy, Susur's Lorr Bak Goh recipe:

Grate Chinese turnip (Daikon). Mix mushrooms, dried shrimps, Lap Churng (Chinese sausage), seasonings, and sesame oil together. Mix flour and water thoroughly in separate bowl. Combine mushroom mixture with flour and water mixture and heat until thick (do not let boil). Transfer mixture to a bowl and steam for half-hour. Garnish with green onion, coriander, shiitake mushrooms and cooked Lap Churng.

Stuff you need:

3/4 kg Chinese turnip or Daikon (grated)
225 g rice flour
38 g wheat flour
1 tsp dried shrimp (chopped)
1/4 cup shiitake mushrooms (diced)
1/4 cup Lap Churng (Chinese sausage)
1/2 tsp sesame oil
6 cups water
seasoning salt
white pepper 

沒有老鼠

超级 (super) 碗 (bowl) in Shanghai & 1 unlikely die-hard Cowboys Fan

Worlds collide here as SuperBowl culture gets podcast in Shanghai while Mao rolls over his grave in the face of his worst nightmare, an American invasion...or maybe he's just cursing "炒马特·米兰鱿鱼" which translates "fry Matt Millen squid" a colloquial way of saying "fire dah fucker". Isn't Chinese great!

Here's the NFL teams list:

布法罗比尔 Bùfǎluó Bǐ'ěr Buffalo Bills
迈阿密海豚 Mài'āmì hǎitún Miami Dolphins
新英格兰爱国者 Xīn Yīnggélán àiguózhě New England Patriots
纽约喷气机 Niǔyuē pēnqìjī New York Jets
巴尔的摩乌鸦 Bā'ěrdìmó wūyā Baltimore Ravens
辛辛那提猛虎 Xīnxīnnàtí měnghǔ Cincinnati Bengals
克利夫兰布朗 Kèlìfūlánbùlǎng Cleveland Browns
匹兹堡钢人 Pǐzībǎo gāngrén Pittsburgh Steelers
休斯敦德州人 Xiūsīdūn Dézhōu rén Houston Texans
印第安纳波利斯小马 Yìndì'ānnàbōlìsī xiǎomǎ Indianapolis Colts
杰克逊维尔美洲虎 Jiékèxùnwéi'ěr měizhōuhǔ Jacksonville Jaguars
田纳西泰坦 Jiánnàxī tàitǎn Tennessee Titans
丹佛野马 Dānfú yěmǎ Denver Broncos
堪萨斯城酋长 Kānsàsīchéng qiúzhǎng Kansas City Chiefs
奥克兰突袭者 Àokèlán tūxízhě Okland Raiders
圣迭戈闪电 Shèngdiégē shǎndiàn San Diego Chargers
达拉斯牛仔 Dálāsī niúzǎi Dallas Cowboys
纽约巨人 Niǔyuē jùrén New York Giants
费城老鹰 Fèichéng lǎoyīng Philadelphia Eagles
华盛顿红皮 Huáshèngdùn hóng pí Washington Redskins
芝加哥熊 Zhījiāgē xióng Chicago Bears
底特律雄狮 Dǐtèlǜ xióngshī Detroit Lions
绿湾包装工 Lǜwān bāozhuānggōng Green Bay Packers
明尼苏达维京人 Míngnísūdá Wéijīng rén Minnesota Vikings
亚特兰大猎鹰 Yàtèlándà lièyīng Atlanta Falcons
卡罗来纳黑豹 Kǎluóláinà hēibào Carolina Panthers
新奥尔良圣徒 Xīn'ào'ěrliáng shèngtú New Orleans Saints
坦帕湾海盗 Tǎnpàwān hǎidào Tampa Bay Buccaneers
亚利桑那红雀 Yàlìsāngnà hóngquè Arizona Cardinals
圣路易斯公羊 Shènglùyìsī gōngyáng St. Louis Rams
旧金山49人 Jiùjīnshān sìshíjiǔ rén San Francisco 49ers
西雅图海鹰 Xīyǎtú hǎiyīng Seattle Seahawks

I like 金山49人 translation best!

'我的藍莓夜 My Blueberry Night'

Looking forward to this release on Feb.13th...hope it's not just a Wong Kar Wai for dummies!

If you're "In The Mood" to ride the "Chunking Xpress" to station "2046" for "My Blueberry Nights" on "Days Of Being Wild" "As Tears Go By" thru "The Ashes Of Time"...drop a line or meet me @ The Memphis Bar & Grill, we just might be "Happy Together". 

Some Morning Routine!

Although both riders are pretty whacked...I'm more impress with shooting than subject rider in front. Still...some pretty phucked up shooting & riding in Kamakazi NYC traffic. Don't try this @ home kiddies...especially not with your own camera! 

'Opening Shot' revisited

First day of the odyssey and my first shoot with Cheuk. Not sure what to expect. Just doing what I do best… going with the flow.

Big blue Western sky…Endless fields of wheat… A perfect Neil Young album cover shot. Even with the gorgeous warm amber prairie light, it’s so freakin’ cold that I can see my own breath inside the car as we make our way on a two-hour drive from Saskatoon airport to the remote town of Outlook.

We take our time stopping along the way to grab beauty shots of the prairie landscape. It’s magic hour by the time we arrive in Outlook. We drive down the main drag like two modern day gunslingers rolling into the sleepy prairie town. All that was missing were the tumbleweeds and the Chop Suey Western sound track. We arrive at the New Outlook Café, home of “Noisy Jim”. I’ve been looking forward to meeting this old Chinese Cowboy.

My mum nicknamed me Ngow Jai, which has a double meaning, Cowboy or Little Cow. It was old village superstition to hide the identity of the eldest son moi, from the demon so no harm would come to me. Some families gave their number one son female names… but my mum got creative and decided to disguise me as an insignificant Little Cow.

Everyone including my close friends find my whole cowboy obsession odd and eccentric because I’m Asian and not White. Yeah… I don’t look anything like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood, but the whole cowboy spirit has little to do with race. It has more to do with a state of mind, a pioneering spirit of risking the unknown against all odds. Since my ancestors risked the unknowns to build the railroad that eventually connected these wild Western frontiers to the rest of the country, I feel a kinship and birthright to their cowboy spirit. I’m the quintessential Banana Kowboy.

The gregarious cowboy, Noisy Jim, and I have a lot in common. He came to Canada as a “paper son”, as my father did. His adopted dad Chow Yun paid the Head Tax to get into Canada and worked as a houseboy serving rich white folks as my Great Grandfather did. We both came from a long line of family-run Chinese restaurants and speak the same singsong village dialect from Toishan County. I feel a warm familiar déjà vu like a long lost son on his home coming sojourn as I enter the New Outlook Café even though I’ve never been there before.

Click To Play

The odyssey eventually took me around the world to these other diaspora stories...

I went into this journey without any expectations. I believe that expectations only bring you disappointments. So…two cameras, thirteen countries, mega miles of digital media, more mileage than Che’s motorcycle can rev up, copious varieties of Chinese food, an extended global family and five years later… the "fat man’s feet" has shown me more than just the global extent of our culture. It has transcended my own ethnicity and cultural boundaries beyond my imagination. This series has made me much more confident in terms of who I am. I’ve been subconsciously living on the margins without borders for most of my life. But the series became the glue that solidified my experiences and now I’m making peace with that notion.

For more journal archives, please visit www.tissa.com/production%20diaries.html. Rice Bowl Diaries were my way of keeping balance or sane. Anyone’s questions it may address are as irrelevant as the answers are absurd. The film may be the only possible answer. And getting to it might mean little to anyone but us. I hope to find strength in recollecting my experiences as they had happened… and hopefully by sharing and exposing my vulnerabilities to you. My memories or thoughts in Rice Bowl Diaries might only have resonance then because they’ve been the things helping me move on.

Peace & Rice.

The Border

Funny bizz aside. Last night, I watched the premiere of "The Border", CBC’s expensive sensationalized glam fiction about the two prongs of good & evil. The show is indeed slick, well-acted, and not badly written, portraying a gritty faux reality which of course makes it worse.

The CBC world of "The Border" is not mine. I'm not Muslim. However, I could not help but reflect on a different but parallel historical context (The Racist Head Tax & Exclusion Act) that my community is still waiting for remaining redress shortfalls. As China rises to world power, it will become a threat to the US more than Iraq had...& I have no confidence that Canada will not follow Big Brother's homeland security policies & revisit that same historical past.

When I finally got my Canadian Citizenship after being in Canada for over a decade, my White co-worker congratulated me jokingly with "...you can now officially go to arrivals at the airport, wave your fist in the air and yell "damn you immigrants, coming to steal our jobs!""Not that I would want to call anyone a damn immigrant. But I still don't feel much like a Canadian after all that's said & done with the whole Citizenship shpeel. I still remain on defensive guards in the face of racial profiling & will continue to do so.

I realize that "The Border" is a fictional world and a fictional show. But so much of this type of material gets swallowed up by mass appeal. l think the racial profiling used in the shows online games http://www.cbc.ca/theborder/?3 are irresponsible & more dangerous than our reality. Despite the slick production, this expensive glam show is not doing any good in educating the public, the realities of immigration & border agencies. But it is instead, fueling the life of a long senseless & evil war brought on by corporate America.

圣诞吃中菜與猶太菜,嗯!!Kreplachs & Chinese 4 Xmas YEAH!!

Xmas was always the loneliest times during College when all dee Gentile students go home leaving the non-Gentile students behind with nuthin to do on Xmas day but go to a matinee. I always thought Silent Nite was so named cuzz the bloody city shuts down & the only place to get food is Chinatown.

...a number of people have expressed their discontent with the way Jews are portrayed in some scenes in this video...

I personally don't get all the fuss about Jews eating Chinese food on Xmas? What dah f#uk's wrong with dat? I eat it everyday including Xmas...but we just call it food!

yeap...I'm back Jack!...& havin KREPLACHS with my Chinese(food) 4 XMAS. Happy belated Chanukah y'all!

Hail The Mighty Han

After all said & done, three words that most characterize Western society are fun, comfort, and convenience & I wanted to return to this world. If I were to choose three words that characterize Chinese society, they would be diligence, control and conformity. While I had not finished this trip a Sinophobe, I definitely did not want to be part of a world in which un-stinting hard work and adherence to social norms were values prized above all others. As the plane lifted off the Shanghai Pudong tarmac, I was filled with a sense of foreboding about what the 21^st century, China's century, had in store, and how I was unlikely to fit into any of it even if I wanted to. In the thoughts of my China comrades, I’ve been "culturally corrupted” after being abroad for so long.

It is tempting to believe in the permanence of Western cultural dominance in the world, that history is an evolutionary process and that the western concepts of liberalism and freedom have defeated all others, and are now set in stone, immutable and victorious. But this is not the case. In historical terms, the last 200 years of Western dominance is merely a historical blip. For most of the history of civilization, it has been China who led the way. The centralized state, gunpowder and printing, among many others, are Chinese inventions. And now the controversial question that has every historian in the West shaking in their booties; China’s pre-Columbus discovery of The Americas!

The return of China to global dominance, or Asian hegemony at the very least, is just a matter of time. Napoleon was ‘right on’ when he pointed towards China & said “let the Chinese dragon sleep…for she will shake the world when she awakes”. In spike of my countrymen’s inward thinking on cultural purity & their refusal to accept me as one of their sons, I still am & will continue to be proud of that heritage where I’ve hailed from.

All hail the Mighty Han.

Shanghai Gah Gah!

Shanghai seemed like living in any other cosmopolitan city like New York or Paris, however with more added accoutrements. I could definitely see myself living here for a while. Entering hotels & restaurants, you floated quietly, surrounded by a host of service – a different person each to open your taxi door, the doors to the hotel, several foyer greetings and the direction to the elevators, the elevator doors and the elevator button even, several more greetings arriving at the lobby etc. In short, if you wanted anonymity and the ability to do anything yourself, Shanghai’s not the place to be.

Unfortunately the nightlife/club scene in Shanghai seemed strictly for the weekends, so as I was in Shanghai only 1 weeknight & disappointedly so, I didn't get to see too many places filled up with people. However, what I did see was very promising and revealed a city as close to being hip as one would think of New York and Paris: a host of modern minimalist restaurants and cafes with the latest cuisine, and all the most fashionable boutiques from Paris, Milan and New York.

One warning about Shanghai: if you’re some sort of Rice King with an Asian fetish, Shanghai could be dangerous for you. Almost everywhere you look, Shanghai has much more than her fair share of beautiful, lanky, long legged, willowy Chinese babes leaning by the Bund…with the wind ever so lightly tossing back her long black silky tresses as she smiles for no other reason than just to annoy you…So all you McDudes stay clear…I’m staking claims here for the brothers!

Impermanent Life

Shanghai, although seemingly similar in the basic underpinnings of Chinese society, was the extreme opposite of Xian. Beijing showed me China’s Modern civilization where as Xian showed me her Ancient one. Beijing felt so permanent, so controlled, and as deterministically drawn out as her rigid avenues (as an extension of a several-thousand year dynastic tradition would warrant). But to know China’s post-modern contemporary civilization, you really need to experience Shanghai. Shanghai seems to be so much more about the impermanence of life, and thus the need to live life for all it is worth before it ends suddenly – almost more close to a sense of living each day as if it were your last.

Shanghai was so much more a post-modern, contemporary, Western-styled city, and so much more capitalistic even as I was driving in from the airport. There were so many more high-rises, fewer bikes and more luxury cars, a sea of neon as well as a host of popular commercial "consumerism", and a skyline of construction cranes and a perma-haze of gritty construction dust and debris (as opposed to the outright exhaust pollution and the ultra-dry air in Beijing & Xian).

Farewell Xian

There were tombs aplenty left to visit, and temples galore, or perhaps just more replicas. But as I write this journal, I can barely remember what they were. The month is coming to an end & William has more or less finished the two repertoires he came to learn. What he might not remember completely, I have the digital evidence to jar his memory.

My cold was getting worse as The Yangtze Rivers of phlegm were flooding my sinuses into The Great Gorges. The dry and dusty air continues to make my skin itch, and those truly awful Chinese cigarettes and even the fake western ones were making me cough like a Canuck Moose. When I read the health warning 'Smiking dimages your hill' on my replica Marlboros, I knew it was time to quit & move on, believing for no sane reason, that I'd feel better in Shanghai. I felt like a shark, which like all fish, must keep moving to breath.

Risky Monkey Business

Terracotta Warrior awaits me for over 2000 years. We arrived fairly early, but there was already a queue the length of the Great Wall, snaking around the square like a giant python, and controlled with difficulty by guards armed with those omnipresent electronic megaphones at 10-metre intervals, using them like whips to stop the queue from disintegrating into a heaving mob.

As I was about to join the queue, Mister Adidas points out to me that no one is allowed to bring in video cameras. I guess Emperor Qin had a phobia about them in case I was to divulge his secret whereabouts to the peasant rebels or something. On top of the X-ray machine at the head of the queue reads ‘In the spirit of fang bien, your bags must be checked in at the building off the square’. How annoying is that! I wasn’t gonna come all the way out here & leave without a single frame…this monkey’s gonna come up with a scam…think hard monkey…

The warrior site looked like a typical Chinese tourist attraction. The long street leading up to the entrance was filled with souvenir shops and food concessions. You could buy any imaginable junket available from any diaspora Chinatown, as well as Mao kitschs like watches with him happily waving his arm to count off the seconds. Of course, there were 1001 replicas of the stone warriors, from inch-high miniatures to life-size statues.

The entrance fee was 65 RMB, roughly 10 bucks Canadian Tire Money, & this monkey didn’t get busted for sneaking in his video camera. No complicated ‘Mission Impossible’ scams or anything…I simply left my camera bag behind with Mister Adidas who stayed outside the gate while I glided pass security & scoped out the joint, then I went back to the fence about 20 feet away from the main security & waited for the trained monkeys to get distracted by the fresh busload of suckers…ahhh…I meant tour groups checking in. At which point I waved Mister Adidas over & had him toss my camera bag over the fence. Voila!

2000 years ago, the price for that would have been live burial or decapitation for me, if I was lucky, and in the fine Peking Opera tradition, prostitution for William with some powerful warlord. But since The 'Son of Heaven' no longer exists, I was safe from the chopping block & William didn’t have to put out! However I did fear for my life as surging troops of Chinese tour groups in different colour baseball caps waddled around threatening to squash me as they collided.

Each group was led by tour guide leaders waving small rectangular flags, armed with those tiny quacking electronic megaphones, leading their pack around the square, like mother goose leading her flock in a V-formation. Near the centre of the square, things got too crowded for a classic V-formation, and the tour groups took on the air of penguins; huddled into each other for protection against the fierce Mongolian wind, all looking in this Antarctica of Terracotta soldiers for somewhere to lay their eggs before Winter set in and the snow started to fall.

After that onslaught, I struggled my way through the tour groups dodging every hustler who wanted to be my personal tour guide for the price of my “Nan Dan Diva in their bed chambers” & entered the three cavernous Russian-style block buildings that held the warriors. It was quite a letdown to say the least.

Each building overlooked a pit that had lines of the soldiers in it. The soldiers looked identical to the lines of replicas in the storefronts I'd just hustled by... but put in a little more scenic setting of a "genuine" archaeological dig. Not quite the Eighth Wonder of the World, as they were touting it. But the 360-degree, 10 projector films were very impressive, showing Xian in 360-degree view & the history of the site. It gave me some ideas for future site-specific film projects.

First Broadcast Deal

Looks like we're on the Zheng He Trail & he's watching over us from his Star Raft in the sky!

I just got word from my producer Cheuk Kwan, that our diaspora series "Chinese Restaurants" scored it's first broadcast deal from Singapore TV; 2 years 6 runs, PAL English version exclusive in Singapore & non-exclusive Asian satelite with a footprint of 21 countries including Hong Kong, China & Japan.

We're now waiting on an Australian deal...will know soon. Hot diggadee dog! If you haven't yet, Go check out our site: http://www.ChineseRestaurants.tv

Pear Garden Or Replica?

It's Valentine's Day & I didn't even get any fake or replica Valentines today. Plastic flowers are popular items but then product counterfeiting is an epidemic here. So plastic flowers must be someone's idea of fake Valentines.

I've always felt cheated by replicas, but the Chinese don't seem to mind at all. I've noticed this about the Chinese here - they seem to be indifferent towards a replica and the real thing. China is littered with parks where you can see replicas of everything. In the boarder city of Shenzhen, just the other side of my home town, Kowloon, there's a park with replicas of famous structures including the Eiffel Tower, and other famous foreign buildings like the Louvre, Buckingham Palace etc.

Foot massage girl #56 told me the other night, without a trace of irony or sarcasm, that it's more convenient that way, as you can see all the places at once without having to travel around too much, and you only have to pay one entrance fee. As if to prove their point, near the tomb of Emperor Qin, there was even a replica of a pyramid and a sphinx, so you don't have to bother going to Egypt! Is that cool or what! Fang bien strikes again!

Not that I was dieing (no pun intended) to see anything as morbid as Qin’s real tomb. But the nearest you can get to the real tomb is to stand on the hill which it was dug into. From the top of the hill, upon the mausoleum's completion, you could once see all 25 kilometers of the great emperor's magnificent mausoleum complex; an eternal necropolis, walled in and an eternal reminder of his greatness.

I did however wanted to see the site of the original Tang Dynasty Pear Garden, the birthplace of Chinese Opera since I was here to shoot a doc about a Peking Opera journey after all. But no one seemed to know of its exact location or care, including our Peking Opera Aficionado, Master Sun. Just to appease my annoying ‘foreigner’s curiosity’, on route to the Terracotta site along a dusty country road to the northern outskirts of town, Mister Adidas shouted out ‘Camera ! Kwoi ! Camera !’ as he hazardously pointed towards what was just a small dirty factory with some neighboring pig-farming peasants. I wasn’t sure if I was disappointed by the absence of a replica or that this piece of obscure history has totally vanished without a trace. Obscure history has little chance of survival here.

A Treasured Legacy

William & I wanted to connect with her in December. But our short & hectic stay in Beijing regrettably did not work out. I’m so glad that I was fortunate enough to have met her last summer in Canada when she was able to travel and celebrate her 90th birthday as well as her legacy to Chinese dance with three generations of dancers from Canada, China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

I always get this unexplainable melancholic sadness when I have to say goodbye to my aunties & uncles in China. It always feels like I might not get to see them again…aunties who I’ve only spent short fleeting moments with…but those short fleeting moments become a treasured lifetime.

We have lost a great patron and friend of the World Arts community. Madame Dai Ai Lian, celebrated dance artist and teacher, pioneer and founder of dance art in modern China, passed away peacefully in her sleep at 17:34 on February 9^th, 2006 at the age of 90 in Beijing.

If you are in the vicinities of Beijing this Friday the 17th, there will be a farewell ceremony for Madame Dai at 10 am in the No. 1 Farewell Room of Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery.

The rest of us outside of Beijing will remember her in solidarity.

Under Your Qin

I came to Xian mainly to follow & film William’s Peking Opera journey. But like everyone else, I was compelled to make my way out to see those silly Terra Cotta warrior statues. You know, those life-size replicas built by Emperor Qin to protect him in the afterlife, in place of burying real soldiers alive, standard practice at the time. The soldiers were lucky - his many concubines, servants and all but one of his 22 children did receive the honour of being buried with him, whether they wanted to be or not. Emperor Qin was the first emperor to rule a united China, but also a bit of a paranoid megalomaniac tyrant. It seems that paranoid megalomaniacs always do well, historically speaking. The Bush Dynasty in America is a prime example.

After uniting China, Qin set about making sure the whole bloody continent of a country was kept busy glorifying his magnificence, and built the greatest mausoleum the world would ever see. The terra-cotta warriors were only one small part of the 25-kilometer complex that was to ensure his greatness was never forgotten. The workmen involved in building the most sensitive part of the complex, the emperor's tomb, were buried alive in it immediately after it was finished just to ensure no one would know of its secret whereabouts. Talk about a bum rap eh! You spend 25 years - your whole life - slaving away underground on some loony's tomb, and then as soon as you finish, they bury you alive in it. I guess those poor slobs had pretty weak unions. That’s why I gave up my IASTE card…lol.

The irony is that only a year after his death, peasant uprisings destroyed the emperor's vast monument to himself, looting what they could, demolishing what they couldn't and burning the rest. Even the Terra Cotta warriors had their metal weapons stolen and were smashed to pieces. The warriors you see today were apparently put back together again by teams of archaeologists, who are so patient and skilled, they could probably reconstruct Humpty Dumpty plus the wall.

The Chinese can be a very destructive lot when they set their mind to it. They can build on a massive scale, unthinkable by other cultures, but they can also tear it all down again at frightening speed. I know it's a crass generalization, and not my first, but since so little of China's long history is still standing I can't help but make the assertion. Often when it is standing, you’ll find it's just a replica of something that was destroyed earlier, often several times over, and always for no apparent reason. The Cultural Revolution and the vandalism of the Red Guards were just a more recent, and comparatively mild, example of China's periodic lapses into a destructive insanity.

Fortunately, for the emperor, the peasants couldn't find the entrance shaft to his tomb. It was hidden in a mountain, so they never laid their hands on his most valuable loot. There is a replica of the tomb, which modern archaeologists have seen, and it apparently makes Mao’s Mausoleum look like a pauper's grave, but I suppose Mao would be glad to hear that.

Qin’s coffin is in the centre of the enormous circular vault-like tomb, and the coffins of his favourite concubines were buried into walls around him. Those lucky beauties were allowed to swallow poison rather than being buried alive. Bloody favouritism, eh? There are jewels everywhere and more gold than the Aztecs or Egyptians could shake a stick at. There were apparently also rivers of toxic lead and mercury, part of Qin’s deadly booby-traps to protect his loot, which is why tour groups can't see the original, or that's what they told us.

Goat's Head Soup

The largest Mosque in all of China, the Great Mosque, is located here. It is Muslim by faith. But with its ornate, eave rooftops, spacious courtyards and stony arches, the architecture is straight Chinese. I’m fascinated by how the Muslims here have co-existed with the Chinese to the point of being absorbed by our culture & yet kept their religion intact & in peace whereas in places like Indonesia, a similar cultural mix have resulted never ending, unresolved race riots. The Great Mosque was probably one of the most authentic untampered sites I’ve visited on this tour. It is pure Tang Dynasty!

I climbed atop a pile of rubbish, peered down a narrow lane with my camera & caught some handsome Muslim boys in starched white skullcaps stirring bubbling cauldrons with floating goats’ heads. Now I know where Mick Jagger got his idea for his Goat’s Head Soup album. The boys shouted at me in Urdu. It was probably something along the lines of “outta my F-ing face with that camera, dude!”. But I couldn’t make anything out other than their breaths in tiny puffs of steam accented by the harsh back light from an overhead street lantern. An elderly man waves his fist at a pack of beautifully sullen adolescent girls walking along holding hands. The festive mood rolled back nostalgic childhood memories of late night flower markets during Lunar New Year in Sham Shui Po, my old hood back home in Kowloon.

The tall bottles of cheap Chinese beer sold in street stalls became rare since the Muslims bypass on alcohol here. But Xian's redeeming quality for me was the food. We happily ate our way through Culture Street and the Muslim Quarters for cheap, stopping every half a block or so to sample yet another delicious and unknown treat from a street vendor. We tried tons of meat skewers, various deep-fried dumpling things, and endless exotic unknown sweets.

Twilight In Muslim Quarter

Xian's 70,000 plus Muslims live beyond a dark tunnel just north of Master Sun on the other side of the Ancient City Wall. Like the Peking Opera Costume Hutong in Beijing, The Muslim Quarter is another filthy but beautiful place that sits on the verge of extinction. The bright lights perched on the sparse branches punctuate the darkness like tiny pin pricks of neon. In the late twilight hours when few patrons are around, the undiffused, raw lights elongate the shadows of passers-by. People come here to stroll around & soak up the exotic atmosphere at night. The narrow pathways are unfit to host vehicular traffic; yet annoying automobiles still honk and flash their lights into the dense crowd forcing their way through.

The streets are labyrinthine with symbols of Arabian imperialism appearing sporadically. Women are veiled & swirling Arabic script (God is Great) appears everywhere on storefront marquis. The faces of the people here are rounder, paler, and more Caucasian looking with blue & green eyes. They’re the descendents of Persian merchants who came eastward along the Silk Road & settled down here with babes of the Han Empire. The women are spectacular...jumping right off the pages from Arabian Nights. Boutiques sell appropriate clothing for the believers.

We being believers & all had custom tailored traditional suites made for approximately $30 Canadian. A price tag unheard of in Beijing, & most likely laughable in Shanghai. I wasn’t sure if it was operatic training frustration or just regular shopping frenzy, but William played Santa Claus & had 6 Cheongsams made. He probably made the tailor’s year! Merry Christmas…ka-ching $$$$ !