Another Random Photo.

Since it was fun last time just finding a photo to post with my eyes shut, I'll do it again.  And, again, if it's something worth talking about, I will, and if it isn't, I'll go off to see a movie instead.

Seeing how bad this photo is

makes me almost pleased 

that particular camera was stolen 

up in China last year.

Ah yes, this one was from two years ago, when I was up in Mainland China over Chinese New Year and thinking just how yuck yellow and purple flowers look together.

Do you know about that?  How, in China, they celebrate their new year by placing pots of yellow and purple flowers and fruit around their front doors, representing a desire for health and longevity ...

 I mean, how YUCK is that!

... and I was walking along thinking how they were such an unfortunate mix of colours, so I made it a quest to find pots that actually worked visually.

And this photo two above was my winner; a more orange-y yellow with the purple.

And now I want to find others from this same quest, although I doubt I can find those photos again.

No luck yet, but look what I did find:

 I did have some afterall!

Yes, it's yet another of Ianbo's Carrie Chau statues, with a Carrie Chau's painting in the background.  Remember how I couldn't find any back in a previous post?

This is from an exhibition she threw together to raise money for the Sichuan earthquake victims last year, and that painting you can see back there is one she donated to the cause and she was selling postcards of it as a fundraiser.  I got heaps, as you may know since I've already sent them all out to folks and used up my entire supply.

Let me try again:

No luck, but I did find another lost photograph:

The Hero of Hong Kong.

This gorgeous fellow, something Wong, was the only HKer to consistently score tries in last year's HK7, so we loved him to death.

Then, only a few months ago, I walked into a cafe here in HK and was astonished to hear Polynesian music - a Maori song to be specific - "Po Keri Keri Ana" or "Band of Men" or "Knock Three Times" or "Slice of Heaven" or some other unofficial Maori anthem - and looked over to see three fellows playing guitar together, only two of whom were large Maori warrior-types and the third was this lovely fellow.  Naturally I HAD to ask, and it turns out that he was doing some sort of rugby training workshop with New Zealand All Blacks and they were having some typical-Maori downtime together.  

Anyway, I told him I'd taken a photo of him surrounded by little autograph hunting kiddies and he said he'd love to see it, only I couldn't find it to send to him.  And now I've found it.

And since the All Blacks have honoured him by sending over a few players to coach him aren't you just longing to see him play again in this year's HK7s next month. 

And all this has taken an hour of my life and I'm not going in again, so you'll have to go without seeing more photos of the shades of yellow and purple that actually do work together.  Can you live with that?

Later:

Found the post where I previously showed you Something Wong's photograph.

Another Letter from the Files.

Here's another random letter, also from 2005.

Hi. Computer still a problem so again writing from the free computers in Pacific Cafe and again I'm here with absolutely nothing to say for myself.

... (Deleted as personal) ...

You MUST come over soon, if for no other reason than to rummage through our wonderfully exciting Johnston Road sample shops; the very reason I've decided to move to Wan Chai, so I can access them every day, I love them so much. (N.B. Sample shops are the places where the luxury goods market dumps their seconds and you can buy the most extraordinary stuff for pocket change.)

 Your typical Johnston Road sample shop.

This one still exists,

although, with Wan Chai 'gentrifying',

most have shut down.

I hear, by the way, they've moved

to Western Markets

but my New Year's Resolution is to give up 

being such a consumer and so I have

yet to chase them down.

Today wasn't an exception. Couldn't help myself so got two gorgeous "granny-style" tulip skirts - Brooks Brothers - several Armani silk shirts, three cashmire cardigan twin-sets and a sublime cream trenchcoat by Burberry, all for less than US$200. I also got a pair of grey "sensible" heeled square-toed shoes and several really sublimely-vile but real crystal broaches to wear with them: the amethyst dragonfly I intend to wear on my beret whenever I do this "crazy rich granny" look ...

 My 'crazy granny look' in Bangkok.

The Patpong Street ladyboys loved it.

... but I'm refusing to even think of wearing a fur tippet. Please remind me of that ... NO FUR TIPPETS!!! And no muffs either.

Hard to believe that, thanks to these sample shops, I've actually got interested in fashion again. Somehow the whole grunge decade turned me off it with a vengence.

Ah, someone's just pressed the button next to me. That means I've only got fifteen minutes before I have to get off. So, what else can I talk about for fifteen minutes?

... (Deleted as personal) ...

Oh yeah, I got a personal trainer and am going to the gym several times a week. Discovered I needed it since I haven't been feeling very fit lately; most likely the air pollution since I'm having trouble breathing. His name is Eo and he's the sweetest, prettiest, vainest little boy imaginable. Lovely face, sublime body and blond-streaked punk hair. He's actually very good at his job but spends all his time posing in the mirrors and saying "Excellent. Excellent." It's hard to know exactly what he's talking about but he's such a little sweetheart I'm trying to convince myself he's talking about my progress.

... (More personal stuff) ...

That's my news and the ticker's gone off meaning my time's up so goodbye for today.

The Pearl River Jaunt

Time for another old letter, right.  So here's one chosen at random from September 2005.


... This will make your jaw drop.

The Redoubtable Walkers have just been up in Mainland China for the Mid-Autumn Festival long weekend, traveling in ferryboats up the Pearl River through Guong Dong. Lovely trip, by the way, so they say and so totally off the beaten track that everyone they saw just stopped and stared slack-jawed at them, so they are probably the first Europeans ever to do it.

Anyway, Sunday night they're staying up in a Chinese boarding house in a little "never-seen-white-people-before" market town on the upper reaches of the Pearl River ... when something so amazing happened they still don't believe it.

There they are, right, early in the evening, wandering the streets deep in heartland countryside China, when they pass "the local nightspot". It was the only place open "so late at night" (8.30) so they peep in to check it out.

It was the saddest little disco probably on the planet: just a couple of flashing lights, homemade stereo playing Canto-pop songs, no actual dance floor and lots of young farmers and farmer-ettes sitting around not talking, drinking local beer, just looking bashful or playing dice.

No one glared at them peeping around the door so they slipped in and ordered a beer each (through sign language, naturally) They were there for a while, watching it all and loving every minute, when ...

... suddenly, right there coming from the stereo, they hear what sounds like the opening of the song "Treaty, yeah!!"

"Can't be!" they both said, but it kept going and yes it was.

Yes, Yothu Yindi!  Yothi Yindi!!! A Northern Territory Aboriginal band and here they are right in heartland country China.

And, if that wasn't jaw-dropping enough, soon as they hear it all the farmers and farmer-ettes cheer and stand up and clap along and when the chorus started they all begin to chant  "Freedom, yeah! Freedom, now! Freedom, yeah!" and start to dance. Obviously it's what they think the song says, and they were soooo getting off on it.



So, there you have it. Young Chinese boogie-ing on down to Yothi Yindi in the upper reaches of Pearl River.

I wonder if we can get this piece of news to Mundawoy Yunupingu. I think it would fascinate him as well because could anything else be so totally astonishing!!!


Later:

The Redoubtable Walkers say that the version they heard up there was actually this one:

Another Dafen Drop-By

Dashed up to Dafen, the artist village in Shenzhen in Mainland China, to pick up the paintings we commissioned. It had to be a fast trip because Heather had a dinner party that night, so there wasn't time to do much at all.

However, this visit I did lay eyes on the artist I admire so much, Cai Jun:

 Amazing fellow. 

I wish you could see his paintings, 

which I wasn't allowed to 

include in the shot.

As for the finished commissions, here's the one I intend to donate to Laucala Bay Parish Rectory in Suva, Fiji, in memory of our good friend Father Bransfield:

 Father heads into the light.

Already told you how this whole commission went skew-whiff because the artist and I had no language in common, but I really like what he came up with. What do you think?

And just being a little silly, I also commissioned a portrait of Jane Austen to hang above my computer:

Honouring The Master!

It's an inspirational thing.  Yes, I too can one day write exquisite little novels.  Only now I'm thinking she's a little bland and wondering if I should paint a moku on her.  That's the traditional Maori facial tattoo, if you don't already know. And I'd just do a little chin tag to signify a women of highest respect. What do you reckon?

When I mentioned this, Maureen was very funny and referred me to this skit:



Yup, Jane Austen was a Kiwi.  I can live with that!

So now all I have left to do, Dafen-wise, is find the photos to be turned into portraits for Tutu Mission in Taveuni, and Lomeri Mission in Deuba.

And, and, and ... I'd LOVE to create my own Wall of Heroes with a row of pop art paintings of  ummmm?, Mahatma Gandhi, Amelia Earhart, Albert Einstein ... and that's just for starters.

And Dafen can do it for me.  How can you NOT love that place?

The Wisdom Path

When Beccy and Heather climbed Big Buddha ...

 Beccy and Heather 

take the pilgrimage; 

a journey of 1000 steps.

All uphill!

... Chris and I ran away.  No way we're taking those steps when we don't have to.

Instead, Chris took me to her very special place "just around the corner":

The Wisdom Walk:

 Young girls taking sexy photos

on the Wisdom Walk.

Yup, at my age I now realise 

there's a lot of wisdom in that!

Have you ever heard of this place?  I hadn't.  It's in the wilderness on the side of the mountain to the left of the monastery:

 

The Wilderness!

The Wisdom Path consists of a series of wooden stellae going up the side of a mountain, all together forming the shape of infinity ...

... each engraved with a "roan" that together make a very famous Buddhist poem known as "The Emptiness Sutra."

The explanation is here:

 Double-click to wrap your brain
around "The Emptiness Sutra".

Personally, I couldn't get my mind around what they were talking about because to me it seemed like Nihilism but Chris said no, so I pushed my very lazy brain some more and came up with Solipsism but Chris said no, and then Phenomenology but again no, and after that I was stuck except for the fleeting thought that it may have been something of what Mary Magdalene was talking about in her now-rediscovered Gospel; all about the interconnectedness of all things, which was, apparently, what Jesus used to talk about in his private down time.

Or maybe Ecclesiastes. Those verses someone turned into that "Turn, Turn, Turn" song.  Yes? No?

Whatever it is, I came away thinking I was exceptionally stupid, especially since, in light of "Emptiness" I couldn't understand why they were doing renovation work trying to save the stellae from those termite attacks:

Look Richard! Scaffolding!

Surely having it all vanish into dust should be the very essence of "Emptiness", but whatever!

However, if you want to visit The Wisdom Path yourself, you'll find it by going to "The Centre of the Earth" ...

 In front of Big Buddha.

Then, facing towards Buddha, turn left, go past the teahouse, then stroll along in front of the toilet block down that small jungle trail and just keep walking ... and walking and walking and walking.

 Past lots of friendly wild cattle.

Eventually - after you've long been thinking "Should have just taken those sodding steps afterall" - you see Big Bird ...

Finally decided it was a phoenix.

But the mosaics are lovely.

... stop there and look around and you'll see the Wisdom Path is right there on the hillside in front of you, only a little to the right.
 
And be careful because, if you miss it, there are other paths around that will lead you deep into the mountains and before you know it, voila!, you're taking a hike. And there's no way you'd want that, is there!