Drawer 4.3: Wish You Happy Year of the Monkey!

Well, here we go: another China year for us. We've been working our way thru the 12 year cycle of the Shengxiao (生肖), the Chinese zodiac. Our first Chinese New Year in Shanghai we met the Rooster...which means...omg!...we arrived in a Monkey year! We thought we'd stay 2 years, maybe 3 & here we are full cycle! 

Those of you who are Monkeys...born in 1932, 44, 56, 68, 80, 92, 2004...might want to visit Drawer #1.4 to catch up on protecting yourself in your ben ming nian (本命年), your zodiac year. It's all about Red Underwear. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I've been in North Carolina all of January with my head happily down at a Winter Residency at the Penland School of Crafts. I was there, at the invitation of Kathryn Gremley, Penland's Gallery Director, (super big thanks, Kathryn!) to work on an installation for an interesting wedge of outdoor space created by the addition of a new gallery building. 

But I also had fun with the yards & yards of the red fabric called Dong Bei Large Flower Cloth I laid it out as part of my April installation at the Hillyer Art Space in D.C. Dong Bei is a province in  Northwest China (though in Chinese that's Westnorth.) but the fabric is favored all over China. By color - red is for happiness - & imagery - the cloth is associated with domesticity & marriage; it's traditionally used for marriage bed duvets (and to decorate Dong Bei restaurants in Shanghai.)  Older Chinese women have a way of putting patterns together that we'd consider mismatched but utterly sings out to me (though I'm too shy to shoot the pics...)  I gave it a try, mixing four different versions of the Dong Bei cloth - some vintage, some contemporary. I learned a lot about pattern and color values but whether it's going to be an audacious addition to the show or an over-the-top failure is yet to be seen...

A few weeks ago He-Whom-I'm-Trailing came home to a pink notice on our front door. Once we got it translated, it forbid the use of fireworks inside the city limits. We were skeptical that this would dampen the show but, indeed, word on the street from Shanghai is that this year there really were no fireworks inside the city limits. I guess that's the safe & prudent way to go but I'm sure glad we were there for the glory days as it gobsmacked us every time...click here for a minute's worth of video of what used to go on for hours & hours...So, this drawer, with its images taken from the spent firework castings that would land on our balcony, is in honor of all that thrilling firepower. Thank you for looking thru the Cabinet with me & Wish You a Happy Year of the Monkey!

Drawer #4.3: from the top 

1. The Chinese Character for Firecracker & a snarl of dragony-looking green tape 

2. A dragon, the highest animal in Chinese mythology, symbolic of males; with a sticker offering services to those migrants in need of a residency permit 

3. A fenghuang a  mythological bird, part phoenix, part peacock, part other things, symbolic of the females; w/ "happy clouds." 

4. Another fenghuang, more happy clouds, all images taken from the decorative wrappers of firecrackers. 

Photo credits: Full drawer, Bruno David; all others, Christina Shmigel

For more Chinese New Year items, check out Drawer #1.4: Chinese Zodiac Animals;
 Drawer #2.2, Things That Don't Fit in a Drawer #4, Things that Don't Fit in a Drawer #3

Drawer #1.4: Chinese Zodiac Animals

Even though Chinese New Year isn't until Feb 10th, the Year of the Black Snake begins today. It's a mystery how that works but that's par for the course.

We arrived in Shanghai in the year of the Monkey but the whole Chinese "zodiac" thing, the Shengxiao, (生肖), didn't really get on my radar until the following New Years's, when my Chinese teacher gave me  a set of postcards with papercuts for the Year of  the Rooster.

The next year was the year of my animal, the Dog. You might think, like I did, that the year your animal rules, you'd rule too. Not so. In fact, that's the year when things are most likely go askew for you & dangers lurk. I learned this the hard way: when the ladder to our top floor slipped out from under me, leaving me dazed for the next 4 months, everyone said knowingly, "oh, it's because you're a Dog." Only then did I learn that I should have been wearing protection. As in: red underwear.

I'm not making this up, people: by this time next week I'll now exactly which of my neighbors is a Snake by what's on their clothesline. No secrets here in the lane.

By the time the Year of the Pig rolled in, I was firmly sucked into the Chinese New Year kitsch market.

And when He-Whom-I'm Trailing's animal, the Rat took over the following year, we were fully armed & prepared: a drawer full of red underwear emblazoned with giant gold good fortune characters & a neck amulet bought in Hong Kong by the mother of a friend who knows about these things. A cow charm on a red string: all the decoy needed for spirits to go looking elsewhere to ruin a Rat's day. (Zig-zag bridges, foot high door jams, decoy charms... it's good to know that one's demons are so easily out smarted, says He-Whom-I'm-Trailing. One can imagine them all slamming themselves around like a bunch of Wile E. Coyotes.)

Next up was the Ox, carrying a sack of wealth, inscribed with the Fu of good fortune.

Fu is everywhere this time of year, often up-side down. That way, when you spot it  & say, in Chinese, "Fu is upside down" you are also saying "Good Fortune has arrived" as upside-down and arrived sound exactly alike in Mandarin. Which might also explain why I'm always a little turned around round here....

And so the twelve year cycle continues, each Animal ruling in the order in which it won the mythic Great Race: Rat, that cheater, conning the Cat out of participating & hitching a ride on the unsuspecting Ox, diving in to race to shore in the final stretch; Dog distracted, despite being a great swimmer, coming in almost dead last... (See The Rematch staged amuzingly last year in Zhujiajiao by American artist Duke Riley for SmART Power.) The years go by: Tiger, then Rabbit, then Dragon & now Snake.

We came to China thinking we'd be here two, maybe three years.... it's nine now. I'm saying that I'm not staying into the next cycle. I'm getting out before it's Monkey's turn again...but the Animals might have other plans...

Drawer # 8.6 : Things for the Dead

We don't especially know the other people who live in our lane and they don't especially seem to know each other: it's hard to imagine anyone here on our lane organizing a block party.  In winter, we mostly see our elderly neighbors on sunny afternoons, huddles of small old women, made smaller & squatter still by the layers of their padded clothes, set on short-legged stools close to the ground, escaping their small damp rooms. 

We do, however, know when one of them passes away. In the mornings, sometimes we find the markings of a funeral rite: a large chalk circle drawn on the ground, at its center the charcoal smudge of a swept-up pile of ashes. The chalk circle encloses the departed soul's earthly place, protects that soul from wandering the earth as a restless ghost. Much has been burnt to accommodate the soul into its after life: paper money, paper mansions complete with garage & Lexus, dvd player & large screen tv, paper clothes & cellphone, cigarettes, medicines, all the material things of this life sent along by fire & smoke to the ancestral life. Sometimes at night we come home while the family is standing around the circle, quietly stamping their feet against the cold, chatting on their cell phones, waiting for the fire to burn down. 

Once we sat drinking coffee at a smart cafe on the futuristic side of the river, inside the photo view that is Shanghai to the world. For two hours, three employees of the cafe nonchalantly fed an unending supply of joss, spirit money, into a small brazier just to the side entrance of the cafe. Wads & wads of flimsy rice paper embossed with a thin metal foil square, all going up in smoke, to someone.

Sometimes the joss sheets are folded into boat-like shapes, paper counterparts of the traditional ingots of gold and silver. On the days leading up to certain dates of the lunar calendar, the old women sit together in the sun on their stools folding hundreds & hundreds of silver & gold paper ingots. They bundle them in red sacks & take them to the temple to burn.

I'm a fire person so I love all this: it reminds me of an elder's advice in a entirely different tradition:  

“Abbot Lot came to Abbot Joseph and said:  Father, according as I am able, I keep my little rule, and my little fast, my prayer, meditation and contemplative silence; and according as I am able I strive to cleanse my heart of thoughts:  now what more should I do?"  

 The elder rose up in reply and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. He said:  Why not be totally changed into fire?”                                                                                          

                            -(LXXII) from The Wisdom of the Elders, Thomas Merton

Drawer 8.6 from bottom: 1. Funeral circle made w/ in-laid silk pins,  heads dipped in some material the color of bone   2. Joss paper, pre-folded into ingots at the Buddhist goods shop, still in its store wrapping 3. Tin container containing Chinese medicine 4. Cast concrete souvenirs of the Terracotta Warriors, beneath a plastic pipe insulated with used plastic bags against winter cold ( drawer photo credit: Bruno David)