Virtual Drawer # 3: Beijing Opera Props Shop

The Beijing Opera Props Shop at 654-658 Guang Dong Lu in Shanghai. Always a place of wonder.

Drawer # 1.5 : Stripey Mops

Despite my endless fascination with the human condition, I find the day-to-day business of dealing with actual humans a bit exhausting. 

Maybe it's because I'm an introvert. Or maybe it's that, as a maker, I believe in the secret life of objects. Whatever it is, I'm always thrilled to encounter an object that I can antropomorphize. In my pre-China days, it was the overlooked architecture of factories and agro-industry: watertowers, dust collectors, grain dryers...

These days, it's the Stripey Mop. 

The ubiquitous stripey mop, made from T-shirt fabric, which you might know from trying to clear up a spill with a t-shirt, is really not a great absorbent material. But never mind, at less than a $1US you can't beat the price. And so they hang out everywhere, from the most local courtyard to the service closet at the poshest hotel. And if I see a good one, even though I know the neighbors will be gossiping about why the foreigner has yet another mop tied to the back of her bike, I can't resist adding to my collection.

Once, in very early days here, I saw an old man with all his mop-making paraphernalia spread out all around him on a street corner. Wood handles, various colors of t-shirt strips, plastic wrap for the initial attachment of strips to handle, binding wire to secure the mop's topknot all precisely lais out like in a diagram of the procedure. To his amusement, I stopped to watch for a while but, in a rush to elsewhere, took no pictures. Given the ubiquity of the mops, I expected to see the makers often. But I never have yet again, not once. It's always interesting that: that when you are new to a place, a tourist, the place sometimes opens up to you in a way that it won't again once it has absorbed you.

                                     The View in Fragments: Mops, 2011

                                                 Mixed media in glass vitrine, 8.5 x 12.75 x 6.25

                                                 Courtesy Bruno David Gallery 

                                                 Photo credit all above: Bruno David 

                                                 Photos below: mine from the industrial sweeping supply shop. Note bamboo broom in use.

Drawer # 3.2: Double Happiness

Wouldn't want St Valentine, the Patron Saint of "affianced couples, bee keepers, epilepsy, fainting, greetings, happy marriages, love, plague, travelers, & young people" to get trumped by the God of Wealth so it's Double Up today... 

When you take the Chinese character for happiness (xi 喜), and you make it a couple, you get Double Happiness, (shuangxi 囍), the fabulously popular character associated with weddings & harmonious coupledom (& a certain brand of cigarettes & a million commercial products...) 

And because hǎoshì yào chéng shuāng 好事要成双 happiness comes in twos...

Chopstick holders from the most famous of Beijing Duck restaurants. Never mind that you are there to eat them,  mandarin ducks, thought to mate for life, are symbols of fidelity & lifelong love.

Somehow it wouldn't be a cabinet of curiosities if it didn't have a few shells. These are a little bit of a cheat on the China theme: these two (& just these two!) were found on the beach during our honeymoon in Thailand.

Debris from a favorite exploding thing, a long tube that when triggered spews out these bits of  tissue & foil & cellophane Double Happinesses. At weddings definitely but really any excuse is will do...

Full drawer photo credit: Bruno David