Sunday morning, rising sun

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

I love buses


I still prefer trains, but if I have the time and there's not much traffic on the roads, its definitely buses over the metro. There's so much life on display. You'd never feel lonely when you are taking the bus, even if you are the only passenger around.

From stop to stop, I see youth, old age, beauty, pregnancy, love, and everything else in between. I am not trying to sound poetic here. That's what fascinates me about public transportation - what a complex medium for human interaction. What I find wonderful is that, when the doe-eyed girl of the cute puppy love couple sitting across from you tries to steal a kiss at her little one, and catch someone else looking at them, her shyness and boldness on display, all in a fraction of a second. Or the frail old woman getting annoyed but likewise scared of the bunch of loud-mouth youth making ruckus in the rows behind. Or fellow silent passengers eyeing one another, to see who would yield their seat first to the old man who just stepped on the bus. Do I get up or would she get up? Would the man get offended - maybe he's in great shape? Just because he has white hair doesn't mean he needs a seat?

Thoughts are transparent, and opaque simultaneously, in buses.

And a few years go on, then we realize that when we were 16 ourselves, boy/girlfriend or none, we sat in one of those sun-filled buses, with scenes rolling on, our heads bopping to our MDs or even walkmans, and those were the best days of our lives.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Um, where are my friends?

Okay.

I just realized that all the "dear ones" listed on the left hand side of this page are people who closed their blogs or no longer update it.

It's a bit unfortunate since these are 3 very intelligent young people who'd have a lot of interesting things to say and share.

It's also a bit unfortunate since it tells you how "dear" they are to me. They are, I just need to get myself much more updated.

Off to Brazil in around 2 weeks.

Hopefully the larger intake of Vitamin D down south will help get my brainpower back up to par.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

"Artiste"???????

Today I left a spiteful comment on TVBCOM, the twitter account for TVB.com, the Hong Kong own-it-all, know-it-all media TV channel that calls all the shots in the Hong Kong entertainment showbiz.

As immature as this sounds, it just pisses me off how some of the second-class candy-pop actresses call themselves "artists". Better yet, they call themselves "artiste". That's not even a word.

Don't get me wrong. I am totally for people who want to pursuit their dreams and if people want to get into show biz (even though they clearly lack talent), that's cool. At least you gotta give them kudos for being persistent. But when clearly, you dropped out of school and got into the biz because you think it'd get you a rich husband and allow yourself to name your profession as being an "artiste"...think again.

I like ATV (namely the loser TV channel of Hong Kong). They had some good shows once in a while, and these people are still hanging in, making every effort to stay afloat. Come on, people. ARTISTE? Are you joking me??

Friday, February 13, 2009

The Chinese musical odyssey- vol. 1

Recently, I have become completely engrossed with Chinese Ethnic (non-han) and han folk music from China. I spend a good 2-3 hours every day after work researching and watching videos on Youtube with performances from these artists.

To clarify, China has 56 different ethnicities, the Han people being the typical image or the typical "Chinese" you will see. If the concept isn't clear to you, for example, Tibetan and Mongolian, Manchurian and Chaosen (Korean) are also some of the minor ethnicities present in China. These people are often bilingual in both Han Yu (Chinese, in this case, mostly Mandarin, the official language of China), and their own ethnic language. Their facial features, especially those in the Northwestern and Southwestern China, are much more distinguishable than the ethnic Han. Uyghur, even Kazahk, is a good comparsion to what some "Chinese" might look like, just to challenge that common perception of what a Chinese is.

People from Hong Kong, Singapore, Macau, or Chinese-Malaysians usually can still trace their roots back to China. Being Chinese is just one part of a Chinese's person's identity. To specify, a Chinese commonly identify his or her own background based on regional geography, specifically the 28 provinces of China. Within certain provinces the differences are even more flamboyant- Canton province for example, people tend to cling on much closer to the city where they/their ancestors are from, not so much the province in itself. And this regional allocation is based on your father's ancestry. With the exception of a few maternal socities (Muo Shaw, Hubei), ancestry, language and regional cultures are defined by paternal lineage.

My father comes from a mix of Han and Tujia ethnicity (mid-East China, Hunan province- just below the Lake), and he claims that his pops told him the Pang clan migrated from inner Mongolia 10 generations ago. How much of this can be retraced is beyond me. On my mom's side, my maternal grandma claims Mexican and French heritage, yet in terms of her own Chinese "allocation" she is Cantonese. So long story short, my family has always told us colourful stories from anywhere in the world, and it was easy to grow up being fascinated with diverse traditions and cultures.

A combination of this fascination and a recent search of some good music to listen to these days got me to bump into a couple of breathtaking performers in present day China, who often perform in their ethnic languages, Mandarin, or both, singing traditional songs from their region. Here's a few:

The can't-fail list of first time listeners to folk music in China

click on the links to see the videos on Youtube.

1. mid-North China: 陕北
Style: 信天游

Performer: 阿宝 (A-bao)

天下黄河九十九道湾 (99 bends in the Yellow River)

A-bao is a peasant singer who can reach a pitch of "double 8C", a voice unprecedentedly high and is often unmatched even by trained tenor voices. 信天游 (Xin Tian You) is a style that in Mongolia or Northern China is often known as "Mountain Climbing Yukele". Each line of the verse is usually based on 7 syllables, and usually rises and fall on a similar note but with lots of dynamic changes in between the first climb of octave to the end. Both men and women can sing this.

信天游 as a style is known to reflect the characteristics of the geographical location that harbours such voices and verses, as well as the content of the lyrics. Northern China (Shaanxi, Shaanbei) are particularly harsh for habitation - the terrain is rough to live on; water is scarce, weather is extremely humid and plantations few. In such tough conditions, 信天游 performers can be heard to reflect the specific "Plateau culture" - it is a collective voice that can sound nostalgic, lonesome, low and occasionally mournful; however, if you ever come across one of these songs and can get a hold of translated lyrics, or pay attention to the change in octaves, 信天游 can also be very positive, the performers' peak in high notes a direct vocal imagery as the area's tough will to fight against misfortune and living in tune with Nature.


Mid-Western China: Tibet :西藏Style: ?

Performer: Soinam Wongmo 索朗旺姆

To familarize yourself with the unique voice of Tibetan soprano, try this one rock-tuned version - I see a good hip hop rendition of it, i wonder if Jay Zhou or even Rick Rubens/Jay-Z would be interested to turn something like this over?

Rubens should be able to make this even more fantastic than it already is:
Walk out of the moutain ranges

Now THE famous tibetan folk song:
青藏高原(Tibetan Plateau)

An original tibetan song, Soinam Wongmo sang first in Tibetan than in Han, with lyric contents being fairly similar to each other. Lyrics roughly translates to:

Who brought in that call from antiquity
Who left behind that age-old longing
Are there any more of such wordless songs?
Or is it the longing which would not depart or be forgotten

Chrous: I see a range of mountains
I see all the mountains and all the rivers
The ranges and the rivers connect together
Ya-Lah-So, this is the Tibetan plateau

Who watches the sky from afar night and day?
Who is longing for that eternal dream?
Are there any more songs of such praise?
Or is it that grandeur that existed long before time?

(repeat Chorus)


As I am getting tired, if someone is reading this; next up: inner Mongolia, and music during The Great Leap Forward (1950-60s).

p.s. Please, do let me know if i made mistakes with reference to anything. i had to research maps to know how many provinces china has, for example!

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Last published :

Last time I wrote here: september 2007.

The moments of life that happened between then and now were relatively hard to catalogue in the written word. So much has passed me by; gained a little, lost a little. Or a lot.

I am currently sitting, waiting, wishing that I'll get my Belgian visa. Je m'asseoie inutilement a Paris. Thank god some friends decided to supply a free roof over my head in the form of letting me freeload at their house.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

And today I am feeling a wee bit poetic

Had a lovely Sunday afternoon. Basked in sunshine, solitary walks along the spacious avenues close to the Louvre, and marvelled again at the architectural and creative wonders of humankind in the said museum. Thanks to a dear friend who left me a carte jeune for Louvre, I went back this Sunday and discovered the entire third floor wing with Northern European, Flemish and Dutch art pieces.


And the other weekend I went back to see my favourite piece in a Parisian museum, La dame à la Licorne. It continues to fascinate me how 3 years ago I would have never dreamed being able to see the real thing as I studied the tapestry in a medieval history class, and now I get to spend as much time as I want gazing at the tapestry. Even though life in Paris can be cruel, tough and cold sometimes, the people occasionally snobby and blasé, its richness in history and culture makes you forget all about it...

Sunday, August 26, 2007

In Istanbul!

Finally, summer! Scorching hot, bright and low sun makes me one very tanned AIESEC delegate at International Congress 2007 in Turkey!

The past few days have been inspiring but I must say the inspiration come mostly from meaningful conversations that were had during the conference. Talks about different cultures, bloopers in different languages, exchange processes and realities...I find that perhaps really in nature I am an introversive person in terms of thoughts and feelings, and it was cool to approach so many people and have so many different chats. If anything, the value of the sessions come later.

A lot of things are going through my mind now, in particular to what I should or would be doing a year from now. Would I be in Brazil? Would that become a reality? Would I still be a part of this amazing organization called AIESEC or would I be an alumni? But if anything, i am more than happy to be as alive as possible during this one year, and it's up to all of us to make it happen, to make the organization as alive as possible likewise during this one year!

One AIESEC- making it happen!