A Good Day in China

Recently we had an interesting Saturday. The program arranged for a demonstration of Chinese painting and calligraphy by a modern master, Xu Qingping, son of the great master of China Xu Beihong at the Xu Beihong museum near Houhai.

As it turns out, even great calligraphy is pretty boring to watch. Especially if you can't read the characters. Still, it was pretty cool, and he wrote a poem for us, which would probably sell for a lot of money if he wanted to sell it. Chinese art is an interesting form, because it doesn't take long to make a painting—a great painter can make a convincing cat in one stroke. But the form is ink on silk or paper; if you make a mistake, you have to work it in or abandon the project. So it takes years and years and years to be able to do the work, and that creates the value. But because the paintings and calligraphy are so quick, they are often used as gifts from one artist to another. For example, it used to be a custom among scholars to leave a little poem at the door if they came and you weren't home.




After the demonstration, I walked around with Jon, Patrick and Jon's friend from AU that sort of turned up randomly on the bus. We had a very spicy lunch, and then came across this very fascinating day market.


That night everyone went to Lush, but that was getting boring, so we went to Juli, Li and KP to the Be For Time Tea House, where 18 kuai will buy you unlimited beverages for 5 hours. We stayed until 4 o'clock in the morning and then we went home, watched half of the Ladykillers (Tom Hanks), and finally all fell asleep on Juli's bed when the sun came up. Except for Li, who got tired of us and went to bed early.

Jon and I with some tea. You could get other drinks too, like red bean snow cones or cappucino.

I haven't done food closeups in a while. These are provided for snacking purposes.

All of us having a good time together.