Greetings from Asia - 27 March 2011

On the Earthquake

Based as we are in Asia at the moment, we had to say something about the recent earthquake in Japan. See our article published in the Broad Street Review by clicking here...

Greetings from Asia - 15 February 2011

Cultural Tropes

This blog focuses primarily on cross-cultural issues, with occasional excursions into other areas. In this entry, we will return to one of our favorite topics — learning about cultures from examining cultural minutiae. As some readers may know, we hate when cross-cultural “experts” reduce every cultural identifier to things such as “Americans shake hands, but Japanese bow...” Not only are statements of this kind not quite true, they don’t really tell you anything. Naturally, sometimes cultures operate at very broad levels — the Chinese usually use chopsticks and Westerners don’t — but even those kind of identifiers are not particularly interesting.

What is really key to getting a profound insight into another culture is to look at what we call tropes. This word has different definitions in different contexts — scientific, artistic, and so on. Technically, “trope” is from a classical Greek word referring to “turning”, and in science, for example, it can refer to the behaviour of a plant as it turns towards the light, i.e., “phototropism”.

Here, we use the term “trope” to mean a subtle activity, configuration, or scene that reveals a macrocosm, essentially, in its microcosmic form. “Trope” here is a “turning” or “point” towards a cultural pattern. In Taiwan, some of the best tropes are visual — tiny configurations and settings, out in the street or in people’s homes. Here are some examples, which we will present below before offering interpretations:

1. a can of “Taiwan Beer” (台灣啤酒)

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2. a gas unit outside a home, with its base protected by tied-together plastic food crates

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3. old boxes and furniture stacked outside a store

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4. PVC pipes squeezed under an apartment building door

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5. random wiring outside a store

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6. scooters parked on a sidewalk

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7. sign held up with packing tape

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8a. small plant tucked away in rundown, dirty building

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8b. small plant tucked away in rundown, dirty building (detail)

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9a. repaired statue

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9b. repaired statute (detail)

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10. trash bin made of old calendar page

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The first picture says a great deal about Taiwanese business — problems in branding. Indeed, there is no brand here at all: in both English and Chinese, the name is simply “Taiwan Beer”. Most other countries have names for their beer, e.g., Singha, Tusker, and so on. There is also no logo on the can: in addition to the generic name, there are abstract stripes on the can.

The second picture shows what happens when a rural people are suddenly thrust into technological modernity. This is a classic case of what we would call in the West a “spit-and-gum” repair — which is, actually, very common and appropriate in rural societies where there are no tools and parts for proper repairs. Here, though, the setting is urban, and obviously the person carried out the repair in whatever would be the most expedient way possible, expediency, alas, being another common Taiwanese trait. Finally, this picture reveals another cultural trope — a disregard for safety. The plastic food crates can in no way protect this dangerous piece of equipment against a vehicle collision — and this setup is right on the corner of a very busy street, out in the street itself.

In the third picture, we again see expediency at work — there was simply no more room inside, so the person has used the outside as an extension of their personal space. On a more positive note, it would seem to indicate a safe culture, where one can store things on the sidewalk without fear of theft. In that case, Taiwan’s culture beats American culture, for sure!

In the fourth picture, we again see a repair that exhibits he cultural tropes of both “rural repair” and expediency. Sure, there are building codes in Taiwan, but the pragmatic culture knows how to work around them... We see the same clever, if messy, workaround in the fifth picture.

In the sixth picture, scooters are parked on a sidewalk. In some places in Taiwan, this is legal, but on this particular stretch it is not. But obviously here people have made their own rules — one person parked illegally, and then another next to that person, and so on. The cultural trope? An organic way of structuring rules and regulations...

Nearby, there is a “no parking” sign. But what is really interesting here is that it is simply a piece of paper held up with packing tape, even though it is outdoors, directly exposed to Taiwan’s subtropical rain and humidity. It is a quick, feeble fix... but an expedient one.

In the eighth picture, we see a cacophony of signs and hideous buildings, and then at the very center a small plant tucked away on a sill right next to a window. Why is it there? How did it get there? The cultural trope here is the strange use of space, the odd juxtaposition of ugliness and natural beauty, attempt at bringing nature into the most typical polluted, overbuilt Asian megapolitan setting.

In the ninth picture, we see another example of “rural repair” — the statue has been repaired with a rebar and bailing wire. No attempt was made at a more subtle, artistic repair.

The final picture shows a small trash bin made out of a calendar page. This is a common trope in Taiwan, as people here love to eat peanuts, watermelon seeds, etc. while having tea or drinking beer, and need a dish for the shells. This kind of bin is a quick, efficient reuse of materials, and certainly has its own engaging aesthetic. The cultural trope here is about a society still in touch, again, with its rural roots — not afraid to reuse materials in a simple but pleasing way.

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Greetings from Asia - 22 January 2011

A Brief Note on Western Painting by Chinese Hands

Since the focus of this blog is cross-cultural issues, I thought that readers might be interested in this issue from the perspective of the visual arts...

I used to dislike Western painting that was done by Chinese artists. The works bothered me because they seemed fake somehow, being in my mind both an abandonment of thousands of years of perfectly good Chinese painting, and an attempt at Western styles, but without Western emotion. But over the years, I’ve found painters whose work has changed my mind.

The term “Chinese painting” covers a broad range of styles and themes, but here I refer to what might be most familiar to readers: the vast watercolor-and-ink landscapes typical of the Song and Yuan Dynasty period (A. D. 960 -1368) and the traditional paintings of nature in the latter history of imperial China (A.D. 1368 - 1895). Typical paintings of these periods include “A Solitary Temple Amid Clearing Peaks” by Li Cheng (李成) (919 - 967) and “Mountain on the Other Side of the River”, 1703 by the Qing Dynasty Chinese painter Shitao (石濤) (1641 - 1707). As for “Western painting”, in this case, I mean scenes of people and places that that are found in nineteenth and early twentieth century art, particularly among the Romantic painters and the Impressionists. Many Chinese have studied these styles (as well as Cubism and other movements), and have become adept at them, but I think only a few have done anything really interesting in Western-style painting.

A colleague of mine, Prof. Tsai Minghsun (蔡明勳), is a Taiwanese painter who studied Western-style oil painting in the U.S., at Fontbonne University in St. Louis. He is a good painter, and likes to do scenes of Taiwanese life from the old days. I asked Tsai why he chooses to paint in the Western style, and he told me that Western painting allows him to engage in themes that Chinese art doesn’t normally investigate in any depth — the emotions of childhood: joy, nostalgia, loneliness and longing...

Many of his paintings portray puppets and other toys, objects not unknown to traditional Chinese painting, but not at the scale or in the mood that one finds in Tsai’s work.

Tsai studied in the U.S., but in the old days, to study Western art one went — oddly, perhaps — to Japan. Japan, of course, had opened up to the West in terms of industrialization and modernization at least a century before Chinese culture did. Japanese artists had studied Impression, Cubism, and other trends in European art almost as soon as those trends came on the scene. Taiwan was under Japanese rule from 1895 to 1945, and many young Taiwanese men studied in Japan during this period — indeed, Japan was their primary access to the outside world. One famous Taiwanese painter, Li Meishu (李梅樹) (1902 - 1983), studied Western painting, with a focus on Classicism and Romanticism, at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts from 1929 to 1934. He particularly enjoyed rendering realist paintings of the Taiwan landscapes, although he was also very skilled in portraiture. Li worked to adapt Western romantic notions in the portrayal of a traditional way of life in Taiwan that he knew to be rapidly disappearing. He was interested in and skilled at Western theories of perspective — something certainly rare in traditional Chinese painting — and the figures in his paintings seem to “reach out” to the viewer.

The reasons that Chinese painting itself never underwent the radical transformation that Western art did — Cubism, Impression, Fauvism, and subsequent modern and post-modern trends — must be the subject of a separate discussion. In addition, there are complex reasons that artists in both Mainland China and Taiwan felt a need to look to overseas techniques and styles in the first place.

Obviously, the embracing of something from a foreign culture entails a rejection of something in one’s own culture. It is the rare artist who can somehow embrace both, and I was intrigued when I stumbled upon the work of the artist Ma Paisui (馬白水) (1909 - 2003). Ma was born in Mainland China and worked for many years as an art teacher. Although his studies were in China, and his later adult years were spent in Taiwan, he beautifully combined traditional Chinese styles with Western techniques and themes.

This is not easy feat — the results can often seem awkward or tacky. Ma spent some time in Europe and the U.S., and did a series of beautiful paintings of New York City and its environs, rendering the modern Western landscape and its tropes (for example, suspension bridges and skyscrapers) with Chinese traditional brush called a mao bi (毛筆) and gouache colors. The results are splendid, with vivid colors and bold line-work. Even his painting of the Guggenheim Museum, although at first glance seeming to be completely Western in style, subtly employs Chinese ink to create profound contrasts of light and dark not normally encountered in Western watercolor work.

Ma’s work has an almost transcendent quality, reminiscent of the later work of the Canadian “Group of Seven” artist Lawren Harris.

The artist’s role is to transcend culture, and even time and place (Harris was a Theosophist), to reach some abstract truth or vision of the world. Indeed, as different as Chinese and Western cultures can be, this role of the artist often appears in both places. Why is an artist like Ma Paisui so important? In part, it’s because he breaks a very common stereotype — that Asians are good imitators but not good originators. We’ve heard it said that the Curtis Institute of Music is filled with Asians who play beautifully but with no feeling. I’ve also heard it said that Chinese people can crank out Western landscapes but with an equal lack of passion. In Ma’s case, though, we see an artist who truly has taken something Western and made it his own. This is important because in an age of globalization, there is a great risk at homogenization, with everyone becoming superficially “Western”. Ma shows that a painter can bring his own cultural tools to bear, and create a true — and original — synthesis.

At the same time, artists like Tsai have consciously embraced Western styles as the Chinese themselves have become increasingly subject to Western emotions — or more exactly, the emotional states, such as anomie, that have been brought on by the Chinese people’s rush into modernity.


Li Cheng (李成)
“A Solitary Temple Amid Clearing Peaks” (晴峦萧寺)
ink and slight color on silk
Northern Song Dynasty (A.D. 960 - 1127)
111.76 x 55.88 cm


Shi Tao (石濤)
“Mountain on the Other Side of the River”
ink and slight color on paper
1703
57.79 x 35.56 cm


Tsai Minghsun (蔡明勳)
“Flying” (飛揚)
oil on canvas
2002
103 x 139 cm


Li Meishu (李梅樹)
“Washing Clothes by the Clear Stream” (清溪浣衣)
oil on canvas
1981
116.5 x 80 cm


Li Meishu (李梅樹)
“Dressing” (梳妝)
oil on canvas
1971
116.5 x 91 cm


Ma Paisui (馬白水)
“Yehliu” (野柳)
ink and color on paper
1972
66 x 33 cm


Ma Paisui (馬白水)
“Hudson River in Autumn” (哈河之秋)
ink and color on paper
1975
51 × 61.5 cm


Ma Paisui (馬白水)
“Central Park, New York” (紐約中央公園)
ink and color on paper
1981
38.1 × 50.8 cm


Ma Paisui (馬白水)
“Red Maple Leaves near George Washington Bridge” (紐約GW橋楓葉紅美)
watercolor on paper
1984
45.5 × 61 cm


Ma Paisui (馬白水)
ink and color on paper
“Guggenheim Museum, N.Y.” (古根漢美術館(紐約))
1974
40 x 50 cm

Greetings from Asia - 26 December 2010

Some More Thoughts on Asian Success...

As noted in our last comments here, we are currently writing about the so-called "Asian success story". Again, we are posting these thoughts in several parts, linking to an article we wrote for the online publication Broad Street Review. This article provides another personal perspective on "Asian success", with a particular focus on China:

"How Chinese is China’s Success Story?: China vs. the West: Who has Conquered Whom?", Broad Street Review (25 December 2010)

Enjoy!

Greetings from Asia - 23 December 2010

Some Thoughts on Asian Success...

Well, while Europe and North America are having a nice cold winter holiday, here in semi-tropical Taiwan, the sun is shining and Santa could go out in no more than a red hat if he wanted to...

Our current entry concerns the so-called "Asian success story". We are posting these thoughts in several parts, and due to copyright agreements, our first entry on this subject is a link to an article we wrote some weeks ago on a few aspects of the strong economy in Taiwan. Taiwan, where this author is currently posted, has weathered the recent economic crisis relatively well. The following article provides some a personal perspective:

"Economic Lessons from the Far East: I Have Seen the Future, and It’s in the Far East", Broad Street Review (4 November 2010)

Stay tuned for more...

Greetings from Asia - 23 November 2010

Tutto il mondo è un cheesesteak / 世界很小

There’s been no entry here in this blog for about a month, and the reader has my apologies. Too much going on: life never stops in Asia. Well, it was that, and then weeks of depressing rain. There is a fall and a spring rainy season here, and both are irritating. Yes, they do, however, lead to wonderful semi-tropical foliage, so one shouldn’t complain. Also, unlike in our dear old U.S.A., there is no Thanksgiving break, nor even Halloween (although they do celebrate the latter here a bit in the local schools, just for fun). Otherwise, it’s work, work, work...

Since it’s been rather dreary here, and we don’t feel like writing about existentialism or other philosophical topics, we shall turn to lighter subjects... Well, not really that much lighter, since we are going to talk about cheesesteaks.

Cheesesteaks in Taiwan? No way!

But yes.

It was all very odd. A fellow teacher here, from Michigan, had his father visiting. We were heading into Taipei for a day of sightseeing, and as we were sitting there on the bus, the gentleman was talking to me, and heard that I was from Philadelphia. “Hey,” he said, “Isn’t that where they have all those cheesesteak places?” “Yup,” I answered, and I began to explain to him the subtle rivalries and differences between the various cheesesteak places in Philadelphia — Pat’s Gino’s, Jim’s, and so on. All this talk was making me hungry, but before you knew, they we were in Taipei. No cheesesteaks, just noodles and tofu.

We split up, with me heading through the west side of the city to do some errands. But having gotten off the bus, I hadn’t gone more than four blocks, when there it was, as if posited by some Jungian synchronicity, from my consciousness to hard-and-fast culinary reality: a cheesesteak place...











The people working there, though all Taiwanese, wore that same vivid, horrid orange that is the color of one of those cheesesteak places in Philly. It was as if a piece of South Philadelphia had been ripped out and transplanted — through a strange Asian inversion — into Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. Inside, there was even a mural of the city of Philadelphia, complete with the Ben Franklin Bridge, Liberty Place, and that awful building next to 30th Street Station.

I went in and tried the cheesesteaks. And you know what? They were pretty good... In fact, they were less greasy than most of the cheesesteaks in Philly, and the french fries were not bad either.

So, what about the title of this entry, “Tutto il mondo è un cheesesteak / 世界很小”? Well, the first part is a riff on the Italian expression, “tutto il mondo è un paese” — that is, “the whole world is one country”. It’s their way of saying, “It’s a small world”, or as we say in Chinese, “/ 世界很小”. Indeed, it’s a very small world, if I can talk about Philly cheesesteaks miles away from Philly, and then somehow they magically appear...

Greetings from Asia - 15 October 2010

High-Speed Bullshit
Even far away here in the “mysterious East”, I find myself missing Philadelphia. I am one of those expatriates who, believe it or not, does indeed admire the country I was born in, even though I find myself consistently disappointed in the direction it has decided to head. Former President Jimmy Carter correctly called it a “crisis of confidence” in a famous speech he gave during his presidency.

Particularly when one is overseas, it is easy to spot the foibles, if not out-and-out absurdities of one’s own country. At this point in U.S. history, it has become outright embarrassing at times. Without even trying, one finds such news reports as this:



A close examination of the piece reveals how stupid this issue is in the U.S. Indeed, even reader comments on the piece were quick to point this out:



And yes, from an overseas perspective, it’s easy to see how crazy the ideas presented in the article are. In France, Germany, Japan... hell, even in Taiwan, there is high-speed rail. Real high-speed rail, not the ridiculous “Acela” nor the “somewhere in the distant future” high-speed trains that may — may — be built some time in the coming decades. What is ridiculous, too, is that people in the U.S. are subjected to this strange kind of propaganda that somehow, someday, we are going to have what is considered “normal” in other countries. If you want to see real rail systems, take a look:

The European TVG: http://www.raileurope.co.uk/tgv.aspx
The Japanese Shinkansen: http://english.jr-central.co.jp/about/index.html
The Taiwanese HSR: http://www.thsrc.com.tw/en

Now, I’ve heard one of the key counter-arguments: that countries like France, Germany, Japan, and so on can afford these systems because we bear so much of the burden of military defense. But if we wanted to, we could also have afforded to build a proper rail system decades ago — indeed, we had a good rail system — but we decided to let it go to ruin. And all the pronouncements in the world will never bring it back.