Romance in Carousels

There is something quite romantic about carousels that I can’t seem to explain.

Usually, carousels remind people of their childhood, or rather, bring out their inner-child, but what it brings out of me is this emotional state of romantic happiness.

This happiness comes from indulging in the sense of joyfulness and carefreeness when watching the carousel spin as well as when riding on one. In that moment, you experience the thrill of excitement but you feel calm, you experience speed but you feel secured. Your indulgence comes with a juxtaposed state of emotions.

Perhaps it’s the beautiful bright lights, or the colorful decorative elements, or maybe the romantic scenes with carousels depicted in films that make up this idea of romance I have in my head, but it isn’t really about love.

It’s about being in love – being in love with life.

I’m going to leave you with pictures I found taken during Louis Vuitton’s Spring/Summer 2012 fashion show by The Sartorialist that brought carousels and of course fashion shows to a whole new level – where romance meets sophistication.

Images taken from The Sartorialist

Reality Check

After having spent a long weekend in a rural village volunteering to paint school walls, it got me thinking about what ‘poor’, ‘rural’, ‘in need’, ‘volunteer work’ really mean.

Our office donated a big sum of money to build walls around a new school called Hope School for the children and orphans of Xu Wan village in Henan province. A group of us volunteered our time to help design/paint those walls together with the children. We were told about the destitution and extremity the children face, especially for orphans who have lost their parents from being abandoned or to accidents, therefore leaving them with no hope and guidance for the future. Given this type of background information, one gets the idea like everyone else who have seen poverty on TV, that this volunteer trip will be an exciting one, because you’re there to make a change in a village that needs it most.

With this sort of expectation in the back of our heads, we carried excitement, hope, and utmost intention of goodwill with us as we hopped onto the plane, and then the bus, and then another bus that lead us to Xu Wan village. When we arrived, we were greeted by all the children in the village on both sides of the school entrance, wearing probably the best outfit in their closet, looking excited for what is to come. They were sweet, friendly, and somewhat timid to begin with.

However, as hours went by, we began interacting and conversing more with the children and found that what they were saying and how they were behaving are completely rehearsed. We later found out that the entire Hope School project have been exposed by media to the public, and that several government officials and other charity programs have visited this village way before we had. This is when I felt what we had expected was not what we should have expected.

This is when I woke up and realize the reality of what charity work can mean, and how, with the effect of media exposure, kids who were deemed ‘poor’ and ‘in need’ (by media) would have been equipped with the right things to say, the right type of image to put up, etc. I felt a lack of authenticity, but at the same time I felt sympathy. When poverty meets society, expectations and reality become blurred. A friend of mine also mentioned that when she visited an orphanage in India, where children were taught to sing, perform, talk and behave to their visitors where she felt similar lack of authenticity. Not that the kids were pretending, but that’s what the institution as well as media had taught them to do. A year later when she went back to the orphanage, she received exactly the same treatment and performace.

Charity institutions no longer serve as a place where you can really ‘help’. They are there as an act to draw sympathy from you. Children in poverty doesn’t mean they are in need, they are happy the way they are, and it’s not money that they lack, it’s tools and knowledge for survival that they need most.

My time at the village was wonderful nonetheless, but now I am more careful with where my good intentions can best be utilized.

Church Fascination

I’ve always been quite fascinated by Christian churches.
The kind of grandeur one can be mesmerized by through the beauty that makes such a place so holy and so serene. You read into the details of a church, from the beautifully colored window panels to the carved and painted walls and ceilings. You breathe in this presence where religion, history and art meets. One can argue that any other religious monuments such as the Angkor Wat or the Al-Masjid al-Haram are as beautiful but I have to say they don’t share the same kind of embodiment Christian churches do.

Think of a place you can sit in, and wonder why, wonder how and wonder who is the maker behind such a magnificent building and still enjoy this peace of mind with absolute silence. This is how I feel when I sit in a Church, it feels almost like maybe, maybe…there is a God out there. Or maybe not.

  

There is no bias to any religions whatsoever, I am as fascinated and curious about Christianity as I am with Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, the Ancient Greek religion and so on. All architectures are beautiful in their own way, but it’s the beauty of the churches that takes it’s number 1 place in my architectural, emotional, visual, whatever-ual preferences.

Quality over Quantity

I was scouring through the internet today to find out what’s been happening throughout China during the past month, this is so that I am in tune with the society of the country I’m currently living and working in and ofcourse it’s part of my job. Here are some of the sites I usually go to: Chinasmack, Ministry of Tofu, Baidu Beat, Sina Society.

When I started visiting these sites a year ago, I was fascinated by the news that gets updated daily on these sites, not because I’m a new comer – I have been here for almost 12 years – but because they were seriously bizarre, both good and bad. It then became a monthly habit of mine to soak up some China happenings and again get fascinated by it.

However, as I scour through these news today, I am for the first time overwhelmed by all of it. Here’s a list of stories that I read up on today:

Protest over forced demolition, suicide attempted
Protest over forced demolition, self-immolation attempted
Protest over low salary, suicide attempted
Forced marriage, suicide attempted
Sex abuse on the street
Sex abuse in school
Kids having sex in classrooms
the list goes on, you get the idea.

Each article gets an average of at least half a million views and up to thousands of comments online and the only reason why conversations are so heated over these articles is because they’re tragic. These conversations become a form of resentment towards government, towards society and towards one another. There is so much hate, so much sadness and so much negativity driving the minds and emotions of 1.3billion Chinese people.

And the bigger question is, as the quantity of such issues continue to rise, does it damage the quality of China’s civilization? While the internet is a great channel to liberate China from media suppression, it is slowly polluting the minds of the people. Perhaps media suppression is what China needs after all.

What is Culture?

I asked a friend: “What is culture?” and he replied: “Dude, it’s like asking people what is creativity, or what is art.”

That’s precisely the point. I’m constantly surrounded by people talking about culture, by work involved with culture and by some sort of lifestyle that embraces culture, but really, what is culture?

By definition, culture is a collective pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that characterizes into a symbolic thought and social learning, or a shared set of common attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes a person, group and society…but the question is, do we shape culture, or does culture shape us?

Perhaps it is both. Castilian Spanish is known for it’s lisp-like pronunciation and is believed that it originated from King Ferdinand of Spain who was born with a lisp, so his people began talking like him, which throughout history shaped the way the people of northern region of Spain today speak. Despite the story being completely false, it lived on as legend told by even ‘cultured’ native Spanish speaker.

Perhaps it is created by an individual. There is this man called Confucian, whose complex system of moral, social, political, philosophical, and quasi-religious thought influenced most of the history and shaped the society of East Asia. He has taught that human beings are teachable, improvable and perfectible through personal and communal endeavor especially including self-cultivation and self-creation. His teachings can be applied to an individual, a group or an entire community.

Perhaps it started off as a trend that later became culture. The Chinese word 囧 (pronounced Jiong) became popular in late 2007 when netizens began using it as an ideographic emoticon to express ideas or feelings of annoyance, shock, embarrassment, awkwardness, scorn, in response to silliness because of the character’s resemblance to a person’s face. The word became relevant in Chinese youth’s lives, it had a ‘cultural’ impact in the way their mindset is shaped and how their thoughts are expressed.

So at the end of the day, is culture man-made? Then is it arguable that animals don’t have culture? (Thanks to my co-worker who allowed me to question him as he strongly believes that animals don’t have culture)

What are the elements of culture in today’s definition? Is it art, language, traditional values shaped by geographical locations?

Already frustrated with this, I came upon the term High Culture, which by wikipedia’s definition, means an excellence in taste for fine art that is held in the highest esteem…or in other words a culture that is only cultivated by elites. What a load of bull. I find it very unfair to classify/define people by their backgrounds and their level of knowledge in all academic aspects. A person without knowledge doesn’t mean they don’t have culture.

I guess, in a broader sense, culture is part of life which leads to it being a way of life, and that it’s true it can be shaped by people and at the same time shape people.