Category Archives: China
Honest Vegetarian Food
Xin Xing
It’s not so unusual in China to open the menu of a temple restaurant to find an array of imitation meats; fake duck, fake chicken, fake fish… Not that there is anything wrong with imitating meat, it is however a strange concept given buddhist beliefs. So it is somewhat refreshing when you stumble across a temple canteen in the hills that serves simple flavourful vegetarian food that is not pretending to be anything else.
Calligraphy menu.
Stick Animals
Aoluguya
Carved children’s toy with humans and animals such as reindeer.
2 Years On
Tuohe
AiJiLun inspects my crudely drawn sketches of ideas for birchbark items, somewhat baffled at her perceived complexity of them. I met her just under 2 years ago (More is Equal to Less). She has no recollection of who I am, oblivious to the fact that it was the few days I spent watching her work and talking to her niece-in-law (Fire of Knowledge) that I became fascinated with the Oronchen and birchbark world.
It was this fascination that initiated my return to Northern China and to Tuohe. As I wandered around this tiny village, recognising faces but no longer the buildings, I am struck by how much yet how little had changed. Bulldozed and rebuilt beyond recognition was where I stayed on my previous visit (The Great Firewall). Most of the residents have been or are in the process of being relocated to a large area just on the outskirts of the town in rows of tidy identical terraced bungalows. Driving slowly down one of the lanes, we attempt to drop off an uncle of a friend who has trouble recognising his house from all the others that look the same. This is the new landscape of modern village life in China, and those caught up in the change are still finding their way.
Stones, Bones and Lighters
Bayina
SunShui Min’s birchbark working tools: shaped bone, stone worn after years of use, thimble inherited from her mother.
Meng Chai Hong makes her own modern embossing tool from an old cigarette lighter.
Canoe
Shibazhan
Tools of canoe maker GuoZhiLin.
“My Ruler is in my Head”
Shibazhan
The moment GeShuxian energetically greets you, you know you have just met someone unique and creative. Running around, she brings out intricately decorated and carefully constructed boxes, hats, bags, clothes, and pictures that spill out from every corner of her temporary home.
During a tea break, while chatting and smoking, she peels into layers a piece of birchbark lying on the floor and starts cutting away to reveal a whole arrange of beautiful patterns. Nothing is pre-drawn, she doesn’t use the computer, no cutting patterns or tape measures. Everything is by eye. In this age of technology, you forget that life and design can flourish without Apple macs. Perhaps it is time for us all to discover our inner ruler!
Linked Lifestyles
Beijing
Bai Ying, director of Earthpulse, enthusiastically pulls out stamps and postcards of Eskimos and nordic european countries. Rummages through his desk for books and photos of native American Indians. Retrieves from bookcases birchbark items from Russia. All these people live in the same latitudinal band as the Oronchen, and over the years have developed lifestyles to cope with similar challenges of living in such a harsh environment. While each of their traditional way of living have distinctions, they also show fascinating similarities, arising from the fact that their environment has presented to them the same materials in their living habitat. Appears nature has circumnavigated the Earth to link these people together.
Heading Up North
Research trip into Oronchen birchbark and culture.
Stop and Eat
Beijing 798
“Prohibit Prohibit Stopping”
Food is important in any culture. None more so than in China, even the graffiti tells you to “Eat”!