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| Buddha and orchid, my office |
In celebration of Qing Ming festival today, grave sweeping day, I give you Buddha, painted by Hong Kong artist Ding Yanyong (1902-1978) in summer 1976 (丙辰夏日). The characters read “Nan Wu Ah [Mi] Tuo Fo”, the Chinese transliteration of an Indian chant “glory be to Buddha, the wise”. Ding accidentally left out the “mi”.
I met Ding in 1977 when I was studying Classical Chinese literature and learning how to make Chinese-style hanging scrolls from a Taiwanese artist and teacher, the lovely Liu Bai Ya-mei, who introduced me to him.
I met Ding in 1977 when I was studying Classical Chinese literature and learning how to make Chinese-style hanging scrolls from a Taiwanese artist and teacher, the lovely Liu Bai Ya-mei, who introduced me to him.
The calligraphy, which I love, is Ding’s very distinctive style, which I’d recognise anywhere. It’s called 怪子 (guai zi), “strange" or “unusual" characters. Better maybe: “idiosyncratic”. Like Buddha, maybe....
The orchid sits on an Egyptian prayer mat, that Jing brought back from Cairo. It has hieroglyphs — similar to Chinese ideograms, but never developed as far.
10:00 HKT: the China three-minutes silence to mourn Covid virus deaths, is NOW! Just as I write this. Except it’s not silence. Sirens and ships’ horns blaring.
Repeat from post below:
10:00 HKT: the China three-minutes silence to mourn Covid virus deaths, is NOW! Just as I write this. Except it’s not silence. Sirens and ships’ horns blaring.
Repeat from post below:
Here in Hong Kong we had one of those “clap for the health care workers” events at 8:00 pm[last night]. Jing and I started it on our street [Siena Lane], thought we were the only ones, then people came out on balconies and opened windows clapping and cheering. Corny, perhaps, but oddly moving.
China today is doing a three-minute national mourning event, horns, sirens, flags half mast, etc…
