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Newsletter


Summer 2002



Contents

1. Summer Programme
2. February Talk: The Silk road
3. Dublin Chinese New Year Dinner
4. March Talk: Feng Shui
5. Chen Zhongsen & Nick Miller
6. Children's Party for Chinese New Year
7. Language School
8. Reminder -- Subscriptions

1. Summer Programme


Please note that our evening events have been changed to SECOND WEDNESDAYS.

For the Summer Programme, including the ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING and the BARBECUE, click HERE.   

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2. February Talk: The Silk road.


Our February Speakers were Tony & Yanyi Blake, who gave an excellent talk on their travels on the Silk Road.

This talk was not just a show of some holiday photos, it was a researched lecture of the history and evolution of the region. This talk gave a clear understanding to the audience of how in time the people and place changed. We were told of the first warlords in control of this Mountain Pass and how the Chinese Emperors tried to form alliances with groups beyond the Pass, how this developed into a trade route for Chinese silk, spices and other treasures, in exchange for horses. This growth in trade and meeting of merchants soon brought religious missionaries into the area. Buddhism became widespread, with many of the routes of the Silk Road becoming adorned with statues of the Buddha to protect the travellers on their journey.

Tony and Yanyi, having set the scene by giving the historical background, then began to outline their personal journey on the Silk Road. They talked about the oppressive heat and wondered at how the locals coped with such harsh living conditions; they talked about wondrous deserts and oases, seeing great natural beauty, and finding magnificent works of art in the many temples they visited. Their many slides and acetates easily brought their trip home to the audience, and their comfortable style of exchanging speakers kept us all focussed on the journey. Tony and Yanyi spent 13 days on this trip: from their in-depth knowledge of this area, coupled with the structure of their journey, it was easy for us to believe that this was not just a holiday, but something more like a pilgrimage.

Thanks, Tony and Yanyi, for a most exhilarating night.


The Silk Road
by Tony & Yanyi Blake

The Silk Road: a worm, an envoy and a monk

It all started more than four thousand years ago, when the Chinese unraveled the fibers woven by the grubs of the moth Bombyx. Finding a filament that could be up to a kilometer long, they had hit on a material that when woven, was so exotic that it was to be demanded by a world then undreamed of by the makers.

Just how the silk made its way to the distant world of the Roman Empire makes an interesting story.

It starts in 206 BC.     Bothered by the marauding Huns the Han Emperor in Chang-an dispatched Zhang Qiang with 100 men to make his way through Hun lines to seek an alliance with a Scythian group north west of the empire. Captured by the Huns, it was 13 years and several adventures later before Zhang returned to the emperor with tales of distant lands and empires. He told of the ‘heavenly horses’ that he had seen in Uzbekistan, that in battle were superior to the small Chinese horses. These the Emperor was determined to acquire, and so it was that as payment for the horses, with precious silks and other goods, a western trade route opened.

Map
This soon developed into a major one with up to 1000 camels carrying silk, jade, porcelain, lacquer ware and spices traveling west with a military escort, while horses, gold, wine, exotic animals, timber, wool and oil came eastwards. Many of these originated in the Roman Empire, where the people prized the exotic silk but could only concoct the most unlikely explanations of its origins. It was thought by some to have grown on magic trees in the East, and its true origins were kept secret for several centuries.

No arcane knowledge can be kept hidden indefinitely when travelers possessing hints of it meet others enduring the same grueling journeys as their own. One can imagine that common hardship makes for great fellowship around a campfire in the desert and gradually the secret was out. But this was not the only information passed. The campfires had opened a communication channel to the influx of a powerful new doctrine from India. After the monk Xuan Zang returned from India in 652, copies of the sacred Sutras, monks joined the caravan trains to bring back and translate other sacred texts. Buddhism took root and flourished along the trade routes, and soon developed with a Chinese form, providing spiritual resources to counter the hardships of the desert caravans.

It is easy to understand that in order to survive their ordeals, spirits had to be invoked for help, and malevolent demons of the Takla Makan desert had to be appeased. The practice developed of constructing Buddhist statues and paintings near the beginning of the Silk Road in supplication for a safe return.

The trading route brought not only Buddhism, but other beliefs too. Jews had settled on the Yellow River in China at a very early time from Persia. Nestorian Christians, expelled from the western churches as heretics found refuge among the ‘unestablished’ religions of the East, and grew quite rapidly in the area. Hindus and Zoroastrians also came, as did Manicheans, whose beliefs contained elements of Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and Christianity.

Then in the 7th century a new, forceful and relentless religion began to arrive - Islam. The adherents of the new religion were experienced traders, particularly in desert regions, and whether it was this fact and the profitable course of joining this prosperous group, or whether Islam better satisfied spiritual needs than other religions is hard to say, but by the second millennium the Silk Road was unshakably Moslem, and has remained so.

Nevertheless the paintings and the statuary from the Buddhist era of the Silk Road have become enshrined in as national treasures in the cultures of several nations, It is particularly in China that the 1000 year old cave galleries contain the best examples of where man has expressed himself in heart moving imagery to express spiritual victory over the cruel forces of nature.

Our journey, which was to see these treasures started at Xi’an, formerly Chang-an, the starting point of the Silk Road. In or near the walled city are not only (questionably) Buddha’s finger bone, but also 8th century carved relics of Nestorian Christianity and the Big Goose Pagoda built to house the precious Buddhist manuscripts.

The train journey took us past the impressive southwestern end of the Great Wall in Jia-yu-guan and over the frontier of the old Empire. On this region old poems refer with heart-rending sadness to bidding goodbye to home and friends, which the traveller will never see again.

Jiayuguan Fort
Jia-Yu-Guan Fort


Lanzhou is built amid mustard-coloured porous loess rocks, and it is easy to see why the Yellow River is so called. On the riverside journey to the Buddhist relics you see people being ferried across the river by the age-old method of inflated sheepskins. An hour-long jetfoil voyage then takes you along the river (with whirlpools) to a gorge where we saw our first grottoes with a giant Buddha and smaller statuary and frescoes, dating from the 5th century.

Lanzhou has the air of an outpost of Chinese civilization. Leaving the city late at night, at first light the next morning the sight out of the train windows was impressive. We were travelling through a wilderness of flat, sandy desert and mountain ranges in the grey distance on each side of the train. This was the famous He Xi corridor, where the Silk Road caravans passed en route to the Takla Makan desert, and where battles had been fought for control of this desolate but strategically important region.

Train


The caves at Dunhuang contain the best examples of Chinese Buddhist art. There are not only caves of statues, stucco figures and frescoes, but also precious manuscripts, at least those that managed to escape the ravages of unscrupulous European ‘explorers’ of a century ago, and which were carted off to world-wide destinations.

Alighting from the train at Turfan gives you the impression that you must have crossed an international frontier somewhere after Dunhuang. The people are Uighurs, who look non-Chinese and speak a Turkic language that is apparently understood by visitors from Turkey. Road signs and posters are bilingual, the Uighur language written in Arabic script, and there are many mosques.

Tufrfan Mosque

The city is 154 meters below sea level and is believed to be the hottest city in China, particularly in July, when we were there. And with the temperature in the mid 40s we saw no reason to doubt the claim. But surprisingly although Turfan has virtually no rainfall the region has vineyards, which are irrigated by 1600 km of underground channels called karez, which brings water from the surrounding Flaming Mountains. They are called this because of their flame-like crenellations, but with temperatures up to 80°C I think they are well named.

Yanyi at Gaochang
Yanyi at the Ruins of Gaochang


Nearby are the former cities of Gaochang and Jiaohe which were abandoned about 700 years ago for reasons which are unclear (war? pestilence? drought?) and are now a rubble of mud bricks blown smooth by the desert winds. The monk Xuan Zang had stopped at Gaochang on his way to collect the precious sutras from India.

The Silk Road then strikes west to Kashgar and out of China. We could not follow its length through Samarkand and Tashkent, to Persia, Syria and beyond. But we had already visited two of its termini in Constantinople and Çanakkale in Turkey, where the silk was unloaded for shipping across the Eastern Mediterranean to Rome.

Mosque at Kashgar


So ended a trip that we would strongly recommend you to make if you possibly can. You would never forget it.

Yanyi and Tony Blake


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3. Dublin Chinese New Year Dinner




The Irish-Chinese Cultural Society celebrated the Chinese New Year with a dinner at Wong's Chinese Restaurant, Ranalagh, Dublin 6.

Mary



110 Members, guests and friends had a wonderful evening, with plenty of good food, good craic and some excellent entertainment.



This was a very successful night, and many thanks are due for a lot of behind-the-scenes work carried out by your committee to ensure that all went well on the night.

Special thanks are due to the sub-committee of Dr. Katherine Chan Mullen, Jane Almqvist and Norman O Galligan, who arranged the venue, agreed the menu, got the kind permission of a nearby school for parking there, distributed the tickets, prepared the table adornments, acquired sufficient raffle prizes, liased with the restaurant, arranged the seating plan, and looked after our special VIP guests. There is a rumour that they even got to eat some food.





Guest of Honour was Mr Zhu Meidao, Chargé d'Affaires at the Chinese Embassy in the absence of Her Excellency Ms Zhang Xiaokang, and Mr and Mrs Albert Luk were guests representing the Irish Chinese Society. We were specially happy to welcome a representative from a newly-founded society, the Ireland China Association; that representative was its distinguished Chairman, Dr Chris Horn.

Chris Horn and Katherine
Dr Katherine Chan Mullen played her usual blinder in acting as MC and creating a party atmosphere, with great help from Dodo and Oliver, two excellent singers from Dalian who are studying here.



The food was excellent and everybody ate their fill, the dinner speeches were short, to the point, and small in number; which left much more time for all the fun stuff. Plenty of volunteers braved the embarrassment and sang into the night. Our usual raffle was hogged by one table that must have won over 60% of all prizes.




Raffle


The Winner

Winner




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4. March Talk: Feng Shui - Further Soundings
by Paula Whelan



Paula Whelan, a Feng Shui Instructor and consultant, gave the society a most interesting talk on the impact of numbers in Feng Shui. Her talk gave a quick overview of this most fascinating of subjects, whose science is practiced all around the world.

Paula


Paula first asked us to add the last two digits of our birth year together; and if this sum was more than ten, to replace it by the sum of its two digits. We then subtracted our sum from ten, to get what is called our Feng Shui Adult number.

Paula then informed us of the characteristics of this number and some of the elements which made up this personality.

No 3: WOOD    Three personality is to avoid failure, they are elegant and smart and extremely ambitious, they act without thinking and have short tempers.



No 4: WOOD Artistic and passionate and are supportive of people in trouble, good traders, good diplomats and very romantic.

No 5: EARTH can be stubborn and self-opinionated, often misunderstood, very successful when they leave home, love new ideas and new challenges.


No 6 METAL Very disciplined and strong organization ability, generally conservative, don’t like conflict, sociable have leadership qualities and cannot tell lies.

No 7 METAL full of joy, can be wasteful, like to entertain, very adaptable, soft on the outside and stubborn on the inside and mid life can be a difficult time.



No 8 EARTH Brilliant brains and brilliant memory, Pride is high, don’t get over excited, not easy to form deep friends and love stability.

Paula Whelan, Feng Shui Consultant,
Tel: 01 6100916, Mobile: 087 4180329




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5.Chen Zhongsen & Nick Miller:  Joint Exhibition, 19th April - 3rd June

This joint exhibition, curated by artist Nick Miller, explores aspects of artistic practise influenced by Eastern thought. The exhibition includes paintings, calligraphy, micro-carvings by Chinese artist Chen Zhongsen, and large-scale figurative watercolours by Miller.

Chen Zhongsen is a master of Chinese arts - a calligrapher, painter, musician, scholar, philosopher and most extraordinarily a meditative micro carver and sculptor. Born in 1941, he divides his time between his carving studio in Fuzhou and his studio where he paints, deep in the remote countryside of northern Fujian province in southern China. He was already an artist and a soloist with the Classical Chinese Music Ensemble when the decade -long Cultural Revolution began. Those years of enforced isolation gave him the time for the prolonged and necessarily furtive study of the ancient Chinese Arts that are the foundation of his work. He perfected skills in painting, calligraphy and especially in meditative micro carving.

Chen Zhongsen carving


Chen Zhongsen Carving


These works on Shoushan, 'Eternity Mountain' stone, feature traditional images, Buddhist and Taoist texts and poetry flawlessly transcribed onto surfaces smaller than a grain of rice and are executed in a meditative state, eyes closed. Most challenging to our understanding of the possible are extraordinary works such as the two Tang Dynasty poems carved on a single strand of his wife’s grey hair. Another carving of a classic text; “Art of War” features more than 7000 Chinese characters carved on a stone only 3.5 x 7cm in size. These pieces cross indefinable boundaries between spiritual practice, ancient tradition, skill, and fine art.

Nick Miller, whose work is strongly rooted in western figurative painting traditions, has been interested in aspects of Chinese philosophy for many years. In particular, as a student of Taoism, Tai Ji, and calligraphy, he has explored the wealth of knowledge in relation to the embodiment of human energy in paint that is central to Chinese thought.

Miller’s paintings and drawings are always very physical works, and those he shows in East - West are no exception. Following on from the acclaimed “Closer” series of drawings where he drew the sitter at very close physical proximity, these new Large-scale watercolour paintings feature a figural presence in a dynamic field of colour and gestural line. The paintings exhibit strong physical and emotional energy, derived from the direct encounter between artist and sitter in the studio. The works present a powerful synthesis of western observational painting and the eastern understanding of energy cultivation, movement, and meditation.

Chen has exhibited, taught and his unique work is collected throughout the world. Miller is a recently elected member of Aosdána, who exhibits internationally and in Ireland. A 64-page colour catalogue available from the gallery includes an essay by Miller offering a full and personal account of this unique meeting of artists from East and West.

A related exhibition of Chen Zhongsen’s work will take place at the Rubicon Gallery, Dublin from 7 May - 2 June. Talks and performances, offering the public a rare opportunity to see and experience Chen’s unusual work, take place at the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin and at the Model Arts and Niland Gallery, Sligo.



Sligo events:
18 April, 6 - 8 pm        Preview Chen + Miller: East - West, Model Arts and Niland Gallery
Exhibition continues 19 April - 3 June
19 April, 1 - 2 pm Chen + Miller; Gallery talk, Model Arts and Niland Gallery, Sligo
20 April, 2:30 pm
 Public Performance and talk, Chen Zhongsen introduced by Nick Miller
 

Dublin Events:

7 May 6 - 8 pm Preview Chen Zhongsen Micro-carvings & Landscape Paintings
8 May - 2 June Exhibition: Chen Zhongsen Micro-carvings & Landscape Paintings
Rubicon Gallery, 10 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin
11 May 2:30 pm Talk: “proposition of Calm” and performance with Chen Zhongsen,
Chester Beatty Library, Dublin Castle
12 May, 2:30 pm Chinese painting and calligraphy workshop with Chen Zhongsen.
Chester Beatty Library, Dublin Castle

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6. Children's Party for Chinese New Year

International Orphan Aid Ireland   hosted a party for adopted Chinese children on Saturday 16th February at the Mount Herbert Hotel Ballsbridge. Well over 60 people adults and children attended this event.

Finger food was supplied and the children were entertained by a Balloon shaping clown who was busy making butterflies, umbrellas, kites, etc. The children could also get their faces painted. There were plenty of flowers, butterflies, Spidermen and Draculas, to name but a few of the faces on display.



It was a great opportunity to get up to date on news and meet friends yet again.

Full marks to Sally Keaveney and her team for this event.



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7. Language School



Language School




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8. Reminder: Subscriptions for 2002.


The Treasurer wishes to remind members that subscriptions are now due for 2002.

The annual subscription is €25.00,
With a reduced student rate of €8,
And a lifetime subscription of €250.

Subscriptions to be sent to:

Norman O’Galligan, Hon. Treasurer,
5 Claremont Road,
Sandymount, Dublin 4.

Euro Cheques to be made payable to:
"Irish-Chinese Cultural Society".

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This Newsletter is published by the Irish-Chinese Cultural Society.
All views and contributions expressed are those of the individual contributors and do not represent any official policy of the Irish-Chinese Cultural Society.
We would be delighted to receive articles, photos and stories for our newsletter.
The Editor welcomes all submissions, but cannot absolutely guarantee the return of any photos or documents supplied, and reserves the right to shorten or modify any letter or material submitted.
Please send to Hon. Secretary
Colm Coleman, 3 Pacelli Ave., Sutton, Dublin 13.
E-mail: iccs@oceanfree.net




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