We discussed Chinese music having
watched 2 videos in advance. The first of these videos
gave us an overview of Chinese traditional instruments
which are divided into 8 categories viz. silk, bamboo,
wood, stone, metal, clay, gourd, and hide and can be
blown, struck, plucked or bowed.
One of the more dramatic clips in the videos featured a
performance of fou (缶 or 缻; pinyin: fǒu) an ancient
Chinese percussion instrument consisting of a pottery or
bronzeware crock, jar, pot, or similar vessel, which was
struck with a stick and used in rituals which don’t come
much bigger than the opening ceremony of the 2008
Olympic Games in Beijing.
Among the other instruments featured, the Bian Zhong
stands out as an extraordinary metal creation with a
3000 year history, featuring 16 to 65 bronze bells, but
despite its intimidating appearance it seems to be a
very gentle giant, musically speaking.
The yu qin is a special instrument literally ‘beyond
instrument’ which is usually reserved for slow and
elegant music. In ancient China the player was required
to have a bath and change clothes before playing it
while incense burned to aid the musician’s mind in
banishing all evil thoughts.
It is also the source of a metaphor in Mandarin
signifying ‘soul mate’ which derives from an encounter
between a celebrated exponent Yu Boya and Zhong Ziqi who
responded to Boya’s music with a sigh saying ‘how grand
the mountain and how great the river was’. Yu Boya was
delighted to meet the first person whom he felt
understood the grandeur of his music. When Zhong Ziqi
died he broke his yu qin in honour of the bond of
friendship between them but that bond lives on in the
well-known idiom gao shan liu shui.
Another instrument associated with spiritual
purification is the fish-shaped wooden slit drum mu yu
which is used in Buddhist chanting.
In this Tang Dynasty (618 -907 A.D.) clay figurine of a
lady playing the pipa you can see the resemblance to the
lute but around this time it began to be played
vertically as the style of playing changed, the plectrum
was abandoned in favour of the fingernails, and the
number of frets on the body was increased. Apart from
Riverdance probably the most famous interaction between
Chinese and Irish traditional music involves the visit
of the Chieftains to China in 1983. Sun Sheng, the vice
chairman of the Musician's Association of China at the
time, said of the visit ‘Music knows no boundaries for
it is a unique and comprehensive language.’ He might
have added ‘not even the Great Wall’ as the Chieftains
actually played on one of the Ming Empire’s Watch
Towers!
Many people in China associate the er hu with blind
people due to the fame of the musician known as A Bing
who lost his sight when he was in his thirties. His
playing was recorded for posterity in 1950 shortly
before he passed away. That recording of "Er Quan Ying
Yue".is available on youtube and it is easy to
appreciate how the mournful strains of the er hu were
deemed a suitable accompaniment by musicians seeking
donations from the public.
We also watched a video of the 12 Girls Band playing
Reel of Light from Riverdance which was very enjoyable
to listen to, and the musicians’ expressions suggested
they really enjoyed playing it. In this performance we
witnessed a much jauntier version of the er hu.
Apart from Riverdance probably the most famous
interaction between Chinese and Irish traditional music
involves the visit of the Chieftains to China in 1983.
Sun Sheng, the vice chairman of the Musician's
Association of China at the time, said of the visit
‘Music knows no boundaries for it is a unique and
comprehensive language.’ He might have added ‘not even
the Great Wall’ as the Chieftains actually played on one
of the Ming Empire’s Watch Towers!
6.
28th April Secrets Of The Great
Wall | Ancient China From Above | National
Geographic.
The magnificent Jiayuguan fortress which marks the
western extremity of the Ming Empire’s Great Wall didn’t
start with a single brick but with a vision of such
engineering sophistication that the architect Yi Kaizhan
was able to compute the precise requirement of 99,999
bricks which would be needed to complete the project.
The single brick is still there, lying on top of a wall,
but only to showcase Yi’s precision!
The remarkable survival of a collection of bamboo slips
gives us a unique insight into the sophisticated
defensive system which the Han Dynasty Wall constituted
over 2000 years ago. These slips contain detailed
instructions for the guardians of a series of
watchtowers, precursors of a phenomenon most familiar to
us through our own Martello Towers, but also of the Ming
Dynasty Watch Towers we associate with the Great Wall
today
These Han Dynasty Towers employed flags by day and fire
by night to send warnings of enemy encroachment hundreds
of kilometres down the line to wherever troops were
garrisoned. The vocabulary included a special signal to
warn that over a 1000 huns were on the march. What a
chilling message that must have been to receive!
It is interesting to note that flag semaphore systems
are still with us today especially in the maritime arena
and are acceptable for emergency communication in
daylight or using lighted wands instead of flags, at
night. Plus ca change!
A striking feature of the Ming Wall are the perfectly
preserved doorway arches marking exit points which
enabled search parties to spy on the enemy but Professor
Li Zhe of Tianjin University found a different kind of
portal: one that allowed soldiers hidden in tunnels
within the wall’s structure to break through a false
façade of brick and ambush the enemy, its jagged outline
conveying just a hint of that ancient ferocity into the
peaceful rural ambience of the present-day Wall.
In the documentary digital highlighting sharpens such
effects, and, in like manner, a digital reconstruction
allows the remains of the Han Wall (quietly slipping
back into the landscape of the Gobi Desert for over a
thousand years), to rear up like a laser barrier from a
dystopian future, and helps us to imagine the
intimidation which must have been felt by soldiers in a
nomad army confronted by this 20 foot high rammed earth
and reed based barrier. Surely the ultimate line in the
sand! But that sand turned up a further dimension of
understanding in relation to the Wall at that time as
Han Dynasty coins from merchants trading on the Silk
Road suggest its important role in protecting this vital
trade route.
As we made our way back in time past the Ming Wall and
the Han Wall we arrived at the rule of the First
Emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who brought all the walls of the
Warring States together to create the first Great Wall
of China, on the backs of a mind-numbing quotient of
human suffering it must be said (in a more poetic
universe the names of the labourers would be engraved on
its sides.)
In any case it seems valid to adapt Kierkegaard’s dictum
about life having to be lived forwards but understood
backwards and apply it to history in general and the
Great Wall in particular. As we move further away from
the iconic structure in time and in space also, via the
vantage points of drones and satellites, we begin to see
it more clearly, in its various iterations, and to
register the scale of it for the first time. With the
help of cutting edge technology Chinese archaeologists
are revealing the true scale of the Great Wall of China
and no doubt will continue to uncover more of its
secrets far into the future.
7.
26th May The Forgotten Emperor Of
The Seas | Zheng He | Absolute History.
I came to this story when, on a visit to the Forbidden
City some years ago, I saw a notice about the presence
of a giraffe there in the 15th century which had caused
quite a stir among the local population. Seeing it
through the eyes of its Chinese admirers rekindled my
own admiration for this most exotic of creatures but I
knew nothing about how the animal came to be in the
emperor’s summer retreat. The film we discussed on
Wednesday filled in that gap in understanding with a
backstory that takes some beating!
The maritime adventures launched by the megalomaniac
emperor, under the command of his favoured general,
Zheng He, a man of exceptional gifts who was familiar
with Arabic Buddhist and Taoist culture, and manned by a
crew of thousands, can only be regarded as the most
extraordinary trade delegation in history doubling up as
a maritime expeditionary force on an unprecedented
scale.
The film uncovered some of the layers of human
ingenuity, spanning centuries, which made the whole
enterprise possible. We learnt of China’s precocious
feats of nautical engineering, the dry docks in
Nanjing’s Dragon Shipyard (400 years before the
technique was known in the West) which facilitated
massive ship production levels and the knowledge of
triple-planked hulls and water-tight bulkheads allowing
for the construction of such massive wooden vessels.
Experts differ on the actual size of Zheng He’s ships
but safe to say they were larger than anything that
sailed the oceans until the 19th century.
The project also saw a harnessing of the expertise of
Arab navigators (China had invented the magnetic compass
but the Arabs refined it for use at sea) and although
not conceived of as voyages of discovery Zheng He’s
journeys were just that, amongst other things, and have
left a significant legacy to human civilisation and
interconnectedness.
Copies of Zheng He’s Star Maps (probably of Arab origin)
survive as do detailed, terrestrial maps that allowed
daytime navigation by shore from China all the way to
Africa. There is also a small bowl of blue and white
porcelain passed down as a family heirloom in an island
off the Kenyan coast which DNA testing in China has
reinforced as compelling evidence of Chinese descent
among the people there, possibly as a result of Zheng
He’s sailors being shipwrecked off the Kenyan coast.
Zheng He’s was undoubtedly the greatest fleet ever to
take to the water with a flag ship carrying a crew of
over a thousand, ‘treasure ships’ filled with
highly-prized porcelain and silks for trading purposes
and all sorts of specialized vessels for transporting
food provisions, fish tanks, water, horses, livestock
and other animals, including that extraordinary
long-necked deer from Africa that set Chinese
lexicographers scrambling for a name.
A 300 strong armada escorted the fleet for protection
but also came into play as an enforcer in its mission to
assert global hegemony. When you are charged with
maintaining harmony between heaven and earth you tend to
have an outsize appetite for receiving tribute from
leaders of other nations. So it was with Yongle. But
this was empire thinking stretched to breaking point. We
can understand the bemusement of the authorities in
Yemen who were being asked to show obeisance to an
emperor from such a distant civilisation. But it was no
laughing matter for those who refused to pay tribute to
China and had to face the wrath of Zheng He’s forces or
for the pirates they defeated in battle.
The draw of Yemen centred on its mythical status as the
land of frankincense, fragrance of heaven, and another
one of the most attractive trading opportunities brought
the fleet to Calicut on India’s Malabar coast which was
famous for a form of black gold in the form of pepper, a
spice that could also serve as a remedy for stomach and
heart problems and was so prized in China that it could
be used in lieu of money. Actual gold also played a
central role in this tale as Africa was China’s el
dorado and African gold was used to pay for luxury goods
such as the Indian pepper and Yemeni frankincense.
But the voyages came at a ruinous cost, the measure of
that ruinousness made clear in the response of the
Chinese authorities who burned Zheng He’s log books,
made construction of a ship with more than 2 masts an
offence punishable by death and basically turned their
back on the sea in order to prevent any repetition of
such maritime adventures in the future.
Zheng He left various inscriptions carved in granite to
memorialise his travels, one of which speaks of
‘traversing savage waves as if we were threading a
public thoroughfare’ and he thanks the sea goddess
Tianfei for her protection ‘suddenly there was a divine
lamp which illuminated the masts and sails, and once
this miraculous light appeared, then apprehension turned
to calm.’ We may call the blue plasma St. Elmo’s Fire,
the electrical discharge from a ship’s mast that occurs
after a storm at sea, but there is no denying the epic,
Shakespearean quality of this image of a larger-
than-life figure battling the elements on his journeys
beyond the limits of the known world.
8.
2021 Autumn Programme.
22nd September: Mid-Autumn Festival 2021 China
Ireland Poetry Cultural Exchange Event. “中爱共婵娟”
2021中秋诗词文化交流会
“Sharing the Beauty of the Moon” Mid-Autumn
Festival 2021 Organiser:Love Actually Charity
Co-organiser: Irish-Chinese Cultural Society
Supported by: Chinese Embassy in Ireland,
Literature Ireland Purpose of the Event:
Firstly, it is an online cultural exchange
event, using poetry as the theme, to celebrate
the Mid-Autumn Festival 2021 with the Chinese
and Irish communities by “Sharing the Beauty of
the Moon”. Secondly, it is a not-for-profit
event and will be open to the public for free.
Last but not least, it is a charitable event and
all proceeds (e.g. sponsorship and donation
received) will be donated to Love Actually
Charity (CHY22213) to support children with
special educational needs in Ireland.
About the Event: To celebrate Mid-Autumn
festival, the poems are selected based on themes
including appreciation of the beauty of the
moon, homesickness, family reunion, etc. 3
Chinese guest speakers and 3 Irish guest
speakers are invited to interpret and appreciate
the poems. Recital performers include children
with special needs sponsored by Love Actually
Charity, Chinese youngsters living in Ireland,
Irish youngsters who have a basic knowledge of
Chinese, poetry recital lovers, etc. Most
recital performances will be pre-recorded with
background music and then played at the event.
Email: irishchineseculturalsociety@gmail.com
Website: www.ucd.ie/iccs
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