Sunday, August 26, 2007
Sa Pa, Vietnam, 27-28 July 2007: Minority Peoples
Hmong And Dzao Women
   It was a misty wet rainy morning when we arrived in Sa Pa. After checking in at the Bamboo Hotel, our tour group of six - two of us, Z and I, from Singapore, three school teachers from Spain, one middle-aged gentle giant from France who muttered only French - were greeted by our local guide, Le Thi Vu, a feisty precocious gregarious 19-year-old Black Hmong girl, sporting an attitude and an electric pink umbrella. She could really hold her own. Besides Vietnamese and the Hmong dialect, she spoke English, a smattering of French and could hurl greetings (and insults) in at least another half a dozen different tongues.    |
Unlike the rest of Vietnam where the Kinh ethnic race predominates, minority peoples like Hmongs and Dzaos prevail in Sa Pa. Mass tourism has transformed the lives and livelihoods of these erstwhile agrarian minority races immutably. Garbed in traditional wear and garish modern rubber galoshes, Hmong women and girls thronged the streets of Sa Pa town, plying indigenous textiles and silverware. Women wore their ethnic costumes proudly. These were espoused for their functionality and comfort, as well as the unique colours and ornamentation that identified the different tribes - Black Hmong in indigo black; Flower Hmong and Red Dzao decked in floral print and vermillion headgears, respectively. Most men eschewed them and donned modern apparel instead. At Cho Sa Pa, the central market, stall owners glanced worriedly skyward as the inchoate drizzle threatened to turn into a downpour. Ensconced in the two-storied market building, the women busily sewed and embroidered, making handicrafts for sale to tourists. The rain brought more customers, all seeking shelter from the heavy showers.   |
   |
The next day, weather improved. At the sides of Sa Pa Town Square, many minority peoples set up stalls selling handicraft, fruits and food. Z bought an embroidered cap from these women at an unbelievably low price of 10,000 VND! I wondered how long it took them to hand-make the cap. After breakfast, we went on a trekking excursion to Lao Chai and Ta Van villages. Along the way, we were joined by many Red Dzao and Black Hmong women hill guides. They trailed us throughout, sometimes helping to steady us and prevent many a nasty fall as we trudged clumsily on the interminable slippery muddy dirt tracks. Of course, at the end, they cajoled us to buy handicrafts from them. The items were all familiar - dyed textiles embroidered bags and caps, silver jewellery - and could be purchased in Sa Pa town at more reasonable prices, too. Market-fatigued and souvenir-weary, I wondered how this cottage economy could be sustainable with everyone selling the same stuff!  |
  |
The natural beauty in the valleys towns of Lao Chai and Ta Van was astounding. But the living was hard. We walked past the squat building that functioned as the village school. Classes have temporarily closed for summer. Only a straggling of resident teachers and fewer students remained in the largely empty classrooms. A tiny room at the corner was the village dispensary. There was no hospital nearby. The dispensary provided makeshift basic healthcare to the surrounding villagers. It was closed that day, a Saturday. The doors were firmly shuttered, and the narrow entrance was guarded by two desultory mongrel dogs. The treacherous village dirt roads were impassable to vehicles. Loads and provisions had to be carried manually. A diminutive Hmong woman, slouched low, bore on her shoulders a load of tied-up plant leaves that was twice her weight. The leaves were meal for the family buffalo. Who now was the beast of burden? |
Labels: ladies, people, Vietnam
Friday, August 10, 2007
Changsha, China, 1 July 2007: Flight CZ6306
Long Day's Journey Into Night
 H - young, petite, in a skyblue singlet with loud silvery glittery swirling letters emblazoned on the bosom, and matching eye shadow - asked me how long I had been waiting. Too long. China Southern Airlines flight CZ6306 was to have taken off an hour ago at 2:30 pm from Shenzhen Airport, bound for Wuhan, then Shenyang. But there was no sign of the plane. Neither official updates nor explanation materialized. A rumour went around: CZ6306 was still stranded at Zhuhai Airport due to bad weather. Turned out to be true. Bad luck. Well maybe not too bad after all. Zhuhai was less than an hour away."You don't sound local." "I am from Singapore." "You speak so softly and care-ful-ly. I can barely grasp what you are saying. Is this how Singaporeans speak?" "Not all. My Huayu is not vey good. I have to think very hard before I say something in Huayu," I stammered haltingly, sotto voce. "Huayu?" "Huayu. No?" Long pause. Broken only as understanding slowly dawned on H's face. "Ohhhhh. It's Guoyu. Or Putonghua. We don't call the Chinese language Huayu here in China." "That's, er, true," L nodded nervously in agreement. L possessed the gentlest of voices, cri du chat. Long hair pinned back squarely, unveiling finely-plucked eyebrows and bemused eyes that danced behind long narrow drawn eyelids, her quiet diffident air was made complete by a below-knee sun-dress with sea-green floral prints and floppy large collar that screamed girl-next-door. H was different - modern, vivacious, confident, spunky, the only one with make-up on. They had been utter strangers before they met at check-in but were now talking animatedly like old friends. Both were traveling by air for the first time. "I have a few days off from work. I am flying to Wuhan. My big brother is there. He's a hairdresser," intimated L shyly. "Isn't Wuhan very hot this time of year?" I queried in wonderment for I did not relish my own first trip to - and upcoming week-long conference in - Wuhan notorious for its oven-like summer heatwave. "It will be fine. I am so looking forward to seeing Wuhan again. I remember having a swell time when I visited with my family more than ten years ago, although my memory of the sights is now blurry. I was only a small child then," L's eyes twinkled, her excitement grew apace, undented by my thinning enthusiasm. "I shall be going onward to Shenyang. I hope the flight will board soon. With this delay, it will be very dark when I arrive," H intoned worriedly. And with sibyllic prescience, as we were all to find out. Flight CZ6306 arrived two hours late, accompanied by gathering glowering clouds and light rain. We met M in the flight boarding queue. M, with the sad doe eyes and tired beautiful face, was in a tee-shirt and a matronly overall top. She too was flying for the first time. To Shenyang to meet some friends there for a holiday. Bound by their common predicament and situation, H, L and M broke into easy chatter. "I should have taken the train. It's way cheaper. At least I know when I will actually arrive," M rued, her plans in limbo. "No way. It's more than thirty hours by train to Shenyang. I am almost sure we shall be in Shenyang in but a few hours," H injected wishfully, albeit with little conviction. Sheep-like we filed into the plane, glad to be going somewhere finally. Almost 6 pm. From my window seat, I thought I could see the intersection of the Yangzi and Hanshui Rivers. They divide Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, into three parts: Hankou, Hanyang and Wuchang. I hurriedly studied my notebook for details of how to make the long journey by bus from the airport to my destination: Bahaolou, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuchang. My thoughts were jolted suddenly by the pilot's announcement. Due to heavy thunderstorms in Wuhan, it was too dangerous to land. The plane had to turn around from the city and detour to Changsha. "WHAAAAT!" the passenger cabin exploded in spontaneous collective protest. Changsha was in another province, Hunan, almost one-third of the way back to where we started off - this I quickly discovered to my dismay, flipping furiously to the map section of the inflight magazine. Hands shot up, voices were raised, children cried. The toddler seated behind me had to go to the loo. Number 2. "Too bad, no can do," was the stewardesses' brusque business-like brush-off. Illumined by the dying rays of the setting sun, Changsha's verdant hills, rice paddi fields and mirror-like lakes looked serenely beautiful from the air. Huanghua airport was, in contrast, drab and cheerless. I searched for and found H, L and M huddled together on a row of chairs, eating Niushifu brand beef-flavoured instant cup noodles. The 8 RMB noodles were overpriced, but were the only food available. Ubiquitous boilers dispensed hot water for cooking the noodles. "Hi. Sit down here," H patted on the seat beside her. "Have one of these." I sat down, accepted her proffered savoury snack, peeled away the tacky plastic wrapper and nervously bit into an anonymous thin slab of spicy saltiness. "Duck's tongue. Local specialty produce. Very good," H volunteered in quick staccato, before turning back to continue her conversation with L and M. She was showing them photos of her colleagues taken that morning, the final day of her job. The last two years, she had worked in a Shenzhen shop, selling cosmetics, 9 am to 9 pm daily, one day off a week. It was a good job, better-paying than the factory work she did previously. Nevertheless, she wanted to move on to better things. She resigned from her job, packed her bags, stuffed her hand luggage with expensive cosmetics, and was traveling to Shenyang to meet a friend. If things went according to plan, they would set up a business there to sell cosmetics. Youthful brashness, but impressive self-assuredness. "I make these," L pointed at my backpack. She worked in a factory making branded backpacks for export. No, she could not afford the expensive bags she made. Neither were they available for sale locally. "I make these," M pointed at my shoes. She too worked in a factory. Making branded shoes for export that she could not afford were they sold locally, which of course they were not. Deja vu. One and a half hours into the wait, China Southern Airlines mustered up packed dinners for us stranded passengers. We supped joylessly on rice, shreds of oily cabbage and meatless hog bones. It was scant comfort for our growing frustration. 10 pm. News broke that the weather in Wuhan was clearing. A boarding announcement was made. Hurrah! Ecstatic beyond belief, H, L, M and I eagerly went through the perfunctory identity and ticket checks, and walked, almost bounced, to the waiting bus on the tarmac. Squeezed into the bus, we were quickly ferried to the waiting plane. There was another one hour's wait in the plane. In the meantime, two other planes flew off to Wuhan. Our pilot said we had to wait to see if these earlier planes could actually land before we set off. "WHAAAAT! AGAAAAIN!" the passenger cabin exploded in spontaneous collective protest. Again. Murmurings of passenger mutiny grew louder and louder. Invectives were hurled at the hapless stewardesses, who ploughed up and down the aisle with stern grave expressions, doing nothing useful really. ARRRRGGH! Nonplussed with bewilderment, I was by now numb to everything around me. I just hoped for an end to the lugubrious ordeal. Around 11 pm, our plane took off. How much the decision was instigated by vocal passenger insistence, I did not know. If we had waited any longer, the aircrew would surely have been lynched. I dared not think about whether the decision was a safe one. The plane landed in Wuhan around midnight, eight hours late. The weather was eerily calm: wet glistening runways and scattered damp drizzle the whimpering vestiges of the foregoing thundering malevolence. Zombie-like, I collected my luggage and exited the airport. Luckily there was a waiting bus to Wuchang's Fujiapo bus terminus. I bought my 30 RMB ticket, deposited my luggage in the trunk and boarded the bus seconds before it moved off. The bus sliced effortlessly through the thick darkness of the Wuhanese night, on roads almost empty of traffic. The first stop was Hankou railway station. As the bus started to slow down near the stop, I felt a hand brush lightly across my shoulder. "Hope you have a good time in Wuhan. Bye," L purred softly. Her body, back-lit against the glaring suddenly-switched-on lights on the bus, flitted past me and floated to the front of the bus to get off. I could barely make out a shadowy silhouette in front of her. Her brother, surely. As the bus pulled away from the stop, and their figures slowly receded and finally disappeared from view, I felt I had lost something. I never got to know their names. It had not seemed necessary. Then.  |
Labels: China, ladies, people, transport
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Berlin, Germany, 11-15 Oct 2006: Gemaldegalerie Paintings
Ladies Of A Certain Vintage
West Berlin's Gemaldegalerie has a remarkable collection  of early Netherlandish and Italian Renaissance paintings. Achingly vivid depiction of  Woman is a major thematic cord that binds religious and secular art. In Madonna in the Church by Jan van Eyck, a larger-than-life Mary stands inside an intricately etched church interior, cradling the infant Jesus in her arms. A supernatural amber aura emanates from, and transfigures, the central figures. Rogier van der Weyden, van Eyck's contemporary and equal, imbued his subjects with unparalleled emotional depth and intensity that was revolutionary in his time. Woman Wearing a Gauze Headdress conveys with delicate sensitivity a Flemish noblewoman's demure confidence. The white gauze headdress, primly pinned into place, is a tour-de-force of finely woven details, translucency and textures. Petrus Christus' masterpiece Portrait of a Young Girl enthralls with the subject's petulant half-smile and detached gaze, drawing one to wonder, "Who is she?" |
 Peter Paul Rubens reenacted the Greek myth of Perseus Freeing Andromeda from certain ravage by the seamonster, to whom she has been sacrificed, with dramatic free brush strokes and luscious colours. She glows, nude, bowing in gratitude, as he, incarnadine cape furiously flapping, rushes forward.More contemplative and sedate are Jan Vermeer's works. A magician at creating myriad light effects, his leitmotif is of scenes of everyday life set in rooms lit by natural light filtering in through open windows. The Woman With a Pearl Necklace holds her necklace carefully to the light, admiring its reflection in the mirror. In The Glass of Wine, we are voyeurs of the secret love life of the couple: witnessing the precise moment that temperance succumbs to indiscretion as wine trickles from the glass into her quivering hitherto chaste lips.   |
 Frans Hals' Portrait of Malle Babbe incisively captures the crude sneering laugh of tavern proprietress 'Mad Babbette' aka 'The Witch of Haarlem'. An owl perched precariously on her left shoulder, she gruffly twists her thick torso around to countenance her  customers with choice curses, giving as good as she gets.The Dutchman Hal's restricted dark palette and grimy realism contrast sharply with the luminous pastels and ethereal beauty of the Italian Raffaello Sanzio's Colonna Madonna (begun by Raffaello, completed by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio). Here, Mary's fresh-faced buxom country maiden fondly gazes at and quietly adores baby Jesus seated on her lap. He playfully clutches her decolletage, looking at us, grinning. The taut outstretched right arm artfully connects the holy duo compositionally. |
 Tiziano Vecellio painted four works of Venus with musicians, allegories to Love, Music's Muse. In Venus and the Organ Player, she is object of the latter's ogling. She, cool to his infatuation, is alas unattainable.Inspired by Botticelli's similar painting, Piero di Cosimo's delightful Venus, Mars and Cupid shows Venus and her lover Mars in an idyllic landscape, the latter exhausted and spread out in deep post-coital slumber. Mars is utterly vanquished, his armour is in disarray; his arms, cherubs' toys. Feted by her son Cupid and a white rabbit, symbol of fecundity, supreme Venus presides over her spoils. Love conquers all.  |
Labels: Berlin, Germany, ladies, museum, painting
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Berlin, Germany, 11-15 Oct 2006: Ägyptisches Museum
Berlin's Most Beautiful Woman
   The painted plaster bust of Queen Nefertiti is the jewel of Berlin's Egyptian Collection, currently housed on the upper floor of the Altes Museum. The classic lines of the heavy  flat-topped crown sitting on the head supported by a sleek elongated neck, the deep vibrant colours, and the life-like portrayal of the ageless face, faintly lined at the outer edges of the lips and below the eyes, seem almost modern. Immediately, one senses the palpable tautness of the neck muscles and the regal serenity of her enigmatic one-eyed gaze. Unlike the right eye which possesses a dark crystal pupil, the left was left strangely unadorned. The bust was never complete, but instead probably used as a model in the studio of her great sculptor-creator Thutmose, where she was discovered unperturbed more than 3000 years later in Amarna.Look also at other sculptures of Nefertiti in the museum. This one to the left reveals a youthful Nefertiti with somewhat more filled-out cheeks and a perfectly-shaped cranium. Another shows her more mature, standing with haunched shoulders, breasts drooping over a nascent middle-age paunch. In all these depictions, her person and unmistakable humanness transcend millennia to reach out to, grab and touch us. |
Labels: art, Berlin, Germany, ladies, museum, sculpture
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Paris, France, 14 Dec 2003: Musee Louvre
Les trois dames et plus
 Musee du Louvre is the largest repository of antiquities and art in the world. Restoration of the august institution met with initial public outcry, but I M Pei's pyramids soon became the Louvre's favourite icons. The understated underground entrance atrium and brilliant light-filled courtyards in the Richelieu wing - Cour Marly and Cour Puget - are the architectural centrepieces from which collection-rich galleries radiate.  |
 Three pieces - da Vinci's Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace - are the Louvre's undisputed mistresses. Priceless. Enigmatic. Ethereal.   |
 Greek statuary line the sculpture gallery. Renaissance sculptors recapture Grecian artistry. Michelango's Rebellious and Dying Slaves convey a life-like contrast in curtailed muscular tension and flaccid resignation. Poetry in marble.    |
  Antiquities from Egypt and the Near East, bounty from Napoleon's Egyptian expeditions, are a collection highlight. Hammurabi's Code is one of the first recorded wriiten laws, preserved in Sumerian cuneiform script on an imposing stela. Awesome.  |
Labels: architecture, art, France, ladies, museum, painting, Paris, sculpture
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License
These are the 30 countries that I have ever set foot on. Airport stopovers don't count!
