Bokrecension På kinesiskt vis

Här kommer första bokrecension för På kinesiskt vis, recenserad av Kinaportalen (www.kinaportalen.se):

"Ännu en bok om Kina har dykt upp på den svenska marknaden, och det är långt ifrån den första detta år. Denna bok handlar dock, till skillnad från flera av sina föregångare, väldigt lite om politik. Den handlar däremot väldigt mycket om kinesisk kultur, traditioner, normer, kutym. Och den gör det på ett mycket bra sätt - boken är välskriven, med massor av vackra och illustrativa bilder. En perfekt gåva, men också mycket läsvärd för den som skall åka till Kina på längre eller kortare tid. Det är en "introduktion" till Kina som skrivits, och bilderna är en viktig del i denna.
Att vara en en ganska kort och lättfattad introduktion har den förstås gemensamt med Johan Björkstens "I Mittens rike" som kom för 2 år sedan. Men de skiljer sig också lite. Björkstens bok behandlar kinesisk historia, och det tar upp en hel del av boken. "På kinesiskt vis" ger ingen kronologi och författaren skriver inte alls om olika historiska epoker. Däremot handlar den om historisk, traditionella kinesiska företeelser (alltifrån vett o etikett till tedrickning) och det gör den på ett mycket bra sätt.

Helt klart läsvärd för den oinitierade!

Besök gärna författaren vackra hemsida: http://www.ingridboozmorejohn.com/

CIWC Christmas Bazaar Photo Update

Yesterday I got the photo prints back from the lab and I must say they look great. They are at the framers now being cut for cream-colored or black matts, depending on what color best suits the image. I made 46 prints total (from the 20 images). Ten of the prints have already been sold and I'm hoping that many more people will pre-order to get an idea of which images are the most popular. Of course, it will be much easier to judge which ones are nice when you actually see them at the Bazaar. The prints are large, standard size is A3 (2 times a regular piece of copy paper). In case the image you like best is sold out you can put your name on an order list and  I'll get the picture to you before Christmas. 

Many people have asked me to recommend a good framer here in Chengdu. I will bring a stack of business cards for a framer I recommend: Shilin Muyi near Rainbow Bridge (the big crossing downtown where the furniture department stores are located): 37 Beisi, tel: 028-86614510. Mobile: 13708007421.  There are also good framers at Songxianqiao Antique Market, underneath the highway in the souvenir shops near the Kempinski and on "framer's street", No 99 West Zhonglieci Road (near the Greenland Hotel).  

For more info about the photos see the entry below from November 3rd.

Fat Lady Rocks!

When I was trying to think up an appropriate name for this blog I thought I might call it Pang Taitai. Then I could truly call myself a blobber at Blobspot, excuse me a blogger at Blogspot. But lo and behold Pang Taitai (Fat Lady) was already taken by a well-endowed Hebei woman selling her own brand of spiffy fashion apparel for curvaceous Chinese women. Her website www.pangtaitai.com leans heavily towards the pink end of the palette and her slogan is "I am beautiful, I believe in myself". She seems to have representation all over China and she models all her designs. As anyone around me knows I can be direct to the point of bluntness, so I really like Ms Fang's straight forward and honest business approach, especially in a country obsessed with slimness and youthful beauty. If you want to put in an order for a natty tennis outfit or a rabbit fur collar down jacket her email is pangtaitai@pangtaitai.com - or why not some Power Woman black suede boots with gold details? Tell her Chengdu Pangtaitai sent you.

Presidents, Princes, Divas and Murderers

When I was a teenager my family moved to Florida. The first week in our new hometown a young black man was taken into the swamps by the local Ku Klux Clan, chained to a tree and beaten to death. This was 1976. Today Barack Obama was elected President of the United States of America. It made me cry. For the past eight years I have been so ashamed to call myself an American that I have cowardly hidden behind my Swedish passport. Today I feel extremely proud to be an American  and proud of the American people that voted for Obama. We are no longer the people of 1976. Let us hope that Mr Obama will keep us proud both of him and ourselves.

©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

The past few weeks have seen various personages pass through Chengdu. Yesterday Prince Andrew, Duke of York, turned up at The Bookworm. He was either very tired (or slightly tipsy from a working lunch) because he fell asleep in front of our very eyes. Luckily this didn't last for more than a few seconds and he went on to lend his support and suggestions to the ex-pat efforts in the local earthquake relief work. 

We opened our front door the other day to discover Yang Erche Namu on our doorstep. She was inspecting the vacant apartment across from ours, possibly thinking of renting it. (Our Korean missionary neighbors have shifted abode). Namu is well-known in Sweden and other European countries as the author (together with Christine Mathieu) of Leaving Mother Lake (Döttrarnas Rike, Bra Böcker Bokförlag), an account of her childhood on the shores of Lugu Lake on the border of Yunnan and Sichuan Province. She belongs to the Mosuo minority and at a young age left her small village to become a mega singing star in China. Her life was featured in National Geographic Magazine and she has since both written books, been a model and starred in movies. Let's hope she's not too hot to handle if she becomes our neighbor. Are Mosuos in the habit of borrowing sugar?

Temple door, Kongpo, Tibet ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

On the darker side of things an upsetting thing happened the other day on our street. On my way in a taxi to pick up my children I suddenly saw two Tibetans stabbing each other with long knives. The taxi driver jammed on his brakes and for a few horrifying seconds we say them lunge fiercely at each other in a grim dance of death, both wanting to get the best of the other. The driver quickly decided the best thing to do was to flee the scene and we sped off in a hurry, both of us shaken by what we had seen. "Did you see that?" I asked him. "I saw it." he answered. I wish I hadn't.

Photos for sale at CIWC Christmas Bazaar

Ballet class, Shanghai

Corn harvest, Lijiang, Yunnan

Moon Gate, West Slender Lake, Yanghzou, Jiangsu

Red Corridor, Wuhou Temple, Chengdu

Black Dragon Pool, Lijiang, Yunnan

Thailand

Lotus Pond

Tagong, West Sichuan

Women's Feast, Dali, Yunnan

Bamboo, Wuhou Temple, Chengdu

Autumn, Jiuzhaigou, Sichuan

Three Pagodas, Dali, Yunnan

Cormorant fishermen, Li River, Guangxi

Chopsticks

10,000 Buddha Peak, Emei Mountain, Sichuan

Tashilhunpo Monastery, Tibet

Lijiang, Yunnan Province

Lotus seed pod

Tibetan nun, Lhasa

Tibetan monk, Sumtsenling Monastery, Zhongdian

All of the pictures you see here are going to be on sale as prints at the 3rd Annual CIWC Christmas Bazaar at QSI International School (Meizhou Huayuan) on December 6, 2008. All proceeds from the sales of these images will go to two charities that work with earthquake relief projects in the Sichuan area that was devastated by the May 12th, 2008 earthquake : Ecologia and Sichuan Quake Relief. 

Ecologia needs 70,000 RMB to help a village rebuild homes and help families begin a cottage industry where they can earn a living. The remaining money earned will go to Sichuan Quake Relief – working on many projects in the quake area to help relieve the suffering of those living in the area.

More about the charities:
Ecologia http://www.ecologia.org/ 

Sichuan Quake Relief http://sichuan-quake-relief.org/ 

Each print will come mounted with a matt (passpartout) and cost 250 rmb. There will be 20 prints on sale.  If there is a special picture that you like please make a comment here below or send me an email: ingridmorejohn@gmail.com. Additional prints can be ordered and delivered before Christmas. The goal this year for the entire bazaar is to raise 100,000 RMB for charity. Please come and help make this possible!

NOTE! ALL IMAGES ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

Chinglish

©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

I'm as puerile as the next foreigner and can't resist the temptation to upload "interesting" signs I come across. Please forgive me. 

Fruits - Chinese Jujube

Photos ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

When I was a child a jujube was an oblong candy (not unlike a coated jellybean) that you could buy in movie theaters. Jujubes are actually small fruits the size of walnuts, loved by Chinese all over the country and eaten in both fresh and dried form. In English they are sometimes mistakenly called Chinese dates. (Lat. Ziziphus jujuba, svenska: jujubär eller bröstbär). The jujube (of which there are many species) is a spiny shrub or small tree belonging to the buckthorn family (sv. brakvedsväxter) and can be found all over Asia and the Middle East, from Syria to China.  It was originally cultivated in India as early as 9,000 BCE.

A fresh jujube tastes like a mild, sweetly aromatic apple without the tartness. The consistency is slightly squishy and mealy and not as firm as a crisp apple. Inside is a small, hard stone, not unlike an olive pit. A young jujube is a shiny green, which quickly turns to yellow with brown splotches. As the fruit dries it goes from brown to a dark red. The nutritional value is high with large quantities of vitamin C.  Like so much food in China jujubes are considered medicinally beneficial. They are said to stimulate appetite and increase life-giving qi, they can also prevent coughs (därav det svenska namnet bröstbär), sore throats and alleviate stress!

In China food is not only looked upon as sustenance and medicine but often as a symbolic vehicle. Foods are served or eaten not only because they taste good or are healthy but because they sound like something else that has a positive meaning. Likewise some foods are avoided if they can be connected to something negative. There are many visual rebus constellations with jujubes, here are a few:

It is traditional for friends to place dried red jujubes (zao) and peanuts (huasheng) in the bridal bed in order to wish the newlyweds a speedy (i.e. early, zao) arrival (birth, sheng) of sons. 

Jujubes (zao) together with chestnuts (lizi) symbolize the early (zao) "establishment of a family" (li). In certain dialects where zhi is pronounced zi this pairing together with a litchi (lizhi) conveys a wish that the recipient shall "establish a family" (li) with as many sons (zi) as early (zao) as possible.  

At Chinese New Year's a sticky rice cake called a niangao is served to wish the guests greater (or higher, gao) prosperity and success year (nian) after year. If the cake is decorated with a red jujube (hongzao) the extra message is for this happy result to come as early (zao) as possible. 

...and of course the deep and warm red of the dried jujube is the luckiest of colors.

You can find more entries like this in my new book "Chinese Symbols" ICA, 2008.

Smoking in China

Photos ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

What do you do when you've just got to have a smoke at an airport and they already confiscated your lighter at the security check?? In Chengdu's Shuangliu Airport you head for the outdoor "lighter dispenser" and fire up. Under lock and key a line of disposable lighters are at your disposal (and children's eager fingers to play with). When the lighters run out of fluid they just unlock the cabinet and put in a new one. "Fiffigt!" as we say in Sweden.

Biblioteksutlåning och statistik - Resa till Kina

Glad nyhet - fick precis ett brev från Sveriges författarfond att min resehandbok Resa till Kina lånades 4570 gånger under 2007. Liten nedgång från 4674 lån 2006 men jag hoppas den har gått upp igen under OS-året 2008. Jag har inte riktigt kommit upp i Astrid Lindgrens lån (över 1 500 000 om året) men man ska inte vara otacksam. Tusen tack alla ni som lånade boken, nu finns två titlar till att ta hem. Jag hoppas att Kina-intresset sträcker sig även till dessa böcker och till denna blogg!

Resa till Kina var med som bokval i både Böckernas klubb och Månadens bok i maj 2006. Bland facklitteratur för vuxna kom den på 14:e plats som mest såld bok till biblioteken under 2006. Sedan utgivningen 2006  har den sålt i ca 10 000 ex. och är nu inne i sin andra upplaga som kom 2008 med uppdateringar och nya bilder. 

Recension i Bibliotekstjänst (BTJ) 2006: 

En guide till Kina och dess resmål såväl i Beijing som i andra delar av landet. Även om kinesisk mat och dryck, om konsthantverk och shopping samt praktiska tips inför resan. Förteckning över alla platser i Kina som finns på UNESCO:s världsarvslista. Omdöme Ingrid Booz Morejohn har mycket gedigna kunskaper om Kina. Därtill är hon en mycket skicklig fotograf och har bland annat dokumenterat landets alla världsarvsplatser. Hon har rest åtskilliga gånger till Kinas samtliga provinser och hon är väl insatt i kinesisk konst och historia samt språket. Beijing presenteras utförligt, därefter alla viktiga platser i östra och västra Kina, Inre Mongoliet, Sidenvägen samt Tibet. Alla sevärdheter beskrivs ingående med intresseväckande uppgifter om natur, tempel, moskéer, kyrkor (det finns många kristna) och utfärdsmål. Kina är ett land med många bottnar, vilket bland annat skildras i provinsernas olika matkulturer. Varje sida har utomordentligt vackra färgfoton; vart och ett är ett konstverk i sig. Boken kan läsas av alla Kinaresenärer för resa i grupp eller på egen hand. Alla som redan har varit där kan med stort nöje läsa denna bok. Praktiska råd finns, dock ej för inkvarteringar, vilket gör att denna bok är mer tidlös än andra aktuella reseguider. Register och litteraturhänvisningar ingår. - Birgitta Gren

Things Chinese - Wedding photography

©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

Outdoor wedding photography is all the rage in China and has been for some years now. The stylists are very creative with their poses and the photographers find the most interesting spots to place their willing victims.  If you are a tourist in China it would be a rare day that you don't come across at least one bride and groom trooping stoically around some beautiful destination accompanied by make-up artist, stylist, photographer, whiteboard carrier etc. Not only do they pick classic locations like Jiuzhaigou, Yellow Mountain and The Forbidden City but sometimes even trashy sites like broken down houses or industrial locations to contrast the flashy wedding attire. Unfortunately divorce statistics are as high in China as in the West so I wonder who gets the pictures?

I will be adding to this entry the more I come across interesting "objects" to upload...