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On the bus on our way back from Tongliang to Chongqing in Sichuan province.
Earlier today three of us visited the No. 1 Experimental Primary School in Tongliang. Our two escort teachers are fluent English speakers and teach English at the Model school. It is famous for its concentration in the arts!!  10 art teachers, 8 music, 60 who teach poetry (every classroom teacher) and 4 technology teachers. The school has 4,000 students and 200 teachers. It draws on the surrounding upper and middle class community.

The buildings for classes

 

 

 

 

 The art, music, science, technology building

 

 

 

Our guides, Grace and Lilian in the Calligraphy studio

 

 

 

 

Grace, Principal He Daiguo, Fulbright delegates Roberta, me, and Kyle, Chairman Hou Youhua, and Lilian. They had a very successful partnership  last year with a school in Wales around food and culture. I’m excited to think about ways we might be able share with each other.

Over 100 degrees in ancient city of Anju, Sichuan province. Restoring the old city and reenactments of mayoral greetings and a wedding ceremony in full costume. The current city dates back 1368-1600’s but the location is much older.

 

Just for the Fulbright delegation in Tongliang   These two women are from Experimental Primary School One in Tongliang where I’m hoping to develop a collaboration.

In rural Sichuan province we eat a  farm to table lunch. Boiled lotus seed, fried and boiled and pickled lotus root. Lotus petals battered and fried. Lotus leaf omelette. All delicious!  The cicadas are roaring and the guests are happy this hot afternoon. I sit on a bench over the water. Honey bees are at what looks like purple flowering pickerelweed. Fuschia bougainville overhang ponds of enormous lotus leaves.  Pink petals and buds rise waving in this magical place.

Walking in the big stones.

Keeping up with the day’s activities and having time to reflect has been challenging.  It’s 11pm and I’m just now writing about this visit a couple of days ago in Xi’an.  

The guide book says some may feel underwhelmed by the museum and preserved foundations.  But my skin tingled thinking about being in this very spot 6,000 years ago.  Building a shelter, finding food, water, making a fire, fighting wildcats and bears.  We are told it is believed to have been matriarchal because the burial sites have the remains of women lined up with vessels alongside.

In fact there is a variety and number of clay vessels that keeps me drawing and photographing the pieces.  The larger ones have lids that were used to bury babies.  Inside one of these is a drawing that seems to show the face of a child, eyes closed, with fish on either side of the head, and a large fish shape across the bottom.

And there are so many clay pots.  Xi’an is a city of clay.  Deep yellow.  I want to work more in clay.  So ancient.

July 13, 2015

 

The excavation pits, the beautifully detailed figures, the massive accumulation of artistic effort is staggering. I cannot take it all in. I draw, photograph, listen to our guide. The crowds of Chinese are large and appreciative. I get photographed, interviewed by young Chinese artists. My ambition to focus and be present gives me so much pleasure that I loose my group for an hour. But we have all learned from Tom’s misfortune, and there is a meeting up spot at the arrival gate so I don’t worry. The truth is that I am happy, alone, working, focused, making a drawing that will hold my memories of Xi’an much longer than 500 photographs could. When I am drawing my eye and hand moves along the contour of the object like a very slow ant. I have never looked at a Terracotta horse and drawn it. I do not “know” the form in my eye muscle to hand movement yet. The profile of the kneeling archer is unknown also. The layers of fired and painted clay, 2,000 years old holds me like listening to Ella and Louis. I am fixed. I thank the spirits of the ancestors for this art, this day, this world.

 

I took a trip to this little 14c village, Dangjiacun. Found out about it in Lonely Planet. Absolutely no tourists there. Eerily deserted but beautiful. Art students were scattered around the village drawing and painting. A beautiful active pagoda and temple.

A wonderful city full of the parallel lives of maintaining the ancient Chinese culture dating back 5,000 years and living a thoroughly modern life with cool restaurants in shopping malls that are lively centers of communal dancing, skateboarding, or a walk with your date.  Bicycling on the city wall this morning with a new friend, LeeAnne. She is preparing to take a big exam in traditional Chinese medicine.

 

 

Afterwards we visited the Guangren Buddhist Temple run by Tibetan monks.  The master meets us with golden prayer shawls placed around our necks.

 

The various smaller temples house many beautiful seated Buddhas. There is a large and steady group of devotees lighting incense sticks and offering prayers.

 

I draw a large standing Buddha between 20-25 feet. We are invited to the private library on the second floor of the golden temple. I am so close to the face and hands in a devotional posture. My world focuses in.  Perfect quiet. Just me and the Buddhas’ enormous hands, face, body.

Amazing again.