Exhibition

I with Laozi

I with Lu Xun

Ah Bing

Ah Bing

I with Ah Bing

We went to a exhibition of sculpture by Wu Weishan on December 02, 2008. The exhibition was showing sculptures, all the sculptures were made by Wu Weishan. Some of the artwork were traditional and others were contemporary.
My favourite artwork was a sculpture called “Ah Bing”. Ah Bing was made by Wu Weishan in 2007. Ah Bing was a folk music performer who played erhu. Erhu is a Chinese traditional instrument which is also called “Chinese violin” or “alto fiddle”. In the artwork, we could see a man’s body on the top two thirds and a very big stone at the bottom. The man’s old robe connects with the stone perfectly, they looked like one thing. The man wore a pair of sunglasses and a hat. He had a poker-face. We could see a concave erhu inside Ah Bing’s body. The curator told us that was a special way to show that Ah Bing could not live without erhu and erhu could not be so famous without Ah Bing, they were together. The whole artwork was about 2 meters tall. It was made of copper. The colour of it was very dark. Ah Bing was the subject.
The artwork made me feel genial and intimate. Ah Bing was a folk music performer who played erhu. I started to learn erhu when I was only 5 years old and I can play it very well now. Ah Bing was famous for a piece of music called “Two Springs Reflect the Moon”.
The artwork reminded me of the story of Ah Bing, I knew the story when I was very young. Ah Bing was a very poor boy who learned erhu from his shifu(Chinese traditional teacher was called “shifu”). When he was young , shifu brought him to the Hui Mountain. He saw the Second Springs in Hui Mountain. The Spring water was very clean and it reflected the moon. However, Ah Bing was only a young boy when he first saw this such a beautiful view. After many years, Ah Bing grew up and shifu died. He had a rough and bumpy life. His eyes became blind. Ah Bing went to the Second Spring in Hui Mountain second time during his life. He could not see the beautiful views any more, but he could feel it with his heart. He sat down beside the Second Spring started to play erhu. He created such a piece of music at that time, with the sounds of spring, the light of the moon and with all his special experiences. You could feel Ah Bing’s tired and optimism from this artwork. This piece of erhu melody is very famous around the world till now and it is also my favourite music. The first time I saw this artwork I felt very intimate, Ah Bing was the founder of erhu, this artwork is almost the Ah Bing in my mind. He wore a sunglasses because of his blind eyes. He also wore a hat and an old robe. He brought only a erhu during his vagrant life. The whole artwork gave me a feeling of that Ah Bing was coming from the Hui Mountain. I think the big stone at the bottom of the artwork represents the Hui Mountain and he would come back there.
I like the artwork very much, because I can understand it, I know the meaning of it. I learned about Ah Bing when I started to learn erhu. His real name was Hua Yanjun and Ah Bing was such a kind of stage name or nickname. I know a lot about this person, I have my own image on him in my mind during these years. When I saw the artwork, I knew it’s Ah Bing at once. It is almost the Ah Bing in my mind, so I like the artwork very much.
I do not think everybody will appreciate the artwork, if they know nothing about Ah Bing, they will not have their mixture of emotions when they saw the artwork. They will not understand Ah Bing’s poverty, his love of music, his love of erhu and his special experiences during his life. He talked about his life in his music, the more you like his music, the more you will appreciate the artwork.

Eat at Jack's Place

We had dinner with Grade 12 students in Jack’s Place on December 18, 2008. Jack’s Place is an Italian restaurant on WangFu street #53. We chose this restaurant because Grand 12 students recommended us to go there. Actually, food in Jack’s place is really cheap and delicious.
I ordered one of the Italian noodles called Spaghetti alla Bolognese, and shared a Jack’s Supreme Pizza with Rina. The Spaghetti alla Bolognese in Jack’s Place is a kind of Italian noodles with traditional bolognese meat sauce, ground beef and tomato sauce. Bolognese sauce is sometimes taken to be a tomato sauce but authentic recipes have only a small amount of tomato. I enjoyed the noodles, it looked good and tasted really delicious. Jack’s Supreme Pizza was also perfect. It is made by Mozzarella, tomato sauce, chicken, beef, green pepper, onion and Parma ham. It had special tastes and looked healthy.
The environment of Jack’s Place wasn't excellent but so so. You could feel Christmas very well , there were a lot of snowflake around the restaurant. The service was good. The waitress let us put the table together so that we could sit beside each other like a real party. There wasn't too many people in Jack’s Place except us, so Jack’s Place was a quiet place.
Jack’s Place is a desirable restaurant, I recommended it to my parents. We decided to go there again on Father’s birthday.

GUEST ARTIST

We was given a speech by professor ZhaoBing on December 1, 2008.
Mr.Zhao introduced about landscape architecture to us. The whole speech included three parts. What is a garden, the summarization of Suzhou gardens and Suzhou gardens.
In the first part, he talked about what is a garden. In China, most of the architects think that a garden must be a fixed scope, a natural land with real soil,water and plants. In the west, ‘Gen’ means hedge and ‘Edon’ means happy place. In conclusion,a garden is a large area of land where plants and flowers are grown with stones, water so that the public can go and see them. The garden is suitable for people to live and it must be followed by science and aesthetics. Mr.Zhao also told us the four biggest kinds of gardens in China. They are imperial family garden, garden belongs to yourself, temple garden and the places of interest. Different kinds of gardens has varied styles.
The second part was about the summarization of Suzhou gardens. This part included three points. First, Suzhou gardens are very peaceful, ancient forests. It maybe very close to the morden city, but when you walk in Suzhou gardens, you may have the the feeling as you walk in forests. Second, Suzhou gardens are living history culture. You can look for ‘yesterday’ from these gardens. When we enjoy ourselves in Suzhou gardens, we might feel that we are walking in the Tang or Ming dynasty. Third, it is an art exotic flower made by Chinese culture. One of the reason that why Suzhou gardens are very famous today is that Suzhou was a place to gestate Chinese old culture. Many famous writers and architects are come from this place during thousands years. Mr.Zhao gave us a Chinese idiom which means Chinese cultrue gestates Suzhou gardens, at the same time Suzhou gardens also affect Chinese cultrue.
In the third part, Mr.Zhao talked about some of the characteristic Suzhou gardens have. The most improtant one is water and stones. I think the relationship between water and stones is also the most interesting one during his speech. Chinese architects always say, ‘stones are the bones of a garden and water is the blood of a garden.’ Southern China rains very often in summer, so the pools in Suzhou gardens are sometimes full of water or even overflow the gardens. Because of this, the owners of these gardens must make the banks of those pools very high. However, if there is only little water in pools, the high banks will be ugly. So the owners come up with a great idea which makes me feel amazing. They put a lot of stones together as a form of beautiful stairs on the banks of those pools. So that no matter if there is water in your pool, the pool is work of art. How clever those people are!
In conclusion, professor ZhaoBing gave us a wonderful speech yesterday. I learnt a lot about landscape architecture and I am interested in it now.