Dusun quarterly 2

dusun quarterly Summer 2014

e-journal of Asian Arts and Culture

Ng Foo Cheong Cheah Thien Soong Rajinder Singh Honey Khor Ng Swee Keat Foo Kwee Horng Nugroho Heri Cahyono 1

Dusun Quarterly 2 cover by Ng Swee Keat

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Editor Martin A Bradley email martinabradley@gmail.com Dusun TM Published by EverDay A

Art Studio and Educare June 2014

dusun quarterly e-journal of Asian Arts and Culture

Dusun remains an entirely free and non-associated publication concerned with bringing Asian arts and culture to everyone

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inside....

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Editorial

Transcendent Purity, Ng Foo Cheong

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The Long Drop, short story by Martin Bradley

Cha with DrCheah Thien Soong

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Band of Brothers, poem, Paul GnanaSelvam

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Ng Swee Keat

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Rajinder Singh

Honey Khor, Chinese Ink Painting

Summer 2014

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Rafin’s Rich Tapestry, Nik Rafin

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Scenes of Singapore, Foo Kwee Horng

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Nugroho Henri Cahyono

Angkor Children’s Hospital Mural

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Poems from India

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Imaging the Oriental

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Food Dusun, Dumplings

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dusun quarterly e-journal of Asian Arts and Culture

editor’s note Summer brings forth images of beads, flowers, bells, poetry and all manner of heady marvels. Well, heady marvels we do have though there is a distinct lack of beads, and bells. Poetry is here as are flowers so, maybe, the old hippie isn’t quite dead after all.

Dusun Quarterly rolls on into its second issue, a little tardy but that is the nature of free enterprises where time is freely given out of love for the subject, and not concerned with any fiscal gain.

Dusun certainly is unique..........it is free!

This issue is, as usual, crammed full of all kinds of visual and textual goodies to delight and bring awareness. Once more we have news from Cambodia, poems from India, images from Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore. Your Summer basket of sweetmeats over floweth as do all good cornucopias.

Sniff the air, it is once again full of promise.

Birds sing their songs of peace and love, were we but to open our ears and listen.

Breezes whisper in greened trees and all is well with the world.

Now read on................

Martin Bradley Editor.

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03-7772 6193 Email masterpiece.malaysia@gmail.com Website http://www.masterpiece-auction.com/ http://mpauction.tumblr.com/

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alaysia...

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transcendent purity

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ng foo cheong

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I first caught sight of Ng Foo Cheong’s artworks when I was writing the monthly back page for Malaysia’s The Expat magazine. To date Cheong has been featured three times in that magazine, and I had followed his exceptional work since the very first. But to see his actual artworks, in the flesh as it were, I had to travel to a splendid art gallery, hidden like a prize of a gem in the Fo Guang Yuan Art Gallery, at the Fo Guang Shan Dong Zen Temple, in Jenjarom, just outside of Kuala Lumpur.

The grounds of the temple were spectacular, calm, tranquil, serene, inviting, all, in fact, you might wish for from a Buddhist temple. It was a sheer pleasure just to be in that environment, however there was a slight rain so we (my wife, I and my youngest step-son) hastened inside, to see Ng Foo Cheong’s artworks. We had been wanting to see this new series of work since the exhibition opened, but had left it late due to other commitments. I had no idea what I was expecting. The works themselves would be fascinating, I knew that, but had no expectations of the gallery. It was, after all, in a Buddhist temple, and the last place you

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might expect to find a professional looking gallery.

We were shocked to find that gallery, part of the cultural structure of the temple, to be as fine as any Kuala Lumpur gallery, and better than most we have visited. The display cases and the lighting were all you could have hoped for, as was the space. We were a little taken aback. It was not what we were expecting.

The experience only got better as we started to look at Ng Foo Cheong’s works, collectively titled Transcendent Purity, and with a very good reason.

Never had a gallery so perfectly suited enlightening artworks better than the Fo Guang Yuan Art Gallery had suited the works of Ng Foo Cheong. The ambiance of the gallery and the innate spirituality of the works themselves set off a welcoming resonance, greeting our timid entrance into that well appointed space. The carefully placed lighting revealed physical depth to the multi- layered mixed media imagery, while gracefully hinting at other depths. Being in the presence of the works of Ng Foo Cheong was to bring another kind of depth, a more poignant, spiritual, transcendent depth as Cheong’s images engaged not just with eyes, but with the heart, the mind and the soul of the visitor too.

Cheong’s artistry, craft, knowledge and spiritual growth were all evident in a magnificent display of cosmic transcendence. It was an uplifting awareness brought forth not from any hallucinogen, no mystical mushroom, revelatory cacti or mind expanding cube of sugar, but from a mind and soul attuned to genuine mindfulness and a greater source than materialism and attachment. There were hints at doors, reached not through Huxley’s peyote, but by meditative

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transcendence and their opening occurring through the opening of a mind, not its dulling through quickfix self medication.

An immense imperturbability of Buddha cutout masks occupied many of Cheong’s expansive canvases. Those iconic images were intriguingly familiar, an amalgam of all the Buddha faces floating in an eternal calmness, all the serene smiles and the knowing peacefulness. Those images glided as an enigma, existing and notexisting, resonant reflection yet painted image, free yet grounded in texture and therefore static yet fluid floating, separate and at one with the canvas. In his works, Cheong presented a visual dhamma talk, an expression of cosmic consciousness, oneness, the disappearing and the bringing forth of a truth or purity in transcendence. The intricate path of dhamma is strewn with metaphorical pebbles, true suffering occurs, real and unreal obstacles appear to distract, as textures mask reality, yet perseverance, mindfulness and meditative practice enables the seeker to see the path clearer, and follow wherever it may lead.

Cheong was providing the catalyst, an introduction to dhamma.

The intricate cutting of paper is a time honoured tradition amongst Chinese peoples. From the invention of paper, in the Han Dynasty, to the modern day cutting of paper for festivals and cultural events paper cutting continues to be very much part of Chinese culture. Cheong’s work engages that paper cutting cultural history as he painstakingly cuts out a Buddha face, layers it onto his canvas and melds it into a transcendental statement, a physical as well as a philosophical prayer.

There is much to the ‘making’

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in the ‘paintings’ of Ng Foo Cheong, many layers giving depth to what at first seems to be one rich surface. As well as his attention to detail, his practical knowledge, it is the varied methods that Cheong uses to create his stunning works, that reveal him as a modern master.

Nothing is quite what it seems in those layered images. Cut out masks sit with three dimension ‘flowers’, lengthy ‘paper cuts’, appearing like stencils, but in reality raised, above other textured surfaces. Each object, each image accompanies and enriches the others, drawing the visitor’s eyes deeper and deeper into the magnificence and mystery of his ‘making’, and into the intriguing dialogue of Cheong’s exquisite imagery and imagination.

The series shown as Transcendent Purity comes as close as it is possible to visualising Nibbana or the Buddhist concept of nonattachment. Nibbana remains the goal after the cosmic cycle of birth, death, rebirth. Nibbana is dhamma which is "unborn, unoriginated, uncreated and unformed." Hence, it is eternal (dhuva), desirable (subha), and happy (sukha).

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Each piece in that exhibition was a silent prayer, but more than that, each piece was an inspiration, an invitation to ‘the way’ (dhamma), and a reminder of the innermost being that we are, and our infinite connection to the cosmos, not in any ethereal way but a very tangible way - in the realm of particles, sub-particles, quark, strangeness and charm. With thanks to Ng Foo Cheong those works were at once a meditation and each an object for meditation. An unfettered mind might seek to open those presenting doors, or glide along the raised lines, head for infinity or gaze upon the majesty that is within us and without us.

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Short Story Dusun

the long drop

by Martin Bradley

It was March, it was raining – slightly, in Kent........

It was not a good day.

Andrew Goodchild was falling.

True to his luck, Mr Goodchild, whom we shall refer to as Andrew, was firmly embraced by the full force of Earth's gravity and inescapably descending rather too rapidly towards an underlying lake. The lake seemed quite eager to welcome him into its watery bosom - if lakes were to have bosoms, watery or otherwise.

He was falling.That was preventing Andrew from drifting off into space.

It was quite a small detail, but significant nevertheless, considering the circumstances. Andrew appeared quite thankful in his own small way.

Coping with falling was bad enough without being oxygen deprived as well.

Andrew was falling. But not for him the airy fairy metaphysical, existential, or phenomenological falling, but rather an actual falling.There was no way that the falling of Andrew Goodchild could be mistaken for a metaphor of religious fallen angels - no. Andrew, through the interaction of his body and gravity was really, actually, bloody-well falling and praying to whichever God or gods who could hear him. It turned out that it was the gods Bank Holiday and even the telephonist was away.

A ridiculously cool March wind whisked past Andrew’s protruding ears. It gave chilling depth to the general cold of the depressive grey winter’s day. If Andrew hadn’t been so concerned about falling, he might have shared a thought or two about the cold but, as it was, his mind was otherwise occupied with his enforced decent, that and the drip at the end of his nose.

It was a psychological diversion, however real and inconvenient it was.

The weather was cold and Andrew’s nose was running. It had begun on the ascent and now was a damned nuisance on the descent. Sniffing did no good whatsoever; another drip simply replaced the vanquished one.

Andrew thought about itches and scratching, but there was just no way that he could stop the flow, or wipe the offending article away.

His nose dripped. Being upside down, meant that the drips ran across

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Andrew’s mouth and shot upwards from his chin and into his jacket.

Sniffing, Andrew continued his plummet towards the obsidian-looking lake below. While falling, Andrew had time enough to consider only one thing worse than rapidly descending - and that was drowning. If he had a choice - Andrew would probably have opted to continue falling. At least there seemed some small measure of hope in the falling, as opposed to actually arriving at his destination. Drowning appeared to be a definite dead end.

Andrew trembled. He nearly lost the contents of his bladder. Maybe he did, it was so cold that he wouldn’t have noticed. Fear and Britain’s onerous weather conspired against Andrew in their own particular way, keeping him cold - mentally and physically, pirate shivering without timbers.

There was a noise - an eerie nerve splintering howl.

It sprang from nowhere.

Somewhere, in some bizarrely lucid part of Andrew’s brain, he thought that there might there be a fox falling at the same rate as him. On a parallel trajectory as it were, and dropping like a proverbial stone - just like Andrew.

Why a fox? It was not a question that a falling mind cared to grapple with. Andrew didn’t see any falling foxes. Why had his mind sprung to the conclusion that whatever was dropping and making the noise, was a fox? Of all the unlikely mammals, why a fox? But Andrew just could not shake that notion of falling, and calling foxes. It was most bizarre. As far as Andrew could literally see, and admittedly he could not see far there were only clouds rushing higher. They seemed quite desperate to get away from him, or the fox, or both. It was difficult to see anything - hanging, as he was, upside down like the proverbial Tarot hanged man - without the hallo, unless you count the hallo of fright which was beginning to surrounded Andrew and maybe a slight whiff of fear too.

Boffins, profs etc. - those who deem to know, say that animals can sense fear; so maybe that’s why the fox was howling - it sensed Andrew’s fear, that is if there was a fox - and if it were falling, and that was no means certain.

‘I wish that bloody noise would stop’, Andrew said to himself as he fell, perhaps to emphasise the fact that he was a) still alive, and b) still conscious . No one replied – which only sought to emphasise his aloneness and desperation.

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The long, and one could ascertain quite heartfelt, piercing scream sharply assailed Andrew’s conscious stream of thought. ‘Bloody foxes, who would drop a fox from this height’ he thought, ‘Actually, I might, I can’t stand bloody foxes especially those that howl’ – it seemed, to

Andrew, quite reasonable given the circumstances.

And given the circumstances – fear of heights, fear of falling, fear of drowning and generalised fear of death it was not unreasonable for Andrew to take it all out on one of the animal species he cared least for, second only to snakes. He had detested foxes from young. Andrew suspected foxes to have killed a one of his cats, when he lived in rural Essex. ‘Besides’ he thought ‘they’re, well……foxy, aren’t they’.

Maybe projecting onto some poor and probably defenceless vulpes vulpes was Andrew’s way of coping with that fall. He was distracting his mind from his imminent demise, a mental sleight of hand as it were.

‘Plunging to your death, na don’t worry about that, here have a fox to think about’ said Andrew’s brain - on the very edge of panic. And, for a moment, it worked. Andrew was mildly more interested in where the sound came from, and who allowed the fox to fall than he was in falling, and that was good, well, in a way it was.

It was a loud wailing. The sound was eerie. It was uncomfortably reverberating in Andrew’s befuddled head. It was strange, in a remarkably familiar sort of way. ‘Perhaps it’s not a fox then, a banshee, but we’re not in Ireland, do we have banshees in Kent.’ Andrew argued to himself, nicely keeping his mind from its and his body’s sudden death. Those agonising banshee/fox screams seemed to last an eternity. They threatened to become a permanent fixture in Andrew’s conscious reality. Maybe they had. Maybe this was hell, and for all eternity Andrew would hear the noisome screech of the fox, well vixen, for Andrew remembered that it was vixens, and not foxes, which screeched.

On an altogether different plane of reality (that is to say the consensus reality many of we humans share), barely a few moments had passed.

And, as the cliché goes, Andrew found that the scream was issuing from his own mouth. ‘Bugger’ was all he could think in response to this news.

Andrew continued to fall, and he continued to scream.

The wind rushed past. It carried Andrew’s voice upwards and away into profoundly unpleasant skies. Andrew’s body continued to plunge at a constant rate downwards - thanks to good ole gravity which was entirely efficient but not exclusively Andrew’s best mate at the time.

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Andrew was never good at maths. If he were to reckon, he might have said that his descent was at the rate of bloody fast feet per second, per second and cold, bloody cold, maybe even colder than that.

He fell with his arms crossed, desperately clinging onto his black nylon, padded, winter jacket and barely clinging onto his sanity. Andrew was unsure if holding the jacket was to prevent it catching the wind, as he plummeted towards the winter wind ruffled lake, or out of a desperate need for comfort, any kind of comfort, in that most fraught of situations – quite probably the latter, for at moments like that you don’t reason you panic.

The screaming stopped.

Curiosity got the better of Andrew.

His previously falling body seemed to linger, momentarily, in midair.

He could sense his body start to relax.

Andrew had just enough time to see the darkened water of a lake inches from his face. He caught sight of himself, grimacing, in the black water’s mirrored surface, practically drowning.

Then...

Then Andrew was jerked upward, back into the sky.

More adrenalin.

More cold.

More panic.

Andrew was being whipped about like some pathetic human weight on a giant’s fishing line. He was caste towards the un-welcoming lake and then, teasingly, pulled back towards the heavens and re-caste back towards the lake. Maybe he was not the weight after all, but the bait, a tasty morsel to lure some monstrous bloody fish, a lake bound kraken perhaps, lurking, hidden in the lake’s sinister depths.

There again, from an entirely practical point of view, Andrew had, in fact, reached the extent of his latex bungee rope's stretch and, without any form of warning, no ringing of bells, no warning light, no excuse me but I think .... the tightly stretched elastic whipped him back up into the air again.

The bungee rope whisked Andrew by his strapped ankles, backwards towards the clouds, then down, then up, then down, then up, then down as Andrew danced and bounced at the mercy of gravity and the elastic.

One moment his head was pointing directly towards the lake and his heels towards the heavens, the next it was vice versa. Andrew felt green

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- as in the need to vomit.

Andrew didn't know whether to be thankful not to have drowned in the lake, or to be concerned that he was doing everything in reverse. He probably would have screamed again, but his mind became preoccupied with his feet - making sure they were not getting twisted in the thick elastic rope which was snaking around, threatening to either hang him or break off some vital limb or other.

Idly Andrew considered the newspaper headlines, as you do at such moments - ‘Quirky accident: ELDERLY Bungee jumper hanged by bungee elastic at charity jump’.

Each yanking bounce was, thankfully, a little shorter than the last. But each bounce seemed to replace Andrew’s stomach back into his mouth.

His face was turning even greener as the motion continued. At each disruptive bounce Andrew casually wondered if he would spray vomit over the wind-swept lake, and on the various gawping onlookers; and if this was, perhaps, expected and all part and parcel of their voyeuristic experience.

Andrew had been a victim, chiefly of his own charity. He was at the mercy of a very vicious gravity and, he hoped, securely attached to a strong elastic rope bound to his ankles. From his precarious upsidedown position and, craning his neck, Andrew could see a small lake getting slowly bigger. There was a sadistic crowd of gawkers gathered by the lake shore. Briefly he pondered -‘is this what a hanging crowd might have looked like, ghoulish spectators waiting for the plunge!’ He turned his head away.

Looking up, past his feet and to one side of his bungee wrapped ankles, Andrew could just about see the great arm of the 300ft high crane and the, now small, metal cage from which he had, eventually, jumped.

It has to be said that Andrew was not the bravest of souls.

Some three hundred feet above ground, in a small, shaky, metal cage his nerves, not strong at the best of times, had given way. Andrew had been asked to jump - perhaps a little too insistently by the young muscled male New Zealander. Andrew stood defiantly holding onto the sides of the cage - for safety, unable to move a tendon let alone enough muscles to jump. There were all sorts of doubts assailing Andrew’s mind. ‘Do these cords break’ ‘What happens if they got the weight measurement wrong - actually no, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know’.

The young bungee coach matter-of-factly repeated his request for

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Andrew to jump. There was something in his tone which added ‘or else return to the ground - others were waiting to jump’. With a faint heart, and a weak grin, Andrew considered his options.

Somewhere in an almost logical cul-de-sac of Andrew’s brain he weighed mocking shame against almost certain death, and perhaps martyrdom.

Not an easy decision and certainly not one to be recommended, but, nevertheless, many fraught moments later Andrew insisted on going through with the jump, and martyrdom. He needed a few moments to persuade himself that there might, possibly, be a slim chance of his survival.

Finally, a stressed-out coach said ‘Look, just do as I say will ya. Stretch your bloody arms out to the sun there, now jump and try to catch it’ in a New Zealand accent, which somehow made it worse for Andrew.

Andrew stretched, but not without a second thought, or three, and found himself falling. He felt completely unheroic, stupid and more than a little terrified - hence the screams. Like Icarus, Andrew didn’t catch the sun either.

It was not an ideal way to spend a Sunday. Being naked and wrestling pigs in mud would have been a better choice, but a promise is a promise and there Andrew was falling headlong through the March chill. He was hoping that the bungee rope was as securely fixed to his ankles as he had been led to believe and praying, yes praying, that he would survive with all limbs, and hopefully everything else, intact.

Like the other lambs to the slaughter that day, Andrew had been weighed. A measured thickness of bungee cord had been fastened to his ankles. After being roped and bound in a non-erotic way, Andrew was not in a position to distrust the young New Zealanders who had trussed him up. To all intents and purposes, Andrew was at their mercy.

The bungee minders herded a group of people into the small metal cage and started to hoist it up into the sky. Painfully slowly, Andrew and his selected elite inched towards the top of a 300 ft high crane arm.

The words lambs and slaughter sprang instantly to Andrew’s mind. He subconsciously bleated.

Aside from my acute fear of heights - which had not manifested until Andrew stood in that all-metal cage, Andrew would confess that he was just not an adrenalin junkie. He was, at forty-two years, getting far too old for such macho posturing. Andrew was feeling decidedly uncomfortable, buffeted by stray breezes on his journey towards the

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top of the crane, worse at the top, and decidedly in multiple minds as to whether to jump at all.

After it all - After the ignominy of the cage freeze, the screaming fall and the bungee bounces which left him with a sickly feeling, Andrew was barely able to restrain from vomiting over the on-looking crowd below.

It didn’t help that his already over-active imagination was running on overtime, no doubt on account of the adrenaline running speed races through his veins and pumping into his stomach.

Andrew’s vivid imagination was running riot. He had been envisioning cubed carrots and sundry fluids spraying on the faces of bystanders, who always seemed to be waiting for him to break his neck.

No doubt, had it been a straightforward fall, curtailed at the very last minute by the bungee elastic, Andrew would not have minded quite so much. But the incessant bouncing and being tugged back and forth had severely upset both his stomach and his frame of mind. Andrew was not so much encountering an adrenalin high, as being really, really pissed off with the whole damnable business and looking for someone to blame.

In the brief time it had taken to climb to the clouds, deliberate about jumping and then plummet the 300 or so feet towards the lake, Andrew had plenty of time to regret his decision to bungee jump for charity, and ruing the day that his so-called mate - Tristram had talked him into doing it. With the idleness of his mind and its eagerness to distract itself, Andrew remembered that day so very clearly, as he fell...

Andrew had been sitting in Blicton-On-Sea sports centre, supposedly facilitating the Tuesday Club, playing board games with sundry mental health clients, but actually listening to Tristram elaborate on the wonders of bungee jumping.

Somewhere between half-hearted games of Trivial Pursuit which, depending upon the player, were either taken way too seriously, or not nearly seriously enough,Tristram had rambled on about kudos and being noticed in the local community for efforts. He was playing the old hero game, trying to persuade Andrew that they would be champions the first in town to collect over a thousand pounds for Blicton-On-Sea (mental) Heath - the local mental health charity – and frequently called just BOSH. Tristram wove a tale of grand heroics, status, derring-do while simultaneously peering through the large interior sports complex picture window, ogling the young college girls learning to swim in the

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heated swimming pool. Fit, blonde, trim Tristram seldom had problems with the ladies. Trist liked to show his interest in the fairer sex, as often as possible. Generally, they reciprocated. No ageism for Tristram, he took all comers – cute sixty year olds and even cuter sixteen year olds and that, sadly was, later, to be his downfall.

So why, after Trist’s sleek advertising campaign didn’t Andrew feel like a hero, why was he left feeling like a king-sized prat instead. The answer was easy. Andrew had always been far too easy to persuade. It had said so on numerous school report cards - and so many teachers couldn’t have been wrong, could they. The term they had used, back then, had been – easily led. This had brought a few school cannings by a thin weasel of a headmaster who seemed to enjoy the process a little more than he should have and many, many tears - all of them mine.

All this was back in the bad old days, when corporal punishment was rampant in Britain’s secondary schools. Caning of boys was practically a pastime among certain headmasters. They could be heard practising in their wood lined offices - if you stood outside the door for long enough....one, two, three, whoosh - one, two, three, whoosh - one two, three, whoosh – some weird waltz. The caning aimed to punish repeat offenders, but it deterred us not one iota. The upshot was that students like Andrew left school with no qualifications, only bad memories of sadistic and quite possibly sexually deviant heads of school. That was one reason why Andrew found himself still being an assistant Mental Health Social Worker at the age of forty-two, and just one-step up from being a complete waste of space.

Yet, in the curious depths of Andrew’s quite often rambling mind, he still preferred to think of himself as being adventurous. Some selfdestructive impulse perhaps which frequently had him saying yes, when it should have been a resounding no. Andrew frequently regretted saying yes, especially when what he really meant was - well yes, but up to a point. That vital point had been quickly reached. In this case about five minutes after Andrew had agreed to Trist’s bungee jump - but there was to be no way out.

Almost immediately Tristram - being the unsuppressed showman that he was, began spreading the news of Andrew’s involvement. Andrew was doomed, no honourable way out. When you’re living just above the bread line you have very little else apart from your honour except, perhaps, a sense of humour, luckily Andrew still had both, though the

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latter was in severe danger after the jump.

The queasiness Andrew had felt then - with everything to look forward to/regret had nothing on the queasiness he felt on dangling from the bungee cord. Andrew could feel the bouncing slowly beginning to cease. He sensed the elastic, and therefore his body too, lowered slowly towards the lake. During those few seconds, Andrew allowed himself to look. What he saw was the cold depths of the black lake now rising slowing up to greet him. It didn’t help his mood any.

At the very last minute, just before Andrew’s head entered the water, the overhead crane’s long arm swept him over to the waiting ground crew. They eased him down and began to unfasten his straps. It was a moment or two before Andrew was capable of scrambling to his feet and walking over to the recovery chair.

Involuntary nerves twitched all over Andrew’s legs, his muscles felt weak. He lay for a moment on the wet winter grass, feeling dejected, washed up and sick. Andrew didn’t care that he had just completed a bloody bungee jump for charity, he wasn’t bothered about the money they would be able to collect for Blicton’s mentally ill.

When he was able to, Andrew sat in the recovery chair watching other jumpers preparing for the forthcoming ordeal, or already in full flight - as he had been but moments beforehand.

‘Fuck’, he said under his breath, as the full realisation of what had transpired hit him.

‘That fucking bastard’, Andrew said to no one in particular, but aimed the insult squarely at Trist.

When his anger began to subside, he took off, staggering from the chair, merging back into the crowd. He was looking for the van he had come in. Andrew aimed to seek some sort of solace in familiarity - even if it was only the familiar faces of the clients he had come with.

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Cha with

Dr Cheah Thien Soong

Golden Joy

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Art Article Dusun

Dr Soong in his study

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Practising Zen

Trees in the Jungle

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Dr. Cheah Thien Soong is a gentle, sage-like, unassuming gentleman who was born in 1942, Negeri Sembilan, Malaya (now Malaysia). He is a well known, and much revered, Malaysian contemporary Chinese inkpainting artist. Dr Soong hails from the second generation of Nanyangstyle contemporary ink-painting artists, and graduated from Singapore's famous Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied both Chinese and Western painting under the tutelage of artists such as Chen Wen Xi, Choong Soo Peng, Chen Zhong Rui, Shi Xiang Tuo, and Georgette Chen. Later, 2002, Dr Soong received a doctorate from Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico (Interamerican University of Puerto Rico).

Dr Soong held his first exhibition in 1962, and has since won a number of awards from art institutes in Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. He has served as a lecturer at the Malaysia Institute of Art (MIA) in Kuala Lumpur, then returned to his hometown to found the Seremban Institute of Art (Cao Tang Men Eastern Arts Society)

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Traditionally, Chinese ink painting revels in symbolism, is multi- layered with swift determined brush strokes revealing the artistry, mind and craft of the artist, and can be ‘read’ simplistically or profoundly.Typically there are few brush strokes to Chinese ink painting, and therein lies the skill of the painter for the Xuan (or Shuan) absorbent paper allows no mistakes from the causal artist, but glorifies the mastery of the professional.

Typically Chinese ink/brush painting is ‘coded’, revealing time honoured symbols such as ‘junzi' 四君子 The Four Gentlemen (Four Paragons in Japan) since the time of the Chinese Song Dynasty (960–1279).They are the orchid, the bamboo, the chrysanthemum, and the plum blossom.

The orchid represents Springtime, and specifically the cymbidium orchid (Chinese: lan) has lengthy associations with friendship, loyalty and patriotism. Bamboo represents Summer, modesty, or virtue. It is evergreen and therefore also a symbol for longevity. Chrysanthemum represented autumn, courage, longevity (because of its health giving properties). Plum blossom are the first flowers to appear in the calendar, and stand for renewal, perseverance and purity. Birds, rocks, mountains,

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The Landscape

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rivers, many and varied flowers, fruits and animals are all symbolic in Chinese ink painting, and change meaning depending upon their conjunctions.

Dr Soong’s diligent Chinese ink painting bears echoes of its ancient history, and yet has successfully created a fresh, modern and innovative style to further the ink on paper medium. Using symbolisms and iconography from various Chinese philosophies, including Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism, Dr Soong creates vistas and landscapes to intrigue and entice. Dr Soon’s strength of line is unparalleled as he guides the watcher’s eye along his paintings, revealing and hiding exactly what the artist wishes, with deft brush strokes available only to a practised master.

Words like balance and harmony spring readily to the mind as the watcher enters into Dr Soon’s created world of bamboo groves, swimming or standing lotus buds and flowers,serene dhamma forests and trickling, cooling streams radiating calm, peacefulness and the intrinsic majesty of life hewn stones.

Absorbing Dr Soon’s Chinese ink paintings engages the watcher to be a ‘partner’ in the countryside of his making, to hold ‘conversations’ with nature, trees and birds. Dr Soong enables our minds to begin a lifelong transformation, to encounter Zen in stones and under moons, to gain satisfaction when facing clouds, colourful or drab for they form a symphony in a loving world which is both exterior and interior, but ultimately in harmony

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with the universe.

In 2003 Dr Soong visited Jiangxi, China,and added painting on porcelain to his list of growing talents and capabilities. He has created many works with Malaysian subjects painted onto Jingdezhen clay and still looks forward to more innovation and creativity. To date there are three major books written about Dr Soong and his works.

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Dr Soong’s studio is a cornucopia of brushes, ink, books and Chinese seals. It is a haven for Chinese ink painting. His Xuan paper scrolls nestle on wooden shelving, holding their precious cargo for posterity.

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A myriad Chinese seals await the master. Some are made of stone, ivory others or jade. He impresses the seals. Using red ink, made of cinnabar, in water and honey or suspended in sesame oil, hemp seed oil. They remain as reminders to his craft, signatures to be remembered through the years.

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Rajinder Singh

Blockbuster Southgate In the early 1900s, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso introduced collaged elements into their Cubist artworks. Braque, familiar with decorating techniques, often used a decorator’s ‘comb’ to replicate wood effects in his work. Both used found paper images and other ‘found’ items - rope, wallpaper etc, to enhance the three dimensionality of their artworks, to question ideas of representation and illusion.

Max Ernst created La Femme 100 têtes [The Woman with one Hundred Heads] (1929) and Rêve d'une petite fille qui voulut entrer au Carmel [A Little Girl dreams of taking the Veil] (1930), and Une semaine de bonté, ‘collage novels’. In the 1950s and 60s Pop artists Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi experimented with cut out or torn imagery from newspapers and magazines, and other found printed items to create collages of new meaning. In a similar manner Rajinder Singh confounds and confuses, though with a mixed media style of bitumen, acrylic paint, oil paint, varnish, glitter, stencil and print etc etc etc, he emulates both

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later as Malaysia), there was the myth of the punitive Punjabi, a darkly negatively racist image, a boogeyman figure. Parents would threaten their children that the Punjabi would come and take naughty children away. It began, no doubt, due to the large number of well-built Sikhs used in the police force by the British, in Malaya and Singapore from the late 1800s onwards.

In Rajinder Singh’s M.O.L.C, which we are informed is constructed of bitumen, acrylic paint, oil paint, varnish and glitter on Polyester cloth, a circular icon cameos a black and white head and shoulders of a Sikh, the word ‘ALIVE’ is above, next to a ‘crest’ of scooters rampant, ridden by a

Backstage-1 collage and commercial enamelled signs, making a semiotics of signs.

Using a variety of mediums, Rajinder Singh renders images reminiscent of wood pulp paper, browning under exposure to light. He draws from historical narratives, dialogues rooted in his homeland - Malaysia, referencing a host of material including comic books, advertising and ‘Pulp’ fictions. The reoccurring iconic image of a standing ‘Punjabi’ (Sikh) ties the ‘reader’ to the artist, reminding us of whose narrative we are ‘reading’, exposing the double bind of how the artist sees us seeing his representation in his imagery.

An aside…..in British Malaya (known

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its stories under a colonial power, are highlighted by words in Malay, counterbalanced by those in English. In works such as Heartstoppin’ Hang Tuah, Sensational K.K., Backstage-1and others, the words Freak Show appear, in Blockbuster Southgate we see the ‘R’, part of ‘E’ and ‘A’ and the ‘K’ of the work ‘FREAK’. Freak Show streaks across the background of Blockbuster Alor Star.

Yet, who are the freaks? Frank Zappa, 1960s/70s counter culture guru from his album Freak Out used the term ‘Freak’ (specifically in the song Hungry Freaks Daddy) to denote fellow denizens of the counter culture, new Beatniks, Avant-garde, reversing the

Backstage-3 Sikh. Like his countryman Zulkifli Yusoff (who, ultimately) becomes entangled in retrospectives concerning Malay sovereignty and perils of colonialism, Singh engages in a narrative of imagery either created to represent his country of birth (Malaysia), or gleaned from posters, advertising etc from Malaysia, juxtaposed in a semi-Dadaist, semi-surreal way to provoke his intended meaning in regard to an identity quest.

The words Oddity, Living Wonders, Curiosities, Other Worlds create an atmosphere of difference, spectacle, reminiscent of the Victorian ‘Freak Show’.

Throughout the M.O.L.C series the duality of Malaysia, its heritage,

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negativity of the Freak Show sideshow performer.

Zappa displayed what Daniel A. Foss (in Freak Culture; life-style and politics, 1972) suggests is a”… gentle display of magical ethereal inner liberation”, self identifying.

Questions arise, is Rajinder Singh revealing his mixed emotions concerning the multi- cultural and multi- conflicted land he has left, or mirroring the West back to itself with all it prejudices, racism and curious fascination with an East that never was. Malaysia being a stunning example, as Chinese, Indians and Malays coexist supposedly harmoniously, but in reality separately, as religious and cultural cliques under persecution.

Is the irony that those ‘Extraordinary Human Beings’ really are extraordinary, and not just freaks to be gawped at, and the ‘Living Wonders’ really wonders but in the sense that we are all unique, separate, different and wonderful in our exteriority and otherness, rather than objectified, wondered at.

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Marvel Malacca

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band of b

*

Rest in peace my brothers, this life lest complete, by karmic- replace a noble rebirth, from this lifelivid of a notorious utopia ganglands and hoodlums branded and numberedimmolated off humane sense, desolate, despair and defeated.

Rest well my brothers, for the summation of fate, unruly, calloused, lacking,

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brothers

by Paul GnanaSelvan

in the paths set forth, an oblivion choice- for blood thirsts blood, of those you carelessly stole, of those drawn from yours; Rest assuredly my brothers, and Let bethe debts of your birth, ifbestowed by dharma, in those remains, lay herein the future seeds, be purified and dignified, in the league of your children.

*to those rounded up, detained, shot or annihilated (OPS CANTAS KHAS: JANUARY- DECEMBER 2013)

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NG SWEE KEAT Ng Swee Keat is a native of Alor Star and a graduate of the Malaysian Institute of Art, where he majored in oil painting and Chinese ink painting. His works have been collected by the National Visual Arts Gallery of Malaysia, as well as the Sultan of Perlis and Nokia (M) Sdn. Bhd.The artist has been exhibiting since 1999 locally and internationally.

Group exhibitions participated by Ng include “Measuring Love” at Wei ling Gallery, “Recent Work” at HOM, “North Kedah Art Society Art Exhibition” and “Father & Son”. In terms of international level exposure, Ng participated in the “Cao Tang Men Eastern Art Society Contemporary Chinese Painting Exhibition” Province of Fu Zou, China in 2007 and last year’s “Affordable Art Fair”, Singapore.

Ng’s achievements to date include being awarded the Best Student prize at his alma mater and in 2011 he emerged with the top prize at the UOB Painting of the Year competition and was also recipient of the bronze prize of the same competition in 2013. In 2009 he became the Grand Award Winner for the MRCB Art Award and in 2007 he received first prize for the National Teow Cew Society Chinese Painting competition. A winner of the 1999 Nokia Art Award Malaysia, Ng was one of the lucky ones to receive The One Academy of Art Competition Scholarship in 1997. He is also recognised as Malaysia Emerging Artist Awardee in 2011. HOM Adopted Residency program or A-Res is the artist first debut in residency program. (from Civilization, HOM Art Trans.)

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ic Majest

Rafin’s Rich Tapestry

by Martin Bradley What initially intrigues the tentative viewer of Nik Rafin's paintings, is the vibrancy of the colours that the artist has chosen to speak for his feelings. No tablet or computer screen viewed JPEG, or four-colour print reproduction, is able to fully satisfy that sight, or capture the sheer beauty of the work of art as you gaze wistfully before it. Catalogues and brochures, as important as they are, and as expansive and informative as they are, cannot compete with being face to face with a work of art.

This is true of meeting an object, soon to be desired, in an adroit artisan temple set aside for such adoration (e.g. Artisan Fine Art Gallery).

Eckhart Tolle has mentioned that “Presence is needed to become aware of the beauty, the majesty, the sacredness of nature.” That presence exists in the uniqueness of the moment when attending a work of art. It is a, practically, sublime moment of ‘viewing’ which in Sanskrit is ‘Darshan’ , and in Japanese ‘Satori’. Walter Benjamin, (in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, 1936) states that “The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity.’ In other words, we can only be certain of authenticity, or ‘realness’, when we are in the presence of the actual work of art. Likewise a work of art reveals its own ‘realness’, its own narrative and not simply a mirroring of its

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surrounds or of society (Plato’s mimesis).

This uniqueness of the viewing moment, of the gaze if you will, is especially true when in the company of the vibrant paintings created by this up-coming artist Nik Rafin. Rafin studied in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and brought a soul full of experiences back from America to his motherland, Malaysia. Practising variously as a graphic artist, illustrator as well as a fine artist, Rafin has nursed a bond with the simplicity and cleanness of line work and a need to give depth and volume to his acrylic painted canvases.The fusion of the woven and inherent depth of barely seen imagery demonstrates itself in Rafin’s ‘Mindscape' and ‘Earthscape' series.

In these there is an intermingling of circles, demi-circles and oblique abstractions, which the artist holds together by an entanglement of strands which could, in a creative future, become the double helix of the painter’s own DNA. In his earlier works, Rafin has rendered visual ‘dances’ of line, exploring colour and shape relationships (Earthscape Series) with the need for a definitive subject matter. At times he has injected subjects into his work, melded them with the abstract and, as time has progressed, we see more and more subjects resonating with the vibrancy of his abstractions. His timely paintings of ‘8 Wild Horses’, coming in the Chinese year of the horse, reflects the multicultural nature of Rafin’s home country - Malaysia. The horses prance and dance, some spot lit in white, manes flowing to the energy of the canvas, others turning heads in the

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mid-ground, neighing, stallions rampant with the luxury of their freedom.

Other horses, tamed for the race, remind the visitors of Malaysia’s love for the racing horse. Another eight horses, this time ridden by diminutive jockeys, their boots standing in race stirrups set high near the lightweight saddles, thunder in the race. Orange abstractions, circles, weave, help place the browns of the horses and lighter colours of their riders.

Rafin’s canvases portray the swift energies of constant movement.

Gazing at Rafin’s work, you might wish to recall those images of the Italian Futurist painters Natalia Sergeevna (The Cyclist, 1912 - 1913), and Pablo Piccaso’s friend Carlo Carra (The Red Horseman, 1912) as they attempted to capture movement onto their canvases. Carra, like Rafin, was intrigued with the motion of horses, painting them time after time (The Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1908, Horse and Rider, 1913, Pursuit,1915). Could we, perhaps, refer to Rafin as a new Malaysian Futurist, painting fluidity and the grace of movement? Rafin, like Carra (Football Match,1934) renders all the rush of the football tackle, as his colourful footballers (Football Celebration, 2014) dash towards the viewer from out of the rich tapestry of a green woven background, their rush and their deftness as sportsmen revealed in Rafin’s painting.

Throughout these more recent images, Rafin has intricately rendered an organically woven background into his energetically multiple-layered paintings. A background, perhaps representative of weft and warp of life, a weaving together of intricate and infinite narratives with his graphically complex strands. Together, it is those myriad painstakingly painted strands which adhere the narrative to the artist's telling yarn (story).

It is with these deft, carefully placed and carefully chosen, ribbons of colour that the artist becomes a wanton weaver of skilfully chosen cultural narratives. The artist images the strength and the resilience of fully engaged riders, as they push their burdened beasts to the all-important

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The Race Series

The Race

finish line. Rafin reveals the dedication, and power, of race horses galloping, legs pounding, stretched at full thunder of hooves with lust for the race, at one with their mounts. In other scenes, Rafin presents the explosive energy of the dhol, dholak and tabla with their high energy beats vibrating a rhythm to which the movement of Bhangra dancers (2014) cavort. Rafin is a precise painter.

In other, older, heads stylistically Rafin’s works might remind gallery visitors of The Beatles' (black and white) 'Revolver' album cover (1966).

The popular music hero foursome, peeking from Klaus Voorman's sublime illustration of strands of graphic hair. The visitor may gaze and remember the painted (not photoshopped) works of Makinti Napanangka, revealing the aborigine Women’s Hair String Ceremony (karrkirritinyja) for, according to Paul Klee, ‘drawing is simply a line going for a walk’, and this is something that Rafin delights in, amidst the spaces of his wonderfully woven, acrylic strands.

The artist Nik Rafin, is a delicate delineator. He is an enricher of sight, with canvases spinning multifarious multicultural tales of Malaysia, from the hoof pounding thrill of Penang races to ebullient Bhangra dancers leaping from the Punjab. It is as if art historical (Italian) Futurism has liaised with an Asian present, producing a fresh style which becomes engaged with all the excitement and dynamism of carefully captured movement.

Whatever the painterly references of these stimulating works, there is little doubt that the artist, Nik Rafin, has successfully captured all the exertion, endurance and potency of a variety of figures in movement.

He has put before us remarkably stimulating colours, against a sublime background of an essential weave. It is for us to gaze into these works, become one with them and discover the artist’s movement and imagery.

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Nasi Lemak 1 FOO Kwee Horng received his initial art training while he was at Junior College. In university, he was trained as a social worker but continued practising watercolours on his own. In 1995, he became one of the youngest artists to join the Singapore Watercolour Society then. Foo also realised his aspiration and became an art teacher a year later.

1999 was a good year for him; his works were exhibited at the UOB painting of the year exhibition and the Philip Morris Singapore art awards exhibition. Foo’s interest in local art history got him enrolled for a M.A. programme, researching on the History of Woodcuts and Cartoons of prewar Singapore. In 2010, Foo left the teaching profession to concentrate on his artistic practise that he felt he has neglected.

After he sold-out his works at the 2011 Affordable Art Fair, followed by more sales at the Ion exhibition in 2012, Foo felt very encouraged. His solo exhibition, A Nation of Shopkeepers’ coincided with the National Day period and was reported in the Straits Times. Besides painting, he now spends his time doing part-time teaching to children with special needs, the elderly and students of mainstream school. Other than art and art teaching,

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Dahulu, Sekarang Dan Masa Yang Akan Datang, Kita Tetap Kaya Raya

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Nugroho Heri Ca Keretaku Tak Mau Berhenti

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Nugroho Heri Cahyono was born in 1981 at Yogyakarta, Indonesia, Heri pursued his formal art education at Indonesia Institute of Art (ISI), Majoring in Printmaking, from 2001 until 2008. Fresh from his graduation, Heri had his solo in 2008 at Katamsi Gallery, Yogyakarta, in an exhibition entitled “Tekstur in Print Making”.

Heri exhibited sparingly over the years, focusing instead on quality instead of quantity.

He received a total of 5 awards,most recently received Consolation prize of 'Asean Graphic Art’s Competition', Hanoi, Vietnam in 2012. Finalist of 2013 UOB 3th Painting of the Year competition as well as nominated for Jakarta Art Award 2010. In 2009, he was also nominated for 'The Power of Dream' Art Competition. Prior to the nominations, he had received his award for Best Printmaking, in ISI’s 29th edition of 'Diesnatalis'.

Aside from being an active artist in Yogyakarta, Heri is also involved in workshops and performances.

His latest international effort was his most recent show entitled 'ConCurrence' in West Gallery, Philippines. (from Civilization, HOM Art Trans.)

Welcome To The Machine no 3

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Keretaku Tak Mau Berhenti no 1

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To Enlightenment 1

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follow artist Honey Khor as she sets out to volunteer for the charity - Colors

Every so often a book appears that reveals and illuminates a project that might otherwise remain largely unknown by the outside world: ‘Colors of Cambodia’ is such a book. This is a highly personal and passionate account written by Martin Bradley and illustrated by Pei Yeou Bradley of her encounter with a remarkable art-based project in and around Siem Reap in Cambodia, and how she was drawn into practical involvement with the children for whom the project exists.

Richard Noyce, Artist, Wales 2012

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s of Cambodia, for the first time

written and designed by Martin Bradley

on sale from cocthebook@gmail.com https://www.facebook.com/ groups/138402846288849/ http://colorsofcambodia.org/

proceeds from all sales go to the education of children in Siem Reap, Cambodia

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Charity: Colors of Cambodia students and staff paint a mural fo

Angkor Hospital for in Siem Reap, Cambodia

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December 2013, Colors of Cambodia was contacted by a Singaporean architect working on renovating the Angkor Children’s hospital, in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

He asked if Colors of Cambodia might be interested in painting a mural to cheer the children up as they waited to be seen by doctors, in the new wing. It was an opportunity too good to miss.

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Over the next few months drawing were made, and plans drawn up to facilitate painting the mural.

There were questions about the right materials, the time frame, the crew to physically paint the murals (plural as the project kept expanding). The date was set for March 2014, just before the launch and opening of the new wing.

Friends from Singapore joined Honey Khor, staff and students of Colors of Cambodia, even their husbands and children joined in to make the new area fun for ill Cambodian children. Two major murals were painted, and twelve room signs, using the twelve animals of the Cambodian zodiac.

Honey painted the original work, which she and her crew enlarged to fill one side of the waiting area.

Under the counter, another mural grew to fascinate the younger children, taking their minds off ailments.

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Uniquely Toro

is the story of a remarkable artist known only as Toro.

He has diligently tested the norms and conventions of artistic ‘society’, and shaken a poignant fist at corruption and prejudice.

It is a bold book about temerity and bravery written and designed by Martin Bradley Available through Waters Publishing House, Manila,The Philippines

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poems from

India

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There are subtle things in the unexplored fathoms of the heart, which no costly pen could wield, nor any mouths could pour out into eager ears.

They stick to the walls like slimy glowing star fish, sucking warm blood to live on unseen and unsaid.

It is too elusive, its nature beyond comprehension.

This is strange, it keeps on sticking, a strange headed shark at times with its aligator mouths wide open, and yet at times like a docile dolphin.

To have a being within the being is awkward.

The sea shore is ideal to smoke out this state; to let the surfing sea blot out this strangeness to be diffused into the horizons, far away.

Arun prasad

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The sea had kept its poise, it is deep and infinite, yet comprehensible and straight.

It had tales to tell the shore with its each dash, feeling the sandy earth, touching, kissing, and carrying with it, in its millionth effort to comprehend the creation.

This is the stage mimicking life, with the sun glimmering and heating it until its bowels had boiled, and the moon gently caressing with a silver shade drawn all over, lulling it to sleep creating an aura of mystery for you to adventure in the day's sheen.

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Walking Home from Camden Some days it is just easy to say I want this voice of mine to echo In an empty blue house Become a song about all my gentle sinning, yet I want my dreams to cover your thighs shivering under the ceiling fan I want to be able to look at smokestacks at dusk and see how Beautiful and sad they rise from the shadows I want to hear the midnight shock of birds That forget the color of dawn I want to hold my broken umbrella up like a crow-flower That can smell the clouds. I also Want to win over the brown hens in the rain When I walk down the carpeted stairs of a home I want it to wait for me with the fragrance of beans and fish At the end of the day I want my coffee face To imprint you, my slowness to conquer you The smooth moonlit calves to rule your nights A secret wish only for a secret you I want to smell of old leather-bounds Want to glow like the china behind cobwebs I want to walk not knowing where to go Stare at the local train’s segmented grace, the river mist and so I want to know how we can bring to life A rusted roadside sign, a misspelled word, a minute that flies These days it’s just so wonderful, nothing special though In a life without jasmine’s clinging scent that I want to be mine And a few other things such as puddles to reflect the sky Shoes to start telling wandering rhymes Or children to stuff metaphors in their bags I also want to twist all my wishes, before they wriggle out Flutter, turn into irreverent sparrows on green iron rails Sometimes, I want to walk from Camden to find home.

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into the migrant city on her feet migrant grit and grime spirit and rhyme too two and three and four before the hours split lit up with sun and moon deep-hewn steps she takes slip across lips of ash-dust rust mashed rose petals tall masts and tangled hose an angle of her marigold face as she goes and she’s gone.

Nabina Das

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Art Article Dusun

Vladimir Tretchikoff - Chinese Girl, 1952

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Oriental The West’s Love Hate Relationship with its Asian Population

Theodore Wores: New Year’s Day in San Francisco’s Chinatown, 1881

Vladimir Tretchikoff’s now iconic painting of ‘Chinese Girl’ (1952) is arguably the most bought, the most revered, the most hated, most recognised print of a Chinese girl from the 20th Century, and is the highest selling print in history. The painting is of Monika Sing Lee, who modelled for Tretchikoff, in Cape Town, South Africa. Incidentally Tretchikoff grew up in China, and so knew his subject well, and later said “In painting ‘Chinese Girl’ I had a lot of experience to draw on…

My mind and soul went into this painting, and perhaps there lies the explanation for its success. Somehow perhaps I caught the essence of Chinese womanhood…”

There, in a wooden frame, sits Portrait of a Chinese Man.A photograph taken by Isaac Wallace Baker, in 1851, at a time when intellectuals and artists were still interested in positive images of Chinese in America.

The man holds his ‘pigtail’ or long braid in one hand. It has not yet been cut off. A few years later the painter Theodore Wores, who was born in San Francisco, captured the essence of that city’s Chinatown.

The Chinese Fishmonger was his first (1881),and in the same year he painted New Year’s Day in San Francisco’s Chinatown; the Chinese Restaurant was painted in 1884 at a time of social unrest with the Chinese population of America.

It is estimated that at least 25,000 Chinese immigrants entered California, due to the gold rush in 1850. During the mid 1800s, that new wave of Chinese immigration into the New World (especially from Canton) was a case of mutual need. The West needed labour to build the new world, China supplied that labour on the railroads and for mining as indentured labour (a fiscal form of slavery) because many Chinese were escaping from Opium Wars and changes of leadership in their own country. Having not learned from previous importation of labour from Africa, the west grew to be ambiguous towards these new Eastern immigrants. However, studies show that Chinese people had been in America long before white settlers came.This is proven through countless sources, including genetic evidence and further confuses the status of Chinese in America. By 1860, again it is estimated that there were some 34,900 Chinese (mostly males) in America. Ten years later that figure had grown to 63,100.

The Chinese abroad suffered persistent racial abuse and the sense of the Perpetual Foreigner Syndrome (constantly targeted as being foreigners

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Matthew Philips Shiel Novel - The Yellow Danger, 1898

Certificate of Residence in America, 1894

despite generations having settled in a particular country). It has been a love/hate relationship.

Caucasians have depicted Chinese as ‘the yellow peril’, ’chinky’, ’slant eyes’, and reminds us of incipient racism against people of Chinese origin. Chinese were seen as unwanted, especially so with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1892, which aimed to restrict Chinese immigration into America, and prohibited Chinese from becoming citizens. Before the Exclusion Act, the 1890 census reported 107,488 Chinese in America, after the Act, in 1910 only 71,531 Chinese were recorded.

This racism has persisted in The West since the 19th century, and has been demeaning and degrading to people of Chinese origin from those days of early settlement in places like America, until the present day. The ‘red neck’ mentality has insinuated itself deep within many aspects of Western culture, to such a degree that it has become practically invisible.

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Wallace Baker, Portrait of a Chinese Man,1851.

Ching Ching

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Theodore Wores: The Chinese Fish Monger, 1881

While Chinese Americans engage in all aspects of American daily life, and at almost all levels, glass ceilings still prevent them from parity with their white brethren. Maybe, in some distant ideal world, we can all move on from racially based discrimination by dropping insulting slurs such as ‘Chinaman’ and remember that there is only one race, and that is ‘human’.

It is a love/hate relationship with Chinese. Americans have happily sat down, eating Sweet and Sour, breaking open Fortune Cookies, inventing Chop Suey and still reviling the Chinaman, the Yellow Devil and laughing at Charlie Chan’s Number One Son. Charlie Chan, supposedly a Chinese detective, was rarely played on screen by an oriental, the last film Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen was played by ‘White Russian’ actor Peter Ustinov. This overt racism, and its flip side the awe struck longing for the oriental, is captured in photographs, paintings and later in graphics such as advertisements, cartoons and comic books/ graphic novels, in America.

It is as if America both desires and discards the oriental. Chinese or Japanese/Korean women are drawn/painted as seductive, desirous, overtly sexy yet dangerous to the extreme, their enigmatic slit eyes continuing the allure of their slit dresses (cheong sams) or slipped sarongs revealing poignantly pert breasts.There is always the viciousness of the cat’s claws hidden in velvet paws, as with Milton Caniff’s Dragon Lady (from Terry and the Pirates, circa 1934), who was fashioned after a real 1920s/30s Chinese female pirate - Lai Choi San, yet never played by an Asian actress in the radio, TV or film series.

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Lee Ya-ching in True Aviation Picture-Stories (1943)

Oriental Stories, a pulp magazine (1931)

Yet it is the oriental male who has suffered most from humiliation and ridicule. When not vicious, unnecessarily cruel and barbarous as in The Shadow “The Chinese Discs”(1934) with the villainous Wang Fu. In 1934 another pulp hero Doc Savage encountered a “Mysterious black Chinaman” in Indo-China while Fu Manchu (Detective Comics no.18, 1938) and Sen Yoi in the Claws of the Red Dragon, on the cover of Detective Comics (no.1, 1937, and no.8 1937) appear as dastardly villians. And, not forgetting Flash Gordon’s nemesis Ming the Merciless (first appearing in Flash Gordon comics, 1936) and the ‘Asian’ master villain Ra’s al Ghul (Batman comics no. 232, 1971), while Chop Chop from Blackhawk, (Military Comics 1942) begins as a stereotype but evolves into a full blown hero. Thomas Kalmaku (an Inuit not a Chinese character) aka Pieface was similarly a sidekick to Gil Kane’s Green Lantern (1960s).

On the other hand, an attempt was made to bring the mystic Asian into the world of burgeoning super heroes, with The Green Lama (originally in Red Ryder Comics, 1940). The Green Lama was Dr Pali, a Buddhist monk from Tibet, though in reality a wealth American -Jethro Dumont and at this point shares an uncanny resemblance to Marvel’s Dr Strange (1963). International detective Fu Chang (Pep Comics 1940) was a less than stereotypical Chinese character, though his many of his adversaries were. Fu Chang had no powers of his own, but had a magical chess set given by a magician called Sing Po. Still in the 1940s there was Dr Fung, called “Master Sleuth of the Orient”, who apparently used “Ancient Chinese Lore to combat modern crime.”

The martial arts expert Kato is but a sidekick of The Green Hornet from the 1930s radio show. Originally Kato was Japanese, but during the Second World War Kato became Chinese. In the 1960s Bruce Lee played

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gazine pet Ma r a C agic The M . 2), Apr. 1933 No (Vol. 3,

Tales of Chinatown, Sax Rohmer, 1950

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Kato Origins: Way of the Ninja #1, Dynamite Comics; April 2010

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Kato, but still only a sidekick to Van Williams as The Green Hornet.

As time karate kicked on comics began stereotyping Chinese as martial arts experts, and not just Kato either. Following on from the 1970s Hong Kong Kung Fu films, came the TV series Kung Fu (1972 to 1975), with David Carradine as Chinese monk Kwai Chang Caine, a martial artist roaming America. It is believed that the TV series idea was stolen from one proposed by Bruce Lee, and to star himself as The Warrior.

A comic book series followed - The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu (1974 to 1977). In those issues featured Iron Fist, The Power of the Tiger and Shang Chi Master of Kung Fu. Later comics included Savage Fists of Kung Fu, then The Hands of Shang Chi, K’Ing Kung Fu and much later - Kung Fu Fighter and Karate Kid. In 1973 Mantis, a Vietnamese super heroine appeared in Avengers (no.112).

She trained in the martial arts, but was part alien and part human.

Outside of America (Belgium) Tin Tin’s Blue Lotus raised a few eyebrows for Herge’s manipulation of line to humanise Chinese characters and dehumanise Japanese ones in The Blue Lotus.

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Many years later sees the graphic novel American born Chinese,

by Gene Luen Yang, tell his own story about growing up Chinese in America, replacing The Journey To The West’s Buddhist values with Christian ones. Many Asian Americans now work in the comics industry, including Gene Luen Yang, Derek Kirk Kim, Thien Pham, Lark Pien, Jason Shiga, GB Tran, Jerry Ma, Larry Hama, Alex Joon Kim, and Christine Norrie, Bernard Chang (Supergirl), Sean Chen (Iron Man), Cliff Chiang (Wonder Woman), Larry Hama (G.I. Joe), Sonny Liew (Malinky Robot), Takeshi Miyazawa (Runaways), Christine Norrie (Hopeless Savages), Greg Pak (The Hulk), G.B. Tran (Vietnamerica).

Chinese from other countries, including China and Malaysia now draw, ink and tell stories for the big two American comics companies Marvel and D.C. Chinaman, Dutch comic book, 1982

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, 2006

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Food Dusun

dumplings "They're not dumplings", I said knowingly! "Dumplings are sort of round and squishy, they belong in stews, beef or lamb, they stick to your ribs in the cold English weather, give you a warm coating to protect you from the full awfulness of the British weather. Dumplings, real dumplings are made with suet, flour and a pinch of salt. Some, the posher ones, have dried herbs". I took a deep breath.

"These things are parcels. Chinese parcels, wrapped with bamboo leaves containing a whole host of things which does not include suet.

Chinese parcels, loosely called dumplings by the unknowing some, are made with two types of rice, have pork, chestnuts, dried prawns and all sorts of goodies to fill eager starving tummies.They, in no way, resemble those gooey lumps found loosely associating with over boiled lamb, demolished potatoes and disintegrated barley."

I was in high dudgeon. I was on my high horse, which was standing on a soap box and I was getting very bloody annoyed at the whole misnomer.

I was irrational, true, but I was making a point.

"Chinese parcels are not dumplings".

It was like the whole bloody turkey bacon saga all over again, or that of the non-alcoholic beer. What next, non-pork pork and non-alcoholic alcohol?

"Other things are Chinese dumplings. Things that are made of pastry.

Things that are fried and dunked in vinegar with ginger strips, or steamed with minced pork and chives inside, or boiled with long flowing tresses of wet pastry trailing like Won Ton but much, much larger. Chinese dumplings surface in Dim Sum eateries, alongside Siu Mai, steamed ribs, feet of chickens and wide rice flour made noodles called Cheong Fun, which fairly drip with flavour (not to mention hoisin sauce) and are hauled around on shaky, rambling, trolleys in restaurants in London’s China Town."

We British have translation problems when we try to talk about Chinese Dumplings. We are out of our depth, out of our culture, lost amidst a veritable ocean of succulent Chinese morsels, each being called

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dumplings by we foreigners who know no difference. And, be honest, which would you choose - Chinese parcels, which are called Chang (Chung) or dumplings, soggy English dumplings. Chinese dumplings are dumplings but tastier than any from British cooks. They far out strip our humble British dumplings which swim, but most likely sinking, in stews like those of my dear departed mother; thin, lifeless stews, stews existing purely to make her robust dumplings buoyant.

Yes, you guessed it, it's that time of year again in Malaysia. A time of remembrance of ancient Chinese poets and their sacrifices for Emperor, and country. A time of dragon races and over eating, and yes I know that just about every week there is an excuse for that in Malaysia, but this is a time honoured tradition so, of course, I have to comply don't I, don’t I?.

June is a time when, once again, Chinese sons and daughters return home to help ageing relatives consume those heaps of Chinese, bambooleaf-wrapped, parcels that loving relatives have tenderly made for their eagerly returning kin. Let's face it, anything concerned with food is practically sacred in Malaysia, and more so if you are Chinese. Chinese love to eat, they live to eat, they long to eat. The 'Dumpling Festival' provides a Spring excuse to consume weighty amounts of rice and meat filled parcels, until consumers can consume no more and have to remain seated, bloated, unable to rise from the table.

Home-made parcels are simply the best. They are fragrantly imbued with all those family and cultural heritage tastes/remembrances. It is that poignant combination of culture, memory and a full stomach which entices sons and daughters to return 'home', dragged away by cultural consciences from that other Chinese love -that of making money.

Martin Bradley

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dusun nurture yourself with

asian arts and culture emagazine

166

ebook

remembering whiteness & other poems

by martin bradley

downloadable as a free pdf from http://correspondences-martin.blogspot.com/2012/04/open-publication-free-publishing-more.html

167 167

ebook

From Britain’s East Coast to South East Asia, surprises were in store for this author as he attempted the rural life amidst sand, sun and slithering snakes.

It is the tale of a seven year journey. A journey into the mind and soul of one deluded Englishman trying desperately to do the right thing and be the right person, in the wrong place amidst the wrong things.

http://www.amazon.com/Buffalo-Breadfruit-Unwary-Malaysia-ebook/dp/B008BHM91C 168