My Chinese National Week

  

National Week is the Chinese Fourth of July that lasts all week. The web had said that the night before National Day (October 1) people get together and supposedly bop each other on the head with inflatable hammers and watch fireworks. Apparently the guy who wrote this on the web was a fraud. We didn’t find anyone else with hammers. 

  

Yet the upside was we watched one of the greatest firework shows in Asia (made up into two halves: the Portuguese who exited with a boom and the Germans who got it together).

I had gotten middle row seats the best place you could watch from. Yep there I was standing on the front of the back of a police pickup truck.

These are our good friends Jason and Gina, who were visiting for National Week. Which led to going to the exhibit

The art gallery that we visited used to be an electric switch factory and now had a knack for selling fancy Zippo lighters in its gift shop. 

The people in "Follow! Follow! Follow!" were made out of thread and had no faces . . . or lives.

  

Some were soldiers guarding tissue paper and parachuting out of airplanes. 

Others were civilians taking pictures next to beautiful buildings.

       

And the last chose to climb mountains for no particularly clear reason.

It makes me feel queasy to feel that the people climbing the mountain don't stand up for what they believe in. Just go along with everyone else. Just like the soldiers guarding the tissue paper.

Hang on a second . . . soldiers guarding tissue paper? Somehow, the paper just didn't look right.

I looked in the book about the artists that was on a desk, and sure enough the picture of the men was there . . . with no tissue paper. It was only two seconds before I decided what to do next.

 

  

Quicker than you could say "communism" the tissue paper was underneath the desk with the art book on it. 

Later when I came back the tissue paper was there sitting where I had picked it up from. At first I was scared out of my mind. When my mom called me over I thought I was really going to get it, but then the lady at the desk explained to me that it was OK. It turned out that at the last moment the artist had changed it so that the men were guarding the tissue paper. 

 

Why am I at the dentist? The night of the fireworks on the way home in the metro I cracked my tooth. I was chewing on some seaweed (which is delicious) and CRACK!!! I was the only one who heard it considering we were on a metro.

Two days later I was in the dentist's office. I was scared out of my mind. Dad kept saying "no pully pully" and I was really annoyed. In not very long I was getting seated for my checkup.

Now what I thought after I broke my tooth the dentist would cement glue the two pieces together and let the tooth come out naturally. After they sat me down and took some tests the assistant dentist brought over a little box. Peeking into it I expected to see thin cement glue... hang on a second is this a hospital or a garage? Inside the small tin box were fifteen different sizes of pliers... or were they yankers? Quicker than you could say "I shouldn’t have bit so hard" the smaller piece of the tooth was yanked out.        

This is Pam.

It was quite a busy National Week. My favorite part about the tooth story is the price. The dentist (who was very nice) worked at a big hospital. After she pulled the broken part of the tooth out, she sent us downstairs to pay. What did it cost? A whopping 9 yuan. You do the math.

I liked the "Follow! Follow! Follow!" exhibit a lot. It was especially interesting because of the way Chinese artists are using their art to ask questions about Chinese society today.

For decades, China's Communist Party ran everything and told everyone what to do. If people didn't go along with what the Party said, they could lose their jobs, be thrown in jail or even worse. The Party controlled everything. People got used to just going along with whatever the Party said.

Now, the economy is more competitive, and people are freer to act on their own. But one of the questions Chinese artists ask is whether Chinese people are actually acting more freely and independently, or whether they are just following a different set of pressures controlled by a different group of people. Are they just trying to do what will make them "popular"? Are they working hard so they can buy lots of stuff because advertisements for products tell them that stuff will make them happy? Here is a painting of an imaginary advertisement by one of the "Follow! Follow! Follow!" artists, Ji Wenyu. It's called "500 Grams of Nutritional Juice."

Looking at these works of art can help people ask questions about their society and themselves.

In the exhibit, I especially liked the piece called "Climb Up, Walk Steadily." It shows a group of men in business suits climbing up strings to a bar, and then trying to keep their balance once they get there. With no faces, they look hollow and empty and sad. Why are they climbing like that? 

To me, this piece could speak to people in the U.S. as well as in China. How many people in the U.S. just follow the ideas of others – friends, TV advertisements, radio show hosts, politicians, etc.?

You might think about your own life, or the lives of people around you. Can you relate to these artworks? Do you ever do things you don't really understand or don't agree with, just because someone else says you should? Do kids at Shamrock ever face peer pressure to act in certain ways? To "go along with the crowd"? If so, who pressures them? Why?

I was glad that Parker was willing to act on his own and take out the tissue paper, even though it turned out that the artist meant for it to be there. It really looked like some visitor had just stuck it there. It didn't cause any problems – it was easy to put back. It can be hard to decide to act independently, and I was glad Parker had the courage to do it. I think the artist would have liked it too.