Guqin books and CDs from China

Here are the stuff that took 2 weeks to ship by sea-frieght from China to Singapore, purchased from Taobao.com via Sgshop.com.sg (very reliable, as always!) The books and CDs were inside a very nice eco-friendly bag. Nice touch!

There are some pictures inside the books. What struck me was, the guqin still looked the same, same design, same shape. The people wore different clothing which reflected their societal norms, but the music and the qin were almost identical to today (2010s decade).

The names of the people in the photos were so elegant and refined. They must have been from very learned and educated families.

Also, they must be people of considerable importance to have their pictures taken using a camera in the year 1919AD.

There was a picture of a guqin table with a little trapdoor for the qin player to tune the instrument. Nifty!

Packages from my grandfather's fatherland

Oh hello there! What have we here? 2 packages from China, my grandfather's fatherland. My grandfather died when my father was just 4 years old. he was supposedly from Macau. Personally I have never been to China yet. So, it's very interesting to see what China's courier package designs look like. It's a strange feeling, at once foreign, yet so familiar, to a Singapore Chinese diaspora like me. I'd reveal what's inside these packages in my next post!

Dr Tse Chun-yan playing Guqin with silk strings

Today was my 35th lesson with my teacher John Thompson.

After I returned home, I chanced upon this video of a gentleman scholar, Dr Tse Chun-yan, playing Guqin with silk strings. Very inspiring. He really brought out the beautiful sounds of the wood and silk. Enjoy!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today is Thanksgiving Day. (3rd Thursday of November).

2012 has been a very good year. President Obama won his re-election, I got to learn how to play Guqin from my teacher John Thompson, and learn how to write Chinese calligraphy, and use brushes and colors for Chinese painting in Singapore's NAFA, and I got to interview many famous shakuhachi Japanese flute master teachers from the North America, Japan, Australia, and Europe. It's been a pleasure and a humbling experience to learn so much from so many people. I also want to thank my PhD dissertation supervisor Prof Peter de Vries for his guidance in this challenging but exciting journey. I sincerely give thanks for all these blessings.

As for me, I'd probably celebrate it tonight by watching a football game at http://gamepass.nfl.com while eating Chinese food.

Wholesome family entertainment, watching big mucho men crashing-together-flipping-through-the-air. Touchdown! Of course, there's also real football played by real women!

No, I am not American. Yes, I know I am an Asian living in Singapore. But sorry, no I'm not a soccer fan. Sorry, soccer fans. Yes, it's football, not soccer, that excites me and millions like me around the world.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

While you're toasting your good fortunes, don't forget to pay it forward. If you can please gift generously to Phil Nyokai James, he's a shakuhachi Japanese flute teacher who suffered a stroke. He's married with a child. You can donote to help him at http://homegrown-hope.blogspot.com/

START OF BLOG SERIES - MEMORY and learning GUQIN

After learning how to play the guqin for about 9 months (from mid March 2012 until late November 2012), in the coming weeks, I will embark on a new series of blog posts about the role that my memory system plays in my learning of guqin.

Specifically, I will document my struggles, analyze my own lived experiences, reflect on them and comment about how the different components of my memory system, such as episodic memory (also known as autobiographic memory), semantic memory (memory of facts), procedural memory (also known as muscle memory) interact to form long and short term memories.

I will attempt to explore some better methods that may help me to memorize new guqin pieces, which has been a constant struggle for me.

So please stay tuned!

6 calligraphy pieces for submission to NAFA for marking

These are the 6 Chinese calligraphy pieces I'm submitting to NAFA for marking after 11 months of learning there.

As you can see, some of the characters are slanted or crocked. Lesson learned: more haste, less speed. haha. Anyway, I plan to take a 6 month hiatus from Chinese calligraphy in 2013 to focus on my dissertation, which I am guilty of not spending more time on. The time for fun and games is over. Time for me to concentrate on serious work now. *smile*

Playing guqin as meditation - a balance of concentration and mindfulness

A professor once asked me: what's the difference between mindfulness while doing something, and doing something as meditation itself? For more than a year, I searched for an answer. Suddenly today, I was very inspired and moved after reading what Phil Nyokai James Sensei, a shakuhachi master wrote on his webpage. You can read his original writing at this link.

In the same sense, I would like to suggest that, just like playing the shakuhachi, playing the guqin also requires a balance of concentration and mindfulness.

Adapting Nyokai Sensei's valuable words of wisdom, I would like to offer that, just like playing shakuhachi, in the case of playing guqin:

Concentration refers to attention of the guqin player to the sound of the fingers interacting with the guqin's silk strings, its pitch, tone color, dynamics, sounds of the fingers sliding on the guqin's fingerboard, the moments of silence between the notes, et cetera.

Mindfulness refers to openness to whatever else is going on: to the sounds of birds, or the train on the tracks outside the window (as in my case, I live next to an MRT train station), to the sensations in one's body, the feeling of the rough texture of the silk strings, the sound of "dragon's breath" finger sliding sounds on the guqin's finger board . All of these, too, are part of the music. Guqin music should have a very open weave, full of space, never suffocating the world around you.

I used to lament that my guqin was not good enough, not loud enough, or my silk strings were not of the highest grade, that I live in a noisy environment, that I live in a humid and tropical country. But now I think different. Tonight I played with the windows in my living room completely open. Even though the sounds from my guqin were extremely soft, almost inaudible, I let the sounds of my guqin blend in together with the ongoing symphony that's already playing in the lifeworld. Suddenly I feel very contended. Perhaps this could be my Kensho. hahaha LOL

PS. Phil Nyokai James Sensei suffered a stroke in 2010. Please kindly donate generously to his family if you can at this webpage. He is married with a young child. Thank you.

My toddler daughter messing around with my guqin

My toddler daughter saw me practicing on my guqin at night, and she said she wanted to try as well, so she climbed onto the high stool and started messing around with my guqin. haha. LOL

Playing amongst the stars

When you're playing your musical instrument, have you ever visualized yourself, grateful of it all, how everything comes together perfectly for you to play, this moment in the history of time itself, in the vastness, amongst the stars and dark void?

Well now, apparently, you can. using Google's 100,000 Stars on Google Chrome.

Speaking of stars, a certain television series that has great integration of Taiko drums and western music is back. Here are the first 2 episodes. Enjoy!

Guqin related performance at Esplanade by Zhong Zhi Yue and Han Ying

I've just purchased 2 tickets as a gift to my teacher to attend this Guqin related performance at Singapore's Esplanade Theaters on the Bay, on Wednesday 5th Dec 2012.

Do lend this husband-and-wife team your support! Click here for ticketing info.

Click --> for a video sneak peek of their performance.

Starting to learn 鷗鷺忘機 Ou Lu Wang Ji

Today was my 33rd guqin lesson with my teacher John Thompson, since starting lessons with him in March 2012. Starting on a new piece called 鷗鷺忘機 Ou Lu Wang Ji. More info about the story behind this piece can be read on my teacher's webpage.

I've not memorized the piece yet, I'd try to make a video of myself playing in the future, but here's a version on Youtube that I like. I think his beard was so cool! haha






Here's another version, a more emotionally charged one, by Pu Xue Zhai, legendary guqin grand master, and cousin of the last emperor of China, Pu Yi. Enjoy!






This is a super slow version played by Stephen Walker from the USA. It's beautiful. Breathtaking.

2nd calligraphy piece (out of 6) to be submitted to NAFA for marking

I don't know if my calligraphy teacher would approve of this piece that I wrote at home yesterday, but I'd try to submit it anyway, and see if she would accept it. Let's see how it goes. *smile*

I do think that the 落款 Luo Kuan (writing one's name, and season that's it's written) and the name seals are a little too large for a piece of writing of this small size (about eight A4 pieces of paper).

Years from now, I'd probably look back (at this webpage) and wonder how in the world I even had the audacity to submit this horribly written piece for marking. hahaha. LOL

Wrote a birthday gift for my dad

The nice thing about learning calligraphy is: I can "handmake" a gift for someone's birthday. Today is my dad's birthday, so I wrote him these congratulatory auspicious words. He's born in the year of the dragon, which means he is 72 this year (2012).

Thickest Japanese calligraphy ink seems to work best with red paper speckled with tiny gold flakes. The words do not look translucent on red paper this time round, unlike my previous attempt using another brand of ink.

My 1st calligraphy piece to be submitted to NAFA

My 1st calligraphy piece to be submitted to NAFA's calligraphy master teacher, Madam Pang, for marking by the end of Nov 2012. Here's some pics taken of it before it goes into long term storage in the darkness of a plastic tube. haha

As you can see, after I signed my name, I affixed my name seal. However, it's a little crocked. Well, never mind, life is a little like that too: imperfect. *smile*

Incidentally, today is also the US Presidential Elections, Obama vs. Romney. I wonder how it's going. All the news media outlets have been reporting that it could swing either way. It's a tight race. haha

Challenging myself to read 生死疲劳 in a year.

It's been about more 20 years since I last tried to read a Chinese language book. Yea, I'm 39 this year. I don't think I've ever actually completely read any novel written in Mandarin. After getting some exposure to (Guqin zither) Qin 琴, (Chinese calligraphy) Shu 書, and (Chinese painting) Hua 畫 since the beginning of 2012, I think it's time I'd slowly challenge myself to read a novel written in Mandarin. Let's see if I can finish reading this book in a year's time. haha. If I can do that, it would be the first Chinese language book I have ever completely read in my life. *smile*

The book I have purchased from Kinokuniya's Singapore store is:
2012 Nobel Laureate for Literature, Mo Yan's newest book, 生死疲劳, is a very interesting read actually. After going at it for a few pages, I'm pleasantly surprised that it's so readable and humorous. I was expecting it to be very high brow or difficult to understand, but it's not. Amazing!

I also bought another book (the book on the right in the picture below) that discusses about the book 生死疲劳, sort of like Clift Notes, I guess. haha. How about you? Would you also rush out to buy and read Mo Yan's books, just to see what's so special about his writing style?

Books of Nobel Prize laureate for Literature 2012 莫言 Mo Yan

After Mo Yan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 2012, it became hip to try to read the more high brow "harder-to-read" chinese books. *smile*

If you're looking for books written by Mo Yan, you can purchase them from the online store of 紀伊國屋書店. Just select 'Chinese books' and enter the keywords 莫言 into the search box of the online store.

Here's a clip of Mo Yan being interviewed when he visited Japan. Enjoy!