I will never forget seeing Balinese dance teacher Ni Ketut Arini in action in her home dance studio in Denpasar in Bali, Indonesia. She was teaching nearly 40 young girls to do Balinese dance with gentle, yet firm hands, and a huge smile. It was like her voice could control this 3D orchestra–the small hands, hips, and eyes moving together in the tight studio. She will be artist in residence with Gamelan Sekar Jaya this spring. Her dance workshop is already fully subscribed but she will be in a performance on April 24 at the School of the Arts.

Incidentally, I’m not sure if you can see it but she is wearing an Obama campaign t-shirt. When I visited Indonesia in the summer of 2008, many people were excited about the prospect of an Obama presidency. Sadly, it appears from this article in The Hill that the warm feelings have worn away a bit since then.

We hope somehow to get word to President Obama about our Bali exhibition so that he may in turn tell Indonesian President Yudhoyono about the exhibition when Obama visits there later this month.

This is a post from: the blog of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Visit us at www.asianart.org.

Visiting Balinese Dancer

This coming Sunday, the Asian Art Museum will be screening a double feature — Shanghai Triad and Two Stage Sisters — that provides a glimpse, both on and off the screen, of the violence and social injustice that lay behind the glamorous facade of “High Times” Shanghai and the heroic mask of Revolutionary China.

Shanghai Triad (1995) depicts the power struggles of the city’s criminal underworld through the innocent eyes of a young country bumpkin employed to serve the mistress of Shanghai’s top gangster. While sometimes considered one of Zhang Yimou’s lesser works, the film is quite compelling when seen in the cultural and historical context afforded by the current exhibition.

The film’s gang boss is based on Du Yuesheng, a native son who rose through the ranks of the notorious Green Gang to become the most powerful man in pre-Communist Shanghai. Don’t miss the hanging-scroll portrait of “Big-Eared Du” and fellow gangster “Pockmarked Huang” on display in the exhibit. It provides an amusingly self-reverential counterpoint to the film’s brutal portrayal. As for Gong Li, who plays the gang lord’s glorified sing-song girl, she looks just like one of those radiant “celestial” beauties depicted in Shanghai’s popular calendar art, several fine examples of which can also be seen in the show.

Shanghai Triad: portrait of a tortured artist

For me, the most fascinating character is the silent, but ever watchful, country boy whose dream of finding a better life in Shanghai becomes a cruel nightmare. I can’t help but see him as a surrogate for director Zhang Yimou. During the film’s production, not only was Zhang under intense government scrutiny because of his previous film, To Live (1994), but he was also on the verge of a breakup with his muse and lover Gong Li.

Seen in this light, the final scene of Shanghai Triad is a haunting metaphor for the intense powerlessness Zhang must have felt at that time.

Sunday’s second feature is an inspired choice to follow Shanghai Triad. While Zhang Yimou was censured for his portrayal of the Cultural Revolution in To Live, Xie Jin and his film Two Stage Sisters (1964) were actual victims of that mad era. Now regarded as one of the best Chinese films of all time, Two Stage Sisters was initially branded a “poisonous weed” and — except for select screenings to criticize the film — it remained unseen by the general public until 1979. For the crime of advocating the reconciliation of social classes, Xie Jin was denounced at a mass rally of more than 100,000 people. Although Xie himself survived the Cultural Revolution, his parents were not so lucky. His mother and father both committed suicide.

Two Stage Sisters: sisterhood is powerful

A revolutionary melodrama, Two Stage Sisters follows the personal trials and tribulations of two opera performers against the backdrop of China’s struggle for liberation. United during hard times, the women choose different paths once they achieve fame and fortune in Shanghai. One retires and marries a man she doesn’t love for the promise of a life of comfort, while the other awakens to the injustice around her and organizes the city’s female opera workers. Thanks to Xie Jin’s abiding humanism and emotional sensitivity, the film never succumbs to mindless didacticism or cardboard characterization. While certain scenes, such as the final conversation between the two women, are evidence of outside interference, the heart of the film remains intact: a personal love strong enough to weather the storms of life.

“Green water goes through numerous mountains”
[from the film's opening song]

Let me end by calling attention to the brief but incredibly moving performance by Shangguan Yunzhu as the film’s fading opera star. Shangguan Yunzhu was a popular actress during 1940s. (Look for her on the video monitor in the exhibit’s “High Times” section in a scene from the 1949 film Crows and Sparrows). It’s rumored that she had a brief affair with Mao Tse-tung which led to her persecution during the Cultural Revolution by Mao’s wife — and former film actress — Jiang Qing. In 1968, four years after her final role in Two Stage Sisters, Shangguan Yunzhu jumped from the window of her apartment building, the Normandie. Some say that her ghost, and those of the many others who also leaped to their death, still haunts the historic French Concession building.

Veteran actress Shangguan Yunzhu’s last goodbye

— Contributed by Dave Wells, who writes for Soft Film: Vintage Chinese Cinema.

This is a post from: the blog of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Visit us at www.asianart.org.

Shanghai Film Series: High Times to Revolution

According to local lore, xiao long bao were created by Huang Mingxian, in the Shanghai suburb of Nanxiang, around 1861. Huang owned a pastry shop and also hawked large steamed buns in a nearby classical garden.  It was a competitive business, and Huang, with his pastry-making skills, came up with the delicate, thin skinned xiao long bao to distinguish his wares from the other vendors’, creating an instant sensation.

Their fame spread beyond the confines of Nanxiang, and in the year 1900, a relative of Huang’s named Wu Xiangsheng brought them to Shanghai, taking over an establishment named Changxing Lou.  He perfected the delicacy, renamed the restaurant the Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant, and booming Shanghai introduced xiao long bao to the world.

On a cool, misty day in early April 1992, I had my first ever meal on Chinese soil – a brunch consisting of xiao long bao at the Nanxiang Mantou Dian.  My host Daisy (she’s now my sister-in-law) decided that the quaint snack shop that had hosted the likes of Queen Elizabeth II and Fidel Castro was a suitable introduction to Shanghai, and it is testimony to her judgment that I have been xiao long bao-mad ever since.  The timing of our visit there was fortunate, for when we attempted to return three weeks later we found it closed for an extensive remodeling and reconfiguring as a more tourist-oriented enterprise.  The dining area was expanded from a single room to three on two upper floors, and a takeout window added on the ground floor.

The Nanxiang Mantou Dian is now owned by a holding company listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, and has added additional branches in Shanghai and more than a dozen franchises in other Asian countries. Xiao long bao connoisseurs will tell you that its dumplings no longer meet the gold standard the restaurant established, though smaller enterprises throughout Shanghai have risen to the challenge.  Nonetheless, locals still revere the Nanxiang as the Mecca of xiao long bao and flock there to jockey for tables; the street-level takeout window, where the dumplings are still a proletarian $1.80 for sixteen dumplings, draws hour-long lines.

– Contributed by Gary Soup, a retired transportation planner with an abiding interest in Shanghai and its food  stemming from his first visit and a xiaolongbao epiphany there in 1992.  He keeps a blog at http://eatingchinese.blogspot.com and has contributed articles and photos to a number of on-line and print publications.

This is a post from: the blog of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Visit us at www.asianart.org.

Shanghai Dumpling Destination

"Vestiges of a Process: Shanghai Garden" during installation.

Shanghai has been up a little more than a week, long enough for a number of media reviews, blog posts, and general discussion points to emerge. One piece that seems to elicit particular comment is Zhang Jian Jun’s installation Vestiges of a Process: Shanghai Garden (2009).

Down in the shadowy basement and back halls of the museum services division, this is known affectionately as the piece with the bricks. Not just your garden variety red clay bricks, but some 3,000 antique grey bricks taken from the remains of buildings dating to the high-times of 1920s Shanghai, recently demolished to pave the way for new construction.

Bricks ready for unpacking.

Of course, bringing over 3,000 bricks from China is not as simple as dropping them off at the post office. Weighting in at over 11,000 pounds, the fifteen crates of individually packed bricks were flown from Shanghai to Los Angeles aboard a cargo plane, and then loaded onto a truck to San Francisco, accompanied by a museum registrar the entire way.

Museum preparators clean the surface of bricks to be stacked.

Because of earthquake concerns, the bricks stacked around the rock platforms needed to be secured against movement. With bricks fresh from a demolition site, this meant carefully cleaning the surfaces of loose debris so that adhesives could bond. As a result, the museum’s preparation team vacuumed a lot of bricks.

Zhang Jian Jun constructs his garden.

Each brick was carefully placed by the artist, who took advantage of the wide expanse of North Court to extend his installation in all directions. The completed work combines all those bricks with two pink silicone rubber scholar’s rocks (taihu), a silicone rubber vase, and tiny bits of artificial greenery emerging from the cracks. It’s an evocative statement about the transition between the city old and new, a theme our visitors will find woven throughout Shanghai.

This is a post from: the blog of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Visit us at www.asianart.org.

Somewhere a Shanghai garden grows

And because this is San Francisco, your weekend starts now.

You have just Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to catch the Swinging Chinatown exhibit at The Old Mint.   A colleague and I took a walk through the beautiful decrepitude of the old building last Monday and were enthralled by the stories of the performers and artists responsible for changing the way Asian Americans were perceived.

A group from Creativity Explored was in the museum today, probably in part because of this great show at the 16th Street gallery.  The opening is tonight, but I can almost guarantee there won’t be Shaolin monks in the Mission, because they’re all at tonight’s MATCHA!.

What else is going on this weekend that I’m going to miss?

This is a post from: the blog of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Visit us at www.asianart.org.

Your Weekend Plans

We try to keep their Octonauts series in the museum store, but I’m expecting their books to sell out as quickly as Oliver Chin’s Year of the Tiger books did for our Lunar New Year celebration last weekend.  Obviously, I am powerless when confronted by the charms of a cartoon Sasquatch.

This is a post from: the blog of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Visit us at www.asianart.org.

Meanwhile, in the frozen North

What awaits us is a land at once imaginary and real–Shanghai the concept, the dream–and its rise from a divided, shanty-filled port to innovative megalopolis.

But I want to talk about something you won’t see in the exhibition.

Shanghai’s Hello Kitty House was one of the first images to turn up while I was doing research last year, and although I’ve yet to find anyone who has actually stayed there, I’m willing to believe the place exists.

Thanks to the encyclopedic nature of the internet, I later discovered that the Shanghai subway’s #6 line is also known as the “Hello Kitty Line,” distinguished from other lines by its decidedly femme details (it makes more sense when you see it on the map).

Shanghai represents an imaginary place for me–I’ve never been, but whenever friends return I hear that I’d love the place.  Much in the same way early mapmakers set a course over paper without having seen a land’s shores, I’m doing the same to Shanghai.  Curators and couriers bring us the proof of another world, and we piece together the idea of a place.

I can’t wait to see what the ephemeral city holds for us.

This is a post from: the blog of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Visit us at www.asianart.org.

The Other Shanghai: 凱蒂貓

image courtesy of ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive

As much as I’d like to give you red envelopes stuffed with cash (for the whippersnappers, of course–red envelopes are traditionally given to those younger than yourself), I’m a little broke right now.

Instead, for your Lunar New Year gift, I will give you the first Chinese feature-length animated film, Princess Iron Fan (Tie Shan Gong Zhu).

This 1941 film by the pioneering Wan brothers came out of the Xinhua Film Company, a feat in itself, as Shanghai was under Japanese occupation at the time. Xinhua may have been one of the last of the Shanghai studios to hold out against occupying force’s business interests, but was eventually merged with Japanese-controlled studios.

The details of the film are charmingly Fleischer-esque, and for those familiar with Chinese epics you’ll know that film is based on an episode from Journey to the West. When the film was screened in Japan, a young Tezuka saw it and it influenced him greatly.

Here’s a preview on youtube–but you can watch the film in its entirety at the Internet Archive.

We hope to see you all for this Sunday’s Lunar New Year Celebration!

This is a post from: the blog of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Visit us at www.asianart.org.

New Year, Old Gift

A detail of the neon tube components of Shen Fan's installation "Landscape—Commemorating Huang Binhong—Small Scroll."

Are they straight or not? Preparator and lighting designer Evan Kierstead hangs two pairs of calligraphy scrolls by Zhao Zhiqian in Osher gallery.

Propaganda posters are prepared for framing in the museum's conservation center.

What’s scheduled for this week? More paintings, ceramic city-scapes and lots and lots of bricks!

This is a post from: the blog of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Visit us at www.asianart.org.

Shanghai update

(From left): AHSC  poster winners Imani Chapman and Dave San Pedro. You could be the next winner!

Call for Artists for the Asian Heritage Street Celebration POSTER CONTEST!

The Asian Heritage Street Celebration, Kearny Street Workshop, and NEW PEOPLE have teamed up to host the annual poster competition for the 6th Annual Asian Heritage Street Celebration. The yearly festival is to be held on Saturday, May 15, 2010 in front of the Asian Art Museum leading up to the Little Saigon District.

Organizers are looking for innovative artists to create an exciting and unique image. The winning artwork will become part of the personality for this year’s event and will be featured in posters, postcards, Muni bus ads, BART banners, bus shelters, newspaper ads and in a TV commercial.

AHSC 2009 winning artwork by Dave San Pedro featured at a MUNI bus stop.

The Asian Heritage Street Celebration gathers the diversity of the Asian American populations of San Francisco and promotes cross-cultural interaction through creation of innovative programs and entertaining activities for visitors and participants. The winner will also earn a $500 grand prize and citywide exposure. All entries will be posted at www.asianfairsf.com. For more information please e-mail ahscposter@gmail.com or call (415) 321-5894. 

DEADLINE for submissions is Friday, February 12, 2010. Send AHSC Poster Entries to: ahscposter@gmail.com.

For official rules go to www.asianfairsf.com and click on “poster contest.”

This is a wonderful opportunity for artists to support the San Francisco community and celebrate Asian Pacific American culture.  Come to the Asian Art Museum for cultural and art inspiration! Don’t forget our next Target First Free Sunday is just around the corner (February 7, 2010). Admission is always free for Asian Art Museum Members!

Please note that this contest is not affiliated with the Asian Art Museum. For questions and concerns please e-mail ahscposter@gmail.com or call (415) 321-5894.

This is a post from: the blog of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Visit us at www.asianart.org.

Call for Artists!