Red Gate Gallery, Beijing, China

Mr Xia Tong

Tomorrow Cam returns to Melbourne. Mr Shen will drive us all to the airport to say farewell. Cam has had a great experience in Tuanjiehu Park just as I have. He linked up with Mr. Xia Tong, a saxophone player. Cam is a musician [as well as an artist] and plays both saxophone and clarinet, and brought his clarinet to Beijing. They have not had much language in common other than music. Cam has learnt a traditional Chinese song from Mr Xia called ‘Jasmine’, while he taught Mr Xia “Kookaburra sits in the old Gum Tree’. Jake and I met Mr Xia last night and we listened to the two songs. Mr Xia visits the park every weekday between 3pm and 6pm to practice.

Yannick Dauby in Taiwan

I have been in touch with Yannick Dauby again, a French sound artist who I met through the phonography.org elist. He is giving a sound talk at the Taipei Artists Village any day now. He also has a great interest in singing insects. He gave me a link to a cricket concert that occurred in Shanghai on the Full Moon Festival. I don’t think there has been an equivalent here in Beijing. I have, however, found out about a cricket culture talk that is taking place at the Chinese Culture Club next Sunday.

Tuanjiehu Park Cricket Interviews Day 2

This morning I conducted some more interviews. Again, pretty successful, but I miss out on a lot of chat and discussion. Rather than asking Kelly to translate during the interviews, I have decided that next Saturday I will bring the minidisk and microphone and record the discussions for later translation. I like the idea of capturing these discussions occurring in the context of all the activities in the park and without much input from me. Having the conversations translated at the time would probably halt the flow of exchange.

The park is still the focus of much activity, but not to the same extent as in the heat of summer. Evenings are much quieter now, as the cool sets in. Days are still warm with alternate sun/cloud.

Golden Week – Full Moon Festival and National Day

Here are images of the unidentified cicada found near Vault 1 of the Terracotta Army in Xi’an. I have managed to photograph and scan this cicada [thanks to Brian and Hong Mei at Red Gate]. Scans are more interesting photographic images, I find, because of their limited depth of field and the effects this limitation has on the image. This is the advantage of finding dead insects over using insects from scientific/museum collections. The difficulty is that it is hard to find dead insects in good nick. A local artist, Huang Xu, has used the scanner to great effect in his ‘Plastic Bag’ series, which was shown at Li Gang’s Pickled Art Factory this month.

I contacted Ai-Ping by email and will wait for his identification expertise. He is very busy at the moment, particularly because of Golden Week, which starts on Monday 1st October – National Day. This week – Golden Week – is a holiday for all. Last week also had the Full Moon Festival on 25th September, which is the traditional mid-Autumn festival. This festival falls on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, and is around the time of the autumn equinox. This celebration can be traced as far back as to the ancient Xia and Shang Dynasties [2000 BC – 1066 BC]. National Day is a far more recent celebration, and every 19 years it falls on the same day as Full Moon Festival. National Day celebrates the founding of the People’s Republic of China as announced by Mao Zedong on 1st October 1949 on the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Tian’anmen Square.

Xi’an City Wall

The city wall of Xi’an is fully restored and it is possible to cycle the 12km around the city on this wall, which we did on our last afternoon here.

Found some crickets singing outside shops in Xi’an, the traditional way of enticing people in to come and buy. Also, outside vault number 1 of the terracotta army Cam came across a dead cicada on the ground. It looks like a cryptotympana atrata, one of the big ones, but I can’t be sure yet. Hoping to make a high res scan of it as I doubt I will be able to take it into Australia.