kanji -漢字 – hanji – 汉字 - two birds with a han

最新漢英辞典

If one reads only English, one would think that this is purely a Japanese-English Dictionary.

If one reads only Chinese, one would think that this is a Chinese-English Dictionary.

If one reads English and Chinese one would at first glance thought that it could have been a mistake in the title – for how could a Chinese-English Dictionary, as read from the Chinese words, be called a Japanese-English Dictionary, in English.

And perhaps this would what most bi-lingual Singaporeans would have thought.

However, the catch is in the word ‘Character’. For, ‘Character’ refers to kanji - 漢字- in Japanese - 汉字 – hanzi – that is the Han or Chinese Character, in written Chinese.

Being a bi-lingual, and able to read Chinese, would give you more than just the Chinese language alone. With a strong foundation in written Chinese, one is also half way into the Japanese language. Though one may not be able to pronounce it in Japanese, however one would have known the written meaning.

As reading the Japanese (or Chinese ) title of the dictionary would testify, if one knows Chinese, one would have known that it is the - Newest Edition of Han-English Dictionary, i.e. a Han Character – English Dictionary, which carries the same meaning in Chinese or in Japanese.

最新漢英辞典 is pronounced as:

saishin kan-ei jiten - in Japanese
zhuixin han-ying chidian – in Chinese

How many Kanji characters are there in the Japanese language, you may ask.

In 1946, the Japanese Government listed a list of 1,850 ‘Current Characters’ - Toyo Kanji – 通用漢字 - with the recommendation that publishers and writers confine themselves to these characters.

All in there are 1,850 commonly used Kanji Characters in the Japanese language, and there are possibly 3,000 to 5, 000 commonly use hanji in the Chinese written language.

So, for those of you in the wildness struggling to learn the ‘Mother’ tongue - if the economic value of the language does not entice you to persevere with it – do not be dishearted, that idea that you are half way thro in learning the Japanese language, might perhaps do the trick to boost you on.

For, if you travel to Japan, you will be able to identify many of the characters in the signboards which will aid you making your way around. You can even engage a Japanese in ‘pen talk’ i.e.笔谈 – histudan – bitan i.e. conversation thro writing Chinese characters.

So, ‘To study Chinese’ – would be written in Japanese as:

中国语 no 勉强 - chugoku go no benkyoo

Oops!

But the two characters - 勉强 - has taken on a different meaning & connotation in the two languages, since the Japanese adopted it into the Japanese language a thousand two hundred odd years and more.

For :

勉强 - benkyoo suru – to study in Japanese ,
勉强 - mianqiang – as an adverb in Chinese has various meanings, namely i) to do one’s best despite difficulty or lack of experience or ii) reluctantly, grudgingly iii) inadequate, unconvincing, farfetched iv) barely enough.

In Chinese to study is : 学习 - xuexi. It is pronounced as as gakushyu –in Japanese – though it connotes a higher level of study, and delving into research.

Perhaps that’s what most of the Singaporeans students are facing when they study Chinese, they -勉强中国语 – mian qiang Zhongguo yu. They are struggling with their Chinese Language! It describes it well in Japanese.


Well, kanji -漢字and hanzi - 汉字- is not so similar after all, ne.



Postscript:

1)　 漢　or 汉
The two characters are the same in Chinese, with one written in the simplified stroke – down from 14 strokes to 5 stokes. In pinyin - han - pronounced in the 4th tone.

Japanese have maintained the traditional standard Chinese character.

Reference:

The Modern Reader’s Japanese-English Character Dictionary - 最新漢英辞典 - by Andrew Nathaniei Nelson, Phd. D published by Charles E Tuttle Company, 1978

Purchased at:

Marican & Sons (M) Sdn Bhd, Podium G5 DBS Building, No 5 Shenton Way Singapore -1
Tel: 221-4037
Date: 13.September.1980,
Price: $64.80







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the kereta that no longer runs on local ayer

Date: 8Jul/Sunday
Time: 9:30pm
Place: Junction of Smith Street – Trengganu Street

Was making my way to the MRT station and while passing thro the junction of Smith and Trengganu Streets, bumped into the street performance and stopped to watch. . Had thought that it was a Cantonese Opera but it wasn’t. The singing was in the Beijing Opera style.

It was a short act from the script - Jin Pingmei – 金瓶梅 - with Wu Song (the hero who killed a tiger with his bare hands) - 武松- Pan Jin Liang- – 潘金莲(the loose sister-n-law of Wu Song ) and Ximen Qing ( rich philander) – 西门庆-in appearance. The drunken screen of Wu Song gulping down huge jars of wine, was superbly acted, and the fighting of with Xiemen Qing was acted with such acrobatic skills and force that it could have broken the make shift stage into pieces, brought applause from the small but mainly tourist audience.

It was a weekend event to rejuvenate the nigh live in China town, possibly organized by the local community club or the STPB. Much has been said about Kereta Ayer having lost its true character, and the Beijing opera in the street certainly had further added on to it – maybe not so much visually, but certainly acoustically.

When I first arrived in Singapore in the late 1980’s, and when I felt a little homesick, I would make my way down to China town. Then, you still find the old styled Cantonese dim sum restaurant - such as Tai Tong dim sum restaurant in Mosque Street -大东海记 . These restaurants had big huge mirrors both sides of the walls, where the menu was written, and a bill of $2.70 would be sung out by the attendant to the cashier as, 二两 礼拜, and in Cantonese – yiliong leibai - literary two tales and a Sunday. 2 tales for two dollars and Sunday, a seven meaning 70 cts.

The Da Dong Restaurant – 大东酒楼 - at the junction of Smith and Trengganu Streets – with the same name Chinese name though as the former TaiTong Restaurant – is not the real McCoy any longer. The attendants for one could do not speak Cantonese – which used to define Kereta Ayer. Without the atmosphere and the familiar sound, the dim sum in this new restaurant does not seem to taste as good and as delicious.

With Kereta Ayer in constant make that which is a part of its unique heritage is visually much altered on its main streets. Not far from Yu Yan Sang Medical Hall –余仁生 - along South Bridge Road, there is now a Tong Ren Tang – 同仁堂 - medical hall from Beijing. A brand new temple styled in Tang architecture which is more at home in Xian - 西安 , or Kyoto, than in this tropical island, just came about.

A Taiwanese style tea salon, a Sichuan hot pot restaurant - is found next to the to the local hawker fare in Smith Street; Chinese cuisine from the North-eastern Provinces such as Heilongjiang, & Shanghainese noodles. And well, a German sausage stall near to Sago Street has definitely added an international flavor to the potpourri of Chinese oriental selection.

Much that I could remember of Chinatown in the past 15 to 20 years odd since I first came has gone – for better or for worse. And for the local folks who are born and bred here, what more has make way for the new and is lost forever, one could get a glimpse of it in the Chinatown heritage museum in Pagoda Street.

It was the ‘Cantonese’ character that use to bring me to Kereta Ayer, as that was the place where I would go to when I wanted to have a taste, feel and hear - of hometown.


Post-script:
A ) Kereta Ayer – 牛车水 – ngau che sooi (Cantonese ) – niu che shui (Hanyu pinyin)

Kereta Ayer – or Bullock Cart Water is the local name for Chinatown. Kereta is the Malay word for a vehicle or a cart. Ayer is water. History has it in the early days of the Singapore, bullock cart would be used to transport water to this place, and thus it was called Kereta Ayer.

However I would like to think that the Ayer – as in - 水 - sooi - or water in Cantonese - is to mean a thoroughfare or a street. A busy street in Cantonese could be called a sooi – I think。

Thus - 牛车水 – ngau che sooi - is a thoroughfare jammed packed with bullock carts. And it so happened that these bullock carts were carrying jars of water to sell to the local population.

of nihongo one point lesson & a gift from fukuoka

It was probably in 1970 when I first started to learn my first Japanese sentence – kore wa nan desu ka – literary – This is what? It was the year of the Osaka World Exposition. Third Brother went to Tokyo to participate in the Asian Youth Football Tournament, and he came back with a English text teaching rudimentary Japanese.

However that was not the first Japanese Language text book that I came across. In my childhood days in the old house I was often curious of what was written in an old thin book with drawings of kids, and animals and in stiff funny characters. I learnt that it was a Japanese text book from the Japanese Occupation ( 1942-1945) . Other than the then the old banana bank notes, this was the other archeological remain from the War years.

The book was written in Katakana and meant as an educational text book to teach Japanese. A few years back I saw another Japanese Language text book from the Occupation era at the defunct Singapore History Museum, at River Point. (The text book is most probably still packed among the boxes which we shifted to another house later in the 1980/s. I would do an archeological again when I balik kampong and if I could find it again).

It was thro Radio Japan, that I was first indicted into a formal Japanese lesson – with text and pronunciation and a native Japanese teacher from the air wave. Shortwave radio listening or DX-ing - was my hobby and my window to the world in my boyhood days, and Radio Japan was my favorite station. While my From One classmates were following the Bee Gees & Sam Hui in the 1970/s I was tuned in to the Japanese pop and enka - 演歌－charts, Aki Yashiro, Masao Ken, Sawada Kenji and the likes.

Later I got a pen-pal from Japan thro the station. She was from Kyushu, in southern Japan. We corresponded in English and kept in contact for close to ten years. We exchanged photographs and she taught me a phrase of two of Japanese. The dictionary in the photograph was a gift from her. I still recall how elated I was when I got it in the mail. It’s dated - 17/3/75, from Fujiko Mizusaki, 水崎富士子。

In 1981, when I first went to Japan for my post graduate study, I was posted to the Osaka University of Foreign Studies for a six month Japanese course. She informed me that she had a friend studying in the same college. I did not meet up with her friend nor did I make a trip to Fukuoka to meet up with her. By then, she was already married.


Postscript:
1. Enka - 演歌
You have the country and western and the blues in the western music, and enka is a genre of music, variously know as the blues of Japan. The tune is melodious and often with a touch of melancholy & nostalgia. The song sings of jilted & lost love, a longing for the warmth of mummy's bosom or the fireplace of the furusato – 故乡- in the north covered in deep snow.

The Japanese would tell you that these enka songs have such deep and unexpressed sentiments in the lyrics and melody that is so uniquely Japanese that only a Japanese born and bred in Japan would be able to feel for it. Much of the Hokkien Karaoke songs are music of this enka genre.

The most well know enka is probably Kitaguni no Haru – 北国no 春 , rendered by Masao Sen – 千 昌夫 , in the late 1970/s or early 1980s. The lyrics starts with - Shiraka ao zora, minami no kaze - 白桦 清空南风 - translated literary as - White birch, clear blue sky and southern breeze. The title is - Spring in the Northern Hometown. It was a hit across the Far East. Its Mandarin, rendition is entitled - 榕树下 – Rongshu xia .

Shiraka - in Japanese is white birch – a commonly found tree in the colder parts of Japan in the mountains and the northern region.

Rongshu - in Chinese is Banyan tree – an equally romantic tree, for an exotic up market holiday resort was named as such, cos the founder and his wife dated among the trees on an island.


2. Japanese names here are written in the order that the Japanese would write and read them, i.e. Masao Sen, or Abe Shinzo, instead of Sen Masao or Shinzo Abe, the western rendition.

3. While searching for enka in goolge, found this interesting web-site on Japan. If you are into museums in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya, and the Japanese countryside, do pop in:

http://japanvisitor.blogspot.com/search/label/Museum

4. You can catch singer Masao Sen & Kitaguni no Haru - in Youtube :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGmJgBQlXWU

http://metropolis.co.jp/biginjapan/356/biginjapaninc.htm




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of oyako donburi & anpan – eating meat & age of enlightenment

A week or more ago, Channel 8 just finished the documentary series on its Wed 10:30pm slot of the documentary series made by CCTV – The Rise of Great Nation -大国崛起 – Daguo jueqi. One of the reasons this documentary made headlines the world over was because it presented a very refreshing perspective on how the Chinese intelligentsia viewed the rise of the other nations over the past 500years - with a unbiased , non-nationalistic and objective focus.

The 7th episode – 百年维新 – A Hundred Year of Reform - narrated the rise of Japan . It started with the appearance of the four American black ships lead by Admiral Perry at Yokosuka Bay - 横须贺 - in 1853 that forced opened the door of this isolated island nation, the restoration of political power to the Emperor after a lapsed of 600year rule by the Shogunate, and thence the raise of modern Japan to the present day economic superpower.

An liner in the documentary that mentioned that the Emperor Meji fist lead the population in eating beef - made me to recall this article on how the Japanese started to eating meat.

What we know now as authentic Japanese food did not have as such long and regal beginning as the Korean Palace cooking or the Chinese food culture. Sukiyaki, tempura, teppanyaki, ramen were foreign import. The Japanese started to eat meat only from 1872, for they had been a vegetarian nation for the previous 1,200 years by government decree.

Here then is the translation of the article on how the Japanese first started on eating meat :-

“ Oyako don – needless to say as everyone knows - is a dish where the chicken cube cooked with egg is laid on top of a bowl filled with rice.

When pork replaces chicken, and cooked with egg, this donburi it is called ta-nin-don -他人ｄｏｎ . The naming of these two dishes comes about sort of a matter of factly. Well, how would the donburi be called when it is beef with egg? In the Kanto region, it is called the – kai-ka don - 开化ｄｏｎ - Enlightened donburi. Why was it named as such?

When Japan entered the Meiji Period (1868-1912) , the Western system, technology, thoughts and lifestyle became popular. (quote from the textbook used in primary school social study ). This is so called the Age of Enlightenment ( the enlightenment of civilization). In such places as Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama the people cut off their topknot and put on Western attire and increasing number of people took to eating beef. ( ref: 前揭教科书).

Hamburger and Beef-donburi shops are found at every nook and corner nowadays. Eating beef has become a very intimate part of our existence. However, it was not so long ago that the Japanese first started to eat beef. In 1872 (Meiji 5th year) , the Meiji government abolished the edict on a ban of meat eating which had been in force continuously for a thousand two hundred years. Beef eating then started together with the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment.

Bye to way, when the government edict t on forbidding meat eating was abolished, the fact was that the citizen did not happily devoured meat. Due to the influence of Buddhism, it was thought that meat was unclean. And there is such a gossip –

In the Motomachi area of Yokohama, there was a person named Nakagawaya K ( 中川屋 嘉兵卫） who started a shop selling beef to foreigners. Nakagawaya informed Fukuzawa Yukichi （福泽论吉）- “From now onwards, it will be an age where everyone will eat beef’. He also opened a shop in Tokyo.


However, it was no mean a task to slaughter a cow then. The area was cordoned off with ropes tied to 4 bamboo & gohei - 御敝 (notation: white paper cutting used in Shinto religious rites ) were hung around it . After the meat had been removed, the bones and organs were buried in the ground and sutra chanted over it (reference: 桶口清之 - 梅干 to 日本刀 – Umeboshi to Nihon katana (Chu) Yodensha - ). This was how things were then, and meat eating did not spread as easily to the wider population.

Emperor Meiji then came on at this juncture. For the sake of the Age of Enlightenment, he took upon the initiative to eating meat. Emperor Meiji disliked meat. As there were many occasions to dine with the Westerners, he could not abstain from eating meat. In order to set an example to his citizens, it was said the he bitterly took on to eating meat.

Among the other kinds of Western food which made their appearance during the Age of Enlightenment there was one which Emperor Meiji took a liking to. It was ice-cream.

During the Age of Enlightenment, bakeries gradually started their trade. However, it almost had no business at the beginning. It did not suit the taste of the Japanese who had over the centuries been used to eating rice. And out of it came anpan – a hybrid of bread an manju. Anpan was an invention of the Japanese during the Meiji period. The Japanese has since time antiquity adapted things foreign to make it suit to them. From the first Western food that stared with meat eating in the Age of Enlightenment, the Japanese have since reformed the food to suit to their taste and it has since spread among the populace.

This type of changes in the cultural life of the Japanese will be discussed over the next seventeen episodes.

Photograph: eating beef nabe dish (reference: Kodansha – History of A Century of the Meiji Era ) .”



References :


1) Taihen data, nikusyoku no hajime, - On eating meat - Oh! What a troublesome start.

Kyokasho ga oshienai rekishi – 2 , Nobukatsu Fujioka, JUYUSYUGISHIKANKENKYUKAI, 2005 - History that is not taught in the school textbook – 2 . http://www.fushosha.co.jp/


Artice first published in Sankei Shinbun Chokan - Sankei Newspaper morning daily. The Sankei newspaper is known for its nationalist, extreme right view. On the translation - E&OE.

2) The Rise of Great Nation -大国崛起 – Daguo jueqi, CCTV

- A 12 episode documentary by CCTV & discussion on the web -
http://www.overseassingaporean.sg/forums/index.php?showtopic=831;
http://www.chinalawblog.com/chinalawblog/2006/12/the_rise_of_gre.html;




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the wedding - eerto, modern desu-ka, western desu-ka

Venue: CHIJMES
Date : 16th June, 2007, SATURDAY
Time : 12:30pm

Was walking past the CHIJMES Hall and saw a wedding crowd, and thought it was a local wedding. However on getting nearer it was not English that I heard but a familiar tongue. On closer look, the mannerism of the folks had a certain uniqueness that distinguished and identified them – the orderliness of the crowd as they line in front of the new couple while the groom was delivering a thank-you speech on the steps of the church hall, the little nod of their head as the listen, the way the ladies carried their handbag with the arm upright instead of across the chest and the way that they covered their mouth with their fingers as they giggled.

Just as one would be able to pick out our own kind while traveling overseas when we hear Singlish, one seems to be able to discern that the crowd here was uniquely Japanese.

The bride and groom though, were not in the traditional wedding kimono, they were dressed smartly in the western wedding gown and made a perfect match.

Among the gathering were two middle aged couples. They were probably the parents of the bridge and groom, here to attending the wedding of their children. The attire of the gentlemen further indicated that this wasn’t a wedding of a local couple. Though the coat and tie is becoming the de rigueur attire, never mind if it is unsuited to the hot and humid climatic condition, one would hardly see someone wearing a morning coat to a local wedding.

For, the gentlemen were in morning coat, vest & cravat, and it brought to mind the Ascot in the movie My Fair Lady. The morning coat or cutaway stood out with its long tailcoat. It is not uncommon for the parents of the bridge and groom to wear the morning coat during the wedding ceremony in Japan. It is also a formal wear in other occasions too.

When ever a new cabinet is formed, the Prime Minster of the day would assemble his members for a group photograph on the grand stairway of the Diet, with the ministers in morning coat and tie. The latest of such group photograph was that of the Abe cabinet.

It was from the age of Meiji Restoration (1868 to 1912) -Meiji Ishin 明治维新 - that the Japanese went with a single minded aim to emulate and learn from the West – be it in technology, political systems and in fashion.

While the Chinese needed a revolution, that of 1911 that overthrew the Qing Dynasty – 清朝- (1644-1912) to enforce the cutting off of the pig tail among the masses ( though it stated off as a symbol of subservience to the Manchu rulers, it became an object of endearment ) , the Samurai clan, - led in adoption of western fashion, some thirty years earlier.

(The samurai belongs to the bushi - 武士 – the elite among the 4 classes of the feudal society 士农工商 - warriors, farmers, craftsmen, and traders - and with the merchat class at the bottom of social hierarchy) .

The samurai took the lead in cropping off their status symbol – the chonmage (丁髷, ちょんまげ) – the topknot head dress that is still worn by the Sumo wrestlers today - and adopted Victorian and Edwardian high fashion. Morning dress coat, tall hat and spotting a moustache came into vogue in the Japanese society.

However, beneath this symbols of westernization – in attire and technology, the Japanese have always pride themselves that they have adopted only the outer trappings of the west, by in sprit and in soul, they have retained their uniquely Japanese character. The Yamato Spirit – 大和魂 – Yamato Damashii. – is still very much alive and kicking among them. Well, as they say in Japan – we are modern but not western.

As a student in Japan, we used to comment and compare the Japanese and her society with the rest of the East Asian societies. We used to joked that while the Japanese was modernized they were not westernized. And comparatively the Filipino seemed westernized but not very modernized.

This makes one to ponder - what kind of society are we becoming on this little island. We are westernized, maybe too westernized perhaps. Do we already have amongst us a class that is westernized but not modernized? Or perhaps as they would liken it to . . a banana. Much that is uniquely our culture and tradition has been eroded and faded, sigh!



References:

1) Morning coat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_dress;


2) Chongmage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chonmage;





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no, that at south bridge road is not a kabuki-za

This picture was taken on Saturday night 19May, 8:45pm , on the night of street light up.

This building, located at the junction of South Bridge Road and Sago Lane - the BTRT S– 佛牙寺龙华院 - will soon adorn the tourist brochures of the Singapore for the master said -that you have not been to Singapore if you had not visited this place.

Well, to a Japanese tourist, his or her first impression could be – is it a Kabuki-Za? For its unique traditional architecture & location, smack in the city center, will bring to mind a Kabuki-Za (歌舞伎座) or a kabuki theatre. In Tokyo, the Kabuki-Za is located not too far from the Ginza shopping mall, at the Tukiji district (the better known tourist site in Tsukiji is the wholesale fish market – the biggest in the world), while in Kyoto it is the Minami-Za Kabuki theatre.

And for the local couple that was standing beside me on that night of the lighting up ceremony I over heard the husband saying to the wife – How ingenious the Japanese are in their architectural design. Look at the intricately style wooded beams. Indeed it looks very ‘Japanese’ for that. If one has seen the Heian Shrine （平安宫）in Kyoto （京都） or some of the ostentatiously painted crimson torii gates, it looks uncannily Japanese in style and color scheme.

Well, to be an easily recognizable tourist attraction, it boards well to be visually unique, and vibrant in color and style.

It brings to mind another temple and tourist site - the Chi Nin Nunnery （慈宁庵） in Hong Kong. Located at Diamond Hill, it too adopted the Tang architectural style - with the horse mane roof as a trademark of that era. The color scheme of this temple complex is much more subdue, and reflective perhaps of original Tang color.

For temples, and a Buddhist one at that, one would have it that it takes a more subdue and less glaring color scheme, that would be more soothing to the mind and less evoking to the senses. The red and crimson would have been left to the palaces of the emperors,

However, this building is more than a temple, it is also a masterpiece of Chinese Tang architecture, albeit with a fusion of temple and palace traditions – with the bodhisattvas inter-mixing with the flying dragons.

The tiles that covered the roof are from Nara （奈良） Japan. The label on the tiles red – naikyu Yamato Kawara - 大和瓦- dento no gijutsu o ikashita, jishin, taifu ni tsuyoi - translated as: long lasting Yamato Kawara tiles, a living traditional craft , able to withstand earthquake and taifuyu. The hopes and prayers of the believers are written on these tiles.

Taking about Nara – it was established in 701A.D as the fist capital of Japan. The city is modeled after Changan (长安) the capital of the Tang Dynasty -(618-907AD) – present day Xian (西安). The most prominent landmark in Nara is the Todaiji Temple (东大寺). Built in 752AD along Tang architectural style, it housed the Daibutsu， the biggest Buddha statue in Japan. For the past 1,300years it has been the center of Buddhist learning and culture.

The new landmark in Chinatown could easily be the most expensive single temple building in Singapore, and housed the most expensive – in terms of monetary term – Buddha stature on the island. Never mind that the fusion of Japlish-Tang architectural style and that is is incongruous with its environment. And that it is not styled after the local temple complex tradition which our forefathers brought with them from southern China. It is however a reflection of the continued influence of Tang soft culture and a landmark of our time in this globalize city.

As the Todaiji Temple in Nara has with stood the ravages of war, typhoon and earthquake thro the millenium, may this too long as long. Be it also known as far and wide not only for its rich imagery, but also as a citadel for reflection and meditation, and a center for the advancement of thoughts and leanings for the faith.


In the hustle and bustle of the pomp and pageantry of its opening ceremony, one hears the sound of the temple bell – echoing ever softly and gently . . . for it has been ringing for the past 2551 years, when the wheel was first set into motion.


postscript:

1. Lianhe Zaobao dated 6Jul07 -

联合早报 2007-7-6 ， 言论版 – 热点话题 – 万丙炎

也谈佛牙舍利 - 世界上只有两颗佛牙已经是广大佛教徒的共识。在此，笔者倒是建议本地佛牙以‘佛牙影骨’也未必不可。

Forum page of Lianhe Zhaobao, in a column on titled ‘Hot Topic’ by Wan Binyan

The column titled – Also talk about Buddha sarira. In it mentioned that it is a common knowledge among the word wide Buddhist community that there are only two pieces of Buddha tooth. It may not be impossible if the local Buddha Tooth be called - 佛牙影骨 - Foyayinggu - (i.e a copy of the Buddha tooth) , the author proposed.

The article stated that the two pieces of Buddha tooth which have historical records that could be traced to the Sakyamuni Buddha, and also mentioned in the sutra are located in the temples in Sri Lanka and Beijing, one each respectively.





References:


1) Chi Nin Nunnery – Hong Kong
http://www.pbase.com/jwctang/chi_nin_nunnery
http://flickr.com/photos/124330160/50412290/in/set-1076812/

2) Heian shrine – Kyoto
The Japansese capital moved from Nara to Kyoto in
Heian-kyo in Kyoto is the capital of ancient Japan during the Heian Period (A.D794. -A.D1192).
http://www.sacred-destinations.com/japan/kyoto-heian-jingu.htm

3) Todaiji – Nara
http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e4100.html

4) Nara National Museum
Exhibition – Saidai-ji shutsudo kawara (Roof Tiles Excavated at Saidai-ji Temple)Nara period, 8th century, Two tilesNara National Cultural Properties Research Institute

http://www.narahaku.go.jp/exhib/2002toku/saidaiji/saidaiji-2_e.htm;


5) Kabuki-za (歌舞伎座) – Tokyo
It is the principal theater in Tokyo for the traditional kabuki drama form. It opened in 1889 during the Meiji-era.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabuki-za;
http://www.shochiku.co.jp/play/kabukiza/theater;






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A tale of two poetry books & the search for cultural identity

Browsing thro the book shelf one lazy Sunday morning and nothing better to do, I did a little stock taking and count of the books that I have bought over the past 25 years and more. What came out as quiet a surprise was that the theme of the books has consistently been on culture, history, politics, biography, and the one country that these books hark back to is China – be the books in English, Japanese or Chinese.

What tale has these two books on the Chinese poet Du Fu ( 杜甫) got to tell – of the journey in the search for ‘self’ and cultural identity?

The book on the right in Japanese was bought at the Tokodai Seikyo – Student Co-op Bookstore - at the Tokyo Institute of Technology (TIT) on 15Feb 1983. The title reads -‘Chinese Famous Poetry 5 - The Wandering Poet DuFu, which in Japanese reads - Chugoku no Meishi 5 - Pyoohaku no shijin – Toho.

The book in English on the same Tang Poet Du Fu, title ‘A Little Primer of Tu Fu’ by David Hawkes, was purchased at the now defunct Sogo Department Store at Raffles City, Kinokuniya bookstore on 10Nov1990.

I bought the former while studying in the Japan, and the latter, after I came to Singapore a year or so odd.

Rewinding back to 1981, when I first arrived in Japan. She was the rising superpower that seemed poised to over the US. Less than a year after I arrived, Dr M the new PM of Malaysia, advocated the ‘Look East Policy’ – to learn from the East. And it was particularly towards Japan - to emulate her exemplary work ethics and drive, and learn from her modern industry and technology. The Japanese economy was thrusting head on with a new found vigor in the aftermath of the oil crisis of the 1970/s. For the politician, entrepreneurs & the shakers and movers of the economy, the book written by Eric Vogel’– Japan as No One - was a must read. There were no lack of books on Japan and its rise then, as just as now there is no lack of choice on books of China.

Though China in 1978 had declared her new policy of change & opening up – 改革开放, gaige kaifang, it was still a pretty closed country in the early eighties. People had strated to make visits to the country. In between lectures the Japanese professor who had traveled to China, would tell us tales about the country and her society. It was a first hand narration of the communist country and her cities, and I looked forward to those stories. It was a pretty poor country, and the people were very frugal. For what I have heard from my folks who have traveled to China, was the pre-1949 society of our rural village. I read the book - ‘China: Alive in the bitter Sea’- 苦海求生 - by Fox Butterfield. Despite the hardship, poverty and the harsh political reality, the people had a tenacity & resilience for survival, I remember he wrote.

The first six months of my stay in Japan was at the Osaka University of Foreign Studies (OUFS) studying Japanese. After lecture, I would head straight to the library to borrow the video tapes and watch the trial of the Gang of Four- 四人帮 – Si Ren Bang. I recall Mao’s wife – Madame Jiang Qing 江青– taking her defiant stand in court and the spectators laughed at her comments:

我是毛主席身边的一条狗，他叫我咬谁我就咬谁。
– I was just a dog by the side of Chairman Mao. When he asked me to bite who, I will bite who.

老娘打革命，你们还在哪儿。
- You all were no where around, when your Old Mum me was fighting the revolution .

There at OUFS I met the first batches of Chinese Government scholars, and subsequently at TIT, there were more who came and did their research. Many of these scholars were in the forties, and had missed out on their college education cos of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Their dressing were like their proletariat cousins that one could now see in North Korea - simple and plain, and a number were wearing the traditional cloth shoes.

We stayed in the same dormitory and traveled to college together in the same train during the morning rush hour. In between we would chat about China, and me trying to fill in the gaps on what I could learn of the country.

They would hint of the amazement on the profusion of goods in Japan, and how well the stores were stocked up, while keeping their pride. I mentioned that looking back to China long history these past 140 odd years or so of backwardness, was a bleep, and that the 21st Century would be a Pacific Age. Since then, what a difference the past 25 years have made!

Coming back to the finding of ‘self’, it was a constant search to understand one’s culture and roots that seems to be the mission and interest in what one did. Where did the ancestors come from? As an ethnic Hakka –客家 – i.e. Guest People for that - this group of people has constantly migrated in history for the past two thousand years or so. The ancestors we from the Northern Plains of China, and cos of war, and while escaping the invasion of the Mongols and Tartars, they landed in the hills of Guangdong province. Subsequently due to war and hardship again, they migrated to the Nanyang - 南洋 - in the 2nd half of the 19th century.

Identification and ethnicity will always be with oneself, and all the stronger in me, maybe because, I am trying to cover ground on something, Was it because, all my siblings were educated in Chinese and me the odd one out who was put into an English medium school that made me to want to learn Chinese? Was it because of the social environment that I grew up in that make me yearn for the cultural linkage? Well there don’t seem to be a definitive answer to these questions, , and often one did things driven by our sub-conscience.

Reading Tang Poetry is a manifestation of this search for cultural identity & self。 This search is found in the bookshelves on the books that I bought. It has been a journey that I embarked on all these years, and will continue to do so. We'll it's also about history, and culture. .



Postscript:

1) 中国no 名诗5 – 漂泊no 诗人 杜甫 - 译注者 小野忍， 小山正孝，佐藤保 – 平凡社 1983; Chugoku no Meishi 5 - Pyoohaku no Shijin Toho, Heibon Sya 1983. Chinese Famous Poetry 5 - The Wandering Poet DuFu, - Translation with notes by Ono Shinobu, Oyama Masataka, Sato Tamotsu; Publisher : Heibon sya , 1983

The receipt of the book in Japanese right reads:

Tokyo Institute of Technology Student Co-op Book Section
Telephone: 726-1111 extension 2398
15 Feb 83

The price tag of the book is Y1,400 (about S$17.50 current rate). It was discounted 10% at Y140, and the actual price that I paid was Y1,260. I paid with a Y10,000 note, and the change was Y8,740.

2) A Little Primer by Tu Fu by David Hawkes, Oxford University Press 1967, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1990 , Renditions Paperbacks.

3) Tu Fu 杜甫- 712-770AD

Du Fu (in pinyin) was lauded as the ‘Sage of Poetry’ & one of the most famous poets who lived during the height of the Tang Dynasty (618-960 AD) .

‘His poems reflect in broad scope and profound depth the features of the times and are a comprehensive expression of all the best of preceding poets and an opening up of the way to later poets, hence meriting the praise of being ‘epic poetry’. ’
唐诗三百新译 -300 Tang Poems, A New Translation , The Commercial Press Ltd, 1987.






/--

从清早的凉风和十年前探访祖辈故里说起

没用过中文来写博客，在这五一假日的早上，下了场晨雨没出门， 就留在家练习练习中文吧。

从家里前窗吹进来一阵阵地凉风，近日来连续三四天早上凌晨都挎起西南风，从苏门答腊群岛带来的雨水把炎日地天气冲个凉。

虽然岛国没有四季，只是有雨旱两个不什么分明的季节，这个时侯刚好是进入了季节风向更转的时期， 风向是从屋子的前面吹进来。到了风转从后窗吹来时，就知道又快要到年底了，那时候的风是从东北朝向马来群岛来。

从前帆船时代，郑和下西洋时就靠着这季接的风向，夏为西南，冬为东北风，运航
印度洋与南中国海。岛国的狮子城就位置在这海航线的中心。

这里的马来群岛也是千百年来东西文明的交叉点。 特别是欧洲大陆地战舰和传教士还没到来前，这个地区已是海上丝绸之路必经之地。来自阿拉伯，印度，中国唐山 的船只都停留在这里做生意，而从中带来了亚洲三大文明和本群岛马来文明的
交流与发展。

说到唐山， 十年前， 刚好是亚洲金融风暴发生的那一年， 和家父们一起初次回到祖辈们的故里探访。翻看旧照片，看到了这张拍摄到这个神气的小孩儿的照片。

照片的后面写着：

雁洋， 叶剑英故居前， 小孩， 叶年广，五岁。 25.12.97

那位坐在小踏车，举起右手，笑眯眯挥着手，两指子做个‘胜利’ 手号的
小弟弟 是住在叶家祖屋。记得这个小孩很聪明，问他几岁叫什么名，他很灵活地回答了。他现在应该是个十五岁的年青小伙子吧。那小姑娘呢，是和他一起玩的邻居。

雁洋离祖辈故里松口镇不远，到梅州得要经过这个镇， 所以就趁着机会参观了叶帅的故居。

说到叶剑英，中国人也许就会想起 他命令逮捕‘四人帮’的故事。前不久观看了‘文化大革命始末 （1966-1976）’的光碟， 里面有一段是讲述叶帅和 他的故里雁洋。听父亲说，叶家也有亲人在马国霹雳州家乡怡保，万里望。

祖辈们以前下番到南洋，是从粤北的客家山区经由梅江接韩江到汕头转乘帆船靠着这个 吹向亚洲南部和印度洋的季风而来地。他们在星州上岸，然而由陆地北上霹州的近打谷锡矿山而到去。




附言：
1。 从小学到大专一直以来都是念英文，没有正式的上过华校。反而，在日本留学时还有上过日语课程。 中文写错了字，或用错了词，请多多指导。

2。有了电脑，写中文觉得比以前没电脑，中文软件时，来的方便得多。以前不晓得写的字 必须查字典。 但是， 用电脑书写只要能汉语拼音把字念出就可查出字来了。 但汉语基础不好，常会用错字，词。

3。新加坡教育以英语和母语为基础。华族学生必须学英，华两语。但是有些华裔家族已是英语为‘母语’了。方言如客家粤福潮琼的没落，就像那些老建筑物被一栋一栋的拆掉似的。城市的面貌翻新，民族的语言也不断的更换。要听方言你得到马来西亚的乡下去了。

4. A first attempt to write in Chinese – a thought on the morning monsoon rain and the visit to the ancestral village ten years ago.

-------
09.May.2007 - translated into English:

from the cool morning breeze and to reminiscing the visit ten years ago to the ancestral village

I’ve not written a blog in Chinese before, and in this May Day morning, after a morning rain, did venture out but stayed home to practice my Chinese.

A cool breeze is coming from the front window, and for the past three four days, the south-westerly Sumatran wind brought with it the rain the cooled the hot sultry day.

Although the island nation does not have the four seasons, it has a rainy and dry season which is not that clearly defined. It is now the transitional period of the trade wind, and the wind direction is coming in from the front window. When the wind starts to come in from the window at the back of the house, you know that its towards year end. The wind direction will then blow from the north-east towards the Malay Archipelago.

In the days of the sailing ship, and when Cheng Ho travel to the western seas he depended on these Trade Winds to take him on his voyages. (note: according to the Chinese record, Cheng Ho’s voyages are described as travels to the Western Sea , and he reached as far as African coast across the Arabian Sea). In summer the wind blows from the south-west and in winter it is from the north-east. And the island nation Lion City is located in the center of the sea lane from South China Sea to the Indian Ocean.

The Malay Archipelago has been at the cross-road of the eastern and western civilizations for thousand of years. And way before the arrival of the man-of-war and the missionaries from Europe, this region was part of the Silk Route of the Sea. Ships from Arabia, India and China or Tangshan met here to trade. And with it, came the interaction and development of cultures of the Malay and the three great civilizations.

Talking about Tangshan - 唐山 , it was exactly ten years ago in the year of the Asian financial meltdown , that I first visited my ancestral town with dad. On looking thro the old photographs, I came across this picture of the lively little boy.

It was written in the back of the photo:

Yanyang , former dwelling of Ye Jianying, little kid, Yap Nian-guong (note: Hakka pronunciation ), age 5. 25Dec97.

The little boy on the bicycle with his right hand raised, and with a cool smile waving a ‘V’ sign lived in the Ye-叶- family ancestral home ( 叶: is pronounced as Yap in Hakka). I remember him as a bright kid , and when I asked his name and age he smartly replied. He should be a fine young man by now. The little girl who was playing with him was his neighbor.

As Yanyang - 雁洋- was not far from our ancestral town Songkou -松口, and as it was on the way to Meizhou- 梅州 - we took the opportunity to stop at there and visit the former home of Marshall Ye.

On mentioning Ye Jianying-叶剑英-the Chinese will recall the story of his decree to arrest the ‘Gang of Four’. Not long ago, I watched a DVD on the ‘Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) – From its Beginning to its End’, and in it has an episode of the Marshall and his home town – Yanyang. Heard from Dad that the Ye family has relatives in Perak State in Ipoh-Menglembu area.

When the ancestors migrated to the South Seas, they traveled from the hilly Hakka district of North-eastern Guangdong Province, riding down the Mei Jiang 梅江- which then joins the Han River - 韩江 – to reach Swatou -汕头. From here, they waited for the Trade Winds to sail to south. They disembark in Singapore, and from there the wend up-country by road to Perak, and the tin mines in the Kinta Valley.

(Added note: Ye Jianying wa one of the ten famous Generals on New China. He was instrumental in bringing the down fall of he Gang of Four with Mao’s wife Jiang Qing as the head, and the end to the Cultural Revolution. With that came the come back and rise of Deng Xiaoping, and the opening up of China to the modern world, embracing socialism with Chinese characteristic. And as they say, the rest was then history…)

Postscript:

1. Have not studied Chinese formally in school before, and was educated in English form primary to college. On the contrary, had attended formal Japanese lesson while studying in Japan. If there are any wrong words or mistaken phrase, pls guide and correct.

2. With a computer, it is much easier to write Chinese. With computer and the Chinese software, one just need to learn the pinyin system in order to be able to bring out the work and chose which is the correct one, and thus need not to use the dictionary. However my Chinese foundation is weak, and often tend to use the wrong word or phrase.

3. Singapore’s education is with English and mother tongue as its foundation. Ethnic Chinese will learn bi-lingual English and Chinese. However, many of the ethnic Chinese have English as their mother tongue. The decline of the dialects – Hakka, Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew and Hainanese, is akin to the destruction of the old buildings – block by block being torn down. The city landscape is being renewed, and the language of the people is continuously changing. If you want to listen to dialect you need to travel to the towns and villages in Malaysia.






/--/

on the interview & the cultural renaissance after thought

‘What were you doing there?’
‘What did the reporter ask you?’
‘You sounded skeptical. ’

Indeed I might have sounded so, for when I was asked by the reporter if I believed in the little Buddha, I said that I find it very mysterious, and I was not sure, and wanted to know more. And I ended the sentence my trade mark laugh ‘Ha, ha, ha’ which was edited into the news script.

It was less than a 30 second or so clip, and was one of the two people in the interview that was on the news. There were others interviewed in Mandarin at the Lodge that morning.

I was not aware that the reporter with a mike suddenly appeared in front of me. The lady reporter started asking me in Mandarin. ‘你是来看小活佛吗？’- Are you hear to meet the Little Buddha? I replied that I would normally visit the Lodge on weekend, and in fact I did not know that the little Buddha would be there.

The reporter next asked if I believe in the little Buddha. With the camera trained on my face, I was caught lost of words, and had no time to mentally prepare for an answer, but just responded what came to mind.

I replied that I found it mysterious, and that I wanted to learn and know more. Mysterious, as in the many reincarnations that came about. The answer did not really give a direct reply as to whether I believe or do not believe in the little boy as the reincarnation of the master, except that I wanted to learn more.

On the cultural renaissance -

It was a discovery by chance walking up Kim Yan Road one day, that I found the Lodge close to 18 years ago when I first came here. During the weekends after a swim at the defunct River Valley pool, would then proceed to the library to read up on the how the religion flowered in China and of the jewels in the net. I guess it was more an intellectual pursuit all these while, that till today the secularity in me has not make me to cultivated the deep faith to reply naturally that ‘Yes, I believe.’

Well, possibility because of the interview, last week I bought a book on Buddhism again after a lapse of more than 9 years – in the photo – and started to read again. This book is published in China, i.e. The People’s Republic of China, and not ROC, Chinese Taipei. This book in Chinese is written by a Zhu Hong 朱洪, introduced as a university lecturer and a member of the Chinese Writers Association – 中国作家协会 - and on the interpretation of Buddhism by the great lay Buddhist of New China – Zhao Puchu - 赵朴初.

Old Pu - 朴老, as he is reverently and affectionately addressed in the book by the author was not only a lay authority on Buddhist teachings, he was also a respected poet and a great calligrapher. His was the genre of literati who held the tradition of a Confucian Buddist scholar. This tradition has its roots to when Buddhism first arrived in China nearly two millennium ago.

An underlying theme in the book is to rediscover this cultural renaissance in their new found confidence in the Chinese society, after the great calamity and blunder of the Cultural Revolution that nearly decimated the age old culture and the religion.

The Silk Route that brought the teaching to China is stirring again. The travel of Xuan Zhang 玄奘 - to India in search of Buddhist sutras, and the spread of the teaching to Japan during the Heian - 平安朝 -period, was a display of soft power diplomacy by Tang China - 唐 朝 . Talking about soft power diplomacy, the Party seems to be rediscovering the usefulness of this cultural heritage and is redeploying it again.



Postscript:

1. 赵朴初说佛 – 朱洪著；当代中国出版社，2007 ; Zhao Puchu shuo fo – Zhu Hong zhu, Dangdai Zhongguo chubanse. (Publisher: http://www.ddzg.net/)

2. The last purchase of books on Buddhism was on 21Nov1998, at a second book store in Paradiz Centre, Selegie Road -

a) Buddhist Cosmology – Science and Theology in the Image of Motion and Light, by W.Randolph Kloetzli; Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Pte Ltd, Delhi, first published in 1983, and reprint in 1997.

b) The Buddhist Teaching of Totality – The Philosophy of Hwa Yen Buddhism, by Garma C.C. Chang; The Pennsylvania State University. First Indian edition 1992, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Pte Ltd, Delhi.


3. Xuan Zhang 玄奘 - born in 602AD Tang China, and traveled to India in 629AD in search of Buddhist sutras. He stayed in India for 17 years, studied at the Nalanda University which the Bihar State is planning to rebuild with Singapore collaboration. Xuan Zhang was more popularly known to the world as the Tripitaka monk in the story Journey to the West - 西游记 。


4. In addition to the Integrated Resort, we may soon have a Shaolin themed Spiritual Resort. Local entrepreneurs are in discussion with the abbot of the 1500-year-old Shaolin Temple 少林寺 located in Henan Province, to set up it first overseas branch here which will offer - a ‘holistic’ lifestyle holiday retreat’ – where tourist can immerse themselves in the Shaolin way of life through meditation, traditional Shaolin wellness therapies and treatments, as well as martial arts performance by the temple’s monks. The venue for the resort is possibly based at the now-defunct Tang City in Jurong. (Straits Times, 27April 2007).





-//-

from old colonial maps to two tales of a war

Two Sundays afternoon ago, accidentally found this map hanging on the link way between Long Bar and the Long Bar Steakhouse at the Raffles Hotel. It is a 70 year old map of Malaya. At the bottom of the map is written - ‘Published under the direction of the Surveyor General F.M.S & S.S. ‘& on the bottom right corner, ‘F.M.S Surveys No 419 -1936’.

This map complemented the Japanese map of Malaya that I saw earlier (ref : once upon a railway town ) . Contrary to the Japanese map published in 1943, this map shows a list of other railway stations along the Ipoh – Tronoh railway line, namely: Falim, Menglembu, Lahat T, Papan, Pusing Siputeh and Tronoh,

A number of questions came to mind when I compared these two maps was why the other stations other than Menglembu, Siputeh and Tronoh were not highlighted in the Japanese map of 1943. Were they closed for operations by then? When did this line stop operation and the Japanese Military started to dismantle the line start? I guess it would have happened soon after they occupied the land.

It seems quite apparent that the Japanese map of 1943 was copied from the 1937 map. The rivers and towns are almost nearly the same, except that the Japanese map was more crudely drawn. The Japanese Military government would have their map makers to make a replica of the map done by the Surveyor General of the colonial government – putting the names into Japanese, and indicating areas of economic & strategic interest, such as rubber plantation and tin mining area and railway lines.


What makes this railway line of interest is that it no longer exit in the map of Malaysia. The line was removed during the Japanese occupation and its rail sent north to build the Thai-Burma railway line. The story of this railway was made famous by the movie – The Bridge over River Kwai, filmed 50 years ago.

I do not know which other railway lines in Malaya were dismantled by the Japanese Military Government for this use. How I came to know that there was this railway line and why I it had me interested was because of the oral history lesson from mum over dinner. She used to tell us about this railway line in the home town, and tales of life under the Japanese.

Despite the horror stories & suffering that she related of the 3 years and 8 months of occupation, it did not dampened any of my enthusiasm for things Japanese. I first started to learn Japanese thro Radio Japan shortwave broadcast. My great fondness for the country and culture did not dwindle throughout my school and college life, and subsequently I got on a scholarship to study in Japan. Well, it was after all karma, as they would say.

While in Japan, what I learnt & heard from the way the ordinary Japanese felt of the war was rather different from what I had known from my childhood years. Before I left for Japan, a relative of mine who had been thro the occupation described the Japanese as - 恶 / E (fourth sound) - which variably to mean vicious, wicked, fierce – which I think she meant the militarist.

On the contrary, I did not have to wait until I arrived in Japan, to proof what this aunt of mine said was way off the mark – at least with the ordinary Japanese. It was on flight the JAL on my way to Osaka that I first encountered the Japanese civility, and manners.

This Japanese lady who was seated on the aisle next to me was on her way back to Japan. I noticed that she shed a little tear as the plane took off from Subang Airport, possibility parting with her dear ones. After meal, she would open the napkin to neatly cover the tray so that it would not be showing off the unsightly left over food. Later on when she moved to seat elsewhere, she would politely rise, and give the gentlemen seated beside her a gentle bow – all without saying a word, but the meaning seem understood. ‘I am sorry to leave this seat, and will move to seat elsewhere. I beg your pardon for any disturbance’. (This was my first inception into haragei - 腹艺- literary ‘the art of speaking thro the stomach’, a subtle communication technique. While in college, I learnt the word Onshi -恩师 – one’s life long debt of gratitude to one’s teacher. A way of expressing this gratitude is to send a postcard in each summer and the new year, to ask about his/her health.

Returing to the war story - I was on a farm stay in Hakodate, a port city in the southern tip of Hokkaido. The farmer who took us in said to me when we first met – that during the war ‘The Japanese had suffered too,’ ( Nihon jin mo kurushita…). An elder cousin of his had been a soldier before, and he could have felt bad that the Japanese army had caused much suffering to the people in the land that they ‘advanced’ into. But nevertheless he felt that the Japanese had suffered much too. He took it to remind me first, in case I would blame them for the suffering.
.
I do not remember being sensitive or feeling bad of what he said, and just took it as a matter of fact, that it was their tale and what they had heard from their elders. And moreover I being the guest, and imbibe with the oriental politeness and sensitivity, it would be impolite to say otherwise,

In our talk on the war years, a Japanese college mate of mine would tell me that Tokyo was bombed flat by the American planes during the war, but I did not asked if he knew of the bombs that were dropped on Kereta Ayer in the wee hours of 28Dec 1942 and that started it all. Well, I do not know how much they knew of the bad things that their military liberators did, such as sook ching (肃清), water torture, the chopping of heads, except that they knew that they too had suffered.

During the 3 years immersion in the Japanese society, I had a chance to encounter these first hand how the Japanese felt of the war then, and that was more than 25 years ago.

A new generation of Japanese had since grown up. What they have heard of the Pacific War would be the suffering and humiliation of their great grand parents from their mum, dad, grand mum, and grand dad. This oral history, I am afraid, holds more truth to the young mind than any of the revised texts that the Monbusho （文部省）- Ministry of Education -intends to introduce to the schools.

-//-

from dynastic song to the internet age – a reflection on genealogical record

This article was written in the autumn of the year 1144AD, during the Song Dynasty (960-1279AD) by a minor official that lived in Chaozhou Fu 潮州府, the present land of the Teochews. To date this would have been 863 years old. It is a preface to his family genealogical record, and his was the 11th generation.

Pouring thro the pages made me to ponder what the social and political conditions were then, that allowed this ancestor of mine to have this record to be written, and that I am able to read it today.

Though it was during the Tang Dynasty where the the might and influence of the Chinese Empire spead far and wide, it was during the Song, I believe that literature and learning truly seeped into the social structure.

As I recall the history lesson that I learned in secondary school, printing was invented during the Song Dynasty. Just like this age with the invention of the Internet and the proliferation of blog journalism, the invention of movable type wood block print would have caused a sort of a social revolution in the spread of learning and literacy, and for that matter journalism.

Though it might not have been as global a scale then as the spread of Internet and blogging as it is now, printing however would have proliferated to the other parts of the empire along with the migration of the Song people to escape the invaders from the north. They would have brought along their learning and invention to the new land and ‘blog’ their family history.

Fast forward 800 years on, in the year 2807AD, thro some future search engine a kinkonkid found this page, lo and behold – he made connection with his roots and traced it back to 1,600years of family history.

He thus ponder, what was the social environment then ….SGX hitting new peak of above 3,300pts, the Flyer wheel is three-quarter done and making the last connection to make it full circle, the IR construction moving ahead full steam… the little red dot has survived eight centuries and four score…



Retrospective:

1. Though there were constant wars with the Nurchen tribe - 女真族 - the ancestors of the Manchu of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), from the North in the border region, the Song Dynasty was a period of relative prosperity, social stability & cultural maturity as a whole for the society.

Though the Tang Dynasty (618-960AD) before the Song was famous for her poets, such as Li Bai （李白） and Dufu （杜甫） the number of recorded poets from the Song Dynasty far exceeded that of the Tang. There were more than 6,800 recoded poets with known and un-known names from the Song Dynasty, compared to about 2,000 odd from the Tang Dynasty.


2. The Song Dynasty 宋朝代 (960-1279AD) commenced with the reign of the first Song emperor, posthumously known as Song Taizu 宋太祖 in 960AD. The year where the emperor reign was accorded the name Jian Lung 建隆and thus in Chinese historical record the year 960AD is recorded as 建隆元年 Year 1 of Jian Lung .

With the invasion of the Nurchen and the fall of its capital Kaifeng, the Song court retreated to the south and the year 1126AD is designated as the start of the Southern Song Dynasty.

3. 新安古氏家谱序 – Xin An Gushi JiaPu Xu

古氏盖姬(ji)姓也诗云古公亶(dan)夫来朝走马率(lv)西水浒 (xu)至(zhi)于歧(qi)下昔大王居‘彬’迁居称古公其后以为姓大王也史叙之详矣(yi)然后世子孙固有究其傅
岐梁之间古氏之姓往往居多自历代载之史傅名誉(yu)显著尚有拓焉(yan)汉有古道子又有孝子古初蜀有广陵功曹古牧魏有尚书古弼(bi)北齐中散大夫古起唐有县令古之奇作县令箴(zhen)入于文选有飞独县令古云应自唐末由鼻祖二十五府君本河东人也任洪州通判七府君任虔 (qian)化县令生二十府君秘书郎集洪州书记生十九府君任揖 (yi)大祝生三府君任窦 (dou)州都监史生六子
长曰十一府君讳(hui)全交居古云
次曰十二府君讳全规江下
三曰十四府君讳全则居白沙
四曰十五府君讳全望居增城生子延绶移居梅州传成子
五曰十六府君讳全让居惠州立溪场
六曰十七府君讳全赏居圳边奕世相传子孙历仕我宋勃兴削(xiao) 平僭(jian)乱混一区宇端拱间曾祖成之中程宿榜连名三十八宿之列授棉竹县令以词学独冠炎荒厥 (jue)后逍遥物外脱履尘寰何其异也 皇 佑中驰名场屋联荣仕籍独祖宗悦擢(zhuo)勋骑都尉及子凤仪升潮典郡荣耀闾禄及其亲福荫后裔流芳馀韵既炽且昌至毕(bi)暂榜 革 忝窃上帝获续祖风徒荣州县二十馀载仕徒艰险颇厌尘荣隐居於逸老堂偶因闲暇览旧祖图列为家谱贻传子孙使之知所自出益知艰难之业敦睦亲之义共激欢以绍箕裘咸遵式训庶有祖而有宗斯无忝於前人耳

赞曰

亶父積德 古氏流芳 蛰蛰螽斯 既炽且昌
续厥云孙 列祖有光 辑斯谱牒 庆福绵长

大宋绍兴十四年甲子岁菊月吉日十一世知潮州府中宪大夫 革敬撰


- ２００６。０４。０８　／上午７点５５分 - 抄记 -

Translated as : Preface to the Genealogical Records of the Gu Clan, from the Hall of Xin An)

The Preface was recorded as the 14th year of Shaoxing 绍兴 十四年, which is the year 1144AD.

The article wa written in traditional Chinese, Wen-Yen-Wen（文言文）, the writing style of the literati before the new language movement that swept thro China during the May 4th movement in 1919.

Whatever the article means, I could not read it well, and will not attempt to translate it. However with my shallow foundation in self-taught Chinese & with a Chinese-Chinese dictionary in hand, I ploughed thro the article word by word, and guess I could decipher about a third of what the content.

Anyone who knows Wen-yen and could help to translate the document would be much appreciated.

I typed it in Words and digitized it - however as I was using the Pinyin system from Microsoft, I could not find some of words, and have to leave it with the ‘sound’ equivalent.

- 革公派 - 古氏族谱 - 民国十八年修
-title translated as : Gu Clan Genealogical Records from the GeGong Branch – edited in 1929 (18th year of the Republic)

References:


2. 风与云 - 中国诗文论集， [日] 小川环树著， 周先明译 - 北京中华书局， 2005

- title translated as ‘Wind and Cloud’ a collection of articles on Chinese Poems/Prose – originally written in Japanese by Ogawa Tamakiand translated by Zhou Xianming. Publisher Beijing Zhong Hua ShuJu

- Professor Ogawa Tamiki (1910-1993) of Kyoto University was an authority and an outstanding researcher of Chinese studies in Japan.

2. 宋诗鉴赏辞典 – 上海辞 书出版社， 2002

- title translated as ‘Dictionary for the Appreciation of Song Poem ‘ published by Shanghai Cishu Chubanshe.

3. The National Heritage Board has a website for recording one’s roots.

http://www.singaporefamilytree.com.sg/sft/home/Home.aspx

The Singapore Family Tree website is a service that you can use to safekeep your family memories and share it across generations. Start by building your family tree and then invite your family members through the system. You can upload and share photos, create your family webpage, and even print out your family tree.

4 . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_Dynasty#Technology

Song Dynasty – Technology - Printing

‘Printing technology in the form of movable type was invented by Bi Sheng in the 11th century. The work of Bi Sheng was written of by Shen Kuo (mentioned above), in his Writings Beside the Meng Creek (夢溪筆談 Mengxi Bitan). Movable type, alongside woodblock printing, increased literacy with the mass production of printed materials. This meant that parents could encourage sons to learn to read and write and therefore be able to take the imperial examination and become part of the growing learned bureaucracy.’

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a touch of cultural tang @ telok ayer street

It was not as grand a performance as the Dream of the Great Tang （梦回大唐） – a resplendent musical cum cultural troupe that came from Xian （西安）- that was held at the Esplanade last year, but the performance at Telok Ayer Street nevertheless has traveled an equally long journey be it in distance or in time. It is a pedigree of music that is truer in its essence and form to the original Tang version. And further it is closer to our hearts as it was inherited from our folks who brought along the music with them when they came to this shore.

Most of us would have heard of the Tang Quartet, if we have yet to watch them performing, at least we have read of them often in the local daily. However what of the Xiang Ling Musical Ensemble (湘灵音乐社)? Is it another Wayang (Drama) troupe that performs in the street corner to celebrate the deity birthday, you may ask.

Well, no. The Xiang Ling Musical Ensemble plays a genre of classical Chinese music known as the Nanyin （南音）or Nanguan（南管 ）. Literary it means the southern musical sound or the southern wind instrument. Historically Nanyin music is directly descended from the music of the Tang Dynasty & it has retained its originality in its musical score and in the composition and formation of the musical ensemble.

The musical ensemble consists of string, wind and percussion instruments. In the typical Nanying style, during the performance the pipa （琵琶）a string instrument, it is held slanted as in the same manner of holding a guitar, instead of holding it upright as what it is now. This style of holding the pipa is depicted in the painting of the court ladies of the Tang Dynasty playing the instrument. The Nanyin music is more mellow and soothing then the typical score of the Chinese orchestra music.

When the Tang Dynasty (618-960AD) ended after a reign of 342 years, this music continues to survive in the remote corners of the great empire. This music is nowadays found mainly in southern China in Fujian (福建) Province， Quanzhou, （泉州） and further south in Yunnan （云南）Province in the LiJiang （漓江）area.

Away from their native land, the Nanyin music is now found in areas where there are Fujian, Quanzhou migrants & mainly in Taiwan and South-east Asia. The early traders and migrant brought the music along with them to the far corners of the world where they made their new home.

The Xiang Ling Ensemble performed in front of the Fujian Association at Telok Ayer Street last Sunday night, 04March, the first full moon day of the first month of the Chinese Lunar calendar, aka Yuan Xiao （ 元宵）. The musical group was formed 70years ago. It was a cultural feast of sort on that night and was the first time that I watched a Nanyin performance though I have read of it before.

In order to imbibe in the full cultural and historic glory of the humble music, one has to know a bit of its historic origin as well as the story behind some of the musical pieces that the ensemble played or the arias sung that night,, such as The Night of the Lantern Festival (元宵十五)，and the story of the Han Dynasty beauty Wang Zhaojun（ 王昭君） leaving for the frontier. The MC did a great job in introducing the history of the music to the audience, albeit in Mandarin.

It’s not only the short history of 188 odd years that we find in Telok Ayer that links us back to the beginning of the founding of this city port in 1819 . Looking beyond the sight and deeper down, I hear the sound and felt the spirit of the cultural Tang in our streets. It’s only if we care to find…

.



Post-script:

1. According to the MC the next performance of the Nanying musical ensemble will be in the evening of April 6th at the Tian Fu Gong (天福宫) Temple, Telok Ayer Street. It is Good Friday, which coincides with the birthday of Goddess of Mercy (观音诞), yet another cultural fest.

2. Yuan Xiao (元宵) is also known as Lantern Festival in many parts of China. It is the first full moon night of the Lunar New Year. It’s more commonly know as Chap Goh Meh (十五夜), in the local Fujian （福建）/ Hokkien dialect among the local population. Whereas the other dialect groups such as the Cantonese or the Hakka would call it Yuan Xiao Jie （元宵节）or Yuan Xiao Festival.

It is the Chinese Valentine's day, where maiden would toss oranges into the rivers while making a wish for a good husband. It seems that Penang has revived this practise where locals and tourists alike would toss oranges to the sea, making a wish.

How about the Lion City reviving this age old practise too - tossing oranges into the Singapore River during Yuan Xiao Festival - adding another event into the river calendar of festivities.

3. In China especially, Yuan Xiao Festival is celebrated with lighting lanterns at night. However custom seems not to have been continued over here. Locally lanterns are lit on the Moon Cake Festival which falls on the full moon night of the 8th lunar calendar, which is also the Autumn Festival.

4. The Chinese festivals if one care to note, usually occurs during the lunar-solar solstices. It had its roots millenniums ago in an agrarian society. It is a celebration of the seasons and not particularly of any religious origin. The Lunar New Year is also known as the Spring Festival (春节), for that matter.

5. In the olden days, during the Yuan Xiao Festival ( 元宵 节), family which has given birth to a baby boy would proceed to the ancestral temple （宗祠）to light lantern and hang it on the temple beam, one for each male born the year before.

Thus during the new year, it was customary to greet newly wedded couples, 添丁发财 (Tian Ding Fa Cai ) , meaning May you have a new baby boy and be prosperous.

In this age when the birth rate is less than desirable to replenish the population,, we may need to re-popularize this greeting again, albeit with a touch of equality for the gender.









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from the treasure valleys - the gold and silver rush

They developed as mining towns and started about the same period that coincided with the history of mass migration of the Chinese out of their homeland in the mid 19th century. One was rich in tin and the other in gold. Migrants from the southern Chinese province of Guangdong ( 广东省l ) flocked to these places in search of their pot of gold and, to escape the misery of a war torn land.

The Taiping (1851-1864) rebellion was raging in China. The new frontiers were in dire need of labors to open up the land. With the discovery of the treasures, ship loads of migrant from the villages make their way to the Gold & Silver Mountains.

It was a pleasant when I first visited Boise, Idaho in the US and had a chance to drop in to the Idaho Historical Museum. In a section of the museum was the tale of the Chinese migrant who ventured to the Treasure Valley in the continuing wave of gold rush that started in California. The story sounded familiar, and the photograph of the miners holding the water piston was what I've seen back in my hometown too.

The Boise basin is located in the Pacific Northwest & within the precinct of the Rockies. In its heyday, with a population of 3,900, nearly two-third of them at 1,700 were Chinese migrants. The majoriy working as miners. Sudden as they appeared and fast they vanished from the valley too. This could possibly be due to the fact that when the gold was exhausted the migrant tide receded to the costal cities. It could have been also a desire to return home after making their fortune. And it had also been culminated by the effect of the Exclusion Act of 1882.

"In 1856 a small party of Chinese from California entered the Rocky Mountains and reached the Boise Basin of what is now southern Idaho. They left no written record, but seventy-five years later the last survivor of that party, Wong Ying, told their story in the Idaho Statesman. His personal experience in the American West was typical frontier drama." (a)

Other than the miners, there was also a handful of the Chinese migrants in Boise town who were engaged as gardeners.

"The truck gardens operated by Chinaman in the Boise area yielded big returns as the climate was more favorable than in Idaho City or Silver City. Their favorite carryall was two baskets swung from a yoke, curving around the neck and balanced across the shoulders. Fifteen to twenty miles a day was the average ordinary mileage by foot. They could not afford the stage." (b)

“But the gardens themselves were beautiful, beautiful things to behold…..row after row of beautiful growing vegetables. They were neat and orderly. It was all done by hand.” – Boise resident describing the Chinese gardens / Idaho Historical Museum.

These vegetable gardeners left a name in the city that reminded us of their existence. A fellow colleague said that Chinden Boulevard, a main road in Boise, is derived from the phrase Chinese Garden. The road possibly passed thro the vegetable gardens ploughed by the entrepreneurial minded and industrious migrants who were there to make their buck.

At the same time, other groups of migrants from Guangdong province migrated to the tropical Nanyang ( 南洋 - South Sea) via the Lion City. They proceeded up country from this transit point and ventured to the Silver state in Malaya Peninsula. Tin was discovered in abundance in the Kinta Valley, and a Silver rush followed its heel.

Epoh became the adminstrative center for the many mining towns that opened up in this Treasure Valley. The town prospered. It once pride herself as the town with the biggest concentration of Towkays in the peninsula. After the Pacific War ended, many of those who ventured out as young men in the late 19th century, had wanted to return to their villages with their brood & fortune to enjoy their twilight years. However their dreams were thrown awry by the grave political situation back home. Their descendants stayed put and took roots in the Kinta Valley. They grown to become fine citizens of their new land.


Retrospective:

1. First trip to Boise was in May 2002. It was early summer and the valley was lush with greenery. Boise came from the French word ‘les Bois’:

“Well, history shows that the French explorer who discovered Boise exclaimed, "Les Bois, Les Bois, voi Les Bois!" when he saw the fertile Boise river valley for the first time decades ago. The literal translation is "the trees, the trees, see the trees!"

The Idaho Historic Museum pictures were taken during that trip.

2. Visited Boise again last month. The temperature dropped to -10C and there was a light snow on the morning of 20Jan2007.



Reference:

a) A Chinaman’s Chance – The Chinese on he Rocky Mountain Mining Frontier, Liping Zhu, University Press of Colorado , 1997. (中国佬的运气 )

b) Idaho Chinese Lore, Sister M. Alfreda Elsensohn, Idaho Corporation of the Benedictines Sisters, Cottonwood, Idaho, 1993

c) http://www.idahohistory.net/museum.html

d) http://www.lebois.com/







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from up north start-up @ kawan street to marie biscuit

What has the Khong Guan Biscuit got to do with Ipoh?

I was reading the book ‘Stepping Out – the making of a Chinese Entrepreneur’, and interestingly & incidentally it mentioned that the founder of Khong Guan Biscuit, Chew Choo Keng （周子敬）ventured into his first start-up business in biscuit making in Ipoh!

It reads:

'His first business start-up was in Ipoh together with a former fellow school-mate Chan Beng Tee, with a capital borrowed from Boon Tee’s uncle & his friend. Boon Tee came to work in his uncle’s rubber packing firm in Ipoh. His uncle Chew Boon San was the President of the Hokkien Association in Ipoh and a well-known business man.

They formed the Khong Leng Biscuit Factory at No 5 Cowan Street, Ipoh, with a staff of about 40 people who were all unmarried people. He was 24 then in 1940. He was the manager, his younger brother the director, and his wife was the assistant chemist. The workers were all school mates in China and their own people. '

On a trip back to Ipoh last month, I went looking for where No 5 Cowan Street is. It was not difficult to find where Cowan Street is, as it is one of the main roads in the Ipoh New Town. However to my pleasant surprise, the address is located in a row of shop houses which all along for the residents of Ipoh has been well known for its concentration of bakery shops. This bakery row is located in the same block as the old Grand Cinema & Amusement Park. The shop house is now the Goodways Enterprise Sdn Bhd selling Yamaha motorcycles. (The Sdn Bhd stands for Senderian Berhad – meaning Private Limited in Malay).

In this row of 6 to 7 shop houses, there used to be at least three bakery shops, run by Indian or Pakistani Muslims. There is now only one left doing business – Noor Jahan Bakery Sdn Bhd, located at 7 Cowan Street. The shop lots next door were closed and the front barricaded with zinc sheet. It is probably the victims of the repeal of quit rent act, which was lifted a few years back.

I went into the Noor Jahan Bakery, and chatted with the boss who is in his late sixties or early seventies, about the history of the bakery shops in this area. He told me that his dad came from Pakistan after the War. He was working in a bakery shop owned by a Chinese, and he later took over the business. He said that bakery shops were concentrated in this northern part of the new town, because during the colonial days this area was nearer to where the Orang Putih, the White Man lived. He said that the oldest bakery was a century old, in the shop next to his, which is closed now.

I inquired how did the name Cowan came about. He said that it was from the Malay word kawan, meaning friend. My guess is that the in the olden days the fellow bakers from among the ethnic Indian Muslim and the Chinese could be addressing each other as kawan, and the word came to be corrupted as Cowan. Or the colonial masters could have addressed their bakers as kawan, and they got their daily bread from kawan place.

Just like the tale that Smith Street in Singapore Chinatown came from the corruption of the word Hokkien word si-mi-su ( 什么事), which means ‘ What is it?’ Cowan could be have originated from kawan.

This aerial view photograph of Ipoh with Cowan Street in the middle was taken in 1962, when Ipoh became a municipality. The circular building known as the Yau Tet Shin Market or Bat Gog Lau (八角楼) in Cantonese is now gone. Itwas demolished not too long ago and what is left is a vacant lot. now. The complex to the mid-left is the Grand Cinema & Amusement Park. It was akin to the Great World City or Gay World of old in Singapore.

After the War Chew Choo Keng returned to Singapore, and with the capital he got from selling off his business in the peninsula, he started the Khong Guan Biscuit at Paya Lebar. As they say, the rest was history.



Post-script:

1. The Khong Guan story continues:

'During the Japanese occupation, cos Chew Choo Keng was unable to get flour for his business due to shortage, and refusing to use flour substitute, he dissolved the business.

He then went to Telok Anson to live with his father-in-law, and stared a soap making business. Business was good and he sold 400-500cases of soap per day. He soon became rich and with the money he made he started other businesses investing in coconut oil factory, rice trading company and salt company employing a few hundred workers.

The success of there trading activities boosted his confidence as a businessman and set the momentum for his gradual business expansion

During the war years in Telok Anson, the communist regarded him a traitor as he could drive his cars which served his company freely with permit from the Japanese military. He was arrested and interrogated by the communist in the jungle. It turned out later that the interrogator was a former female classmate of his in China. Chew met up with Chin Peng who instead of the charges, solicited his contribution to the communist cause, which involve usable products such as soap, salt, and oil as well as $10,000 cash. Upon his release, Chew was interrogated by the Japanese Military Police in Taping jail, on the events that took plaec in the jungle.

Chew in fact saw the war as a turning point, an opportunity to change his business venue from Malaya to Singapore. In the communist camp, Chin Peng warned him that Malaya would fight for its independence from the British, a revelation which started him thinking of going elsewhere for his business development.

Start-up in Singapore

Two months after the war, he returned to Singapore. He has sold all his businesses in Malaya for about $70-80,000. He was unemployed in Singapore and had spent about $10-20,000. He then ventured to start up the Khong Guan Biscuit Factory in Paya Lebar with the remainder of $50-60,000 as capita.'

2. In Singapore History Gallery of the newly opened National Museum of Singapore, Khong Guan Biscuits and the Chew brothers Choo Keng and Choo Han are featured in the Personal Path in the Merdeka zone on self-governing.


Reference:
1. Stepping Out –The making of Chinese Entrepreneurs, by Chan Kwok Bun, Claire Chiang, Prentice Hall 1994

2. Ipoh, The Town that Tin Built, A review of the history, progress and developmenet of Perak’s capital –commemorative book on the establishment of Ipoh as a municipality in on May 31, 1962. This book is availabe at the Middle Road National Library, Singapore.





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