Thursday, August 21, 2014

What Could You Do With a Stele?




Sailing in over the silence from the dining room was a familiar voice.  Who is that?  I had put it on my wife’s laptop a few years back along with a broad download of female grandeur from jazz, blues, R&B, rock and, like this sound coming in now, samba.  I was listening to Brazil’s wild man of interstellar funk at the gym yesterday, Tim Maia.  It was perhaps the first time since we traveled to Portugal that I had a chance to listen to the language.  Alas, nothing much new was decipherable. 



Listening then, to this lovely voice, the familiar mix, I scraped at my head to figure out who it could be.  Eventually I caved and went and had a look.  Ah, yes, Céu, a.k.a.: Maria do Céu Whitaker Poças.  Born Sau Paulo in 1980, I’d long been familiar with her debut album “Céu” from 2005.  I’ve a disc on from a few years later in 2009 entitled “Vagarosa.”  This second song “Cangote” is fascinating.  Her voice couldn’t be clearer and the mix is broad and spacious with a host of compelling little studio effects that have me wanting to share it with my older daughter who might appreciate her voice.

She is trying out for a part in the school musical today.  They are doing Mulan, which seem a tad predictable, but it’s not for me.  She was all over it, digging up the song from the movie that she wanted to sing for the audition and practicing diligently.  Last night she was singing and, as happens, everyone had something to say about how she should properly belt it out.  Summarily ordered out, we left her to it. 

It will be a busy night for her as they also have the back-to-school middle school dance.  Her old school never had such a thing.   “If we were even seen walking next to a boy outside of class we’d have been reported.”  I’m reasonably certain nothing Bacchanalian will transpire tonight.  Boys will stand in one corner, girls in another and they will alternatively laugh out loud and stare down at their shoes, or or in this day and age, thumb along on their phones.  We are most assuredly not invited.  

Certainly, it does bring to mind all the odd, awkward “dances” we had when I was in public middle school, in Pleasantville New York.  Cool people would be coupled-up, disaffected folk like myself would have been seething in the corner, everyone having, of course, ignored our music requests for something like “Clash City Rockers”, hating absolutely all the music being played, most prominently of course, the obligatory final number, “Stairway to Heaven” which, year after year started with a few couples embraced and ended with a few boys jumping around on one foot, in some form of air guitar with the girls all retreated to the walls, preparing to leave.   Perhaps middle school dances have evolved, but I doubt it. 

I was intrigued last night, looking around the Times’ Sinosphere blog to see the following article about a rather large stone, at the emperor’s palace in Japan, where it is never seen by anyone, save the Imperial family and, presumably the imperial gardeners.  It is a Tang Dynasty stele that removed as booty from the city of Port Arthur, now known as Lushan.  The subtly titled group, “China Federation of Demanding Compensation From Japan” has requested the return of the rock, which was taken between 1906 and 1908 after Japan defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese War.  When the Tang erected the stele, the area, which has been part of what is contemporarily known as “China” was not part of the Tang Dynasty, but rather the Koguryo Dynasty in northern Korea. 

Certainly, “liberating” the stone and pavilion from the private gaze of the imperial family seems reasonable.  But then, who do you return it to?  It was carved by Tang imperial subjects and erected in a place that was not Tang territory at the time, but is unquestionably Chinese soil today.  But it was taken from the Russians as war booty.  The article suggests that South Korean scholars will not be happy if the stele is returned to China, as it is part of Korea’s cultural heritage.  One can only imagine that North Korea will have an opinion, before long, as well.

When I go to Japan, my favorite hotel is the Sheraton Miyako.  I always stay there in that lovely wooded neighborhood of Shirokanedai.  Walking in along the hallway to their Sichuan Restaurant which doubles as the breakfast buffet, there are a number of museum grade, historical treasures from China, including a seemingly complete Tang Dynasty progression of riders and horses.   There is one wine drinking vessel, a jue, which, if memory serves was from the Spring and Autumn period, roughly when Socrates walked the earth.  It is always inspiring and disturbing to see it there.  How did it make its way to Tokyo?  Did a Japanese archeologist unearth it at a dig?  Did a noble Japanese collector rescue the treasure from some market stall where it was unrecognized and likely to be disregarded and destroyed, or is it simply plunder, stolen from someone in China who knew what the treasure was and valued it, but was powerless to stop it being carted off to Tokyo as war booty, like the stele? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_and_Autumn_period



Once we go down this path, half the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collections are presumably up for reexamination.  But if I were Emperor Akihito, who has no political power and extraordinary symbolic power, I would consider strongly off-loading stone, which is probably no more than a “nice-to-have” in his vast gardens.  Personally oversee the return of the stone to Lushan and tell the assembled crowd that it is a gesture of reconciliation.  Oh, and deliver the one two sentence message in both Korean and in Chinese.  What else are you doing for the rest of your reign?  One can only assume you had no opportunity to attend a middle school dance, but remember, there is always time to 改弦易辙[1].  It’s good to be the emperor.





[1] gǎixiányìzhé: change of string, move out of rut (idiom); dramatic change of direction / to dance to a different tune

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