Chinese Silkweaving, Multiple Scripts

During a visit to the Freer Gallery of Art last year, I came across this 13th-century scroll painting that depicts the art of Chinese silkweaving. The scroll links together 24 sheets of paper unfurling from left to right, and its visual content is fascinating (the scenes represent all the stages of silk production). Its verbal content is interesting as well. Each scene is accompanied by a poem that is written out in a formal style of calligraphy called "seal script." Next to each character of text in the poem there's a tiny gloss "translating" the character into standard script. There are also various inscriptions in "running script" throughout the scroll, in addition to the seals of multiple owners that have accrued over time.

To see more images of the scroll and download detailed documentation about its contents, see this website.

Guide to Arabic Calligraphy

Guide to the Arabic alphabet, "Calligraphy of the Islamic World," Sackler and Freer Gallery of Art, 2007. This pamphlet offers a chart providing information on the letters of the Arabic alphabet and it also allows you to trace the proper strokes in order to write السلام عليكم (As-Salāmu `Alaykum = "Peace be with you"). I'm not exactly sure if the chart of letter forms is all that useful, since Arabic letters (as I understand it) must change their shape depending on where they appear in a given word.

(For more on calligraphy in Muslim cultures, see this online exhibition. To see another chart of the Arabic alphabet with cute animal pictures, see this earlier post.)

Upside-Down Fortune (Chinese New Year)

Happy Chinese New Year! A red paper lantern bears the character 福 (fu = "good luck, fortune") upside-down. This is a common practice in Chinese restaurants and storefronts around the start of the lunar new year, as "fu dao le" (meaning "fu is upside-down") sounds like 福到了 (fu dao le = "luck/fortune has arrived").

For a (rather unfortunate) 福-related image in Chinatown, see this posting.

Virtual Medieval Media (Interactive Gutenberg Bible)

Library of Congress, November 2009. I must say the interactive display accompanying the LOC's Gutenberg Bible is really cool. The Gutenberg Bible is of course one of the first texts in Western Europe to be produced using movable print technology. This touch-screen display allows you to navigate the text "virtually" (here, "hot spots" on the screen allow you to see chapter headings, rubrics, Latin abbreviations, etc.).

Another image from a different page in this bible. I find it interesting that so many of the terms we use to describe how we navigate digital media are simply imported from previous technologies: e.g., (web)page, scroll, tab, bookmark. There's something uncanny - familiar and yet strange - about navigating the "virtual" text in such a dynamic way while the original physical text remains inert in a stuffy display case just a few feet away.

Multilingual Monkeys

Sackler Gallery, National Mall, Fall 2009. This hanging sculpture entitled "Monkeys Grasping for the Moon" (by Chinese artist Xu Bing) is one of my favorites; the word for "monkey" in various languages/scripts form a linked chain  hanging from the ceiling.

Below, another view of the sculpture (lower in the building):

Read more about this sculpture on this page of the Sackler website or read the story that inspired the artwork.

Shakespeare in Chinese

I highly recommend the current exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library entitled "Imagining China: The View from Europe, 1550-1700" (it explores relationships between Early Modern Europe and China - including a fascinating collection of maps, letters, documents, and other artifacts).

Today I noticed some new "family guides" for the exhibition. The "Learn Chinese!" flyer (left, above) invites readers to pronounce Chinese characters, including the standard phonetic transcription of the name "Shakespeare" (莎士比亞 shā shì bǐ yà).

I'm glad to see the Chinese text has been carefully prepared, but I must admit some indication of the proper tones in the phonetic transcriptions would have been welcome (especially if this flyer is inviting readers to "sound out" the words).

Curiously, the red box with caption "One China, Many Names" (right, above) resonates with contemporary geopolitics. Both mainland China and the Republic of China (aka Taiwan) officially claim that there is only "one China" (中国 Zhōng guó, in Mandarin; 中國 Tiong-kok in Taiwanese) - but arriving at a shared definition of "one China" is a difficult matter.

P.S. It just occurred to me that the final syllable of the transliteration for the name "Shakespeare" (亞 yà) also happens to appear in 亞 洲 yà zhōu ("Asia").

P.P.S. For a related post, see this later entry.

Thrifty Chinese Writing

Chinatown. The characters 租車 do indeed mean rent(al) car. The writing is very poorly executed - thrifty indeed!

Chinatown: Hillel

This sign transcribes "Hillel" phonetically as 海 (hǎi) 勒 (lè). At first I thought it was strange that Hebrew was absent from this sign, but I now suspect the "flames" in the background might actually be a very stylized form of the appropriate Hebrew letters (הלל). If so, this is a rare trilingual sign!

Chinatown: Quiznos Sub

Chinatown. Quiznos Sub becomes simply 三明治 (sandwich).

Chinatown: Ann Taylor Loft

Chinatown. The characters underneath phonetically "translate" the name Ann Taylor: 安 (an) 泰 (tai) 勒 (lei). 泰勒 is used in Chinese-language media as a transliteration (e.g. Elizabeth Taylor) so I guess this isn't that bad.

The Chinese writing is awful, though. I get the sense that many of the signs in Chinatown were created by people who don't even speak/write the language.