A Very Special Monkey

For those who are not familiar with the Chinese zodiac signs, I wrote about it in this post.  This year being the Year of the Monkey, I decided to introduce Tiger to one of the Chinese classics, Journey to the West ( 《西游记》）

As with many Chinese children, Tiger's first introduction to this Chinese classic is through animation:

After seeing him become enamoured with the cartoon above, I told Tiger that the cartoon shows only a very selection of the monkey's journey, and that it is part of a very long Chinese novel.  He immedidately asked me get him the story.  I got him the abridged, single-book version of the classic to see how he got on with the story.  At 528 pages, the abridged version gives a good overview of the actual novel but when I asked Tiger whether he read about the characters' encounters with certain demons, Tiger realised that there are many juicy and interesting adventures that are being left out, so he asked me to get him the unabridged, four-volume version:

1. Volume 1 - 576 pages
2. Volume 2 - 424 pages
3. Volume 3 - 464 pages
4. Volume 4 - 440 pages

Seeing Tiger read this Chinese classic novel in English translation (I read the original Chinese version) brings back memory of my own experience of reading Pride and Prejudice in Chinese translation at about 12 years old.   Obviously it is always preferable to read a story in its original language as certain linguist nuances and subtleties are often lost in in the translation process, but where one's language skills are not up to the required standard to allow one to read the original text, then finding a good translated version is the next best thing to do.

When Tiger has read the four books through twice (it took him about a week), I showed him a TV series based on the book.  While this classic has been adapted into movies and other performances many times over the years (the latest one being a new movie based on one of the major adventures from the book):

the 1986 TV version is the one that I think stays closest to the original novel, and the actor who played the monkey is acknowledged as unsurpassed in his interpretation of the character:

Journey to the West is the most popular, accessible of the four major Chinese classics.  Even those who have not read the book would know about a number of the fantastical adventures of the main characters in the story.  However, although the story is written in the form of a historical fantasy/myth, the story has a much deeper, spiritual meaning to it, in a very similar way that The Lord of the Rings is so much more than a fantasy story. 

The following video is rather appropriate as a new year wish from me to you: may your year be full of wonderful adventures!  I know mine will be!

(I know those are apes in the video but they belong to the same primate family as monkeys.  Besides, they make me laugh, so that'll do for Chinese New Year.  I'm sure Sun Wukong would approve!)


*Disclosure: some links are affiliate links, which means I earn a commission if you click through and buy something.


This post is linked up to:

1. Collage Friday
2. Multicultural Kid Blogs
3. Hip Homeschool Hop 2/16/16 - 2/20/16
4. Finishing Stron #77
5. Weekly Wrap-Up: The one that started with an amazing Valentine gift

Year of the Monkey

The Year of the Monkey started last Monday.  The celebration usually lasts 15 days so we have two weeks to mark this significant Chinese festival.

As with last year, Tiger and I found an Chinese New Year-related activity to do in London.  This time, the National Gallery had a short workshop on decorating the Peking Opera mask, so we went along and did that.

Although the workshop emphasised creativity, which Tiger exercised plenty of, his mask doesn't look particularly Chinese in colour or design, so I asked him to read the Origins of Chinese Art and Craft as well as Lianpu in order to look into the significance of the design and colours of the various traditional Peking opera masks to understand that they are not chosen randomly.  We also found the following clip useful to give us a better understanding of this art form:

From the National Gallery, we walked to Chinatown to buy a few special items in preparation for the Chinese New Year as well as to eat a hearty meal.  It is interesting to see that we have chosen exactly the same food as last year.

Once we got home, we started decorating the house by putting up various decorative items around the house, much like what people would do to decorate their homes for Christmas.

Many of the Chinese decorations have symbolic meanings that usually mean well-wishes and the ushering in of good fortune and prosperity for the family.  Unlike a child who grows up in the East who will understand the symbolism behind the various Chinese decorations through sheer exposure to the culture in his environment, Tiger does not have such luxury so he has to find out about the symbolic meaning of the various decorations through reading books.

This year's New Year's Eve dinner was quite special in that I bought the 'Yu Sheng' (鱼生) from Chinatown.

This dish is like a raw salmon salad that is only eaten during the Chinese New Year period, and is a tradition of Chinese living in Southeast Asia.  It is a dish to be eaten with family and friends as a way to welcome prosperity for everyone in the new year:

*Disclosure: some links are affiliate links, which means I earn a commission if you click through and buy something.


This post is linked up to:

1. Finishing Strong #76
2. Collage Friday
3. Multicultural Kid Blogs
4. Hip Homeschool Hop 2/16/16 - 2/20/16
5. Weekly Wrap-Up: The one that started with an amazing Valentine gift
6. Practical Mondays Link Up Week #2

Countdown to Christmas: Week 2

It has been a difficult week.  Tiger has been very ill with high fever and severe headache all this time.  It took three visits to the GP to find out that Tiger has a middle ear infection, which most likely resulted from his weekly swimming lessons.   There is no a lot to be done apart from taking the prescribed antibiotics and waiting for the bacteria to be gotten rid of.  The infection is a nasty one, causing such a spliting headache for Tiger that he (and consequently, I) has been woken up by the pain several times in the night for the past week.  Hence, all external activities have been cancelled, with Tiger spending most of his time lying on the sofa.  He is only well enough today to play with LEGO and his train set.

Compared to how active Tiger normally is, this week has been very boring for him as all external activities have been cancelled due to his being ill.  With all my not-so-well-planned December plans out of the window, luckily we have been able to manage some continuity with the daily unwrapping of Christmas-related storybooks.

  and rewatching a Christmas classic:

When he felt well enough to get off the sofa, we continued to look through the RI space-themed advent calendar, watched the second week of the Angel Trail, and made tin can lanterns that turned out to be very pretty.

At the very beginning of the week Tiger felt really terrible so in order to distract him from the physical pain that he was experiencing, my husband had the brilliant idea of introducing Tiger to a classic movie that he (my husband) has always wanted them to watch together:

No, Tiger will not be getting any Star Wars-related presents.

Countdown to Christmas: Dickens' Carol

We have read A Christmas Carol in the past two Christmases such that the book has become a part of our Christmas tradition.  This year, however, I think it would be a good idea to expand our scope a little wider by reading the other Christmas stories written by Charles Dickens at Tiger's bedtime so that A Christmas Carol does not become the only Dickensian Christmas story that we know.

However, even though we are not reading A Christmas Carol this year, we find ourselves not being able to get away from it totally.  As a result of Tiger being ill with fever most of last week, we found ourselves having a lot of time on our hands that we could spend on video watching.  To my surprise, Tiger watched the 1999 movie version without his usual complaint that most movie versions are poor substitutes for the original storybooks.  There have been numerous movie adaptations of the story, but the 1999 version is the one that stayed most true to the original, and it helps that Patrick Stewart (who played Scrooge) is a most excellent actor.
 

After we watched the movie, we thought we might as well review our knowledge about the origins of the story:

What I find interesting about reading/reviewing the same story each year is that not only does the story become part of our family's tradition at Christmas time, but my own understanding of the story grows with each reading.  This sense of getting to know a story at a deeper level with each passing year comes with no surprise.  What is perhaps surprising is how easily recognisable many universal human values, such as compassion and redemption, are in this very traditional, English story.  Then again, isn't that what every good classic story is supposed to do?

Another reason for us not being able to completely ignore A Christmas Carol this year is that it is currently being discussed in the BerkerleyX Book Club, which is another free MOOC offered by edX.  Tiger and I looked at the first week's coursework, which we felt has helped us consider a few points that we had not discussed in our previous readings. 

Countdown to Christmas: Week 1

The best way to describe our first week of Christmas countdown is that it's a mixed bag.

After announcing that I am not going to come up with 24 different activities this December, I found the advent calendar that my mother-in-law bought for Tiger when he was a baby and thought it best to take it out and use it before Tiger's childhood is over.  So, I stayed up on the night of November 30th to do some last minute brainstorming and managed to stretch my initial short list of activities to fill 24 days.

Since I have the habit of over-preparing than under-preparing most of the time, I wrapped the Christmas-related books that I borrowed from the library in Christmas wrappers to act as another form of advent calendar (just in case the other one doesn't work, for whatever reason), so that Tiger can unwrap one book each day to read a Christmas-related story.  That's the least we can do, if we don't do anything else for the month.

I really needn't worry, because the RI has a space-related advent calendar ready so we have been unveiling it each day, after I read aloud a section from our spine book for the month, The Christmas Almanac.  The book covers a broad spectrum of Christmas-related issues from history to traditions, both religious and secular.

There is a section in the book explaining the origins and different ranks of angels in the Western tradition which coincides with the weekly video of the Angel Trail organised by the National Gallery, so we watched the first episode of that.

The rest of the week was interspersed with the making of mince meat,

as well as mince pies.

We would have done more this week if Tiger hadn't been ill with high fever most of the time.  In fact, he spent most of the week lying on the sofa, recovering from nights of broken sleep.

He is still suffering from fever as I type.  We are taking him to see the out-of-hours doctor in a little while, since our usual GP does not work on weekends.  I hope next week will be a better week.


This post is linked up to Christmas In A Box ~ Week 1 Link Up.

Countdown to Christmas: The Beginning

Our countdown to Christmas has begun with the consumption of mulled wine and mince pies, as is my little personal tradition.

I started accumulating the mince pies from the supermarkets at the end of November, having forgotten that I had already done a survey of the various mince pies last year.  I was wondering what to do with the over supply of mince pies when my attention was turned to the homeless.

Ever since the extent of homelessness in the UK came to our attention in May this year when we studied about the Victorian poor, I have become more aware of the signs of the current rising food and housing crises around us, for example the increase in the number of food bank collection points in town and the number of people selling The Big Issue (a magazine sold by homeless people).  The trend is both worrying and upsetting.

We already make regular donations to the food banks and to the charity shops, but I feel compelled to do a little more this December.  I thought about volunteering at a homeless shelter over Christmas, but knew I would be too upset when I come face-to-face with real people who are in such a desperate situation, so this year I will just make donations of winter clothing and 10% of our weekly grocery to the shelter, including all the extra mince pies that I have bought -- although I seriously think that homeless people have bigger problems to worry about than having mince pies to eat at Christmas time.  Maybe next year I will find the courage to actually go and help out at the shelter.

Plans for December

With December only a few days away, I feel I ought to share what our plans are for the month.  I am going to call ours a 'December plan' rather than an Advent plan because we are not Christians, so I don't feel right about using the term 'advent' when we don't actually celebrate the days leading up to Christmas Day in a religious way.

In our own secular way, we honour Christmas Day as a major festival with our own family traditions, which include setting aside time each December to do something special.  To me, the significance of Christmas Day to the English side of our family is on par with that of Chinese New Year to the Chinese side of the family.

Since we are not calling our December activities 'advent' activities anymore, I feel a sense of relief that I don't have to come up with 24 different activities for us to complete in order to earn our place at the Christmas table.  I have come up with fewer than 24 activities because I would like to spend some time this year to observe the Dongzhi Festival (冬至), which is another important Chinese festival that takes place near Christmas Day.

Below are our Christmas-related activities for December, in no particular order:

• make Christmas cards
• make lanterns
• watch Christmas-related movies
• listen to Christmas music
• see Christmas lights
• learn to sing three Christmas carols
• learn to recite one Christmas poem
• decorate the house
• decorate the tree
• watch a Christmas-related documentary
• go for two nature walks
• make mince pies
• read Christmas-related stories
• draw Christmas-related drawings

I aim to be more diligent with blogging in December, so having a planned list of activities for the month will give me a good reason to do so.

Wizard and Wand

After all these years of dressing up, Tiger is still fond of doing so (although I suspect not for much longer).  At Halloween, he often dresses up as a wizard, this year being no exception.

He has been fascinated by magic and wizardry so has been practising magic tricks using a few books and a "Magic Tricks Box" that I picked up from the charity shop.

While this is all just fun to a very imaginative boy, I have a strong aversion to conjurors and magicians as I find the idea of deception, a principle on which most 'magic' we are shown is based on, rather objectional.  Therefore, I tried to redirect Tiger's fascination with wizardry to more 'useful' outlets, such as studying the entire Harry Potter series using the related issue of The Arrow for discussion and other English-related work.

We were at King's Cross station the other day, so we went to look for platform 9¾ where Harry Potter boarded the Hogwarts Express for the first time in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

The station was refurbished a few years ago so it is now very bright and spacious, nothing like the dark and slightly dingy King's Cross station that I knew and missed from more than a decade ago.  The station is now almost too modern, cheerful and well-managed for the setting of the story.  While back in the dark and dingy days anyone could walk up and down the platforms freely and tried one's luck at running into a wall without bothering anyone else, there is absolutely no chance of doing that now without looking like a total fool to everyone in the station since there are now no dark corners in the station where one can hide in shame or embarrassment.  Moreoever, new and shiny electronic barriers are now up in front of all the barriers so there is no way to even walk between the actual platorms 9 and 10 to look for platform 9¾ unless you buy a train ticket beforehand.  In short, more progress but less spontaneous fun.

The station authorities have no doubt thought about the station's significance in the Harry Potter story, so a few feet away from platforms 9 to 11 is a wall dedicated to being the famous platform 9¾ , where tourists and fans can pose for photos and visit the shop.

As a result of our dislike for the commercialised aspect of the story, Tiger is adamant that he would not watch any of the Harry Potter movies despite my repeated encouragement.  I thought he might enjoy the movie's special effects so I started watching the first movie.

Tiger watched for 10 minutes and decided that, "The movie has left out too many details.  The book is better."  So that put an end to movie-watching.  Consequently, we need not go to the Warner Brothers Studio Tour too, which saves me a small fortune.

We used the time and money saved from not watching the Harry Potter movies and not going to the studio tour on some real magic, where Tiger made an electronic wand by soldering bits and pieces of resistors and other electronics bits to create a programmable wand using binary codes.

I have not captured the video very well, but the wand was programmed to display the word "bye".  Apparently the wand is able to be programmed to display different six-character words by changing the codes, but I don't really know how the wand works or how to programme the codes to change the word display.  Luckily Tiger paid attention in class and knows how to work it.

 

Where's the Pumpkin?

Last year I made an attempt to wean ourselves off the neigbourhood trick-or-treaters by making it a low-key event that involved just us, indoors.  I neither put our pumpkins outside nor put any decorations out.  Still, they came knocking on our front door, and I had to tell many small, disappointed English witches/wizards/ghouls/zombies/vampires that I was not celebrating Halloween.... I felt like a total villain by the time I said that to the tenth junior vampire who appeared outside my front door.

This year, to redeem myself, I decided that we would be better prepared for the trick-or-treaters.

We started preparing our pumpkin yesterday.  I used a marker pen to draw Tiger's chosen template onto the pumpkin before he proceeded with carving it to the music of Mussorsky.

I must say that we are very pleased with our pumpkin this year.  We think it really captures the essence of the spirit of Halloween.

After we had enjoyed the roasted pumpkin seeds, I put the Jack-O-Lantern out while Tiger decorated the front porch in preparation for night fall.  My husband even donated his car for a few hours to let a skeleton sit in the driver's seat, which totally scared a little four-year-old witch who refused to let go of her mother's neck when she spotted it.

All went really well this evening.  We were graced with visits from over 30 young English witches/wizards/ghouls/zombies/vampires, resulting in the sweets being nearly all taken.  We were all enjoying giving the sweets away when, about 20 minutes after nightfall, I noticed that our pumpkin had disappeared! 

I thought it might have rolled off the front step -- which is quite impossible to begin with since it is huge and heavy -- so I looked for it all out at the front of the house, but I could not see it anywhere.  Since I was not expecting anyone to take our pumpkin away, I only bought one this year.  For the rest of the evening, we had to rely on our milk jug ghost to annouce to the neighbourhood children that we are playing Halloween this year.

How bizarre it is to have a Jack-O-Lantern stolen on Halloween night!  This has never happened before so we are all quite perplexed by the incident.  Who would do something like this, and what can anyone do with the pumpkin after tonight?  The pumpkin is neither expensive nor particularly difficult to carve.  Our conclusion is that the foxes living in the nearby woods must have carried it off to their dens to have their own Halloween celebrations, or maybe the cats might have done so...

Chongyang Festival

The above clip is a very famous verse, 《醉花阴》，written by the Song dynasty female poet, Li Qingzhao (李清照）, about how badly she missed her husband who was away on official business on the Chongyang Festival (重阳节).

Chongyang Festival falls on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar, hence it is also called the Double Ninth Festival.

The festival took place a week ago on Wednesday.  As is customary with traditional Chinese festivals, there are special food to go with it, so I spent a whole day in the kitchen making the various desserts from scratch, as these specific festive food cannot be bought in the UK.

These are by no means the only type of dessert to be had in the traditional sense.  I only made what I can manage to do with the ingredients I could find:

1. Chrysanthemum Tea (菊花茶）
2. Chrysanthemum Crisp （菊花酥）
3. Goji Chrysanthemum Cake (枸杞菊花糕）
4. Tricolor Chongyang Cake (三色重阳糕） 
5. Chestnut Chongyang Cake (桂花板栗重阳糕)

Tiger's favourites are (2), (4) and (5).

Besides eating specific food, there are so specific customs associated with the Chongyang Festival.

Usually the Chinese people will go for a hike on the hills or mountains on this day to be in touch with nature.  Since we don't have hills or mountains near us, Tiger and I got our nature fix by doing some gardening.

You might have noticed that the chrysanthemum flower features very prominently at the Chongyang Festival -- hence Tiger's gardening task was to pot a bunch of chrysanthemum.  To the Chinese people, the chrysanthemum flower symbolises elegance and courage.  It is therefore a significant symbol of autumn for us.

Tiger asked whether there is a poem that goes with the Chongyang Festival, to which I replied that there are many but the most beautiful is the verse by Li Qingzhao, which is shown in the clip at the beginning of this post.  He is not ready to learn it yet though, as the depth of emotions described in the verse and the masterful use of language are beyond his comprehension at present.

Looking At the Same Moon

The Sunday that has just gone by was the Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节）.  For the Chinese, it was a time for contemplation and family togetherness.  I cannot find any better clips about the festival than the ones I found last year, so Tiger and I watched those for review.  After all, a tradition is such because it has been observed and practised consistently for over a millenia, so there is no need to watch a new video every year because the legends and practices associated with the festival are the same.

I found myself panicking in the middle of last week, having realised that I did not have sufficient traditional paper lanterns and mooncakes for the occasion.  Luckily, I was able to order them on the internet and receive them just in time!

I wanted us to make a simple craft to mark the occasion.  Since we have made paper lanterns before, we decided to paint appropriate motifs onto glass jars and turn them into glass lanterns by putting a tealight in each.  While the motifs turned out well, the effect was not as good in the evenings with the tealights in them.  I am going to add more colours to the glass paintings to see whether that helps to transform the glass jars into votive candles.

In addition, Tiger is learning a new classical Chinese poem for the occasion.  Last year he learnt the poem，Contemplation on a Quiet Night 《静夜思》, by the Tang dynasty poet, Li Bai (李白）.  This year I have chosen another poem related to the festival, again by the same poet.  This year's poem is titled The Ancient Moon Recital 《古朗月行》.

The original poem has eight lines but Tiger is only learning the first half of it, i.e. the first four lines.  The reasons for that are: (1) the use of language in the second half of the poem is more complicated, and (2) the tone of the second half of the poem is infused with sadness as the poet alludes to the political instability of his time.  

Easter Eggs and Dark Chocolate

We don't always do much for Easter.  The last time we did anything for it was two years ago, so it's time to decorate the eggs again!

We tried a few different methods of dyeing our eggs, with mixed results:

1. direct painting with food colouring - didn't work too well
2. direct painting with coloured pastes made of food colouring and bicarbonate of soda - didn't work either
3. marbling with nail polish - worked ok but very messy
4. marbling with ink - worked ok but the marbling ink stinks
5. soaking cracked eggs in coloured water - worked!

Needless to say, we were slightly disappointed to get little success compared to the amount of effort we had to put in to get a few half decent-looking eggs!  However, since I had the marbling ink out, Tiger then went on to do some 'proper' marbling on watercolour paper.

Tiger found the texture of the ink and the semi-random (one can manipuate the patterns made by the ink to some extent) patterns that it makes fascinating.  We both found the smell too strong and unpleasant though, so the pieces of marbled paper were left to dry outside for a few hours to get rid of the smell.

Since our dyed eggs haven't turned out too well, we thought we might have better results drawing them.

While we were drawing, Tiger wondered what the connection is between the chocolate eggs and Jesus.  We had talked about this before but he obviously needed some reminder, so I pointed him to the videos that we had watched two years ago.

As we watched the video about how the festival of Easter has evolved from the fertility goddess of ancient Mesopotamia through to the Anglo Saxon times, Tiger was intrigued by a piece of obscure information about an ancient manuscript, the Codex Sinaiticus. 

He then took it upon himself to look through the ancient Greek text on the British Library website, and spent the next hour and a half attempting to translate it from ancient Greek to modern English.  I did suggest to Tiger that he has a better chance of success at translating ancient Chinese texts since I can give him a hand at that but I can't help with ancient Greek.  Despite my offer, Tiger decided to have a go at translating the Codex anyway, and he got as far as translating the first stanza in 1.5 hours.  It was a slow, long-drawn process by the looks of it, but I think he's off to a good start.  In the process, Tiger taught himself much about ancient Christian history and theology, translation techniques, texts comparisons, and language rules (grammar, syntax, sentence structure).  It is all quite fascinating to watch.

Once he has had enough of translating, we resumed our happy research on Easter chocolate eggs and how they are made in the factory:

From the consumer perspective where we see chocolate eggs stacked along the shelves of supermarkets, we then moved slowly along the supply chain and traced the source of the main ingredient, cocoa beans.  What we found is not a happy situation at all:

Tiger was slightly upset -- as any naturally uncorrupted human being would be -- by what he saw in the documentary above, but I think it is important for him to start becoming aware that our relatively safe, first-world existence is not to be taken for granted, and that many people suffer injustice and exploitation every day.  Although we may not be able to offer a solution, at the very least we should not become part of the problem by sheltering ourselves in apathy and igorance.