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:
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.
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.
It started out innocently enough, with us learning about a Victorian explorer/missionary, David Livingstone, and his travels in Africa.
A few chapters into the main book that we were reading for this topic, we came across the concept of slavery, which quickly turned our attention onto the transatlantic slave trade that was undergoing huge changes in the Victorian times when slavery had been going on for centuries but people were just starting to make progess in abolishing the practice, openly at least. As we saw last month when learning about chocolate, slavery still exists today in various forms.
While the art gallery session gave us a good overview into the abolition process towards the end of the slave trade, we wanted to understand more of this sad history of human trafficking, so we attended a Slavery Study Day at the Museum of London Docklands.
This museum is a very relevant to the learning of the transatlantic slave trade, specifically of the sugar trade, because the building was the former warehouse for the sugar that came to London from West Africa, where the sugar canes were grown and where slaves were used on those plantations. On the third floor of the museum is the London, Sugar & Slavery gallery where we saw some harrowing instruments of enslavement and cruelty.
The various sessions throughout the study day were very interesting and informative. We started with an introductory session where we were given an overview of the slave trade, how it began, why West Africa in particular, people's attitudes at that time, and how it ended.
There was also an object handling session where we learnt about Africa pre-and-post slave trade through various objects that symbolise the produce of that continent (e.g. sugar cane, tobacco) and its varied culture (e.g. small bronze sculptures from Benin, gourd drums). The main objective of the session is to dispel the misconceptions of early Europeans that dark-skinned people were sub-human or that they had an inferior/non-existing culture, which I think the children understands very well.
The most interesting session of that day, for me, was the poetry session where the workshop leader engaged the children in various language exercises to reflect upon what they had heard, seen, and felt in the previous sessions, in relation to the topic of the day, i.e. slavery. The children then had to write a short poem about slavery. There was a family of African descent in attendance that day, and those children wrote the poetic verses on the topic that day, far more insightful and sensitively written than anyone else in the room. I wonder whether the topic being very close to their personal ancestral history has something to do with their ability to feel its relevance much deeper than the rest of us.
Considering the gravity of this topic, I think the museum has handled the displays and the sessions with great care and sensitivity. I was very interested in the reaction of the African family to this topic so I observed them for the whole day, in addition to paying attention to the sessions, of course. It seemed to me that the mother was slightly uncomfortable with certain exhibits in the gallery and with some points that were discussed in the various sessions. I imagine it must feel strange for someone of African descent to hear about the history of slavery from Europeans. I personally would be very interested to hear the British side of the story about the Opium Wars but since this topic is not in the National Curriculum, I would not have the pleasure of seeing how it is taught to children in this country, if at all.
I chanced upon a company that sells various themed mystery/treasure trails around the country. The trails look quite interesting and challenging, and appears to offer a fun day out, so we tried out the one that is set in Convent Garden area.
Tiger was keen to take the lead for solving the mystery. The trail is designed such that we are only told the starting point (this particular trail started outside the Leicester Square tube station), and have to find our way around by following the clues given in each step of the trail, which are in turned only revealed when we solve each cryptic code accurately. We thought it would be very easy, but we realised that we were totally lost after three hours of walking around the side streets and narrow lanes in the Soho/Convent Garden vicinity and finding ourselves barely halfway through our trail. The guideline on the trail says that it should take 1.5 to 2 hours to complete the trail. Ooops.
Feeling very hot, bothered, and utterly defeated, we gave up for the day and went home to rethink our strategy for solving the mystery.
We returned to complete the trail the next day, this time better prepared, both mentally and physically.
There must be something about wearing the Yorkshire flat cap that invoked Tiger's inner detective, as we were much more successful on our second attempt to complete the trail and hence solve the related mystery. It took Tiger less than an hour to this time, and as we ended up in Convent Garden Market where there are many interesting sights to be seen, we spent the rest of the day congratulating ourselves for being super sleuths and rewarding ourselves with fantastic food found in the market.
Encouraged by our success at the Convent Garden trail, we then spent another fun day solving a second murder mystery, this time at Bankside. I chose this location thinking that we would have a greater success because it has a shorter completion time of 1.5 hours, and that having been to that area many times we ought to know most of the places there.
Not wanting to take any chances this time, Tiger started studying the trail and working out the most efficient route once we got on the tube to get our first destination.
Our starting point this time is outside the London Bridge tube station, near the Southwark Cathedral. This proved to be very interesting for me because we had mostly hung out on the St. Paul's Cathedral side of the river, so starting the trail from Southwark is an opportunity for us to explore a few new places.
And exploring and discovering new places we certainly did! The trail took us through many significant, new-to-us landmarks that we did not know about or had not visited before. Seeing new places is always exciting, especially when it is done in conjunction with delicious food, as we found when we were led to Borough Market.
It was Tiger's first visit to Borough Market, and the sights and sounds of the market fascinated him. More importantly, we found a stall that sells Thai desserts and mango sticky rice which we both love to eat!
The trail gradually led us towards the side of the Thames that we are more familiar with, whereupon we walked past the Clink Prison Museum and Tiger wanted to go in to take a look.
I knew about this museum but did not take Tiger here for a visit when we studied Medieval England because I thought: (1) it looked more like a commerical attraction than a real, historical accurate museum, and (2) the content may be too gruesome and hence inappropriate for a young child. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that not only are the exhibits and artefacts historically accurate, the representation of this gruesome aspect of medieval history is not unnecessarily gory. Tiger was fascinated by the exhibits, while I was slightly appalled by the inhumane use of certain instruments of punishment.
As we approached the end of the trail, we were brought to 'theatre-land' (at least in Tudor/Elizabethan times) and came upon the original site of the Globe Theatre, which was burned to the ground. Although Tiger and I have visited the current Shakespeare's Globe theatre many times in the past,
we have not been to the original site until now. It is interesting to
see that the site is now part of a compound inside a housing estate. Not far from it stands the Rose Theatre, which was the first purpose-built theatre on Bankside (predating The Globe Theatre) in Tudor time.
We walked the trail at a very leisurely pace, so it took us nearly a
whole day to complete it but we stopped and enjoyed our discovery of
many previously unknown-to-us places as the clues took us down side
streets or made us look closely at certain architectural and historical
features along the way.
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.
The Chinese New Year ended on Thursday with the Lantern Festival (元宵节). Compared to last year, my effort at this year's Chinese New Year celebration is somewhat lacklustre. However, I console myself that we have at least managed to focus on having Chinese dishes this past week.
The recipes have been adjusted for our dietary requirements:
We also pulled out our copy of The Warlord's Puzzle to have a play with tangrams, a 7-piece puzzle from ancient China that Tiger had a go with nearly five years ago.
The appeal of the tangrams is its deceptive simplicity. There are only three shapes and seven pieces. However, as we have found, to solve the puzzles are not an easy task. Tiger has been working through a tangrams puzzle book last week just for the fun of it. At first, he was quite frustrated with hiimself for not being able to solve the puzzles immediately but after a few rounds, he started to be able to visualise how the different pieces can be combined together in numerous ways. From then on, he was able to solve a few puzzles on his own.
I used the study guide that accompanies the book for activity ideas and the one that caught Tiger's interest most was that of writing a cinquain, which is a 5-line patterned poetry form that bears some resemblance to the nature poems written by ancient Chinese poets.
It appears that the patterned format of cinquains has a strong appeal to Tiger, so not only did he enthusiastically write three of them, he even went as far as editing and rewriting each one a few times before he was happy with the final result. In the process of editing his various drafts, Tiger happily highlighted to me that he was employing the write-in-the-margin lesson that he has learnt from Tolkien not so long ago.
We had time to have another poetry tea with a Chinese snack (sesame cookies) in the week, so I taught Tiger to recite another Tang poem about spring: "Early Spring" (早春) by Han Yu (韩俞)
This poem describes the beautiful scene of a street in Chang'an (长安), the capital city during the Tang dynasty, in the early spring drizzle. After having the meaning of the poem explained to him, Tiger was attracted to its sound and rhythm so he learnt the poem easily and quickily, and he even sang the poem alongside the clip above! Poetry, regardless of the language it is written in, portrays a sense of linguistic beauty and mastery to its reader/listener. I am very glad to see Tiger showing much joy and pride in reciting and translating classical Chinese poetry very well. After all, having an intimate relationship with classical Chinese poetry is part of identifying with the soul of the Chinese culture.
Since it is the Chinese New Year, we have a good excuse to do another Chinese-themed tea. As with the previous Chinese tea we had during the Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节), our Chinese New Year tea was filled with traditional Chinese snacks:
Peanut butter mochi (花生米糬)
Sesame mochi (芝麻米糬)
Peanut dainties (花生酥)
Mung bean patties (绿豆酥)
Fuzhou cyrstal puffs (福洲水晶饼)
Pandan rice cake (香兰叶糕)
Alongside enjoying the snacks and drinking rose tea, Tiger learned a new poem -- <<春晓>> (Spring Dawn) by another Tang dynasty poet, Meng Haoran (孟浩然).
This poem depicts the poet's contemplation upon a dawn in springtime. Given that the Chinese New Year is also called the Spring Festival (春节) as it marks the beginning of spring in the Chinese calendar, learning this particular poem seems very appropriate.
Besides memorising and reciting the poem, Tiger also learnt how the poem can be depicted as a painting and a song,
as well as a piece of music that is popular during the Chinese New Year.
Monday was the Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节), the fifteenth day of the eighth month in the lunar calendar.
There are many legends about this festival, the best known one being the legend of Chang'e:
As with many ancient Chinese legends that were originally orally transmitted, there are many different versions of the same story. The version that is depicted in the clip above differs slightly from the ones that Tiger learns from the books or from the ones I heard as a child:
I asked Tiger for a narration of the various legends about the festival and he rattled off three superb narrations of the various stories he has read. I was so amazed by his new-found willingness to provide a long narration that I forgot to type them out as he spoke, so unfortunately I have no record of them but at least I now know that Tiger is able to narrate beautifully when he can be bothered to.
After his narrations, I told him the different versions of the legends that I learnt as a child. Using these different versions, we discussed about the beauty and drawbacks of the ancient oral tradition to transmit knowledge and wisdom. I also told Tiger about the lesser known, related stories of:
(1) the only other human occupant on the moon (besides Chang'e), Wu Gang (吴刚), and his divine punishment of having to chop down a self-healing osmanthus tree, and
(2) the Jade Rabbit (玉兔).
These two stories are beautifully depicted below:
As with all major Chinese festivals, the Mid-Autumn Festival is to celebrate family togetherness with specific symbolic foods.
The food that is specifically tied to the Mid-Autumn Festival is the mooncake (月饼), so called because of its traditional round shape that symbolises the moon, union, and togetherness.
Our double-yolk and walnut mooncakes with date paste. Yum!
There are many varieties of mooncakes, depending on the regions in which they originate. The type that is most widely available in the West is the Cantonese type. Other varieties of mooncakes are explained in the clip below.
Other than the traditional custom of consuming the mooncake as a symoblic festive food, there is also a more political association in medieval Chinese history. In the 14th century, the ethnic Chinese used the mooncake to conceal revolutionary messages that led to the toppling of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty, and the subsequent establishment of the Ming dynasty.
Besides the mooncake, the other symbolic item of the Mid-Autumn festival is the lantern.
In a similar fashion to the Yuanxiao Festival (元宵节) that marks the end of the Chinese New Year, lanterns are lit and displayed at the Mid-Autumn Festival, with riddles to be solved. However, the difference is that the public display of lanterns at the Mid-Autumn Festival encompasses all kinds of shapes, sizes and colours. Moreover, Chinese children in the Southeast Asian countries also have the additional practice of carrying lanterns in a procession.
The traditional custom is to sit outside in the evening of the Mid-Autumn Festival to admire the moon whilst enjoying tea and mooncake.
We stood outside for a short while to admire the full moon and the very bright moonlight.
It has been very chilly in the evenings here so we decided to alter the tradition slightly to suit our circumstance by having a Chinese version of poetry tea in the afternoon instead.
The format follows that of our usual English version of poetry tea, except that:
we ate mooncakes instead of scones or biscuits;
we drank rose tea instead of peppermint tea;
we used our traditional Chinese tea set instead of an English tea set;
we worked on Chinese classical poetry instead of English poetry.
I used this opportunity to show Tiger the proper procedures of using the Chinese tea set and to some of the Chinese tea etiquette:
An additional aspect of the Mid-Autumn Festival is the poetic connection, which lends itself very well to the format of poetry tea. There are many classical Chinese poetry about the moon and the feeling of home-sickness associated with not being able to be with one's family at this particular time of the year, the most basic of which is Contemplation on a Quiet Night (静夜思):
I taught Tiger to recite the poetry, followed by discussing about its structure, rhythm and rhyme, as well as the poet's choice of words. Naturally, we also worked on its meaning.
The final piece of work Tiger was to do was to write the pinyin (phonetic tones) for every character of the poem and to write below each verse its English translation in coherent sentences without losing the poetic meaning of the original verses. He was given the tasks prior to my showing him the clip above so he was pleased to see that he has completed the tasks correctly. After some practice (and a few pieces of mooncake), Tiger is able to recite this poem fluently in Mandarin as well as translate it instantly. This poem is now part of his daily memory work.
Since we have learned this poem, it makes sense to know a bit more about the poet, Li Bai (李白), the 'immortal poet' from the Tang dynasty.
The Mid-Autumn Festival is such a poetic time that this post will be incomplete without leaving you with another beautiful depiction in sand art:
The song that accompanies the clip above is set to verses from another classical Chinese poetry (水调歌头) by Su Shi (苏轼), a famous poet from the Song dynasty. These verses are more complex than Contemplation on a Quiet Night (静夜思) so we will only learn them in a few years' time, after Tiger has acquired sufficient knowledge of the Chinese language to meaningfully appreciate the sentiments described in the verses.
The seventh month of the Chinese lunar calendar is known as the "ghost month". It is the month where the spirits of the deceased from netherworld are allowed to roam the living realm. More specifically, a festival of rituals and offerings is held on the 15th day of the seventh month, when (according to traditional Chinese beliefs) the gates of hell open.
This festival is observed by both Taoists and Buddhists, for slightly different reasons. To the Taoists, the festival is called Zhongyuan Jie (中元节) while the Buddhists call it Ullambana (盂兰盆会). While there are certainly differences in the Taoists' and the Buddhists' rituals to honour the deceased, they share the goals of:
deliverance of suffering of the deceaseds' souls;
reminding the Chinese people the importance of filial piety and compassion;
bringing hope to those who are alive that their loved ones are in a better place.
As this is one of the traditional Chinese festivals, practices and interpretation of the festival have been amalgamted with folk traditions of ancestral worship to form a rather unique, grassroot type of mixed practice for the layman (i.e. those who are neither strictly Taoist nor strictly Buddhist) where many taboos are observed and a lot of paper offerings are burnt with a view that they will bring the deceased an 'easier' life in the netherworld.
I personally prefer the Buddhist story that explains the origin of the festival, because it emphasizes filial piety and the importance of living a life guided by moral principles.
In Asia, the rituals of the seventh lunar month are widely observed. With many ghost stories and folklores being told amongst friends at this time, alongside the frequent sights of burning paper offerings and religious rituals, whether you like it or not, you will feel a slightly different atmosphere in the air. There is not a hint of this festival in the UK, and it being the summer here, there is none of that ghostly feeling that one gets in Asia during this time. However, I would like Tiger to know about this significant Chinese festival in relation to some of the important moral values in the Chinese tradition so I asked him to read up on this festival:
before showing him the clip below to let him have a sense of what it would be like to be watching an actual street performance of the Buddhist story of Mulian saving his mother:
Other than street performances, there are other more formal Chinese opera performances of the same story. We watched one of them (see the clip below) and talked about the similarities and differences between a formal performance and a street performance in terms of the quality of the stage, costume, props, and skills required by the actors.
Of course, one cannot make a fair comparison between a street performance (where anyone can stop by and watch the show for free) and a formal performance (with a much bigger budget and crew, and where people pay to watch the show).
Tiger has watched La Boheme at the Royal Opera House before, so it has been interesting for him to note the differences between Chinese operas (in general) and Western operas in terms of style and stage techniques.
While we are not going to burn any paper offerings or observe any religious rituals while we live in the UK, I was still able to observe the festival in a small way: by making a simple stir-fry vegetarian dish using 10 different ingredients:
I'm a little late with this, but better late than never!
The Qixi festival (七夕), takes place on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month. The festival has evolved from an ancient tradition of celebrating women's skills at handcrafts and needlework to becoming a commericalised "Chinese Valentine's Day", which emphasises more about love and romance. Even though the legend behind this festival involves the separation of a couple, the original focus of the tradition was on the the weaving skill that Weaver Maiden (织女) brought down from heaven and taught to the common folk. There's nothing wrong with celebrating love and romance, but it's also good to know the original context of the festival.
This year the festival took place last Saturday, August 2nd. We did not do much with it apart from learning it is celebrated in modern day China:
and eating symbolic food that goes with the festival to represent sweetness and happiness: a fruit salad made up of seven different types of fruit. I used the following:
kiwi
pear
honeydew melon
blueberry
peach
watermelon
mango
If I were more organised, I would probably have found some needlework or craft to go with this festival, but I'm on my summer break (that's my excuse for this year)!
At Home with Chinese
We spent most of this week at home focusing on Chinese.
As the school year is coming to a close, Tiger has to
prepare for his end-of-year Chinese exam and to complete the end-of-term
projects set by his Chinese teacher.
There are six projects to complete, which contribute to 20% of his yearly assessment:
1. to draw and label various parts of the body;
2. to construct sentences using specific words;
3. to translate a Chinese nursery rhyme into English;
The nursery rhyme that we chose to translate is a traditional one to Chinese children, in much the same way as Jack and Jill is to a Western child.
4. to make a greeting card based on a traditional Chinese festival and write appropriate greetings inside the card;
5. to research and write about a traditional Chinese festival;
6. to research and write two sets of questions and answers about some geographical aspects of China.
Tiger wanted to make a Chinese New Year card because, being a typical boy who seeks the shortest way to get a job done, he finds that the illustrations of this year's (Year of the Horse) card can be easily done by a few brush strokes so that was what he did, using a reference photo from a google search and following along using gold paint. The result turns out alright, as seen in the red card above. The illustration shows a combination of the year 2014 with the word 'horse' in traditional Chinese character.
We decided to look into another traditional Chinese festival for our research project. There are so many festivals to choose from, but we decided to learn more about one that has just passed (the Dragon Boat festival) quietly in our household because I couldn't get all the ingredients together to make the rice dumplings...
Note to myself: please stay on top of the festivals!
Why the dragon boats and rice dumplings? Many traditional Chinese festive customs have to do with actual historical accounts. It is no different on this occasion:
Although we're not officially studying the Vikings at the moment, the flexibility of homeschooling has allowed us the opportunity to visit this rare exhibition -- the first Viking exhibition in England in 30 years -- and to see for ourselves the longest Viking warship that has ever been found!
Hence, even though Vikings are not on our current schedule, we feel it is certainly worth taking a little time out to refresh our memory about what we've learnt about the Vikings (we studied them two years ago) in addition to looking at real Viking artefacts that we hadn't seen before.
While we were at the exhibition, we were treated to additional interaction with the learning coordinators, both inside the exhibition and afterwards, who provided more directions and suggestions on looking at the exhibits to the children.
I wasn't sure whether Tiger remembers what he learnt from two years ago, but he apparently does, as shown by his enthusiastic and accurate responses to the quiz at the end of the visit.
