Ric Swenson on sat 6 may 06
Hello all!
Great to hear from so many of you. I appreciate all your comments and
encouragements. Life teaching English to Chinese College students is a
great life. The added benefit of being in a place where art is so important
only enhances my love of the place. Ceramics is a great field to study.
I had sent my last missal to CLAYART, but it was not working last week.
Sorry folks..... you missed a good one. Wish I could re-send it......but I
tried three times. Maybe sometime I can re-send it?
The past week I have spent some time exploring the back streets of Jing De
Zhen. Some is disturbing and poverty abounds to some extent, but most is
uplifting and inspiring. The slices of life I have seen in the past
week....a week of the MAY DAY celebration...(read 'Labor Day') has been
fabulous.
For instance : it is the THE week to get married in China. There were SO
many cars decorated with flowers and trailing cars with
balloons.............it was fantastic. Happy people.
I went to a number of historic sites and kiln sites and factories this week
to see production of wares. There are literally hundreds of thousands of
people in this one city making ceramics ! Out of a population of 1.2
million souls here, at least 3/4 have some work to do in glazing,
firing,forming, selling or shipping ceramic goods. The rest support the
others with food and supplies. I visited Noel O'Connel and his Chinese
business partner....they are starting a design company here that is
fabulous. He is a grad of U. of Wisconsin I believe. Smart stuff.
In the back streets I have seen poor peasants and ordinary workers just
doing their work. Everyone works hard here, believe me. There were 6 men
weeding the college lawns by hand this morning as I made my way through the
campus.
As the population of 900 million farmers here in China move to the urban
areas there are changes occuring on a massive scale. One cannot imagine the
changes that will occur over the next few years.
As an example, I have made a number of ceramic pieces here in China at the
KOICA studio sponsored by the Korean Govt. I used the local clay.....which
, to tell you the truth is more like trying to throw firmed up-casting
slip.......it is extremely thixotropic........soft and mushy and feeling
deflocculated....in getting the pieces glazed and fired, I discovered that
there are experts that DO that work here. and for 10 yuan ( about 20 US
cents....I would just HAVE IT DONE FOR ME.) I chose a celadon glaze of
light green and SHAZAMMM ! it is done and delivered back to me in just two
days. YIKES!
One could get used to this.............or not. !? ( I am sort of used to
doin' my own shit, after 40 years of makin' pots. after all.) Different;
and yet it makes me appreciate the skills and techniques of the folks here.
No wonder we as a world have let the Chinese make our shoes and clothing and
electronics........it is SO easy to let them.
I continue to admire their cooking and food. It never ends.........there
are a hundreds of small restaurants within 10 minutes walk of where I sit
now typing......and all offer specialties that you in America and Europe
have never seen. You think you know Chinese food? Not the way they do it
in China. Marco Polo maybe brought some aspects to Europe, but I have never
seen Sesame Chicken or chow mien here. NEVER. I have only been here for 8
weeks, but I have eaten at a few places now, and it is apparent that all the
chinese food I ever ate was from a different China than this one.
This morning I was taxied (cabbed??) to the center of town to be a judge in
the CCTV-10 (People's TV stations include 10-12 channels of TV that range
'from the ridiculous to the sublime', as someone once said about other
subjects.....) a contest for 7-11 years olds trying to speak English as best
they could. And they all did very well.... I might add..... From 8:30 'til
11:30 I listened and rated 50 entrants in the local Jing De Zhen
competition. They were all fabulous and quite inspiring..........but only
the top 10 ten get to go on to the next level in the Nanjing competition.
The five judges still got to go to lunch together, regardless of who won.
So goes life. As my Father used to say " Some days you eat the bear and
some days the bear eats you."
Have I told you how great the people are here? If I haven't, let me please.
The people here are great. They all have smiles galore and even on the
most impoverished, toothless peasant I can find a smile if I say 'Nee Hao'
and give a smile of my own. They are NOT used to foreigners and are very
curious about us "Gusiks" ( Eskimo for "round eyes")
The weather has turned wet and hot. Not my favorite sort of weather, but I
have AC in the dorm room so I can escape it when I need to. I understand it
gets hotter in summer so I can hardly wait to have two months off in Aug and
Sept to travel North to Mongolia or Tibet and seek respite. I get paid
during that time and also get a travel allowance of 2000 yuan, so I am
looking forward to that time. I chose not to travel during the Labor day
holiday this week because I was told it would be crowded in Beijing and
Shanghai and elsewhere, and the trains and buses would be crowded as well. A
good choice IMHO.
Eight weeks here and I have barely scratched the surface.
Stay tuned ........ and "Keep your stick on the ice"
Off to San Bao, about 15 minutes away by taxi............. tomorrow to visit
kiln /pottery sites. I will have 'three, count em, three' beautiful Chinese
students to help me find my way....."such a deal".
Ric
"...then fiery expedition be my wing, ..."
Wm. Shakespeare, RICHARD III, Act IV Scene III
Richard H. ("Ric") Swenson, Teacher,
Office of International Cooperation and Exchange of Jingdezhen Ceramic
Institute, TaoYang Road, Eastern Suburb, Jingdezhen City
JiangXi Province, P.R. of China
Postal code 333001
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Marcia Selsor on sat 6 may 06
Ric,
Great stories. My husband goes to nanjing in August to teach two
weeks at the university.
Keep the stories coming. I wish I had done that in '94 from Uzbekistan.
Amazing experiences for Westerners.
Marcia Selsor
http://marciaselsor.com
Helen Bates on sat 6 may 06
Dear Ric,
I am enjoying reading about your stay in China, especially this latest
letter. There may have been some problems with the Clayart software just
around the time you sent your previous post. Maybe the post would get
through OK now, if you were to try again.
By the way, it will help if you change one letter in any reply to this
e-mail. Hit "Reply" then change the n to a y, ie: nelbanell to yelbanell.
Then the post will be forwarded to my private address and I won't miss it
in the yahoo.ca trash bucket for spam.
Sincerely, Helen
Belleville, Ontario
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