beijing

Reflections

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Now that I’m back in the states, spending time in a familiar environment, and falling back into the daily routine, I’ve been alloted some time to reflect upon the new friends that I made during the field program.

Upon arriving in Beijing I felt indescribably sad, with a strong sense of foreboding that didn’t seem to have a defined root or cause. All I knew was that I felt terrible and couldn’t wait to go home. The next morning I met some of the people in the group. At first I thought I may have gotten off on the wrong foot with Jeanette because I basically stole her room, but she turned out to be one of the most friendly and enthusiastic people on the trip. It blew my mind that the person renting out her room for the summer was my old roommate. Small world I guess. Jeanette will always be the bug magnet to me. I’m always going to remember her swollen legs and the constant smell of repellent that followed her wherever she went.

I was unsure what to think about Megan at first. Being older than me, I kind of expected her to be in some weird mother goose role. This wasn’t the case at all. Her cynicism and sense of humor matched up perfectly with mine, and helped me keep my sanity through some of the weirder portions of our stay. Her taste in TV was also so good. I’ve started to watch Dr. Who on her recommendation and it’s great!

Next I met Jo and Yu-Ting. Their combo was hilarious to me. They had all these weird notions of the type of person that I was right off the bat that while sometimes brutally honest, gave me something to think in terms of how I’m perceived by others, and more importantly how I am perceived by people in differing cultures. For instance, just based on the way that I spoke and moved around, Jo thought that I might be gay. I realize that I am more articulate than most guys when I explain things or interact with people, but I never really thought about it being classified as a “gay” way of acting. It also made me wonder what kind of people Jo has had the pleasure of meeting in Eugene. A lot of “bros” perhaps? Yu-Ting was great as well. Extremely blunt in her opinions and observations (not sure if this was because of the language barrier or her natural character, I think a bit of both). The thing I enjoyed most about Yu-Ting’s company was seeing her and her boyfriend with each other. Probably two of the happiest people I’ve ever seen together. He was so nice too! Always holding her bags and doing little things for her. Something I don’t really see back here in the states. Both Jo and Yu-Ting loved showing me around, and seemed to be delighted that I loved shopping so much. Also Jo’s strong interest in seeing me wear skinny-jeans was puzzling, but funny to me.

Naan (I dunno if I’m spelling this right but whenever I’d hear her name an image of Naan bread would flash through my mind) was so amazing! She balanced the social aspects of being in the group as a student perfectly with her duties as a guide and translator. I never felt like she was an authority figure or afraid of disapproval or judgment from her. She always had answers to my many questions and really made me feel welcome in Beijing. Plus she went above and beyond during those long translating sessions at Beijing Normal and elsewhere.

Rosalyn was another great person to have around. She along with Megan provided the cynicism and black humor that kept me grounded throughout the trip. Rosalyn noticed things that other people didn’t notice, commented on them, and was never afraid to voice her opinion. She was a great leader for our group and extremely engaged throughout our meetings and work sessions. I fully realize that she could have spent the majority of her time with her husband, but she made an effort to be part of the group, and I’m very thankful that she did because she was an awesome person to have around. I feel so bad about the revolving restaurant thing though!

As for John and Doug, I don’t think I could have asked for two better instructors. They were a lot more like friends than supervisors, which is really what I was hoping for. Doug was possibly the kindest person I’ve ever met. He always asked me if I was feeling good and if there was anything he should be worried about. The one thing that really stuck out in my mind was his concern for my feelings about sending pictures of our trip to my mom. It wasn’t even on my radar in terms of things that I’d be worried about, but he was actively thinking about it. I really appreciated this thoughtfulness, even if it was unneeded, and will never forget it. John was  a fantastic instructor as well. Possessing a strong interest in almost everything, his willingness to try new things and genuine attitude towards our individual likes and tastes was awesome. I always go overboard and nerd out about movies, and he knew about pretty much every on that I mentioned on the trip. John was like the go-to guy for technology, always up on the latest gadgets and electronics. Extremely helpful and eager to please whenever I was having trouble with the compiling of footage or data. It was great meeting his wife and kids (briefly) at the airport and see the family that he clearly loves so much.

So in short, this group of people, all ridiculously different, turned out to be some of the most pleasant individuals to spend what I consider the closest thing to a life changing experience with, and they’re part of what made it a life changing experience! I could go on talking about all of the great cultural things that I learned about China and the famous sites I visited, but one of the things that I valued most about the program are the people that I met and the relationships that I built with them during our stay.

dispersal

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We’ve finished the fieldwork/residency phase of the field school, and rather successfully at that! Now we move on to various locations: Shanghai, Tsingtao, other parts of Beijing, or all the way back to Oregon. We will reconvene at the beginning of August—from wherever we all are—in order to process fieldwork materials into ChinaVine content (initially available via Vine Online). Continue checking this site for updates from the teams and ongoing conversations about culture, heritage, fieldwork, and interpretation. Great job and happy travels, everyone!

Field school progress…

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At this point, we are more than halfway through our Beijing-based, ChinaVine-driven field school, and everything is moving along according to—and in many ways, exceeding—our plans. As co-directors, we spent many hours planning and imagining the experience we’d like students to have in Beijing, the whole time realizing that, ultimately, much of the experience would be in their hands. And, luckily, they have taken that responsibility on and have worked with us to successfully conduct rewarding fieldwork and engage the tasks of documentation and interpretation with an enthusiasm that has made our jobs easy.

The results of their work will be visible on VineOnline (and our course site) toward the middle of August 2011. Each team of student field workers has been tasked with producing two posts for VineOnline—one for each site we’ve visited during our time in Beijing. The first site was Jiangou, a village to the north west of Beijing where we focused on cultural tourism (including “red” tourism efforts that explore the history of Communism), pilgrimage traditions, and rose cultivation. The second site was Songzhuang, to the east of Beijing. As an “artists’ village,” Songzhuang has grown in the past twenty-five years from a place where a handful of artistic pioneers sought affordable work space distanced from the urban renewal of Beijing to a home for over five thousand artists and the site of a “cultural and creative cluster” promoted heavily by regional government. In each site, the students have listened, interviewed, photographed, and otherwise documented the cultural practices and traditions we have encountered. They’ve also eaten, and the image at the top of this post represents a meal cooked for us by artist that ChinaVine has worked with for the past three years: Mr. Her Xue-Sheng. He graciously hosted us during our time in Songzhuang, preparing fresh noodles in the style of his home in the Ningxia region.

So, in the coming weeks be sure to check the VineOnline site in order to follow up on the work produced by the field school students. Their posts will be rich, multimedia explorations of the artists, places, and cultural practices that pull together documentation and interpretation in a manner that extends the mission of ChinaVine. In the meantime, be sure to poke around in this Flickr set highlighting some of the sights from our weeks in Beijing.

a few snaps from Wednesday's Beijing tour…

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I’ve pulled these from a Flickr stream I started. They represent scenes from our first full day in Beijing, during which we visited Tian’an men Square and the Forbidden City in the hot mugginess of a July afternoon. Plenty of other people were out along with us…

our coach

our ride around town, with Oscar the Guide

long view of Tian'an men Square (south to north)

looking down Tian’an men Square, from the south to the north

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the Square is dressed up for the 90th Anniversary of the CCP (which happened on July 1, 2011)

portable photo studio
in Tian'an men Square

two shots from our portable photo studio session; top is the studio in action and bottom is a recreation of the photo he printed for us!

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crowd entering the Forbidden City (south gate)

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somewhere near the middle of the Forbidden City

beware

leaving the Forbidden City (north gate)

Orientation to Conceptions of Culture – 2 Questions

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I chose to read the article Sins of objectification? Agency, mediation, and community cultural self-determination in public folklore and cultural tourism programming. Here are the two questions that I came up with pertaining to the article.

1. Baron mentions professionalism quite a few times in the article, talking about the role of a public folklorist in terms of career goals and advancement. This made me think about intentions and motivation connected to money. In my eyes this field school is much more about knowledge than any type of monetary or career boosting gain. So how do Baron’s themes here change when we, students are given the role of folklorist? Is there a chance that we may be taken less seriously than someone older with more experience? Or do you think that the community members will be more comfortable collaborating with those less informed who lack preconceived expectations about their culture? In other words do you think that we as students are able to represent the cultures of these people in a purer way than a professional, career oriented folklorist?

2. Baron devotes a section of the article to the idea of framing cultures when representing them. He talks about the power of the stage, stating that “While the elevated stage can be constraining for folk performers and thus limit their interactions with audiences, it nevertheless serves as a dominant context for performance in most contemporary cultures.” Baron also quotes Daniel Sheehy by likening the stage to “putting a picture in a frame and hanging it on a wall”. In other words, the stage becomes a tool to help legitimize the art (72). He continues to enumerate the ways in which this framing can be used to diminish the distance between the artist and the audience by “fostering interaction with them”. I am majoring in cinema studies and plan to use my camera heavily in documenting the cultural traditions we will be examining during our stay. I believe that many of the ways in which artists can be framed on the stage can apply to the use of framing in terms of film and cinema. One thing that stood out to me in Baron’s article was the seemingly simple decision on how high to place the stage on which the cultural artists were performing in order to encourage the idea of it being a participatory event. With this in mind, I began to think about the ways in which camera techniques can influence and dictate audience opinion. Everything from camera angles to positioning to color adjustments to use of sound can affect the way in which an audience perceives what they are seeing. What are some techniques that can be used to encourage interaction  and eliminate distance between the subject and the audience? How similar do you think the idea of framing on a stage is to framing with a camera?

Some tips

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Since I’ve already back to Beijing, here are several tips that I think may help you a lot when you go to Beijing.

Beijing Capital Airport has three terminals. The second and third terminals are for international arrival and departure. The sign on the airport are both in Chinese and English. It’s really easy to follow the sign to find everything you want. When arrival airport, the first place you will go is the immigration check. You should prepare your passport, arrival card, and Declaration Form. After enter the Chinese frontier, you can go to pick your langague and find the sign shows where to find the taxi. (If you have problem, just ask in English, most of Chinese can speak simple English). You can show the taxi driver your hotel’s address. It will take about 1 hour to our hotel.

Preparing a mask, the environment in Beijing is not as good as U.S. The air pollution is a little bit serious.

When in the airport, there are a lot of people there, be careful about the thieves. Watching out your wallet and cellphone.

Re-configuring Museums – 2 Questions

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1. Welsh describes the domains of museums as materiality, engagement and representation. In your opinion are these domains applicable to ChinaVine.org? If yes, please provide examples from the website for each domain. If no, please support this response through references to the article and the website.

I believe that all but one of these domains are applicable to ChinaVine.org. Having said that, I think that the one category that doesn’t quite fit with the site can still apply in certain ways. This would be materiality. Welsh states that museums are “repositories for certain categories of the material world”. He makes sure to emphasize the fact that the things they contain are part of a physical setting that puts a focus on the exchange of ideas and the conservation of history and how “people extend their beings by producing, acquiring and exchanging tangible things”. While the ChinaVine.org website does archive cultural information through pictures and text, I believe that it lacks a physicality that is key to the ideas that Welsh writes about. There is a separation that comes when experiencing something through a computer, television or any other electronic device that is a representation rather than an original manifestation or object. Good examples of this can be seen throughout society. For instance: The music industry has seen a rapid decline in sales since the introduction of the MP3 and the rise in file sharing. I think that this is an excellent example of making something available in an intangible form lessens our appreciation or connection with it. On the other hand Welsh states that “Materiality is the domain that encompasses the human capability to modify our surroundings to physically, emotionally and cognitively modify our surroundings to suit our purposes“. I think that by converting the physicality of the subjects into an intangible, electronic form is simply us exercising this human capability in order to make them conform to our needs. We may not be able to bring everyone from the University of Oregon and elsewhere with us to see what we see, but we can convert these experiences into a format that allows us to show them at least a part of their material qualities.

I think that engagement is probably the domain best used to describe ChinaVine.org. Although we are simply moving a mouse over the map of China to trigger different changes in the visuals, we are engaging in an activity that effectively draws us in to the different provinces and locations. The fact that this is a resource of the internet that is accessible to millions of people takes the idea of engagement to a whole other level. Welsh says that “Museums seek to establish relationships with a wide variety of people.” What could do this better than a website? Something such as ChinaVine.org allows for a dialogue to be created between the contributors and the participants that may not be as evident or obvious in something like an actual museum. We as a culture are now understanding the internet as a primary method of interaction and communication, and I think that a website effectively creates an expectation for a “reciprocal relationship”, especially when visitors are encouraged to post comments and interact with the people who are forming the experience.

Representation is the final domain that applies well to the ChinaVine.org site. Welsh writes that representation “-aims to re-frame our awareness of the historical and cultural landscape within museums have created themselves.” The website focuses on presenting an experience that caters to the visual expectations that many of us hold when thinking of China. Everything from the choice in text to an actual map of China being presented first and foremost pushes the idea of a cultural representation of China that provides a sense of instant legitimacy to draw in participants to the real meat of the site. Although it is extremely simple, the tiny box in the bottom left hand corner that reads “Welcome To ChinaVine, A Collaborative Effort In The Preservation of Chinese Folk Art” is a good example of framing the aims and goals of the website in much the same way that museums guide a visitor’s experience through a mission statement in addition to their exhibits. This is elaborated in the “Prologue” and “Our Mission” sections of the site.

2.Welsh describes museums as repositories, educational, celebratory, stewards, learning centers, collaborative, conceptual, and reflexive. Describe how ChinaVine falls into each of these categories. Use at least one example for each supporting your opinion. If you believe that ChinaVine.org is not addressing one of these categories describe how it could do so.

-Repositories: While I believe that ChinaVine.org can be looked at as a repository, Welsh’s definition of one seems to be heavily intertwined with the domain of materiality. Images concerning and comparing things such as the bristle dolls and dough figures in Beijing allow the user to see digital representations of the objects, but don’t allow for a true experience. The descriptions provide a purely informational idea of how and why they are made, but lack the associations  with time, aesthetics, personality, community and discovery.

-Education: I believe that any website has the potential to be educational. ChinaVine.org is no exception. Anything that can create a dialogue about a certain subject can be used to inform or educate someone. I learn something every day from the internet, be it on Facebook, the news blurbs on Yahoo.com, or the price rises and drops on Amazon.com. ChinaVine.org simply takes this a step further by encouraging interaction, interest and preservation of the subject rather than using the internet as a loudspeaker or self-serving purpose. The site also brings the idea of authenticity to the table by showing our very real interactions and experiences in China as legitimate sources of information and learning. I guess you could also look at this as educational on a few levels, as presenting the information on a website encourages a certain amount of knowledge pertaining to navigation and sorting of digital information, which is becoming more and more prevalent in the world today.

-Celebratory: ChinaVine.org certainly can be classified as celebratory. Welsh describes this aspect of museums as accentuating “-positive relationships with their subjects”. I believe that the website celebrates the ideas of preservation and diversity by presenting a culturally foreign subject with a historically rich background and digitally archiving and documenting it. The connection here though is created on a personal aspect rather than a principally object based relationship. Our interaction and presentation of our experiences bring a human aspect into the mix that emphasizes individual perception and interpretation. Our mixed-media field work and blog contributions will hopefully reflect this.

-Stewards: The idea of stewardship when applied to museums focuses on content being “-the foundations for building relationships with people who recognize various kinds of continuing relationship with material controlled by museums.” ChinaVine.org doesn’t possess the physicality or materiality of museums, but it does possess the ability to bring together people from differing backgrounds, cultures and societies with shared interests and ideas. A good deal of the things concerning ownership and money certainly don’t apply to many of the information presented on ChinaVine.org, but the contributors of the site and partnership between U.S. and Chinese counterparts in support of the program can certainly apply to the idea of stewardship.

-Learning Centers: I think this is pretty much the same as education. ChinaVine.org is a very informal learning center, much like museums are. There is no direct guide or one person telling you how to interpret a certain subject or thing. This is most evident in the way that the site is configured, allowing the user to navigate his or her own way through the various provinces, villages and practices of their inhabitants. The idea of museums positioning themselves as “leisure time” alternatives also applies to ChinaVine.org. I believe that most people generally perceive their usage of the internet as leisure time, whether it be in categories of entertainment or pursuit of information. The website presents the information in an enjoyable, no-pressure environment that still promotes learning and education about China and the folkloric, cultural traditions that we will be focusing on.

-Collaboration: Although we haven’t really started into the program yet, I think that collaboration will be a key aspect of our contributions to the site. While none of us are curators or exhibit advisers, we all will be using our experiences to hopefully create a comprehensive collaborative result that provides visitors of the site to take in a wide range of subjects and personal insights into Chinese culture. ChinaVine.org not only creates a community between the participants and people we interact with, but it also  does so with people who access the content and choose to leave comments or interact in some way with us. We are also serving as a collaborator with the people whose traditions and cultures we are highlighting. By documenting their words and actions with pictures, media and text we are “-providing a venue, and presumably, avoiding ascribing institutional meanings to the materials on view”.

-Conceptualization: Conceptualization in museums has a lot to do with the presence of material objects within them. While material objects don’t really apply to ChinaVine.org, I believe that conceptual attributes still pertain to the site, particularly because it focuses on Chinese traditions and culture through folkloric arts and practices to bring light to the overall state of the country and how they are affected by its rapid growth and rise to prominence in a larger overall global dialogue. This is an excellent example of what Welsh describes as conceptual configurations of materiality not dismissing the past while at the same time not ignoring the present. The website’s relaxed form and lack of guided direction allow for a good amount of individual interpretation in which users can draw their own conclusions.

-Reflexivity: Welsh describes reflexivity as “-emphasizing the relationship between the museum and its subject, and opens a pathway for visitors to interpose their own perspectives.” With our contributions to the site, we are providing viewers with a message about cultural aspects of China that acknowledges its own nature through multiple viewpoints. Having a comment box and providing opportunities for communication between visitors of the site and its contributors allows for a variety of alternative views of the subjects we will be exploring and posting to the blog stream and site. This communication between us, the “stewards” and them, the “visitors” is a great example of what Welsh calls a “-relation of shared authority, as both visitors and museums engage in constructive activities that give rise to the possible meanings of things,” which is an essential part not only to the potential for reflexivity, but also for education.