The past week…

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My final week of freedom before starting work has been spent hunting for culture in Hong Kong. Though it’s a widespread belief amongst Hong Kongers that our city is virtually a ‘cultural desert’, I beg to differ. Culture does exist in Hong Kong, it’s in fact very much alive and kicking. Only because our lives tend to be taken up by work, eating and – dare I say it – shopping, culture has been rendered an almost underground movement. Street theatre in the middle of Mong Kok invites mainly ‘are you mad?’ type glares from passers-by. Rock music, at least as far as Hong Kong artists are concerned, is considered ‘alternative’; instead we are subject to chart hits with essentially the same melody and cringe-worthily soppy lyrics. Classical concerts and art exhibitions are too ‘avant-garde’, whereas traditional Cantonese opera is dying a rapid death, no longer embraced by the younger generation. There will, however, always be ‘guerilla fighters’ dedicating their lives to keeping this culture alive. Thanks to them, I shall find my time in Hong Kong slightly less monotonous.

For example, I very much enjoyed my visit to the Museum of Art, especially two of their special exhibitions. One was a retrospective on the work by Chinese artist Lin Fengmian, who studied at the L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in France before returning to China to found the National Academy of Art at the age of 28. He was privileged in the earlier part of his life, being able to afford studying abroad, and rising to fame fairly quickly. The latter half of his life, however, was marred by the Second World War, followed by the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. He was incarcerated and tortured, and many of his works were destroyed. Nonetheless he survived it all, and lived to a ripe old age. The exhibition included his landscapes, still life, portraits (mainly of women) and later, more abstract paintings. One can detect his Western influences, amongst them Monet, Modigliani, Cezanne and Picasso, as well as his inspiration from traditional Chinese paintings (of courtesans, for instance).

 
Painting by Lin Fengmian

A second exhibition, Chinglish, featured the work by a number of local artists which is deeply seeped in Hong Kong’s unique culture. Its uniqueness stems from the city’s previous identity as a British colony, which meant the co-existence of two equally important languages. These, for many of us, became intermingled. As a result, there is often much confusion for us brought up to learn two unrelated languages from a young age, with many left with mediocrity in both rather than excellence in either. Capturing this ‘bipolar disorder’ especially well was Rosanna Li Wei-han (李慧嫻)’s brilliant series of sculptures, comical and meaningful all at once. Another artist (I’ve forgotten his/her name) created a brightly-lit room with all four walls decorated with lovely patterns; only if you look closely would you realise that those patterns were composed of fairly offensive Chinese and English text. The explanation by the exhibit stated that the artist wished to challenge our perception of beauty and vulgarity, and I think it worked.

                                   

       

           
From top to bottom: Sculpture of Rosanna Li Wei-han (courtesy of HK Museum of Art); myself standing in one of the exhibits; close-up of flowery pattern on the wall of the exhibit.

The photos here are supplied courtesy of my friend S, whose idea it was to visit this museum. We were invited (well, we invited ourselves) to create our own ‘masterpieces’ to add to the museum’s collection, and here the proud artists are shown with their creations. It was truly a lovely way to spend a (stormy) afternoon – thanks, S!

     

Over the weekend I also went to watch two films at the Hong Kong International Film Festival. First of all, I would like to applaud the organisers for doing a marvellous job in showcasing the work of Italian director Luchino Visconti. I have to be honest and admit my ignorance about the director prior to reading a newspaper article about the upcoming retrospective at said film festival. His best known work, for the uninduced, is probably his adaptation of Thomas Mann’s novel, Death In Venice, starring Dirk Bogarde. I decided that I would attend a free seminar (also part of the film festival) about the director’s work, and there I learned a bit about his oeuvre. He was part of the Neo-Realist movement, but in the later part of his career turned to more personal subjects, such as sex and death (it doesn’t get much more peronsal than that). After reading the very well-produced brochure distributed at the seminar, I decided to go and watch The Leopard (Il Gattopardo) and Conversation Piece (Gruppo di famiglia in un interno), the former being more epic in scale, dealing with Italy’s unification, and the latter more intimate, mixing politics with more personal issues. Burt Lancaster, formerly a Hollywood action star, was featured in both, and lent much gravitas pivotal for each of the films. For each showing, there were more than 100 people in the audience, despite the fact that both films were showing with only English subtitles, which would be enough to put a lot of people off. It goes on to show that there is a cult following for culture, however obscure to the general public.

(top) poster for Visconti retrospective; (bottom) still from Conversation Piece, both courtesy of the Hong Kong International Film Festival

Boy, do I go on and on. Am currently reading Albert Camus‘ The Outsider (L’Etranger) – funnily enough, Visconti made a film adaptation of this book too – and Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, at a snail’s pace as per usual, as well as various periodicals (I’ll dedicate an article to some of them later). Latest musical obsessions include Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dylan, Grace by Jeff Buckley, Favourite Worst Nightmare by Arctic Monkeys and Alright, Still by Lily Allen. In particular, though, I’d like to commend Stephanie Sun (孫燕姿), a Singaporean singer who never fails to deliver her ballads with heartfelt emotions, and whose latest release 我懷念的 has proved highly addictive to me, despite the pain that it communicates. The subject matter is beyond cliche – the mourning of a relationship – and the melody is hardly groundbreaking stuff. Sun’s rendition is what make the song great. I won’t attempt to translate the lyrics, since a lot would be lost in translation…

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