Rantings from the Granite Studio

I’m clearly not getting enough roughage in my diet…

Can we all get on board with the idea that whatever you feel about Τibet, the PRC, or the price of cabbage in Zhengzhou, when protesting the Olympic torch relay: leave the athletes alone? Is that too much to ask? And this goes for both sides. That said, athletes should be free to say whatever they want. If they have political views, let ‘em out. Sports has always had its political side. Lest anyone forget, today is the 37th anniversary of the US Ping Pong team’s historic trip to China. The Red Sox are 4-4 and people are worried. Really? They opened the season with 18 days on the road covering three countries, and they won 3 out of 7. I’d take that for a late-July trip through the AL Central, never mind to Asia and back. I’m taking the bus now. It’s partially a fiscal decision and also because YJ spent a Sunday afternoon in the warm embrace of Al Gore and came away thinking that every time we turn on the hot water, somewhere in the world something dies. She’s probably right. But the real reason I’m riding the

April 10th, 2008

What is a studio?

I recently had dinner with a fellow blogger, and he asked me: Why a studio?

Well the recent online edition of the China Heritage Quarterly has everything you ever wanted to know about a scholar’s studio but were afraid to ask.

For a Chinese artist, a studio name is suggestive of his or her artistic persona and the creative realm from which they draw inspiration. It is a highly personal construction of words that serves to link the artist to ideas, people or places, often in the past, but also to the present. The name can allude to a physical space such as a studio, a library or a building where the act of painting, writing or thinking happens, but equally it may just be an imaginary place or conjure a poetic sensibility expressive of the artist’s temperament.

Studio names are an integral part of the process of artistic and literary creation. They do not remain static and often shift in and out of use. Many artists and writers adopt new names to reflect changes in physical circumstances or their mental world. Many names refer to desirable human qualities that may be linked to Confucian, Buddhist or Daoist thought, such

April 4th, 2008

Chinese History by Fidel Castro

Given his retirement–and a handy staff of ghost writers–Comrade Fidel casts his thoughts to Chinese history with a few digs thrown in on separatism of the Taiwanese and Tibetan varieties. No real shockers here, pretty much boilerplate Party line/Marxist theoretical reductionism, though for obvious reasons Fidel focuses particular attention on US support for Chiang Kai-shek and the American involvement in Tibetan independence movements of the 1950s. (Apparently the ex-El Presidente and I have the same nightstand reading list as well as taste in cigars–I read Kenneth Conboy’s The CIA‘s Secret War in Tibet last spring.)

At first, I thought it odd that his historical narrative stops roughly at 1949 before moving on to contemporary political tussles, but then it started to make sense.

In 1960, Cuba became the first Latin American country to recognize the PRC. But in the pragmatic world of big brother politics, Castro needed his friends in Moscow too much and Khrushchev’s views of Beijing were well-known. Following the Sino-Soviet split, the Cuban leader had little good to say about Mao’s regime, and publicly criticized China’s 1979 invasion of Vietnam. Relations have since normalized, and in recent years Cuba has been reaching out to Beijing trying to

April 3rd, 2008

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