I was half expecting Experience the Art of Life and Learn the Confucian Spirit (體驗生活藝術—心領儒家精神), a workshop hosted by Taipei Confucius Temple (台北市孔廟), to consist of rote lessons on how to obey one’s parents and kowtow to superiors.
Organized by the Taipei City Government, the workshop is part of a broader plan to transform the Dalongdong (大龍峒) area, where the temple is located, into a tourism hotspot for visitors to soak up Taiwanese culture with Chinese characteristics, or as one organizer put it, “how different aspects of Chinese culture … manifest themselves in today’s [Taiwan].”
Always on the lookout for ways to improve my knowledge of Taiwan’s culture, and with the course offered gratis, how could I resist?
Photo: Noah Buchan, Taipei Times
(Details of a similar two-day workshop to be held on June 4 and June 5 can be found below.)
Later I learned that the free, three-day course limited its focus on Confucius to the morning of the first day. Fortune-telling with the I Ching (易經, also known as the Book of Changes), palm reading, Chinese medicine, tea appreciation, meditation and drumming were among the subjects covered at the workshop, which was conducted in Chinese with English and Japanese interpretation from May 6 to May 8.
Day One
Photo: Noah Buchan, Taipei Times
I was 15 minutes early when I walked through heavy wooden doors into a chamber behind the temple where the workshop began at 9am. Thick pillars extended up to a colorful, intricately carved ceiling. Terra-cotta tiling lined the floor. A large screen at the front and the occasional ringing of mobile phones were the only hints that I hadn’t been transported back in time to China’s ancient past.
A polyglot crowd from Brazil, Mexico, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, Poland and Canada languidly assembled at long wooden benches and rectangular tables. After introductions — name, length of stay in Taiwan and reason for coming — all participants were given a navy Chinese-style shirt with Mandarin collar to wear for the next three days.
Following a brief introduction to the thought of Confucius — honor your parents, respect education — Tung Chin-yue (董金裕), a professor at National Chengchi University, presented a video that outlined the rites held at the temple every Sept. 28 to celebrate “Master Kong’s” (孔夫子) birthday.
Photo: Noah Buchan, Taipei Times
Tung said the ritual consists of 33 sequences and includes drumming, sacrifices, chanting and bowing. It began 2,000 years ago following Confucius’ death when a regional ruler established his residence as a temple, and went national during the Han Dynasty. The ritual was halted in China after the Chinese Civil War and was officially re-established at Taipei Confucius Temple in 1970.
Just as attention spans were wavering and people were fidgeting in their seats, we moved outside for a tour of the temple grounds with Wu Wen-hsiang (巫文祥), a volunteer guide. He discussed the history of the temple, which dates back to the Qing Dynasty, its layout (modeled after the original Confucius Temple in Qufu, Shandong Province, China) and architectural style (southern Fujian Province).
Wu kept his presentation interesting by constantly asking questions. Correct answers would bring a cheer and a prize — souvenirs from Taipei’s Flora Expo.
Photo: Noah Buchan, Taipei Times
Following a simple but tasty lunch of “local delicacies” (noodles, fried tofu and Taiwan beer), we returned to the temple for an afternoon of the I Ching.
Chiu Yun-pin (邱雲斌), a member of Taiwan I-Ching Research Association (台灣周易文化研究會), said the text was written 6,000 years ago by a mythical character named Fu Xi (伏羲), and listed it first among China’s Four Books and Five Classics (四書五經). Contemporary scholarship dates the text to sometime around the third century BC.
Chiu said Confucius tamed the highly esoteric divination manual into a comprehensive philosophy that emphasized human effort, rather than luck, in the attainment of future benefits. He then pulled out a laptop with divination software to show us how he “foretells” the future.
Photo: Noah Buchan, Taipei Times
Using the I Ching as a prediction tool turns out to be a complicated affair. One has to expend considerable time and energy to properly combine and interpret a vast quantity of symbols (pictograms and hexagrams). It is perhaps unsurprising that, in these highly rushed times, computers are used to crunch the numbers.
Predictions follow a distinct pattern: A client (or in our case, a student) gives some personal information and asks a question, which “should be sincere, virtuous and avoid fatalism,” Chiu advised.
The fortune-teller punches data into a computer (or spends several hours poring over books), makes a few calculations and draws a conclusion.
Photo: Noah Buchan, Taipei Times
Chiu avoided the kind of big-ticket predictions that made a laughing stock of self-styled prophet Wang Chao-hung (王超弘), also known as “Teacher Wang,” when his prophecy of a magnitude 14 earthquake failed to materialize last week. Chiu stuck with a few economic forecasts.
Taiwan’s economy for 2012 will be meng (蒙, youthful folly), according to his calculations. Chiu’s interpretation: The economy will be in the dumps.
During the same period, China’s economic outlook will be cui (萃, gathering together), which Chiu said means that it’s a good time to invest. And so on.
Photo: Noah Buchan, Taipei Times
At the end of his presentation, Chiu asked for volunteers. There was a few second’s pause and then the scrum began.
A computer programmer from Mexico who had recently married a Taiwanese woman asked about the stock market.
Chiu said the question was too vague, so the student rephrased it to ask about shares he bought for a listed Taiwanese company — one that has performed poorly over the past few months.
Photo: Noah Buchan, Taipei Times
After punching his information into the computer, Chiu’s expression said it all. Amid howls of “sell, sell, sell,” by those assembled, Chiu intimated the company was a poor investment.
He ended with an admonition: “Don’t be envious of others making money on the stock market.”
A Japanese woman hushed the participants by asking how Japan should deal with the earthquake and tsunami that struck in March. With a grave voice, Chiu said the Japanese should not rely on the government to solve their problems. He finished with a vague warning to avoid superficial behavior.
Photo: Noah Buchan, Taipei Times
A young teacher from Switzerland asked if he would grow old with the woman he is in love with. After a few calculations Chiu responded: “Do you really want me to answer this question in public?”
Chiu’s process of predicting fortunes was inclusive and fun, and time passed so quickly I was a little surprised when one of the organizers announced it was 5pm, the end of the first day.
Day Two
Photo: Noah Buchan, Taipei Times
The organizers chose their geomantic experts well. People who make predictions are often arrogant and patronizing, but Huang Sung-ling (黃松齡), our master on the second morning, was self-deprecating, quick to smile and offered occasional lewd gestures with the paraphernalia he had brought for the topics he would cover: Chinese medicine, acupuncture, chiromancy (palm reading) and physiognomy (face reading).
Huang began with a brief lecture on Chinese medicine. Unlike recent medical practices based on Western scientific methodology, Chinese medicine follows an empirically produced body of knowledge developed over thousands of years, Huang said. He passed around several small baggies filled with dried herbs, roots, bark and berries that he mixes “into a [medicinal] cocktail according to the patient’s needs.”
A gold model of a naked male (its private parts, as Huang pointed out, sheathed with a red sash) was lined with the 14 meridians (channels of invisible energy, also known as qi (氣), that circulate throughout the body) and punctuated with the 365 acupuncture points.
He showed the class how to read a pulse, Chinese style: Three to four beats per breath are normal, while seven to eight beats means a headache or cold. Irregular pulse? Go to the doctor immediately.
“If the pulse feels stringy, like a guitar string, that means you might have problems with your liver,” Huang said, which prompted me to breathe in and feel my pulse, which did feel a little stringy. Perhaps too much Taiwan Beer at lunch on the first day.
He also offered some quick remedies to common ailments. Feeling tired or faint? Use your thumb to massage the bone junction between the thumb and forefinger of the opposite hand. (Pregnant women should avoid this treatment, he warned.) Heating the lower back using a moxibustion stick made from fragrant wormwood helps to prevent a cold. (A blow dryer can be also be used.) Next he called for volunteers to demonstrate moxibustion. Soon we were all applying the treatment to our forearms and backs.
Huang’s palm and face reading proved so popular that it was running into the time allotted for Wisteria Tea House (紫藤盧), and the organizers insisted rather abruptly that we move along.
Located in a large Japanese-style house complete with a water garden full of begging carp, Wisteria opened in 1981 and “deeply influenced the renaissance of tea culture” in Taiwan by amalgamating Taoist aesthetics and Confucian self-cultivation into a refined lifestyle. With its various architectural styles and philosophical influences, Wisteria parallels some of the cultural diversity that is today’s Taiwan.
After getting off the shuttle bus, we were led to the second floor and told to remove our shoes and sit on tatami mats.
Liu Hsing-chung (劉行中), our tea master, has a detailed process for preparing tea that she learned from Chow Yu (周渝), the founder of Wisteria, and attempted to pass it on to our somewhat rowdy crowd. It revolved around four principles: rightness, quietness, clarity and roundness.
Liu’s thinking tended toward the spiritual, if not outright new age. She said that only a person “pure of heart” can make a proper cup of tea, and that every cup drunk possesses its own unique flavor. When she said the cups we were drinking from were 800 years old, I sensed more than a little hyperbole, especially considering that the filmy remains of a price tag could still be discerned on the bottom of mine.
Still, the presentation — from the simple edible green tea in long needle-like strands to the desiccated oolong tea — revealed that the beverage is as much about culture and refinement as it is about relaxing.
Day Three
On the first day there were 10 people in the class, a number that had doubled by the third day as we were joined by newcomers from the US, Japan, the Czech Republic and France. Our group included a housewife, a professor, a missionary and a copy editor. Some had just arrived in Taiwan, while others were veteran expats who have been in the country for years. Many were studying Mandarin, and all were enthusiastic about gaining a deeper understanding of Taiwan’s culture.
We met at the Muzha MRT Station (木柵捷運站) on Sunday morning and took a short shuttle bus to visit U-Theater (優人神鼓), a performance troupe that combines meditation, martial arts and drumming into unique and highly energetic performances. Our objective was to learn simple exercises in the morning that would prepare us for some passionate drumming in the afternoon.
We were led into one of the troupe’s rehearsal spaces, a room the size of a small gym that was painted black. The curtains were closed to eliminate the possibility of outside distractions. After watching a brief documentary about the U-Theater, performers from the troupe lined us up for breathing exercises meant to focus our minds and relax our bodies.
For me, however, it was a frustrating reminder of my own physical limitations, not helped along by the incessant grinning of one of the instructors, who reminded me of one of those inane self-portraits by Chinese artist Yue Minjun (岳敏君).
Following a vegetarian lunch, we returned to the studio classroom to find our new tea master, Cheng Chih-yuan (鄭智元), sitting placidly behind a low table with a number of tea cups, teapots and containers of tea exquisitely arranged on its surface. A single spotlight, shining down from above, was the only light source, giving Cheng a bizarre godly appearance. Whereas Liu’s tea presentation the previous day emphasized the spiritual aspects of tea, Cheng showed us how to properly pour tea for guests. And then it was time to drum.
We were brought to another large classroom for the final leg of the workshop. Considerable natural lighting filtered through the floor-to-ceiling windows, which offered magnificent views of the distant mountains. Large drums, custom-made by master craftsman Wang Hsi-kun (王錫坤), were lined up on each side of the of the room. Anula (阿努拉, Chinese name Huang Kun-ming, 黃焜明), our lithe drumming master, stood in the empty space in the middle.
Anula first showed us how to handle the drumsticks properly, taught us a few dance maneuvers and then told us to move the drums to the middle of the room. We spent the last few hours of the workshop going through a number of fun, energetic routines that effectively ended the workshop with a bang.
After the drum playing, we were asked about how we felt about the workshop. Everyone agreed that it was well organized. A participant from Japan said it was impossible to imagine her home country putting on such a workshop, adding that it was “a testimonial to the kindness and openness of the Taiwanese.”
Upcoming
Taipei Confucius Temple will hold a two-day workshop, dubbed World Youth Confucius Camp (世界青年孔學營), on June 4 and June 5 from 8am to 8pm. Courses include Koji pottery, calligraphy, puppetry, the history of Taipei’s Dadaocheng (大稻埕) area and the thought and philosophy of Confucius. Details can be found at tct101.pixnet.net/blog/post/523946.
A jumbo operation is moving 20 elephants across the breadth of India to the mammoth private zoo set up by the son of Asia’s richest man, adjoining a sprawling oil refinery. The elephants have been “freed from the exploitative logging industry,” according to the Vantara Animal Rescue Centre, run by Anant Ambani, son of the billionaire head of Reliance Industries Mukesh Ambani, a close ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The sheer scale of the self-declared “world’s biggest wild animal rescue center” has raised eyebrows — including more than 50 bears, 160 tigers, 200 lions, 250 leopards and 900 crocodiles, according to
They were four years old, 15 or only seven months when they were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald and Ravensbruck. Some were born there. Somehow they survived, began their lives again and had children, grandchildren and even great grandchildren themselves. Now in the evening of their lives, some 40 survivors of the Nazi camps tell their story as the world marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious of the death camps. In 15 countries, from Israel to Poland, Russia to Argentina, Canada to South Africa, they spoke of victory over absolute evil. Some spoke publicly for the first
RSS