follies

I find it fascinating that Chinese polity up till today, peddles this sacrilege “lost of face” over the French and English troops successively burning of the last dynasty’s Summer Palaces. “It’s an affront to our nation,” they cry, citing the looted treasures of empire in the British Museum and the Guiment.

In the crumbling gardens today, one of few things that remain is this stone ship commissioned by Empress CiXi.

Aside from the aesthetics of beautiful Venetian glass and Italian marble, it defies any logic. Set in an artificial lake, it’s not going left, not going right. In many ways, a perverse reminder of a nation at the time, loosing its mind stuck in its own ways, unable to steer forward even if it tried.

empire of signs

Cardinal east gates, in many old empires, portend funeral entrances. In old Beijing, Guijie Street, east of the forbidden city went from a dour coffin street to an unmistakable feast for the senses, not least the rowdy hot pot restaurants that go on deep into the night. These days, the only ghosts are that of a communist past lighting the floating world of commerce. 

burn down the mission

Burn down the Mission
If we're gonna stay alive
Watch the black smoke fly to heaven
See the red flame light the sky

mission district, san franciso

et in arcadia ego

rousham, oxfordshire

BERNARD: Lovely. The real England.
HANNAH: You can stop being silly now, Bernard. English landscape was invented by gardeners imitating foreign painters who were evoking classical authors. The whole thing was brought home in the luggage from the grand tour. Here, look – Capability Brown doing Claude, who was doing Virgil. Arcadia! And here, superimposed by Richard Noakes, untamed nature in the style of Salvator Rosa. It's the Gothic novel expressed in landscape. Everything but vampires. 

Tom Stoppard, Arcadia, 1993

 

corona heights, san francisco

les pêcheurs de perles

Lombok never did go through the madcap tourist transformation like Bali. Maybe because its rugged savannah landscape lacks the lush verdancy of its neighbour. What it makes up for, as naturalist and spiritualist A.R. Wallace discovered a century ago, is a eco-treasure trove found nowhere else, fed by multiple ocean currents, and the rich volcanic soils from the majestic of Mt. Agung.

In the furthest reaches south east of the island, there are few travelers, mostly love birds seeking some operatic moments. But rewind to the 1940’s, and the strum und drang was writ large.

During the second world war, it was the far flung marine check point for the Japanese navy. Just as the waters along the Alas Straits welcomed manta rays, whales, bluefins, it’s also a causeway for submarine sea caves harbouring canyons for Allied attacks.

Things are quieter now. I must have read at least six books in three days here. The clean waters, and confluence of calm currents, are a haven for pearl fishers, harvesting those famous south sea black pearls. And at sundown, there’s always time for bonding over a friendly soccer break.

segui tanjung ringgit, lombok

jalan pantai beloam 

the lost coast

kwan tai temple, mendocino ca

kwan tai temple, mendocino ca

 

This tiny plot sits in the buccolic seaside town of Mendocino village. A "joss house," the temple of Kwan Tai built in 1854, is the oldest chinese Taoist temple left in the North Coast. It was the only safehouse for chinese lumber workers and cooks, a reminder of the once hostile Chinese Exclusion Act that permeated through much of the coast up till 1943.

toward a public capitalism

Money is not the sole objective of economic activity, or, as I put it, “Culture is my economics.” People cannot become spiritually rich solely through economic activity. On the contrary, it is my belief that the exclusive pursuit of economic prosperity leads to unhappiness. I believe that there are economic propsects in fostering culture and in creating a good community in which people, including elderly people, are smiling and happy because they feel useful and are approached.

Soichiro Fukutake

 

naoshima, seto inland sea

naoshima, overlooking the seto inland sea towards takamatsu, shikoku

axis mundi

You spin me baby right round / Like a record baby / Right round, round round / Like a record baby …

This afternoon, I found a great escape from the office and Union Square with Buckminster Fuller writings, and a radical assessment of the Haight Ashbury Human Be-In. The Mechanics' Institute was founded in 1854 for adult technical education. It was a visionary attempt to create a post Gold Rush employment for miners. As a frontier town, it became the first library before 1879, and before the Carnegie endowments for seven other city libraries from 1899. And it's still in the same location on Post St.

mechanics’ institute library, san francisco

Montgomery Block, or "Monkey Block," was the tallest building east of Chicago in 1862. Legions of Chinese workers helped build the foundation. The sandy base was stacked with redwood tree trunks and abandoned Gold Rush ships from then Yerba Buena Cove. It was the first fireproofed office structure with deep set windows, iron girdles, stone firewalls. Lawyers, jazz musicians, writers including Mark Twain, passed through it. The building survived the 1906 fire, but not the 1956 demolition. Today, it's the Transamerica building. The redwood grove behind is the only reminder of its past, beneath.

Montgomery Street, San Francisco

yamagata castle