Chen Family Mansion

There are some great stories & photos from today, day TWO with Emme Lu, but I'm going to finish up Saturday's photos first. Suffice it to say for now, Emme Lu was *just* as charming on Day Two, as she was on Day one- as were her fantstic Mama & Papa!

Saturday before meeting Linda, Reuben & Emme Lu, I went to the Chen Family Mansion. I had never been there before, although I had heard about it one time before. Linda mentioned having gone there in her Blog, so I thought I'd follow her steps & see how it was.

Temples are difficult in Guangzhou primarily because of the immense amount of pollution everywhere and their tendency to get dirty so fast. If you travel outside of Guangzhou, you can see beautiful temples painted in vibrant colors surrounded by green green grass. But keeping a Temple or an ancestral house clean in Guangzhou is quite a feat. Therefore, these need to be appreciated in a little different way. It is quite easy for me to say "the Chen family house is "okay" but there are a lot of many more wonderful places I've seen..." But I question if that's being fair to the limitations of the city. I think you just need to appreciate them on a different level. And I need to remind myself of this as well. So, with that in mind, the Chen family house had some amazing attributes. It had been made into a printing house during the Cultural revolution, and much of the design work/wood carving had been destroyed. There are still some exquisite reliefs and a number of wonderful and intricate wood screens which either still exist, or have been re-built since the cultural revolution.

It's not painted nearly as vibrantly as some of the temples I've seen in smaller towns in China, but it seems to still be in a state of renovation, so it will be interesting to visit it again in a few years & see the changes.

In the entryway there is an English history of the building, and a bit of a "shout out" to our dear friend Mao, the Communist party, and the Great Leap Forward. It's interesting that even post cultural revolution, that some of the allegiances to the ideas of the cultural revolution still hold a prominent place in the cultural mentality:

Now that I took the photos but did not record the artist, I wish that I had! There was a single sculptor who had done a number of sculptures in the garden of the Chen Family Mansion. They were based on a series of well known stories- I think set in the 17th and 18th centuries.

The Chen Family Mansion is also an art museum with rotating exhibits. There was a porcelain exhibit and a carved ivory exhibit while I was there. I knew they would not photograph well since they were encased in glass, but I did photograph a few of the carved ivory objects. All of them were carved from a single piece of Ivory. One (not pictured) had a carved ball- with consecutively smaller balls carved inside. It's common to find these with 4 layers of balls (all are able to turn, all carved from a single block of carving material) and even with 8 layers. The one on display was part of a sculpture that was approximately 3 feet tall, and contained 22 balls, each inside the next, all carved from a single solid piece of Ivory.

It's easy to overlook Bonsai trees in China. Easy because honestly they are everywhere. After you see a couple, you forget how special they are. Easy because you don't seem to ever see just "a couple"- you see 20 at a time, 30 at a time, they are everywhere. For that reason, I remind myself to try and appreciate them whenever I see them, because I know they are all unique, and each one is a labor of love for someone. Each one is carefully tended to ensure it can last for years and years to come.

It's when you look this closely that you remember how unique and special each one is...

I admit this photo is horrible. I was having difficulty with my flash & getting the light right, it's really just an awful shot. But I wanted to include it in order to talk about the furniture. Now I really love Asia. I love traveling in Asia, I love the food, I love the people, I love the history, I love the architecture. I've never been particularly enamored with the art or with the furniture of Asia. The art is simply not really my style. Fair enough. The furniture just seems to "hard"- not comfortable for relaxing in- I think if I asked a guest to sit in a Chinese chair in my house, they not only would not stay long, but they wouldn't be coming back too soon! But several years ago I did learn something really interesting about Chinese furniture, or at least this style with the cut stone in it.
The better quality pieces contain Quartz stone, or stone with Quartz in it. There may be other types of stone used as well, I'm not sure. A better quality piece will contain a cut of stone which appears to show a mountain scene painted in the Chinese style. So, envision Chinese style art- and a water color type scene of a mountain. When you look at a chair in this style, this is what you are supposed to see. If the chair is a lower quality, you are unlikely to be able to compare it to a mountain painting.

I suppose this explains one link between Chinese Furniture & Chinese Art & my ambivalence towards them both...but I do think the idea of cutting a stone to look like a painting is unique and interesting, and for that reason, I view it as extraordinary.