Jason Pym's Blog, page 3

At the market

Watercolour sketch, Dali Old Town, Yunnan

Evolution of the ‘dragon’ character

Evolution of the dragon character in Chinese, from Shang dynasty oracle bone script (about 3,500 years ago) through to the simplified character of the 1950s.

Shang dynasty (1600 – 1046 BC) oracle bone script







Western Zhou dynasty (1046 – 771 BC), bronze script



Qin/Han dynasty (221 BC – AD 220), bronze script



Eastern Han dynasty (AD 25 – 220), clerical script



Three Kingdoms era (220 – 280), regular script



Tang dynasty (618 – 907), cursive script



1950s Mainland China, simplified script



Fancy-looking traditional dragon character, this script is actually ‘thin gold script’ (瘦金書 shòu jīn shū), a form of regular script created by the Emperor Huizong of Song about 1000 years ago.

Dance like the phoenix, sing like the luan

Luan bird, usually blue but said to be red in the 《说文解字》



鳳舞鸞歌（凤鸾）fèng wǔ luán gē
Lit: Dance like the phoenix, sing like the luan,
Fig. describes an outstanding performance (of singing and dancing)

The Chinese phoenix is not reborn from the
ashes of a fire like the Western one, rather it is best known as the mythical
king of the birds, and had many associations with Confucianism and academia.

The luan is best known from the epic Chinese bestiary The Classic of Mountains and Seas (《山海經》), a bird of blue plumage that inhabits wild idylls. Like the phoenix, it appears when the nation is at peace, and when songs are sung in praise of a just and great ruler. A luan bird is said to have been presented as a tribute by northwestern tribes to King Cheng of Zhou as a symbol of submission to his virtuous rule.

Phoenix

Pet dragons

The character 寵(宠) is a picture of a dragon under a roof, and originally meant to revere or honour (尊崇 zūn chóng) because if you have a dragon in your house you better be really polite.*

Later the meaning broadened and mellowed,
you’ve probably seen it as:

寵愛(宠爱) chóng ài to dote on someone

As a grandma dotes on her grandchildren. But
this can go too far and then you get

寵壞(宠坏) chóng huài to spoil a child

And from these meaning it did not take long
to evolve into

寵物(宠) chóng wù (house) pet

Like a dog, cat or (small) dragon.  

* The character 寵(宠) goes back three thousand years to the Western Zhou dynasty, and
has not changed in all that time: Actually it’s just a simple radical / phonetic
construction, the roof radical 宀 (mián, usually known
as 宝盖头) is used with characters meaning respect (官
guān official, 宦 huàn officialdom) while
龙 lóng is just there for the sound.

Bole judges a horse

Bole judges a horse

Bole (伯樂 bó lè) was a legendary judge of horses, said to be the inventor of equine physiognomy (相馬 xiàng mǎ, evaluating a horse’s qualities from appearance). He was so exceptional that even today in modern Chinese his name is used as a byword for judging hidden talent:

伯樂相馬 (乐马) bó lè xiàng mǎ
Literally: Bole judges a horse
Figuratively: To be an outstanding judge of someone’s (hidden) gifts or talent.



Bole judges an intern

Bole had the courtesy (honourific) name of
Sun Yang (孫陽 sūn yáng), and so was sometimes known as Sun Bole. He worked as
horse groom for the Duke Mu of Qin (秦穆公qín mù gōng, r.
659-621 BCE) during the Spring and Autumn period *.

Horses were never really a Han Chinese
thing, even through to the Qing dynasty the best horses were always thought to
be foreign bred and brought in from abroad. And there was no ‘horse culture’ as
such, not as compared to China’s nomad neighbours. But that’s why horses (and
horse trainers and grooms) were held in such esteem – they are what protected
the country from the Mongolians, Jurchen and Xiongnu invaders. Bole was not the
only famed judge of horses (ten are mentioned in Lü’s Spring and Autumn Annals 吕氏春秋), and once you get to the Three Kingdoms era horses themselves are
named and feature prominently in the story (more on these in another post).

* The Spring and Autumn period (春秋時代) ran from 771 to 476 BC, and is a golden age of Chinese culture. It
gave us Confucius, Laozi, Mozi, Sunzi (The Art of War), and Lu Ban (China’s
Daedalus). This is the Chinese late bronze age: In Chinese history you have the
possibly mythical Xia, the exotic Shang with it oracle bones (the first time
the Chinese were trounced by nomads on horseback), then the first recognizably
Han Chinese dynasty with the Zhou starting 1046 BC. Halfway through the Zhou
dynasty the place fractures into little feudal kingdoms, so instead of calling
the latter half of the dynasty the (Eastern) Zhou, it’s split into the Spring
and Autumn period and later the Warring States.

Obscure horse-radical characters

In modern Chinese, characters with the horse radical are common and useful (馴 xùn to raise and train an animal, 騙 piàn to cheat, 駡 mà to cuss), but there are a whole host of characters that are equine-specific and gloriously of zero practical use. These were all important technical terms when horses were the transportation of choice:

騍 kè mare
騸 shàn gelding – a castrated horse, making for better-behaved work horses
騂 xīng reddish-brown (bay or chestnut) horse
駹 máng black horse with a white face
驄 cōng dapple-grey horse
騧 guā ‘buckskin’ horse – cream-yellow coat with black points

This is likely the first and last time you’ll see these characters.

But there are some horse-specific characters that still get used every day, usually in proverbs, here are some useful ones:

駒 jū young horse (colt or filly)

This originally meant a two year old horse, not fully grown to adult size, and can be used as a metaphor for a young man (龍駒 lóng jū a brilliant young scholar). And you’ll see it in this expression from Zhuangzi:

白駒過隙 bái jū guò xì time flies

Literally, [time flies like the flash of a] young white colt running past a gap in the wall.

駑 nú a worn-out old horse who can no longer run quickly

This is only really used in this proverb:

駑馬戀棧 nú mǎ liàn zhàn
an incompetent man clings to a good position

Literally, the old horse loves being [fed the grain] in the stable (instead of having to forage for food themselves).

And the last one for today…

駿 jùn a fine horse (良马), a steed

This one you’ll actually see used for horses (in films and such), in names, like:

宮崎駿 gōng qí jùn Hayao Miyazaki

Founder of Studio Ghibli animation studio. His name means ‘Palace-Rough mountain road – Fine Steed,’ which is a pretty cool name.

That’s not a horse….

Appearance on Uncles’ Restaurant, Jiangsu TV

Me, Joseph, Guo Degang and Meng Fei

This is my most impressive tv appearance, in terms of celebrity star power, though it doesn’t have much to do with me drawing pictures. Jiangsu Television, one of China’s most watched channels, came to Dali to shoot a series called Uncles’ Restaurant (“大叔小馆”). The idea is that four celebrities,
the actors and Tong Dawei (佟大为), television host Meng Fei (孟非), and xiangsheng comedian Guo Degang (郭德纲) open a little barbecue place in Dali, and chat with the locals – and that included us :).  

This is us just turning up, the director thought it’d be more entertaining if I pretended not to speak Chinese.



I gave them a copy of A Dali Sketchbook, and a cartoon I’d done of them.



Like Cecilia and I, Guo Jingfei also had a ‘lightning’ marriage – he got married after a week of dating, we got married after a month.

You only see it for a second, but here’s the cartoon I did of the four of them as Dali native animals, they seemed to like it (always a risk you’ll offend someone, I was a bit worried about Guo Degang as a newt):

Left to right: Guo Degang, Meng Fei, Tong Dawei and Guo Jingfei.







With Guo Jingfei



The caption says, ‘An English gentleman’s smile’



Left to right: Da Tongwei, Meng Fei, Guo Degang, Guo Jingfei

The whole restaurant was set up for the show, so every wall had a number of holes where hidden cameras poked through filming us. They were surprisingly kind in the edit – there was one point I ate a lump of beef, like beef jerky, not realising you’re supposed to cut it up first, and had to spit it out with zero dignity intact. That didn’t make the final broadcast, amazingly.

Feng Zikai award and book

非常感謝六哥給我和豐子愷研究會牽線搭橋(讀庫也做了《護生畫集》的超漂亮的版本)，我就有機會認識研究會理事印樹葳先生(嗨Steven :)，專門從上海過來大理送豐子愷先生90高齡的女兒豐一吟的贈書(豐子愷先生的孫子豐羽代贈)，我榮幸得無法形容。明年有機會參選豐子愷漫畫獎，心情激動，好期待！

Roughly this says, ‘To Jason and Cecilia Pym, from Feng Yu, on behalf of my mother Feng Yiyin’

On Thursday, Steven Yin (印樹葳 yìn shù wēi) and his fiancée Ye Nan (葉楠 yè nán) flew over from Shanghai to visit me in Dali. Steven is in his last years of his Phd at Jiaotong University, studying the history of science, while Ye Nan is involved in organ transplant research. Steven also happens to be the director of the Feng Zikai Research Society (豐子愷研究會的理事), and on behalf of the society invited me to take part in next year’s Feng Zikai Award for Comic Art (豐子愷漫畫獎), which of course is a huge honour, I’m amazed and somewhat overwhelmed that they asked me – Feng Zikai was one of China’s most famous and beloved comic book artists. They found me because my publisher Liu Ge, of Duku Publishing House, passed on a copy of A Dali Sketchbook to the Feng family (Duku has also put out a beautiful version of Feng Zikai’s Buddhist-inspired art, Paintings for the Preservation of Life 《護生畫集》). Apparently Feng Zikai’s daughter, a lady now in her 90s, liked my book enough that she suggested I take part in the competition, and sent a signed copy of her father’s biography. I’m amazed and very happy, though it is amazing how slowly time unfolds in the book world – A Dali Sketchbook came out two years ago, I thought it was already off the radar.

My Father Feng Zikai, by Feng Yiyin



On the left of the fly leaf is written, ‘A gift of the Feng Zikai Research Society’

A Dali Sketchbook – English language version now out

So finally I put together my only English language version of the book, you can find it as a PDF on Lulu or buy it from Gumroad here:

Picturesque Dali Prefecture sits in the foothills of the Himalaya, for a thousand years the central, bustling hub of China’s southern Silk Road. This book gathers in one volume the sketches and notes of British illustrator Jason Pym who has lived in Dali for more than a decade. Topics range from local cuisine, crafts, religion, history, flora and fauna, and everything in between.

I’m on national tv (!)

When promoting The Dali Sketchbook I was interviewed for local television and radio, but this is the first time I’ve been on national tv, CCTV13 the China Central Television news channel. It’s for a segment on foreigners living in China (‘I Love China’, 我爱你中国). Not sure why they picked me, but very happy they did – and it was filmed when my family were here over Christmas. Here tiz:

http://www.jasonpym.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/190211_CCTV13.mp4