A special exhibition of orchid and bamboo paintings held in honor of Madame Chiang Kai-shek's birthday began in March and continued for six weeks. Thirty of Madame's paintings were on display.
The majority are monochrome ink but there are also works in color and one red bamboo.
Madame Chiang has completed albums of bamboo, orchid and one landscape paintings. Her husband, President Chiang Kai-shek, wrote forewords for each. For the orchid album he wrote:
"Early this year (60th Year of the Republic of China) Madame completed twenty-four paintings of orchids as collected in this album. They are among her very best, attaining a degree of artistry which stems from the happy unison of heart and hand, surpassing even the orchids of the great master Shih-t'ao. The difficult art of orchid painting means the subtle achievement of inspiration and technique resulting in the harmony of delicate grace and rhythmic vitality through brushstrokes at once flowing and bold. Not many masters in the history of Chinese painting have excelled in this medium. I appreciate therefore all the more the fragrance and beauty emanating from these pages. On this auspicious occasion of my wife's birthday I take pleasure in writing this foreword and tendering her my warmest felicitations. (Signed) Chiang Chung-cheng (Chiang Kai-shek), March, Year 60."
For her bamboo album he wrote:
"During the Chinese New Year holidays of this year (61st Year of the Republic of China) Madame completed the painting of twenty-four folios of bamboo that are now reproduced in this album. Her bamboos possess the same quality of purity and" rhythmic vitality that is found in her orchids.
"Bamboo is a symbol of nobleness and uprightness and legend has it that it is the only food on which the phoenix feeds. So alive are the bamboos created by Madame's talented brush that they seemingly evoke the approach of a grand pageantry of phoenixes and the ushering in of the ensuing period of prosperity and happiness. (Signed) Chiang Chung-cheng (Chiang Kai-shek), February, Year 61."
There is more to the orchid motif than first meets the eye, as is true of most motifs in Chinese art. The orchid, or epidendrum (a fragrant and delicate variety of orchid) as it is sometimes referred to, is highly esteemed in Chinese art and often ranked with the plum blossom and bamboo. It is prized for its decorative beauty, having exceptionally long, sinuous leaves and elegant flowers. Owing to their deep but subdued fragrance they carry connotations of expressions of love or intimate friendship.
Artist Cheng Ssu-hsiao (1240-1310) was a master of orchids. His name was originally Cheng Mou but when the Sung dynasty fell to the Mongols from the north, who founded the Yuan dynasty, he changed it to Cheng Ssu-hsiao, meaning 'Cheng who thinks of Chao' (Chao meaning the Sung dynasty). He painted nothing but orchids, expressing his feelings by depicting them pulled from the soil with their roots exposed. When asked why he painted them so he replied "Don't you know that the soil has been taken away by the barbarians? "
Most orchid paintings are in monochrome ink and there are comparatively few color renditions. This is because the artistic significance of the orchid lies in the flow of the brushstroke and the ductility of the unbroken lines.
Central Daily feature - Export of orchids
Dr. Wang Po-jen of the Research Institute of Botany, Academia Sinica, said that in the next five years Taiwan's exports of orchids will enjoy a boom and probably monopolize Japanese floral markets.
The orchid has long been honored in China as the gentleman of the floral world. It is costly and difficult to cultivate, and thus formerly was a luxury possession for the rich. Ordinary people could not afford to be orchid fanciers. In recent years, orchid cultivation has become popular with the rank and file.
The orchid is a delicate plant. In cultivating it, high temperature and humidity are needed. A temperature of 25oC is best. Taiwan and Hawaii provide the best climate for orchids.
The Japanese are fond of flower arrangement and the orchid has become their favorite. However, Japan's orchid beds are expensive and cultivation is costly because of the cold climate during winter.
Taiwan cultivates orchids in two ways. Seed sowing and branch planting have been employed. Sowing seeds will produce more buds but mutation is frequent. Planting of branches yields only a few buds. The method now widely followed is cultivation of the bud.
Orchid seeds are so minute as to be almost invisible. Instead of direct sowing, the seed should be cultivated on the surface of agar extracted from Gracilaria together with salt to keep it free from germs.
A small piece of cell is taken from the bud at the top of the stem. This is grown on the agar. The resulting cells are able to orient themselves with growth of normal cells. Five buds will emerge at the same time.
This method ensures purity of the species, Dr. Wang said. Crustacea infection of orchids, which is still without a cure, is eliminated. But new species cannot be produced by crossbreeding.
Taiwan prides itself on successful cultivation of Cattleya, Phalaenopsis, Dentrobium, Yanda and Cymbidium. The Chinese Orchid Garden at Fengyuan, Taichung, and the Ranch Cloud Garden at Yangmingshan, near Taipei, are leading growers.
Asian Pacific Quarterly - Shang music and dance
From available records in the ancient annals of China's legendary past, we can catch glimpses of early music and the role it played in the life of our distant ancestors.
Another legend about music associated with the weather was described by Shun-i Lee:
One of the oldest statements in our history was that of Huangti (ca. 2697 B.C.) when he ordered Ling Lun to work out the musical tones. Ling Lun went through the west of Ta Hsia state to the north of Yuan Yu to obtain bamboo from the northern valley of Mt. Kun Lun. He selected hollow stems of uniform thickness and cut off the knots at both ends, to make a pipe 3.9 ts'un (Chinese inch) long. This bamboo pipe gave a tone which he named "huang chung chih kung," the generator of all the others. Next, he made a set of 12 pipes which produced a series of 12 pitches similar to the Western chromatic semitones.
"During the distant reign of Chu Hsiang Shih, the weather was characterized by prevailing windiness, and the positive element of nature accumulated. As a result, things tended to disintegrate and disperse, and fruits failed to mature. As a countermeasure, Shih Ta invented the five-string sê in order to attract the negative element and to resettle the life of the people."
Concerning dance, there is a legend (also in Lee's book) associated with the ancient people's struggle against the flood:
"During the early part of the reign of Yin K'ang Shih, the negative element of nature was prevalent, resulting in a universal tendency to settle and accumulate. The flow of rivers slowed down, as their courses were blocked up by silt. The spirit of the people dropped to a dormant, low level, their bodies numbed and stiff from the cold and inactivity. Because of this the people were taught to dance as a remedy."
There is also a legend mentioned in the section on "Ancient Music" of Lü Shih Chun Ch'iu (Lü's "Spring and Autumn Annals") which described a kind of religious rite performed by the ancient people. In those ceremonies sacrifice was offered to the family's totem and the black bird, and three persons with oxtails in hand sang and danced to express what they wished the totem to accomplish for them-a luxuriant growth of the grasses and trees, bumper harvest of the five grains and propagation of livestock. This kind of dance with singing and music was called the music of Ko Tien Shih (a person of that period). During the Shang dynasty (1766-1122 B.C.), from the year of Pan Keng (1401 B.C.), the Shang people resettled in their capital in Sang Lin and changed the dynastic title from Shang to Yin but customs and practices were not too different from those of the remote periods. The primitive customs, such as paying homage to maternal ancestors, using blackbirds as their totems, still existed in the Shang period. The maternal ancestor of the Shang people was said to have swallowed a blackbird's egg to produce the tribe. Therefore, the Shang people used the blackbirds as their totem.
Regarding the dances of the Shang dynasty, there is some fragmentary information about performances during the Chou period (1122-241 B.C.). Mentioned in The Book of Odes volume "Lu Sung" (eulogizing the nation Lu), there was once a dance called Wan Wu performed in Pi Kung as a sacrifice to the maternal ancestor. According to historical records, the dance Wan was the secondary name of the dance Ta Hu. It was first composed for sacrifice to the Shang founder, Ch'eng, in appreciation for his contributions to the well being of the people and in memo ry of his victory in the war against Emperor Chieh of the Hsia dynasty. The Book of Odes volume "P'i Feng," chapter "Chien Hsi," states: "The contents of the dance Wan were very fascinating; after seeing this dance, one could easily have thoughts of affection for the opposite sex."
The most efficacious evidence was recorded in the Tso Chuan. In the year of the accession of Lu Chuang Kung (one of the feudal lords), Tzu Yüan (whose title was Ch'u Ling I and who was the prime minister of Ch'u) flirted with Lady Wen (a new dowager of Ch'u). He lived close to her palace and produced the fascinating dance Wan. From this we can understand that the character of Wan must have been primitive and seductive.
Because of the strong sensual and bewitching character of this dance, later scholars avoided literal explanation of it, describing it rather as a dance performed with feathers and shield and used for sacrifices to the mountains, rivers, and ancestors.
Besides the historical records, there are oracle inscriptions found in the Yin relics which give light on study of the Shang or Yin dance. The hieroglyphics on the tortoise shells and animal bones tell us that at least two kinds of dance, Yü and Huang, were performed as prayers for rain. Yü was danced with oxtail in the dancer's hand and Huang with feathers on the dancer's head.
There are few historical records about the music of Shang, especially before the 14th century B.C. However, the oracle inscriptions found in the Yin relics (the oracle bones were first excavated at the Yin market, Anyang county, Honan province, some 70 years ago) had some limited mention of music from Pan Keng (1401 B.C.) to the end of the Yin dynasty (1154 B.C.).
People at that time often played instruments like the ku (drum) and the ho (small mouth pipes) when they worshiped their ancestors. They always played music called Hu or Ta Hu to accompany a dance. Later the Shang people moved their capital to Sang Lin; there the music and dance used when offering sacrifices to the gods and ancestors was named Sang Lin. It was said that this was a name for Ta Hu.
According to the Yin relics, there were many kinds of musical instruments:
- ku (wooden drum, both heads covered with snakeskin)
- ling (bronze bell)
- ching (stone chime; sometimes made of jade)
- pien chung (chimes of bronze bells)
- yun (a single large bronze bell)
- hsun (ocarina made of pottery, stone or bone)
In tortoise shell and bone inscriptions of Shang, the yüeh (mouth organ made of bamboo) referred to an instrument consisting of a set of pipes. Perhaps two or three pipes sounded simultaneously produced a harmonic effect.
With regard to stringed instruments, there are only a few legends. There are no archaeological discoveries of stringed instruments from Shang.
The music of the remote past (before Shang) was simple. The basic element was tempo or beat. It was probably toward the beginning of the Hsia dynasty (preceding Shang) that music began to develop melodically. The time during which Ta Hu music flourished could not have been too early. - Tsun Yuen Liu
Asian Outlook - Human rights violations
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights makes it a duty for all national powers to observe the following rules: "Nobody shall be subjected to torture, to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatments or to arbitrary arrest, detention or deportation. Everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, with all the guarantees for his defense. Nobody shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home and correspondence. Every citizen has the right to freedom of movement within his borders and abroad and to leave his own country. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, worship, association, and may receive and impart information and ideas through any media of communication and regardless of frontiers everyone has the right to choose his government by free elections."
It is enough to merely quote these fundamental rights proclaimed by the U.N. Declaration, for everybody to see that the Communist states trample every day, every aspect of every article of this Declaration which, by its own preamble, is the basic qualification of eligibility to the United Nations. However, our leftists, insatiable for Charter violators have won the admission to the U.N. of one more Communist state and the most flagrant violator of its charter, Red China. Thus our leftists, who make profession of denouncing the smallest breaches to human rights in bourgeois societies, swallow the most blatant violations of rights of men by Communist regimes.
The U.N. claims another fundamental right of men - their right of collective self-determination. Article 15 states: "No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality." However, national self-determination is just as massively, as tragically, as cynically violated by the Communist states as all the other human rights; a fact evidenced by the conquest of tens of nations; bloody crushing by the Red Army of Ukraine, Georgia and all the other non-Russian nations. Annexation with genocide of the Baltic states, Tibet and others. Subjugation by inner violence of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Albania, Bulgaria, North Korea, North Vietnam etc.
In short, the U.N. shelters, today, member states who practice shameful imperialism, a ruthless colonialism, and cruel slavery. In other words, totalitarian absolutism, which make a shambles of all fundamental rights of men. Everybody is aware that the Communist powers violate each and every principle of the U.N., but the "enlightened" leaders of the free world choose to act as if the reality was the opposite of what they know it is. Their "enlightment" consists of asking for peaceful coexistence with those states which plunge human existence in a bottomless chasm. How can such an attitude make sense?
Paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln, I may say that contradiction between principles and facts can be tolerated if it were for a short time or if the contradictions were light. But tolerating contradictions between principles and facts when they are both blatant and permanent, is equivalent to the suicide of mankind.
It is a hopeless gullibility to take seriously, when uttered by totalitarians, this term of "peaceful coexistence," that contradicts the very principle of totalitarian ism, of which the most characteristic feature is a constitutional inability to coexist with others. In fact, the Communists have proved to the hilt that they have never been able to coexist with anyone; neither with their neighbors whom they have satellites and are now crushing bloodily; nor with their multiracial populations, whom they have enslaved; nor with their own subjects, whom they are holding in an iron grip. And the Communist leaders cannot even coexist with each other, as they never stop assassinating each other. Coexistence is certainly a noble concept which is worth praising, but it is essentially democratic, as it implies tolerance for variety and respect for the rights of men. It is, therefore, contradictory to Communism which can live only if it remains exclusive and intolerant.
But precisely - so our liberals argue - the Communist leaders are abandoning progressively their totalitarian nature. They are liberalizing. Isn't it then clever, for us, to precipitate their mutation by giving them a nice welcome?
There is, here, a gross confusion in reasoning. It suffices to observe that, if we want to foster a certain phenomenon, we have to reinforce its cause. Well, what is the cause of the slackening of the Communist masters toward their subjects? Should it be their own good will, then it would certainly be proper to lend them a friendly hand. But how can our liberals speak of any goodwill coming from the Communist masters, after the innocent daughter of Pasternak was punished with forced labor, because her father dared to receive the Nobel prize? After the Communist Pharaoh's own daughter, Svatlana Stalin, was obliged to flee? After Guri Shukhevych has spent 20 years in prison after being arrested at the age of 15 for his refusal to denounce his father, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian insurgent army. After Ukrainian writers are sent to lunatic asylums and concentration camps? How can our liberals speak of liberalism at the very moment when the Soviet tanks have crushed all the human rights of the Czech and Slovak peoples?
The thaw behind the Iron Curtain, when it exists, only results from the unflinching refusal, by the enslaved people, of the Communist regime. It is the unyielding and sometimes rebellious hostility of the peasants of Ukraine, of the students of Potsdam, of the convicts of Workutta, of the workers of East Berlin, of the women of Budapest, which lifts, little by little, the leaden cover choking them. Hence, courting the tyrants results only in slowing, instead of accelerating, the liberalization of their subjects.
Let us remark that those defeatists who today invite us to waltz with the Kremlin, under the pretext that it grows better, gave us exactly the same advice under Stalin-the-Terrible. For 50 years, these same defeatists wanted us always to waltz with the Kremlin whether the latter is coexisting with us or aggressing against us. They have, towards Communism, a systematic complaisance.
The poet Heinrich Heine, on hearing somebody ask who was the chief ally of the Devil, answered: "It is the liberal intellectual who does not believe in the Devil." In the same way, I will say that "the chief allies of Soviet imperialism are the progressive intellectuals who do not believe in Soviet imperialism."
If we want to accelerate the splendid process of the liberalization behind the Iron Curtain, which carries with it the hope of our time, if we want not to betray the courageous peoples who are the true workers of the liberal process, we must relay outside, in a loud voice, the mute but unflinching NIET that the Soviet masters have never ceased to read on muzzled lips of their subjects.
Let us recall, here, the great lesson which Ledru-Rollin gave us when he refused the hand Napoleon III was offering him under the pretext that he was liberalizing France. "When a totalitarian power," answered Ledru-Rollin, "totters under the weight of its crimes, the democrats, if they want to accelerate its fall, must stiffen and not soften their opposition."
The less the Communist dictators see Western hands offered to them, the more will they yield to their subjects' pressure. And, the more they feel their subjects hostile, the less will they launch external aggressions. Thus we see that the care for freedom inside the Communist empire conjugates itself with the care for peace outside, and both command to the West a policy of absolute firmness towards the Kremlin.
In this connection, I should like to emphasize that we, on whom many liberals try to cast discredit by calling us "systematic anti-Communists," ought to lay claim to that label with pride, for we bear it in excellent company. Indeed, the most systematic anti-Communists of the world are the people of the Communist countries, and we can congratulate ourselves for having always been wholeheartedly in tune with them. Yes, the free world owes its survival, today, to the irreconcilable hatred that the masses of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, Byelorussia, Turkestan, Caucasus, Red China, North Vietnam and North Korea have never ceased to show to their Communist rulers, be it by silent refusal, be it by open revolt. It is they who will one day bring our deliverance together with their own.
If the final aim of our policy is to break the dictatorship in Moscow and Peiping the best way of doing so, without a world war, is to have it overthrown, from within, by its rebellious subjects. For as long as Communist dictatorship stands, no man, anywhere on earth, will be able to face the future with confidence. But this policy bids us to help, with all our heart and might, the resistance of those captive people. Because they are, altogether, the most effective, the most valuable and the most exposed allies of the free world. And their sublime sacrifice, not only bids us to denounce their tyrants and to unite, but also shows us the spirit of such a union. This spirit is the fire that inspires them, all races alike, it is the fire that glows in the forge of all our civilization, and the name of this fire is: FREEDOM. - Suzanne Labin
Central Daily feature - Cakes and places
Kuang cake, the most popular dessert of central Fukien province, is said to be the creation of Chi Chi-kuang of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), who fought against the Japanese. Some 60 years ago, Kuang cakes could be seen on any food stand in Taiwan, but new desserts gradually replaced the old ones and these cakes are now rarely seen.
Kuang cakes were closely related to worship of the gods in my childhood. Before the procession arrived, a clown called "pao ma tzu" - a messenger riding a paper horse, holding a bamboo branch and with a circle of Kuang cakes around his neck - would run to every corner, loudly announcing the arrival of the procession and reminding the people to light candles and burn joss sticks to honor the gods' arrival. He was the cheerful prelude to a solemn ceremony.
In paying tribute to Chi Chi-kuang and in memory of the Kuang cakes, someone has proposed changing the name of a railway station from Tienchung to Chikuang. Actually, Tienchung is not the Chinese transliteration of the Japanese Tanaka but the short form of "tien chung yang," which means the center of a field. It has nothing to do with Japanese prime ministers.
Chinese officials have always had the habit of renaming places when they think the original names are vulgar. The result is sometimes misleading. Many names lose their original meanings. Examples can be found everywhere. In Peiping, local color is shown in such names as "mên hu lu kuan" (house narrow as a calabash), "shêng chiang hu tung" (rope producer alley) and "kou i pa hu tung" (dog tail alley).
During the Japanese occupation, some Taiwan place names were changed. "Wanhua," formerly "Mangchia" ("canoe" in the aboriginal language), may mean a green-light house in Japanese. Actually, "Wanhua" is pronounced "banka" in Japanese, phonetically similar to the original sound of "Tamao." "Kaohsiung" in Japanese is pronounced "takao" similar to the sound of "Takou" (beating the dog). After the retrocession of Taiwan, officials changed some place names with out realizing the original meaning. "Yingo," which means nightingale's song, is actually a place with a giant stone resembling a parrot and was named "Yingkoshih" (stone of the parrot).
"Chiangtzutzui" (small harbor) and "Shantzuchiao" have been given names which lose the original meaning. I would agree to revive the Chi Chi-kuang spirit by popularizing the Kuang cakes. - Yang. Yang.