I'm a traitor.

I've switched to a Wordpress.com account, and the link and name of this blog is exactly the same. I've done so simply because Wordpress has an app that lets me blog from my Blackberry. I used to use Wordpress over Blogger anyway, but I tried Blogger for a while because of my interconnected Google accounts. But you will see exactly the same things on the new blog as what I have here. :)

Thank you for visiting and I look forward to catching you on my new platform. ^.^

First Eurasia character designs!

This one for the protagonist, Jivaka, is only preliminary, but they are on the verge of being finalized. :) Thanks go to Keiichi Iwakura for his amazing game designs.

An article about The History Boys

I have a whole slew of favourite fictional characters. One is that has stuck with me for quite some time is Donald Scripps from The History Boys, a British play (and later movie) by Alan Bennett. I think he's a wry, savagely sharp, yet coolly compassionate and observant member of the cast who prefers to counsel rather than judge, and to poke fun at the serious sides of life.

If you're interested (or want to learn more about the quirky world of The History Boys), have a look here for my analysis of the character. The movie itself is excellent, I highly recommend it if you aren't squirmish about homosexual undertones and themes (although IMO there's no reason why anyone should feel that way in the 21st century). :p

Blatant self-advertising

Here are two of my showcased articles on our New Lotus bulletin over at Buddhistdoor International:

Buddha Tang: Pure Land, Ch'an, and the Heritage of Chinese Buddhism

China's Buddhist Pride: Consolidation and Custodianship of the Blessed One's Heritage (a piece about the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation)

New character in my visual novel

Yar Lha Sham Po

With celestial eyes of freezing cold rime and nostrils that howl stormy blizzards through the three worlds, the mountain deity Yar Lha Sham Po is the supreme god of Tibet's primal, pre-Buddhist pantheon. Conceivable to human sight as a massive, eerie white yak, the god's presence on Tibet's peaks is responsible for the bitter weather that enshrouds the highest mountaintops on the Roof of the World. He is also the patron divinity of the fertile Yarlung Valley, from where the empire's monarchs emerge onto the stage of history. As the reigning emperor, Trisong Detsen has now turned his back on the old gods and accepted Buddhism as the state religion. Poised to invade Tang China, he plans to tap into the fury of Yar Lha Sham Po and direct its elemental power against his very enemies.

Character design by Keiichi.

Genres of writing in high Tang culture (2)

The Tang Dynasty is seen as the birthgiver of some of China's best poets and statesmen (very often the two cannot be separated in Chinese culture, whereas it's strange these days to see a politician who professes to be a poet). What strikes me as even more important than the proliferation of so many important writers is the expansion of genres that was consciously crafted by collective circles of poets, ministers, historians, and novelists, even though the production of the literature within those genres was, like all historical developments in the world, organic.

Poetry is certainly the most famous of all bodies of Tang writing, and who could blame historians for their nostalgic recollection of poetry during this time? The poets Wang Wei, Li Bo, and Du Fu are universally recognized as China's best writers, but credit must also be given to people like Han Yu, Yuan Zhen, and more, who pioneered what Lu Xun argued were the first forms of self-conscious storytelling and prose in China: chuanqi or "transmissions of the remarkable", in other words, romantic fictions or short stories. The aftermath of the Anshi Rebellion marked not only this important development in Chinese literature, but it also led to the culmination of Tang writing: critical essays. In an ironic sense, the full maturation of high Tang intellectual culture could only come to fruition with the terminal, slow death of the dynasty's political glory. In this post I'll skim over almost criminally over the genre of fiction, and in two more following posts I'll discuss poetry and the classical prose essay respectively.

The mode of fiction was not, to be sure, as highly regarded or revered as poetry. Nor were authors setting out to write "fiction" in our modern sense of "there is fiction, and there is non-fiction." Also, although many tales offered certain morals and lessons as per most forms of Confucian-influenced literature, these romantic fictions were disarmingly sympathetic to its characters' experiences and emotions, allowing the fictional world to revolve around their personalities, actions, and happy or unhappy endings. In this sense Tang fiction was far less moralistic than many European pieces in the Elizabethan and Victorian periods.

• A range of lyrical techniques was developed to make otherwise simple plotlines engaging and suspenseful.
• Many of these short stories were once accounts of strange phenomena, and a reworking of the plot or the structure made it into what was a "consciously crafted work" - a story told for its own sake.
• Stories often involved the authors themselves or their associates, who were often officials or imperial examinees. Hence much romantic fiction centered on love affairs with courtesans at brothels. Mark, this also rendered the male protagonists of those stories, amusingly, insipid, weak, and helpless compared to the much more capable personalities of the prostitutes. 

Genres of writing in high Tang culture (1)

Over these few days we in London are celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of the Queen, Elizabeth II. But after watching the excellent movie Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (I really wish Tsui Hark pushed more bravely the lesbian subtext between Empress Wu and Jing'er... sigh) I've decided to blog about my favourite activity - writing - during the Tang Dynasty. My post is split into two parts and today I'm asking why anyone should care about the consequences of some group of impoverished, hungry writers from a long-dead dynasty. In other words, who cares about Tang-era literature, seriously?

As China is still recovering from the repercussions of the Cultural Revolution (among them a distinct cultural amnesia or wilful ignorance), I've always argued that you can't recover cultural memory unless you understand writing and its history. Writing crafts narrative, and it's impossible to recover any kind of cultural memory without narrative. In turn, memory is so important and powerful that it forms the very heritage of a people. Narrative and memory are most certainly the lifeblood of any tradition's heritage. Everyone has narrative - from people as diverse as Quakers to British monarchists, from American conservatives to Sikhs or Hindus. No one escapes the magnetic power of narrative because it tells your story, your life, and your place in the world... and it is always being retold as history unfolds.

In other words, the historical understanding of writing, which facilitates the recovery of narrative and memory (and by implication, heritage) is one of the most urgent questions faced by not only Chinese people today, but by anyone interested in culture.

The inheritance of Modernism has not only resulted in republics, the rolling of aristocratic heads, and imperialism without use of the word "empire" (just look at today's USA and China). It also resulted, most dramatically in Central Eurasia and China during the Cultural Revolution, a vicious disowning of the past and time-honoured institutions, and along with these institutions went their ideas about Beauty and Art. As Beckwith pointed out, Modernism demands perpetual revolution, which means that nothing can be considered ideal, or the best, or worthy of emulation, except the narrative of "deposing the aristocrat, the emperor, or the priest". How could I, for example, look up to my Buddhist temple or its monks as the ones to serve if "religion is the opiate of the masses" and Religion, with all its Art, standards of Beauty, Good, and Writing, need to be destroyed?

Which is why art and music during Mao Zedong's rule was so pathetically homogenous in theme as well as morals. And where was the proliferation of genuinely influential authors, who, if they weren't being murdered or sent to a re-education camp, could match the standards of previous periods. Sure, Modernism most definitely has created good art. I'm a lover of cartoons, manga, and anime. I love digital animation (this whole blog is meant for creative media) and I'm unapologetic about some of the writing and music of our contemporary age. But until we understand what it meant to write well in historical periods of cultural productivity, we can never recover that sense of the Ideal.

Of course, no aristocrat or priest was ever perfect. I know my employer isn't (he's a monk). But it didn't matter - in the name of aristocrats and kings creative people, needing money and food and therefore higher society's patronage, wrote or made art or made music. And from understanding kingship/religion/nobility as the Ideal sprang true masterpieces, from the Homeric Epics to the Poetic Edda, from the various scriptures of world religions to Mozart and Handel. That's why we need to look back to the literature of the Tang and other imperial dynasties - if not to emulate their Ideal, then to craft a different Ideal for ourselves with the hindsight of their wisdom.