Guidebooks and paintings
"In literary and art criticism there are two criteria the political and the artistic…
There is the political criterion and there is the artistic criterion; what is the relationship between the two? Politics cannot be equated with art, nor can a general world outlook be equated with a method of artistic creation and criticism. We deny that there is an abstract and absolutely unchangeable political criterion, but also thatthere is an abstract and absolutely unchangeable political criterion; each class in every society as its own political and artistic criteria. But all classes in all class societies invariably put the political criterion first and the artistic criterion second…What we demand is the unity of politics and art; the unity of content and form, the unity of the revolutionary political content and the highest possible perfection of artistic form. Works of art which lack artistic quality have no force, however progressive they are politically. Therefore, we oppose both works of art with a wrong political viewpoint and the tendency towards the "poster and slogan" style which is correct in political viewpoint but lacking in artistic power. On questions of literature and art we must carry on a struggle on two fronts.
- Mao Zedong, Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art, page 88.(bold italics mine)
————
I haven’t bought a map to Hong Kong. I don’t think I’m going to need it- mostly I’ll be taking the bus and the rail. There are rail and bus schedules, and quite coherent directions. There’s isn’t any chance that I’ll get lost so long as I keep reading the signs.
What I need here, however, is a guidebook.
On my first afternoon here, I went walking down Hollywood Road here in Sheung Wan. This area is mostly known for its antique and curio stores.Big vases, warrior wooden effigies and marble or stoneBuddha statues supposedly dating back to this or that dynasty. Ivory tusks carved in minute and intricate details depicting images of a fishing village, a busy village market, a pond full of gracefully yet fitfully moving koi.
There are galleries and art shops three on every block. Paintings and tapestries and tea stores (selling valuable stone and chinaware — fragile things of pristine white, creamy loam brown, greenglass green) and antique furniture exhibition stores featuring chiffarobes and lounging tables, folding doors, ottomans varnished and finished to a high, shining gloss. There are bead stores with rows and rows of tables on top of which are greenjade bowls full of clay, glass, wood and china beads millefiore,chevron, eyes, bodom, granulated silver and gold, tiny bone spheres.
I like this street. I feel like I’m drowning in the wealth of images, the rich luxury of man-made creation. I am quite content to stand in front of the display windows, or look into the glass cases and feel myself somewhat taken over by awe. Man-made beauty and art: it’s been quite a while since I’ve been able to appreciate them at leisure, and now that I am able to so, I somewhat feel weakened.
This is the same feeling I get whenever I read, say, John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman, or certain passages by Albert Camus ("And here are trees and I know their gnarled surface, water and I can feel its tatse. These scents of grass and stars at night, certain evenings when the heart relaxes - how shall I negate this world whose power and strength I feel?")
So now I bring along my guidebook.
At the risk of sounding like a stereotype (or a religious nut, or a cult member like what anti-tibaks libel people who read revolutionary literature), I will write that I read Mao every night. I read his words to remind of what I was trained to be, what I am, where I should really be, and what I should really be doing.
And should do even now, even as I try to regain my bearings and get all my ducks in line.
A new friend of mine saw the book in my bag yesterday and asked me what it was.
"My bible," I answer, but only half jokingly.
It’s my mini Book of Answers and Magic 8 Ball combined.
Back in Manila, I suppose I got overwhelmed by the daily despair of writing about, reading about the political killings, the relentless oil price hikes, the bickering between the know-it-alls and self-righteous politicians. This weakened me against the contradictions that sprouted in the crevices between my interior self (weak and wavering sometimes) and how I related to and did my work. Weariness at doing the same things the same way every time caused my exhaustion.
It’s really a case of being too near the freaking trees to see the forest.
I had to back away a bit, away from the trees (the leaves, the bark, the flowers of which I stopped seeing, and the songs of the birds that perched on them have ceased to sound like music to me) so I can once more learn to appreciate the forest for what it was and all that it means to me and to millions of other people.)
There are two paintings here in a gallery I discovered right down the end of Hollywood road nearing Queen’s Row. The two big oil paintings feature a youth - a girl from the Red Army during Mao’s time (the 1950s). She is clad in olive green fatigues, a garrison belt cinched at her waist, where a red bandanna was also tied. She stands in the middle of a halo of soft golden light, her armalite (or some such weapon) in her capable, confident hands. An emerald butterfly is floating above her head. A small, happy smile is one her face, and her gaze is directed front — as if seeing right into the future, and what she sees pleases her.
The other painting is also of the same girl, only this time she is sitting on a rough wooden bench. She has placed her weapon next to her, standing upright and propped against one of the legs of the bench. This time she is looking at it, speculation and decision in her eyes: "I am resting now, and there is quiet all around me. If I need to wield this weapon, to use it - when the time comes and it is necessary to do in defense of myself and my country, will I be able to do so?"
She pauses, and answers her question herself: "I will."#
