Potentially Offensive Art

Just to let you know that if you are easily offended by art, you might want to skip this post!

Due to the strange way the academic schedule works, every other Thursday I am busy with classes, while the remaining Thursdays I am completely free. It took me some time to get used to this. Yesterday was my busy day, and I started it off wrong by sleeping right through my alarm. This rarely happens to me, because I am a light sleeper, and it wouldn't have yesterday morning either if I hadn't been wearing ear-plugs to drown out the noise of the fridge turning on, which wakes me up. The weird downsides of living in a one-room apartment.

Anyway, had a very fast shower, dressed, and tossed boiling water over one of my jasmine tea "flowers" and then I was out the door. A fifteen minute morning. The upside of having short hair and not being vain. The 8 AM class is always worth it. How I adore the Song Dynasty literature teacher, with his sad downward sloping eyes hugely magnified behind thick round and large lenses. He lectured on Liu Yong, the king of Song songs. The music has all been lost, what's studied now is just the left-over song lyrics as poetry. Some are pretty good, but I suspect it suffers a lot from being read instead of sung.

One of the songs he was discussing was about the Lantern Festival, which is a rather sexy and romantic holiday. It's this that should be called the Chinese Valentine's Day ("Lover's Day" in Chinese), he opined, not the Seven-Seven day, which is supposed to be when the Herdboy and Weaver Girl cross the Milky Way on a bridge of magpies to meet for their once-yearly tryst. They're married, he said. What kind of "Lover's Day" is that? It should be called the Husband and Wife Day. As for the Lantern Festival…

Well, it was too late. The entire class of young undergraduates was in fits of overexcited giggling and whispering. It occurred to me that due to the crowded dorm conditions (4 to a room) and generally conservative sexual mores, it was probably a roomful of 18 and 19 year old virgins with raging hormones, for which probably the only outlet is the idea of such holidays. Well, and making out by the lake, reputedly? though it strike me as rather public for a make-out spot, not to mention plagued by ants and mosquitoes. (The crass-minded can always go to the East Gate and check out this reasonably well-endowed stone lion, as well.) Well, Song dynasty song lyrics were notoriously sexy and scandalous in their time, so I suppose it's the kids who were in the right mood. The prof was trying to sell them on the notion that what made Liu Yong's song lyrics so much better than the others was the depth of personal experience he brought to his compositions…that they weren't all just about pretty girls…but this is the opinion of one whose blood has cooled!

My 10 AM historiography class was canceled. I stopped by home briefly to look things up and grab a different set of books. Then back to campus for lunch, and the library, and one more class. I checked out my first library book, not without difficulty. The circulation said it wasn't working and sent me to the ID card desk. The ID card desk tried to convince me I had to pay another 500 RMB. Nothing doing; I even kept my receipt. Then they did some magic to my card and it worked. Yay me!

The afternoon classical Chinese class was an extended discussion of specific vocabulary words instead of a discussion of literary pieces as it had been the last time I dropped in. I suffered and slept.

Here is a funny thing I saw on the way home. It is one of those turning billboard things, where each vertical strip has three different potential ads, and they turn in sync, cycling through the ads. But this one is getting its ads changed. It was the weirdest thing to see. I assume they have these in the US, but I've never seen them change one before. They paste a huge sign on to the vertical pieces and then cut them one by one into strips. It requires careful organization and (in China) at least 10 people. How many Chinese does it take to change a light-bulb? As many as possible. Anyway, I thought the billboard-changing process was pretty cool to see.