China Talk Tuesday - Porcelain Figurines

I told you I'd be highlighting a few pieces of beautiful Chinese artwork over the next few weeks!

These beauties are from the same art market in Shanghai as the silk embroidery from last week.

The girl on the right is playing a flute (dek). The girl on the left is playing a Erhu (yi wu). Lo Gung and I each picked one out. I chose the girl with the Erhu.

When I lived in Hong Kong, I had my good days and my bad days. On one particularly icky day, my companion and I went down into a train station to head to our next appointment. As we walked, I heard the most beautiful music, on an instrument that sounded so hauntingly sad, and so startlingly similar to a human voice, I was transfixed. The source of the sound was an old man, sitting on a milk crate in the corner, eyes closed, oblivious to the people around him. In his hand was an instrument with two strings strung along a long neck and through a horse hair bow. The neck was attached to a small two-sided skin drum at the base that looked very much like it was covered in snake skin. I later learned, from Lo Gung, that the Erhu is said to be the instrument most similar to the human voice, as the Erhu has only two strings. There are no frets, no markings to tell you where you are in the scale. I later got to try my hand at playing an Erhu - I successfully mimicked the sound of a dying crow, and quickly stopped my impromptu recital. Lo Gung and I have set a sort of a goal to collect as many traditional Chinese musical instruments as we can, and then try to find someone who can teach us to play them, if only just a little. The Erhu is the first on my list!

These girls are called B Foh (Grade B) artwork - they are beautiful, but do not require as much time or talent as A Foh. (The embroidery from last week would be an example of A Foh. If these girls were to be upgraded to A Foh, their dresses would be hand-painted with an intricate design instead of the simple raised pattern that is much easier to paint.) All the artwork in the Shanghai market was graded A, and B. There is a price jump from one to the other, so you just need to go in knowing what you want to pay. We, of course, haggled on all of the items I'm showing you. I was fairly useless in that area, as all the negotiations were done in Mandarin!

Come back next week - I'm going to show you some magic crystal balls!!