Two Worlds

November 16, 2011

We visited two worlds today. We spent the morning in China and the afternoon in the wilds of British Columbia.

The Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden was built for the World expo here in 1986. It is a feng shui marvel. Everything in it was imported from China and placed for a purpose. The result is a beautiful and harmonious space that bequeaths instant peace upon the visitor. From every perspective it is exquisite. Of course, one cannot escape the fact that these gardens were built for the elite Ming Dynasty scholars, a position open only to men, and so the most pristine and quiet room was saved for the guy. Yin and Yang. Have to take the good with the bad, right?

We spent the afternoon at the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology walking among the amazing artifacts and works of art from the eight First Nations tribes along the coast. I couldn't quit taking photos of the totem poles. They are so full of interesting figures: a hunter facing off with a bear; a bird transforming into a human, a very tall grimacing figure holding a face crotch-level between its hands. A well-informed and pleasant docent spent an hour teaching us about the exhibits and just wet our appetites. However, our feet were tired even if our appetites weren’t sated, and so we decided to leave for dinner even before the museum closed.

I found myself fascinated by Dzunukwa, an ogress in Kwakwaka’wakw (it’s really fun to say aloud--try it) mythology. She was a bringer of wealth, but she’s also an ogress—really a witch along the lines of Hansel and Gretel. She steals children and carries them home in her basket to eat. Children were told that the sound of the wind blowing through the cedar trees was the call of Dzunukwa. Wouldn’t that make an interesting picture book? A fascinating retelling of a native story?

In my eternal quest to find objects that will let me bring the experience home with me, I bought several prints by native artists. One of them, by an artist named Chee Chee, is an abstract rendering of geese that has the same feel as the Inuit print called "Our Joy" that Bob brought for me from Hudson's Bay a decade ago. Now we'll just have to buy a house to put it in.