Bits and bobs

Stepladder in a tree, evening

Sometimes there are things that I need to write about my experience in Hong Kong that don't really have a logical home in this blog. When, for example, I come across a stepladder upside down at the top of a tree, I don't know what to think. Is this an adolescent prank? A normal occurrence after a typhoon (not that there have been any big ones for a couple of years, or so people tell me)? A new approach to waste management? An art project?
Speaking of art projects, I love coming across bits of public art here and there in Hong Kong - often in shopping malls, perhaps because that is where most people seem to spend their time.
We were wandering around in Tsim Sha Tsui the other day, and a display of bamboo carvings caught our eye. As a bamboo lover, this was too good an opportunity to overlook. I'm glad we went in. The carvings were amazing, though probably too traditional for me to really enjoy. These were done by a Master Bamboo carver, as he was described, from Anhui province in China.

I really do not know how anyone can carve this amount of detail with any sort of tool, and I guess I have to add this to my informal list of incredible-things-that-humans-do. These things had depth and perspective, and all carved in minute detail from single pieces of bamboo culm. Wow! In a nice early-childhoodish touch, we could have had a go at carving our own bits of bamboo as part of the exhibition. Many people were trying it out, but I felt rather intimidated after having seen the intricacy of the carvings on display. As has been our experience in Hong Kong, the people at the exhibition were very kind, with one woman giving us a brief tour of the pieces, and short explanations, and then pressing a catalogue on us, apologizing that is was only in Cantonese. I recognised two easy characters I have learnt, bamboo (竹) and mountain (山), which is always a thrill.

Forest of metallic balloons

Video of child and balloons

In the same mall a few floors up we came across more art, this time one I had seen mentioned online or in the paper somewhere. This was interactive, playful art, aimed perhaps at children, or for those feeling in a light-hearted mood. It had caught my eye initially because as an early childhood teacher I am always interested in how children are perceived and catered for in the wider arts world. We didn't have time to give it the attention it deserved - video installations always take a bit of time and energy to participate in - but I saw a couple of things I liked, including this simple but effective balloon forest. I guess I am always a sucker for interactive art, like the work by Felix Gonzalez-Torres that I saw in the NGV MOMA show in Melbourne. It was also a bit of a thrill to play a large game of quoits with the artist, a young Cantonese woman, using hula hoops and a 'Danger- slippery floor' sign, continuing the participatory art theme.

The last thing I wanted to note, in this very wide-ranging post, was my great affection for the laundry-hanging culture in Hong Kong. It is the absolute antithesis of the American suburbs where hanging laundry outside is banned. Yes, banned, in 'the land of the free' (right!). Here in Hong Kong, people are a lot more relaxed about this sort of stuff. You see clothing hung out to dry precariously from 40th story windows (they must really trust their clothes pegs/pins) as well as people stringing up their washing over bicycle-path handrails, or on washing lines they string up in parks. Just as people might play football in parks in Australia, people here seem to be relaxed enough to dry their laundry in them, particularly those pesky sheets that are a pain to dry in any apartment. To prove I'm not joking, I snapped this picture in Tai Po the other day - please note the need explicitly to ban hanging out laundry in this small public.

Sometimes you can learn a lot about a culture by what needs to be prohibited, and what does not!