#week 137

White Deer Plain (白鹿原) by Chen Zhongshi (陈忠实). 1993. Translated by Jay Zhang.

A novel that took Chen Zhongshi six years to write, White Deer Plain follows the trials and tribulations of two families across three generations, from the fall of the Qing Dynasty to the rise of the People’s Republic of China. Set in a small village in Shaanxi Province, the novel shed light on the voices of the Chinese rural periphery throughout history and enjoyed widespread popularity for its stunning realism and massive scope. In 1997, the novel received the Mao Dun Literature Prize — the most prestigious modern literary award in China. Since then, White Deer Plain has been adapted into a critically acclaimed drama, movie, and traditional opera. 

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This is week 137, folks!

I am looking for authors or new stories to read. If you know an author or story that I’m not reading, please let me know!

Readers-please make sure you show these authors some love! If you’d like to check out my previous posts, follow #rachel’s fanfic lists or search the tag on my blog. Happy reading!

On Borrowed Time - panskiss123

Come Back To Me - RainbowUnicorn_12

A Bump On The Head - MTK4FUN

When Peeta met Katniss - alliswell aka @alliswell21

F**k The Coffee - heilb aka @butrfac14

I Count the Hours - Mellarkandcarstairs

Blended - @adreamofadandelioninthespring

Calabash Brothers (葫芦娃). dir. Hu Jinqing (胡进庆). 1986.

Director Hu Jingqing passed away recently on May 13, 2019, at the age of 83. Hu was born in Jiangsu province and early in his career he joined the Shanghai Animation Film Studio, and assisted in creating Pigsy Eats Watermelon, the first ever Chinese paper cutting animation film. Since then he won many awards throughout his career, which he continued through the late 1990s, including the 1984 Golden Rooster Award for Best Animation for his film The Fight Between the Snipe and the Clam.

Among his most well-known works is the cartoon series Calabash Brothers. Their story is as follows: there were two demons banished in the Calabash mountains, and one day a pangolin accidentally made a hole in the mountain, releasing the two demons. Since then the common people suffered, and many left the hometown. The pangolin rushed to tell an old man, that in order to stop the demons, he was to grow seven calabashes, one in each colour. The old man follows suit, and after the calabashes ripen, they fall off the stem and turn into seven boys, each possessing a different super power as well as incredible strength. Together they journey to fight off the demons. The Calabash Brothers remain one of the most famous Chinese animated characters today. 

I.M. Pei ( 貝聿銘). 1917-2019.

Chinese-American master architect Ieoh Ming Pei (I.M. Pei) passed away on May 16, 2019, at the age of 102. He was best known for designing the glass pyramid at the entrance of the Louvre in Paris, the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Dallas City Hall and The Bank of China Building in Hong Kong. Pei’s work follows his particular, modernist brand of simple geometries that is clean-cut, sharp-edged and unapologetic. Critics praise his buildings for going beyond the coldness of modern architecture and for being both boldly monumental and warmly exhilarating and inviting. 

Born in in Guangzhou and raised in Hong Kong and Shanghai, Pei’s biggest inspirations came at an early age from the gardens of Suzhou. Pei joined the Harvard Graduate School of Design after graduating from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1948, he began his architect career designing buildings for a real estate developer in New York for seven years before establishing his own independent firm in 1955. After his first major recognition with the Mesa Laboratory in Colorado in 1967, Pei was selected as the chief architect for the John F. Kennedy Library in Massachusetts, and went on to design some of the most iconic skyscrapers, museums, concert halls and civic buildings in the world. 

Pei became one of the most revered architects in the world and won a variety of awards and prizes in his field, including the AIA Gold Medal, the first Praemium Imperiale for Architecture and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. In 1983, he received the Pritzker Prize, sometimes referred to as the Nobel Prize for architecture. 

Project Dust. Brother Nut (坚果兄弟). Performance. 2015.

Brother Nut is an internationally-known Chinese performance artist born in 1981 in Shenzhen, China. Based in Beijing, his work often targets China’s environmental concerns. His most renowned work is Project Dust, where he made a brick out of the toxic smog in Beijing to raise awareness of the severe air pollution level in the major cities of China. He spent 100 days around the capital with an industrial-strength vacuum and a gas mask, vacuuming the dust particles from the polluted air for four hours a day. 

Untitled, (2010-2,3,4). Lin Xue (林穴). Ink on paper. 2010.

Lin Xue was born in 1968 in Fujian, China and currently resides in China. His work was first exhibited in the Manulife Young Artists Series 1995 and the Hong Kong Art Biennial Exhibition 1998. Since then, Lin’s work has been featured, among mainland artists Kan Xuan and Guo Fengyi, in the 2013 Venice Biennale.

Lin’s Untitled series from 2010 reflect his preoccupation with the life and mechanics of plants and microorganisms. His paintings take inspiration from the literati landscape paintings of scholar's rocks, and formally resemble them from afar, though closer investigation reveals the detailed microcosms of flora and fauna contained in each form.