Buying a Classical Guitar

 Today I was playing the classical guitar while watching Ivan playing toys in the lounge. Ivan was playing with the toyed fire engine and suddenly he wanted to sit on it. I asked him to not sit on it but as he is merely a toddler less than two years old, I shouldn’t expect him to listen to me. Then I stopped playing, laid the guitar against the wall and the sofa stood up and headed to stop him. But as soon as I stood up, I heard a “bang” sound, and the guitar had just fallen down to the ground. After I stopped Ivan sitting on the toy, I hurried to pick up the guitar and found the bridge of the guitar had been broken.
It is March 27 in 2022, nine years after I purchased the guitar. I could still remember that I bought the guitar in the second half of the year 2013. I was near 29 years old then, as a bachelor living with my grandmother in her house. At that time I was devoted to some tough research topics with very limited financial support. Life was not easy and I wanted to find a way to entertain myself a little bit. I started to think of learning a musical instrument. Previously I had played a type of vertical bamboo flute called Xiao, which was originated from China. As I had lived in Australia for several years, I believed I should learn a western musical instrument, and guitar was my choice due it its popularity and affordable prices.
It was in the afternoon. After shopping, I went to a guitar store near the shopping centre. At that time my parents were in Australia, helping my sister to look after her children. We were together. The staves saw us coming in, and then greeted us nicely. I said I wanted to buy a guitar as a beginner. Then he asked what type of guitars I wanted to learn, “For example, we have acoustic guitars, classical guitars and electric guitars. What do you want? ” This puzzled me as I hadn’t got much knowledge about that, but I first ruled out electric guitar as I felt it was too artificial. I liked the gentle sounds purely produced by the strings vibrating over the guitar body. “What is the difference between classical guitars and acoustic guitars?” I then asked. The staff smiled and said, “The sounds are very different, depending on which one you like. ” He then played some tunes with a classical guitar followed by an acoustic guitar, and said, “The feeling when plucking the strings are different. The acoustic guitars are made with steel strings and the classical guitars are using nylon strings, so the classical guitar is easier to pluck as it is softer. The classical guitar produces a warmer sound while the acoustic guitar’s sound is much louder and more brilliant. ” Only listening to the sounds produced, I thought I liked both of them, though I also agreed they were very different. I then asked the guy which one was more popular. He then said, “The steel strings based acoustic guitar is much much more popular nowadays, as it is used in pop music. The classical guitar is more favourable to playing classical music. ” My father then suggested I buy a more popular one as he thought it was better to follow the mainstream. However, I eventually decided to buy a classical guitar as I liked classical music more, and the price for classical guitar seems more affordable.

Admiring the Moon on the Sea Shore

In the late afternoon, we were arriving at the Shornciffe Pier again. The spectacle was as attractive as usual, despite the winds being much stronger than last time. The sea winds seemed to have blown the seawater into the atmosphere, making the air smell salty. Ivan was very active and exciting as he was merrily running along the pier. Since today was not the weekend, there were only a few people sparsely distributed on the pier, leaving enough space for us to linger around and take photos.


It was a sunny and clear day, though there were clouds with either white or grey colours floating in the blue sky. At the time when we arrived there, the sun was still quite harsh, shining its golden beams on the ground. But after a while, it soon fell to the west. The sunset had made a patch of red clouds to the west of the sky and smeared some pink mist to the east.
We took some photos and then we were thinking about going home as there were mosquitoes at night on the shore. However, a stranger asked me whether we needed his help to take some photos for us. I courteously refused as we wanted to keep a social distance from the others. However, they then asked me to help them to take a photo. Though I was a bit reluctant, I could not find a good excuse to refuse. This was what the life about living under the pandemic.


I checked the information online and knew moonrise time would be around 5:41 pm, which was about 20 minutes later. We then slowly walk to the children’s playground to spend some time before going to the end of the park where there was a narrow and long concrete passage stretching to the middle of the sea. We cautiously stepped to the passage and wandered there for a while before I saw a big and round moon appeared on the horizontal line of the sea. The moon gradually rose to the sky. When the whole world had become darker and darker, the moon itself had become more and more brilliant.

STEREOTYPE

Today both the rain and the heatwave have been gone for a couple of days, leaving a clear sky with plenty of cotton-like fluffy white clouds that occlude the sun. My wife suggested going out to the shore as she said we hadn’t been there after the Lunar New Year, and then we headed to the Shorncliffe Pier. The spectacle was beautiful, with a calm sea in front of us. Standing on the pier, we could admire the blue sky, the dark green sea, and the horizontal line at the far end where they met. Ashore there laid some quiet villages reflecting the golden sunshine. Far away were mountains that were blurred in vision. White seagulls were flying on top of our heads. Many fishing rods were laid on the fence of the pier, with some people sitting leisurely while waiting for the fish. My wife rejoiced with the beautiful scenery and urged me to take photos for her. When I had taken many photos for her and Ivan, she said she wanted to take some for me. I was not keen on photos and unconsciously accepted the idea. I didn’t know what postures and expressions should I make for the photos. So I was just standing naturally while she was taking photos for me. Then she looked at the photos on the mobile phone and exclaimed, “Oh, you look too feminine in the photos. ” I groaned, “What postures are considered to be masculine? ” Then I said, “There is some type of beauty for the feminine postures as well.” Then in the next photo, I made a posture by holding two fists in my hand, assuming that was meant to be manly.
In our society, there are always some behaviours and appearances considered to be masculine and some others to be feminine. It is expected that a man should be masculine and a woman should be feminine in terms of this. Otherwise, they will be considered abnormal or disgusting, and are teased. However, I believe these are merely stereotypes, and should not be viewed as wrong and teased. Could we consider them as a special form of beauty other than a type of guilty? I reckon at least we should view them as a form of nature, which should not be condemned or required to rectify.




I suddenly recalled in the old days when I was a child, I had a doll as my favourite toy. My father was not happy about that and he said as a boy I should prefer to play with toys such as a robot or a superman model to be masculine. However, in my mind, manliness was not meant to be playing what types of toys, it means braveness and determination though I admit that I am not a brave or determined man either.

Stereotypes do not only relate to gender characteristics. Sometimes it will be applied to other aspects. For instance, there is a type of stereotype for adults.

I would like to tell a true story of mine during the final year of secondary school. It happened just two months before the national college entrance examinations. One day the headmaster of my class asked me to her office to have a chat with me. It was said she wanted to understand all students’ requirements and provided helps if needed. As the headmaster had seldom chatted with me. I was very nervous. I admitted that I was weak in social interactions and communications, and my academic performance was poor in my class during the senior high school period. I was also under enormous stress for the coming examinations. For almost every mock exam I had diarrhea and needed to go to the toilet for some time, and then often had not enough time to answer all questions.

I was afraid to talk to teachers and worried about why she asked me to her office. It was during the evening classes. When I entered her office, I trembled a bit. “Miss Yang! What is the matter that you asked me to be here?” I said to her. I have forgotten much about the conversation. I just remembered that she said she wanted to see whether I needed some help. However, I clearly remembered that after I went back to the classroom for some time, she furiously went to the classroom, and blamed my rash gestures and rude behaviours during the conversation. She said, even other teachers had noticed that my facial expressions and gestures were unusual, which had made her rather embarrassed in the office. “You have been over eighteen years old,” She said in front of all students in the class, “and you shouldn’t behave like that, which was aggressive and rude.” Then she condemned me in front of all students in the class for about half an hour.

I admitted that my behaviours had never been elegant, and sometimes they were a bit uncourteous, but I had never intended to offend anyone. I was not sure why she was so angry with me for such a trivial matter. Ridiculously, the conversation, which was said to be used to understand whether I needed help, in fact, had hurt me greatly, especially just two months before the college entrance examinations. It is true that I had been over eighteen years old and had been a young adult. But why can’t an adult be shy and nervous? Why can’t an adult behave a bit unusual when overwhelmed by the coming exams?

Then later I went to Xi’an for university, and I told some of my roommates this story. They were shocked by how narrow-minded the teacher was to bother with a student for only the gestures and facial expressions matter. For many years, I thought I also had some faults to be not courteous enough, but now I think it is not a fault as an adult, especially when being overwhelmed by preparing for the world’s most competitive examinations.