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.

A Visit to Upper Kedron Recreation Reserve

On the morning of yesterday, we were engaging in cleaning and moving furniture for the renovated space that was stretched from our house. In the afternoon, we uninstalled the Christmas tree in the living room and stored it for use in the future years. That corner now has become a space for Ivan to play. It was such a busy day that it was too busy to have time to cook and as a result, we ordered pizzas from Domino’s. Ivan was so happy to have a new play space, that he didn’t go to sleep until late at night, and woke up early in the morning.

My wife then suggested going to a park for recreation, but I thought we should make a haircut for Ivan first as his hair has been quite long given that it hadn’t been cut for a very long time. It was not as easy as before to trim his hair, and as one could imagine, he was crying and struggling to leave the chair during the procedure. However, it was also fortunate that we hadn’t gone out in the morning as there were a few showers, some of which were quite heavy.


After a few showers, the sky turned out to be blue with some clouds that were as white as snow in the afternoon. We then rethought the idea of going out. My wife said she planned to go to a place in Upper Kedron. I naively thought it was a place nearby as Kedron was just a neighbourhood suburb from here. However, it was in fact quite far away. The park was large and quiet. There were few people when we arrived. Later some people came to the park but it had never been as crowded as some other popular parks with big playgrounds.

There was a big round wheel that was facing the sky and with four seats at the corners. The wheel could be spinning when one push from either in a clockwise or anticlockwise direction. We called the wheel a boat. My wife held the baby, stepped into the wheel and then sat on one chair. I slowly turned the wheel moving around, and then sang the nursery rhyme “Row, Row, Row your boat. Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily. Life is but a dream!” However, we soon found there was some noise when the wheel was in motion. I then said to my wife, “You may be too heavy to sit on it as it was designed for children.” However, the noise did not diminish when my wife went off from it.

There was a corridor, with pictures painted on the walls. Ivan was so excited to see them. He especially liked the butterflies. I thought it was a great sign as I hoped he could learn to admire the arts.

There were two big slides and a few swings in the playground. Ivan spent some time playing the swings. Then we fetched the pram from the car, put the baby in it and then walked through a path to a mountain. From a higher place to look back at the park, the view was splendid.

Cantonese Music YANG Cui Xi

The composer for the famous Cantonese music YANG CUI XI is anonymous. No one nowadays knows who has composed it or what the music wants to express. However, from its title, which was a historical person’s name, the history of the music should not be too long. YANG CUI XI was a famous prostitute, actress and singer whose activities were active in the late Qing Dynasty and the early years in the Republic of China. She was perhaps the most famous prostitute in Qing Dynasty. There were references online that said she had once tried to protect the reformers who advocated constitutional Monarchy in Qing Dynasty.

The music has been widely used in Cantonese opera for many years. I know it was used in some operas in the 1950s and the music sheet was once published in the 1930s. From this point of view, it is at least not a piece of contemporary music and has many characteristics of traditional Cantonese music. I am not sure the mood of the music, but I feel it at least not a sad song.

Many years ago when I was a middle school student, I played this music with a bamboo flute in a musical lesson.

Autumn Yearning By The Dresser

The repertoire Autumn Yearning By The Dresser is dated from ancient China. No one knows who or when this piece of music was composed. The earliest known printed music sheet for this repertoire was published in Qing Dynasty, the last dynasty in China’s feudal society. However, it might have been composed even before Qing Dynasty. This repertoire is associated with the story of Wang Zhaojun, a women from Chinese Han Dynasty and married to the head of XiongNu to stop the war between the two countries. This piece of music expresses Zhaojun’s homesick when she was by the dresser in XiongNu on an Autumn day. This melody is generally well-known in the Cantonese speaking area due to it was adopted as the music in the last chapter, Fragnance Sacrifice, in the Cantonese opera Di Nu Hua, which tells a tragedy of a Princess in Ming Dynasty who suffered a lot and later commitede suicide for the collapse of the country. The version of this Xiao solo in the post is from this Cantonese opera, and it was arranged by the musician Wang YueSheng.

This is one of my most favourable pieces of music. At the time when I was studying in Xi’an, I often played it at my casual time. I was attracted to this tune not only because the characteristics of music, but also because of the history and historical stories associated with it. Playing this type of music is as if travelling to the past and talking to people from the ancient time, especially when using an intrument with several thousands years of history such as the Xiao. This is the greatest beauty that I admire. This is also the reason why Xiao is my favourate musical instrument despite I also sometimes play with concert flute and classical guitar. This is also the reason why Xi’an is my favourable city in China.

Solo Xiao for Greensleeves

The Xiao is a Chinese traditional vertical end-blown flute. There is no doubt that it can be used to play varies types of Chinese traditional music. However, its capability is not limited to that, as it can be used for western music as well.

There are some challenges to use Xiao in western or contemporary music. First of all, the pitch range for Xiao is not as wide as that for the concert flute. This leads to the fact that there are some repertoire concert flute can play while Xiao cannot. This does not mean Xiao is inferior to concert flute, as it has its strengths in other aspects. I know professional Xiao players can play about three octaves in a Xiao, but this is not easy to achieve by amateurs.

The second challenge is to play chromatic scale in Xiao. The contemporary Xiao has eight holes, which can easily play the ten out of the twelve notes in an octave of chromatic scale. However, there are still two notes, which require the techniques of covering half holes. In a G key Xiao, these two notes are the D sharp and G sharp.

These days I am practicing a piece o traditional western music, Greensleeves. It is an English folk song with a long history. It has quite a poignant melody, and its rhythm is slow, which fits the Xiao well. The difficulty is the frequently used G sharp note that requires covering half hole (playing in A minor on a G key Xiao). The technique is not that easy to master, as the tone sounds a bit week. It is also hard to play a clear tone, especially if I want to play smoothly.

A Trip to Rolin Farm

 Rolin farm is a strawberry farm located to the north of Brisbane. Every year in the season when strawberries are ripe, it will open to visitors for them to pick their own strawberries from the farm.

A few days ago, my wife told me that the strawberries in the supermarket are very cheap, which indicated that the arrival of peak season. Then yesterday, I made a phone call to the farm to get more information. The staff on the phone told me that it was available on Saturday (today) to pick strawberries on the farm but booking in advance was essential due to Covid. I then made a booking on the phone. As the time slots in the morning had been fully booked, I finally confirmed with them that we (including my mother and my sister), four adults and one toddler, would come to the farm at three o’clock in the afternoon.

Today is a sunny and warm day. The spring of Brisbane seems to have come. Ivan started to sleep at around eleven o’clock, and he became awake about one hour later, though he usually sleeps for a bit more than two hours at noon. Fortunately, he slept for half an hour on the way to the farm. Otherwise, he would be too tired.

We arrived at the farm a few minutes before 3 pm.  Next to the car park was a little cottage. Inside the cottage was a reception counter with a couple of staff, who handled the registrations. The cottage also sold some products such as strawberries, orchids, honey, ice-creams and so on. I entered the cottage and told them I had booked the one-hour time slot starting at 3 pm. The staff at the reception then gave me a few punnets. Each punnet for a person. It was said that the punnet for an adult could contain around 500 grams of strawberries, and cost $8. There was also a small punnet for our kid, which could contain 250 grams.

Outside the cottage were some chairs, tables, a children’s playground and a big strawberry statue. A big strawberry field was located on the other side of the road. We first took some photos with the strawberry statue and then went across the road to the strawberry field. The sky was so blue today with few clouds. The sun shined on the green farm as if the ground was brushed with a level of golden oil. The strawberries, as red as rubies, inlaid within the green leaves. The larger ones were as big as a half palm and usually with irregular shapes, whereas the smaller ones were in heart shape. They emitted a type of fragrance, which was the scent of flesh and ripe strawberries. We tried our best to pick the larger strawberries and only consider smaller ones to fill the holes in the punnets. Before 4 pm, all of our punnets were full.

When the sun began to fall to the west, we left the farm and drove back home. As soon as we arrived home, we cleaned the strawberries and ate them. They were super sweet. There were quite a number of strawberries becoming soft due to the squeezing, but I felt that the softer ones tasted better and sweeter. They were not like the strawberries bought from supermarkets, which were usually a bit sourer, less red and harder. My wife said the strawberries picked from the farm dissolved in the month immediately when biting them. Ivan also had three, which was quite a lot for his little stomach.

 

Playing Classical Guitar

I started playing classical guitar at the age of 29. Now several years have passed and I made little progress. I gave up for quite a long time as it was said that one would required to grow long nails and shape them well to pay with modern techniques. This is very inconvenient in life. However, recently I went through the websites and found that there were people playing well without nails. Then I restarted my journey with it.

I registered in some well-known forums and purchased an online course from Udemy. I found that I made a mistake in right hand fingers. In my practice, I always used the ring finger for the first string, the middle finger for the second string, the index finger for the third string, and the thumb for the three bass strings. But I recently realised that I should alternate my fingers while playing. I started to unlearned the bad habit and practiced by using i-m or m-a alternation.

I find I play too many musical instruments, including concert flute, Dizi, Xiao and classical guitar. I had to made a decision to play just some of them.I think I will just practice concert flute and classical guitar, given the wide range of music these instruments provide. Dizi and Xiao are nice instruments with a Chinese music focus and they had a much longer history. However, the pitch range is quite limited making me hard to play many western style music.