Lishui Photo Festival: On Giving and Receiving

 Giving & Receiving Present, © Unknown,
from the Three Shadows Photography Art Center Collection

Bowing in gratitude for the many wonderful exchanges during our time in Lishui:

My team of sweet, enthusiastic volunteers who helped frame the work. The young men were architecture students from the University of Lishui. At right, Rainbow and Mushroom, their chosen names, who are are studying English at the University and had never spoken English with a foreigner before. We are now pen pals. When Rainbow asked me about our work, I said  we use old photographic processes in a new way and after looking at the work, she replied "Oh I understand. Like daughter paying homage to father." Their openness was a highlight of the trip.

High school students peppered us with questions, practicing their English and giggling, and we were interviewed and photographed like celebrities.

 

Meeting the other Chinese photographers exhibiting was an honor and cause for exchanges that would inevitably draw a crowd who photographed us. We even made the Lishui newspaper.

 We visited the studio of one of the artists we met at the exhibition and were served tea in his hand thrown celadon glazed exquisite teacups. We all came away with his beautiful pottery.

Here enjoying the cultural treasure of Chinese foot massage at Leisure Foot in Lishui.

And the sweetest gift of traveling with engaging, talented, and fun photographers.

The “Unconventional Photographers” with curator: l to r: Barbara Ciurej, Jim Leisy, Bill Vaccarro, Yan Li, Clay Lipsky, Fritz Leidtke, Susan Kae Grant, and her consort Rich Klein, Heidi Kirkpatrick and Ryan Zoghlin. We missed Lindsay Lochman, Kim Kaufman and co-curator Blue Mitchell.

Back of the House: Wing of the Unmarried Daughters

In Beijing, my hotel was a converted 300-year old former residence of a high ranking official. The room where I stayed was in the back of the house where the unmarried daughters were kept. Another lesson in refined confinement since "the leftover woman" was an embarrassment to her family.

What Cixi Saw

Cixi was the Empress Dowager (1835-1908) who ruled China (from behind a yellow silk curtain) for decades and moved China from a medieval empire into the modern age.  Jung Chiang's book: Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China defines her as reformer who abolished gruesome punishments like "death by a thousand cuts",  inaugurated women's liberation by outlawing foot binding and embarked on a path to parliamentary elections in China.

I visited the concubines' quarters (The Hall of Cultured Elegance) in the Forbidden City and felt the confinements of the women who served the emperor. Within these constraints, she found ways to rule.

Marina Warner in her biography: The Dragon Empress: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China describes these walls within walls within walls.