panda diplomacy

Via Nag on the Nag’s expertly curated Sunday Links (always a lot to explore here), we are introduced to the latest obsession, research rabbit hole from the contributors of Artsy magazine in this 1861 portrait of a pedigree Pekingese by German transplant painter Friedrich Wilhelm Keyl, who specialised in the subject and received many commissions from the court of Victoria and Albert. Though living a contented to all appearances and happy eleven more years in the lap of luxury, there’s a dark side to little Looty and her role as a political prop—sort of like Nixon’s Checkers speech.

Charmingly called after the diminutive for the spoils of war by the queen, this example of the exclusive companion breed reserved for the Imperial family of China was one of five Pekingese dogs found guarding the corpse of a lady who took her own life in 1860 as an Anglo-French exhibition force advanced on the Old Summer Palace (The Garden of Perfect Brightness and royal residence) and under the orders of Lord Elgin in retribution for an earlier failed peace treaty began to ransack the place at the height of the Second Opium War. The plunder and destruction took a force of four thousand men three days to carry out, owing to the palace’s monumental size. The sentimental portrait takes on new meaning when looking at it through the fraught historical context of colonialism and is still a matter that the European powers are coming to terms with. Not to be outdone by his father that stole the Marbles, Elgin’s (who also served as governors of Jamaica, Canada and India) wanton act forced the capitulation of the Qing Emperor and ceded the rest of the Kowloon Peninsula to the crown colony of Hong Kong. Posing before a Ming vase that was surely also part of the pilfered treasure, you can detect a hint of saudade and longing her eyes. We’d like to give back Looty her old name as well.

palabra jot

Probably at least a semi-legendary figure though charged with an onerous task nonetheless, court historian, secretary and studious bureaucrat Cangjie (倉頡) was tasked with the job of inventing written language around forty-six centuries ago when the Yellow Emperor expressed his dissatisfaction with the available method of recording information—that is, knots in string.
Though gifted and determined, Cangjie was at a loss until he began to contemplate the tracks and footprints left by animals and humans. Encountering an unfamiliar impress, Cangjie inquired with a hunter what sort of animal could leave such a mark. On learning it was the print of a Pixiu (貔貅, the equivalent of a chimera), Cangjie was inspired to create a set of logograms that would become written Chinese. Traditionally depicted with four eyes, it is said that at his eureka moment, the deities and ghosts wailed and wept as the living could be duped no longer thanks to a written record and the heavens rained down millet and grain. This figure is the namesake of the first Chinese language dictionaries and the method for adapting Chinese for Western keyboards.

overseas logogram

The peripatetic polyglots at the helm over at Language Log direct us to a host of for the nonce Sinographs from Hong Kong which could be described as neologism—rather neographisms or visual portmanteaux inventing characters by mixing the component parts and meaning-bearers from different glyphs to form something nuanced and paraliteral.  The pictured example seems to borrow selectively from 鎮靜 (zhènjìng, that is combined calm, poised) but taking on a new context in this form as equanimous and not un-dispassionate, unshaken.
As one reader commented, this zhìzào (制造, making characters) is reminiscent of the 1987 publication originally to be entitled Mirror to Analyse the World: The Century’s Final Volume by artist Xu Bing but was instead ultimately called after the Chinese term tiān shū that itself originally was reserved for divinely inspired writing (akin to speaking in tongues) but came to signify gibberish in “A Book from the Sky.” Very much up to the interpretation of the reader, the bound edition limited to a single print run, the book is composed with a set of four-thousand characters (comparable to the lexicon of modern Chinese writing) and imitate natural language on the page in terms of diversity and frequency but are wholly made up, nonsense words, as if a book in a Latin script were filled with Wingdings. The above banners, however, have a meaning and message that can be puzzled out.

7x7

cut-throat competition: gig workers are tethering their smartphones in trees to gain an edge of miilliseconds over others for a limited number of contracts

the hackney year: season after season of recorded back garden bird song and other sonic gems via Things Magazine

october surprise: a cynical campaign ploy threatens to erode public trust in science and medicine

a transparent corridor in the air: a design firm completes the longest glass-bottomed suspension bridge along the approach to Three Gorges

ascii art: artists creates “typicitions” on his vintage typewriter

snitches get stitches: the prohibition against social gatherings are polarising college campuses

eula: monopsonistic on-line retail giant deploys union-busting tactics to perpetuate myth of “freelance” work-force and maintain their impressment

spacepower

Foregoing the space bar, the United States of America’s newest military branch has outlined its vision and mission couched in very jingoistic and war-like language how it will establish and maintain dominance in the firmament. Unlike the Space Race that ran parallel to the nuclear build-up that was marked by achievements and milestones of one-upmanship that the Soviets indisputably won—with the exception of the crowning technical success of landing a crew on the lunar surface and bringing them back safely repeated over several iterations—there’s not so much a spirit of competition and exploration, with shining moments of cooperation, but rather sabotage and denial of access for those aspiring to join.

7x7

r.o.u.s. (rodent of unusual size): a LEGO Princess Bride playset

fifteen men on the dead man’s chest: beach sand skeletal impression kit

colouring london: an ongoing project amassing architectural statistical data from Maps Mania

antimandering: redistricting software that illustrates the trade-offs of proportional representation, via Waxy

splinternet: discouraging trend championed now by the US towards compartmentalising the once global web—via Slashdot

duly appointed rounds: another one of Trump’s antithetical department heads bent on dismantling the institution he is in charge of (see previously)

mind the gap: subway and metro announcements from around the world

bytedance

Though arguably characterising the popular short video montage application as some Trojan Horse infiltrating Americans’ households and siphoning their data to China is a hackneyed red herring with it hitting closer to home with many taking to the platform to insult and ridicule Donald Trump, it is instead worth noting the change in tenor on allowing TikTok to continue to operate within the US from an outright and immediate ban to suiting a quick and slapdash takeover. User data is still collected, presumably pursuant of the same sort of demographic profiling but will graciously be stored on domestic servers and not exported. Though TikTok is Chinese-owned, the app is not available in China. Pressuring the parent company to divest itself of a big part of its business under duress is the stuff of mafia bosses—especially so when Trump thinks that the US government deserves a cut of the sales for having negotiated such a favourable deal.

parting shot

Launched on 23 July, China’s mission to Mars, Tianwen-1, beamed back this postcard of a crescent Earth and its satellite from a distance of a little over a million kilometres as it accelerates towards the Red Planet.
The image joins a growing gallery of iconic photographs that help bring perspective and humility. The alignment of the two worlds mean that this is among the fastest and most efficient times for Martian travel and Tianwen-1—the first probe of a series of planned excursions and is named (天問) for the eponymous ancient work of epic prose that begins asking how the universe was created, thus Heavenly Questions—was joined during this auspicious launch window by and orbiter from the United Arab Emirates and NASA rover named Perseverance. All three will arrive in February 2021, touching down at Utopia Planitia.

there is an old vulcan proverb

With no sense of irony, the US Secretary of State announced during a speech earlier in the week delivered at the Richard Milhous Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California, that the “old paradigm of blind engagement with China” had become untenable, and subsequently closed and ordered the expulsion of diplomatic staff in its consulate in Houston—characterising the operation as hub for industrial espionage.
Outside the embassy in Washington, DC the Texas compound was the first for China once relations had been normalised in 1979. In response, Chinese officials ordered the closure of the American consulate in the city of Sichuan capital Chengdu (see previously). These heightened tensions come on top of ongoing trade disputes and deflecting the failure of the US to contain the spread of COVID-19 infections by vociferously blaming China.

9x9

toccata und fuge in d-moll: table settings scatter and repair to Bach’s virtuoso piece

tapón del darién: the gap in the Pan American Highway that may never be bridged

hording: USA buys up all available stock of a drug treatment for COVID-19, leaving none for the rest of the world—unclear whether it is an effective intervention, via Super Punch

double-decker: panoramic people mover designed for physical distancing

dr-dr-draugur: Icelandic utility company contracts an exorcist (see previously) to clear neighbouring farmstead of ghosts

we’d call them farmers’ markets: the indispensable role of China’s “wet markets” in food logistics and how they’re unfairly stigmatised

afrofuturism: Sun Ra’s syllabus from a 1971 UC Berkley “African American Studies” course

oppression of scale: a gallery of evocative large construction projects

various artists: another look at the New Age anthology Pure Moods, via The Morning News

bl 23

Ostensibly to prevent interference in territorial affairs and required under the twenty-third article of the Special Administrative Region’s Basic Law, police authorities had the chance to inaugurate the newly enacted security legislation by conducting mass arrests of demonstrators marking the anniversary of the transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong (see previously) from the UK to China in 1997.
Protesters were arrested and detained for unlawful assembly and for advocating for Hong Kong independence. Globally the response to what is perceived as heavy-handed encroachment in reaction to ongoing civil unrest that began around March 2019 over proposed changes including extradition to the mainland for those accused of sedition and other crimes to stand trial instead of facing justice in local courts has been one of consternation with UK pledging to fast-track citizenship for residents born under British rule who seek to leave.

daddy issues

Via Language Log, we learn that Chinese netizens have cultivated a term to call out chauvinism and paternalistic behaviour, invoked in a similar spirit to accusing someone, albeit in a less gendered way despite the name, of mansplaining—with diē wèi (爹味, literally dad flavour).
While in the West some might find such withering words to carry power and pride for moving beyond (and sometimes rightfully so, though none of us should be so quick to label others less liberated or enlightened lest we remain ignorant of our own ample shortcomings) their parochial tendencies, the feminist advocate tracking this trend believes it to be more of an internet catharsis and a way of commiserating online (whose power also shouldn’t necessarily be dismissed) over unwelcome and unsolicited impositions and is not likely to affect society at large. Speaking of the above equivalence, mansplaining was inspired by a universal phenomenon described by author and essayist Rebecca Solnit who was approached by a man at a social event who’d heard she was a writer, to which she began talking about her latest publication on the topic of Eadweard Muybridge, whereupon the man cut off his interlocutor proclaiming that he had heard of about a comprehensive edition of the life of Muybridge that had come out recently—failing to entertain the likely fact that he was addressing the book’s author. Describing the experience without having the precise term, the internet soon provided one, falsely credited with its coinage, Solnit insofar as she can speak for mansplaining regrets that it is a harsher condemnation on men and their perceived mindset than she meant it to be.

7x7

hello, little friends: Ryoji Akiyama transversed China in 1981 and 1982 capturing images of young people in a rapidly changing country

a class divided: a powerful, pivotal lesson in discrimination revisited

the plot to overthrow america: a round-up of fear-mongering ploys baited by Trump’s declaring an acronym a terrorist group, plus a case of deicide

simrefinery: Chevron commissioned the makers of SimCity to make a training programme for workers at their petroleum plants back in 1992

little green men: investigating the anonymous, unaccountable army policing Washington, DC—via Pluralistic

subjective cityscapes: Natalie Christensen focuses her lens on the intersection of architecture and automobiles in the US Southwest—via Plain Magazine

heavenly palace: more details surface regarding China’s space station, with construction beginning next year

wonkavator

Though still under construction, the spectacular “horizontal skyscraper” of Chonqing’s Raffles City project in the central Yuzhong district is welcoming visitors—like its namesake development in Singapore, called in honour of Sir Stamford Raffles (*1781 – †1826), Lieutenant-Governor of the East India Company and founder of the modern city state and British Malay.
The skybridge, the Crystal, is three hundred metres long and is supported by four towers at a height of a quarter of a kilometre and features a park, a history and industrial museum of the city, and an observation platform with future plans for a lounge, restaurants, bars and an infinity pool. Within the glass and steel columns, there are spaces allotted for offices, hotels, shopping centres as well as fourteen hundred residential units.

once upon a virus

Though much like Fox News in the United States, the state-owned Xinhua news agency has been accused of being an instrument of propaganda in the past, but this particular timeline of the Corona Virus pandemic as told, schooled in the medium of Lego with the air of a fairy tale, does not require much spin or hyperbole—especially compared with Trump’s constant, increasingly desperate and far-fetched claims that it came from a laboratory in Wuhan, fatally inadequate countermeasures on the part of the American federal government that have collapsed into riot and terrorism or his suggestion that the disease might be treated by ingesting bleach and other under the kitchen counter cleaning materials.

proxemics

Though the scholarship is far from conclusive and the emperors themselves sported the same headgear with wide wing-like flaps that demanded a lot of extra clearance, according to one popular account those hats, worn by ministers and courtiers of the Song dynasty, were imposed to discourage whispering and side-bar conversations during meetings and government assemblies, and whatever the case certainly look to be an effective and impactful object lesson for pupils in one classroom who are getting to design and wear hats in this style in Hangzhou to incorporate physical distancing along with other new hygienic practises.

dynasty

The Simpsons did not predict the ascension of Kim’s sister Yo-jong to the senior leadership position of North Korea—rather this circulated image is from the 2015 episode called Goo Goo Gai Pan in which a post-menopausal Selma adopts an infant from a Chinese orphanage and is challenged by Madame Wu—a sort of Miss Hannigan from Annie character, who eventually relents and allows the adoption to be finalised but has to stop Homer from kidnapping a panda cub.
Here is the heir-apparent behind the seated US vice-president and Second Lady, mushy-headed Mike and Karen (whom he calls ‘Mother’) Pence, however, at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. Alternate member of the country’s politburo, Kim is also reported vice director (her full portfolio being a matter of speculation) of the Workers’ Party’s Department of Propaganda and Agitation (PAD), a steering committee for all state media outlets and cultural programming.

the east is red one

On this day fifty years ago, carried aloft by a Changzheng (long march, CZ-1) rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre of Inner Mongolia, China became the world’s sixth space-faring nation (see previously, the UK launched Ariel 1 with American cooperation) with the Dongfanghong I (东方红一号, meaning the eponymous national anthem during the Cultural Revolution, 1966 - 1976) which the research vehicle broadcast continuously back to Earth (along with telemetry data) on an ultra-shortwave band during its planned twenty-day life span. Though the tune is used by broadcasters as an interval signal, like the pips, and remained popular with the public, it was dropped later in the decade with the ascension and reforms of Deng Xiaping in favour of the original “March of the Volunteers” for its associations with purges, imprisonment and factional strife. In May 2016, an updated version was circulating on the internet “The East is Red Again,” suggesting that Xi Jingping is the political heir of Mao Zedong, whom while the mentions of the songs went down a memory hole, Xi failed to refute the comparison.

bauhinia × blakeana

In anticipation of a post-colonial Hong Kong with the banner being first hoisted and flown during the transfer ceremony that took place 1 July 1997 onwards, on this day in 1990 the National People’s Congress approved the design for a new flag featuring a stylised five-petal flower of an orchid tree on a China red background to replace the defaced Union Jack on display since UK acquisition in 1843 after the Opium Wars. The design was submitted by a member of the selection committee, local architect Tao Ho (*1936 – †2019), whom unsatisfied with the entrants he had reviewed so far was inspired by a bauhinia blossom he found in his garden for its symmetry and dynamism.

7x7

inside out & upside-down: hundreds of posters from CalArts students ranging back to 1980

r360: how the coupe and microcar informed Mazda’s design

area rug: custom parametric carpets informed by their settings that really bring the room together

the floor is lava: advice for keeping the cat off the kitchen counters plus an assortment of more humourous tweets

noodles and pandas: innovative ways to discuss the pandemic without attracting the attention of the authorities

happy mutants: Cory Doctorow’s daily curated links—via Waxy

white russians: contemporary fermented dairy drinks