Memory

So Alyssa left her coat at Amy's last night which meant Amy's mum brought it into school to give to Naomi who left it on a table in the lobby where they have their art class. So Flute, the artist (I know, interesting name) finds it and phones to say I can pick it up at 9pm. So I race over, pick it up but lose my jumper. Where did I put it? Who are more forgetful: children or their ageing parents? I can remember the most detailed, useless facts from 40 years ago, like the names of Leeds United's 1972-73 squad, or Focus's bass players, or the names of all 50 US states... but can I remember where I put my jumper 5 minutes ago? 

Fate, 25 Years ago

25 years ago today, I saw Harold Budd, Michael Brook, Laaraji and Roger Eno perform at the Shaw Theatre in London. It was a fine concert, with visuals by Russell Mills and various alt-celebs inc Brian Eno, Andrew Logan etc in attendance. But the evening would be remembered for a tragic event not 400 yards away. At 7:30pm a fire broke out in King's Cross tube station. (I had come out of the station half an hour earlier). It killed 31 people. Fate.

Kitaro

The Dunhuang theme continues. We laid on a lunch at the Ambassador's Residence (HMA in absentia) for around 20 people from London, Beijing, Urumqi and of course Dunhuang itself. It  went OK although we weren't sure whether the muslim contingent were halal or not, so played safe with veggie. I sat next to an archaeologist from Urumqi who looked longingly at my roast lamb, so perhaps we got that wrong. He spoke no English but we had Japanese between us which made for an interesting if stilted conversation. 
This turned out to be another theme as our Japanese friends Michiko, Kazuko, Takeru and children came round for afternoon tea. They'd been to Dunhuang. Most Japanese people over the age of 40 have seen the classic NHK TV documentary about the Silk Road. It took seven years to plan & film (mostly simply trying to get permission) before finally being transmitted in 1980 in 12 monthly instalments, followed by various sequels throughout the 80s. The soundtrack, by Kitaro, is almost as famous as the programme, and I have the original two LPs. There were ooohs and aaahs as I showed them the sleeves and of course, being original Japanese releases, they had tons of inserts which we poured over while eating Liz's delicious English sandwiches & scones. Never mind the British Council - this is cultural relations.

Raiders of the Lost Caves

Paul Pelliott, rumaging in 1908

This morning I attended the 10th anniversary celebrations of the International Dunhuang Project website. Sounds a bit dull, but there's a cracking story behind it. 
Back in 1900, a Daoist monk rediscovered a massive stash of manuscripts (mostly about Buddhism, but also history, mathematics, folk songs and dance) dating from the 5th - 11th centuries, in some caves that had been hitherto sealed up in Dunhuang in western China. In the following years, when Indiana-Jones-type characters roamed the world and China was in chaos, much was sold off to explorers like Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliott who took them back to the great libraries of the west, where they still reside. 
Although sensitive to some, the case has never reached Elgin Marbles proportions, and most Chinese and international scholars seem happy for the manuscripts simply to be accessible to as many people as possible - thus the website. To date, 378,465 manuscripts have been digitised, most of them by the IDP's UK office within the British Library.   

Men in Black

Today,as I drove past Tiananmen Square in our office car, a once-in-a-decade event was happening within the Great Hall of the People: the changing of the old guard and the ushering in of the new. As expected Xi Jinping is the new General Secretary of the Communist Party, and will also become President next year, taking over from Hu Jintao. Under him are six new senior figures. Together they make up a slightly reduced (from nine) Politburo Standing Committee. The red flags fluttered, the red walls of the Forbidden City blushed in the morning sun, and we got caught on a red light. 

Double dinner

This afternoon I attended the opening of Towards Modernity: Three Centuries of British Painting at the Beijing World Art Museum. It's an unusual exhibition in that all the works are from a loose consortium of small-to-medium sized museums in the north-west of England, spearheaded by Bury Art Museum. One might think that this would be rather limiting for a big survey show of British art in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. It's true, it doesn't include many of the major, iconic works which reside in the big national institutions, but it does include most of the major names: Reynolds, Constable, Turner, Whistler, Burne-Jones, Epstein, Piper, Hepworth, Moore, Freud etc. 

White Mountain (1888)

The big surprise was the number of artists I'd never heard of. Loads of them. And mostly surprisingly good. For example: a very abstract landscape painting by someone called William Stott-of-Oldham. (He wasn't a Lord or anything; he just called himself that to differentiate himself from another Lancastrian painter, Edward Stott). It's called White Mountain, from 1888, but looks like it could have been painted now. Anyway, if you'll pardon the pun, it all hangs together very well. But the really great thing is that it's going on to five other cities.
This was followed by two dinners: an early one at the museum (which I tried to pick at rather than devour), and a later one across town with Liz, my cousin David & his wife Oddveig. They both work for Shell, met in Norway, have been based there for the last ten years, but have just moved to Beijing. So we're 'family'... but, apart from a few family reunions, weddings and funerals, we barely know each other. Nice to be reacquainted actually. 
I returned home stuffed.

50

My little brother is 50 today. Happy birthday Patrick. Where does the time go...?