Hong Kong Museum of Art – a new gem

Tags

Art, culture, Hong Kong

Almost a decade ago, I had visited the HK Museum of Art, and been overwhelmed with Chinese ink paintings, calligraphy and vases. Nothing against them, but because my knowledge is scarce and the information provided by the museum then was even scarcer, I came away with a slight headache.

The museum underwent an extensive renovation and recently reopened. And what a breath of fresh air!

Mimi and I landed up there after I mixed up the dates for another event we were supposed to go to. I had been hearing good things about the museum and been meaning to go. I wasn’t 100 per cent sure I wanted to go with the kids because it didn’t seem like there was anything specifically for them. But Mimi is an art lover and since we were at a loose end and I couldn’t find anything more interactive, we headed there.

I was attracted by an exhibition that had contemporary Hong Kong artists responding to older work from the museum’s permanent collection, but when we landed there, I also realised there was an exhibition of British landscape painters – including Gainsborough, Turner and Constable – on loan from the Tate so we bought tickets for that (the rest of the museum is free).

My recommendation is to start with the Ordinary to Extrordinary: Stories from the Museum exhibition on the first floor first. This is a beautiful spotlight on selected works – possibly some of those that gave me a headache last time. To my surprise, Mimi was very into the older works, like scroll paintings, trade paintings and artifacts like cups.

The counterpoint to this is Classics Remix on the fifth floor, in which contemporary artists respond to specific works largely from the Stories from the Museum collection. We actually broke for lunch before taking in this one, and I asked Mimi if she’d rather go home, but she was up for it. There were some really interesting pieces up there – the highlight for me was installation and canvases from renowned Hong Kong street artist who goes by the name Frog King; a friend loved Rosanna Li’s take on quirky Hong Kong street names with her signature fat figures.

I just asked Mimi what her favourite piece was and she said Luis Chan’s very long, surrealist take on the Chinese scroll.

I suddenly realised that the tickets for the landscape exhibition listed an admission time, so we kind of had to rush through it. The Turners were stunning, but Mimi was not impressed. She tended to be more into the hyper-realistic Constables. She could pretty much identify what the more abstract Turners were – “boat”, “water” – but perhaps the muted tones were not her cup of tea (hawww!).

One of the things that was a hit with Mimi was the stamp machine. You download an app, and then on each floor, you answer a question and if you get it right, you can get a stamp on your phone from this digital machine (if you get it wrong, you just answer another question). The stamps were super pretty and if you collect all five, you can get a souvenir, which turned out to be this really lovely Wilson Shieh painting of iconic Hong Kong buildings on a microfibre cloth.

Another activity for kids was a series of screens on which kids could create their own artwork and then have it projected on a bigger screen.

We almost missed – but didn’t, thanks to the need to get a stamp there – the interactive installations on the theme of landscapes by local artists (The Breath of Landscape). We particularly liked Rick Lam’s Shape the Water, in which the artwork reacts to your pulse or your facial expression, and Move the Mountain, in which you can use objects provided to create a landscape of shadows.

In all, we spent around 4 hours at the museum and there’s still lots left to see. I would particularly revisit for the Hong Kong Experience collection.

Very unusually for Hong Kong, the museum has lots of seating space – even racks of chairs you can just take for sitting on – unusual in Hong Kong. The earlier building had been criticised for being almost windowless while taking up harbour sidespace. This is amply remedied in the renovation.

We broke for lunch at the restaurant in the adjoining Space Museum complex, which has a very reasonable and wide selection of food. To get there we walked through the art museum bookshop, which I would recommend for Hong Kong souvenirs/gifts.

We criticise our government a lot, but in this instance, they really got it right.

We crowned our visit with a stroll down the harbourfront, where we identified the buildings depicted on the souvenir towel, and a slow ride down to Hong Kong island on the Star Ferry.

 

 

Little Women 2019

Tags

film, little women, louisa may alcott

Have you watched it? Are you a fan of the book? Read my thoughts on the chick lit blog.

Top 10 books I read in 2019

Tags

books, fiction, reading

MinCat put out a call on FB for one book recommendation. Obviously, this is hard especially when I read so much, and so much good stuff, but to my own surprise, I was able to come up with the standouts with too much trouble.

1. An American Wife, Curtis Sittenfeld
2. The Wife, Meg Wolitzer
3. Eligible, Curtis Sittenfeld
4. Commonwealth, Ann Patchett
5. Unmarrigeable, Soniah Kamal
6. Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn
7. Prep, Curtis Sittenfeld
8. Hush Hush , Laura Lippman
9. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman
10. The Dry, Jane Harper

My Golden Globes best dressed picks

Tags

fashion, golden globes, Red carpet

The Golden Globes frocks were kinda blah this year, with people the women not only sticking to safe but also to stale dresses. But a few days on, some of the more unusual choices have stuck with me, so here are my favourites in order of preference.

1. Zoey Deutch in Fendi

2. Zoey Kravitz in Saint Laurent: This would have been my top pick, because I can’t resist a good polka, not to mention two, but on second thoughts, I decided Zoey’s dress had more glam power.

3. Kaitlyn Dever in Valentino: Guess it’s obvious I’m drawn to unusual prints and colours.

4. Taylor Swift in Etro: I went back on forth on this, but my initial reaction was yassss so I’m sticking with it.

5. Kirsten Dunst in Rodarte: For straightforward pretty, with just that little quirk a la Rodarte.

Which were your favourites?

 

December reading list

Tags

books, chick lit, family dramas, historical fiction, reading

Commonwealth, Ann Patchett

The funny thing was that I picked up the book so I would read something not too intense so I could pay attention to my husband and children and instead the husband and children in the novel caught me and swallowed me whole, and I literally told my own husband to shut up and let me read.

This is a sprawling family drama, about secrets and loyalties, but uplifting in the end.

The Confessions of Young Nero, Margaret George

Read second part first so there was overlap, especially at the end. It’s well written but I lost steam by the end.

The Deal, Elle Kennedy

This wasn’t my favorite. The premise which turned out to be sex didn’t turn me on. And then it went on too long. Garrett-Hannah felt like a repeat of Hunter-Demi in The Play. Still fun read though

Throaway observation: In every single book she mentions the partitions in the showers of the hockey team’s men’s locker rooms. It’s like she’s determined to kill some myth about boys checking each other out in the shower.

Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng

A family drama in the guise of a mystery. Moral of the story: Parents fuck up their kids with the best intentions.

The Lost Man, Jane Harper

I thought this was part of the Falk series. It was connected in a very subtle way. But it was very good. I love how she sets her stories in the outback and how the land is so much a part of it, how she deconstructs the idea of the noble savage. All the more relevant in these times as fires rage in Australia.

 

The Convenience Store Girl, Sayaka Murata

Read my thoughts on the chick lit blog here. This is not chick lit, if that’s going to put you off, but it had some commonalities with the single girl narratives of that genre so I put my thoughts on that blog.

The English Cameo – Madhulika Liddle

Love the Mughal era and wish there was more written in that period. I stayed away from this – a mystery series set in Emperor Shah Jahan’s time – for a long time because I felt like it didn’t deal with the main Mughal players but it’s excellently done. Going to read the rest in the series for sure.

Chasing Hillary, Amy Chozick

I expected this to be a bio, but it’s really a memoir about a journalist whose career became inextricably tied up with Clinton’s. I’m just going to post my scattered thoughts:

• Like that it turned out to be a journalistic memoir and that she presents herself as a fuck up
• Dislike that she doesn’t seem to like Hillary perhaps because she didn’t talk to her much (e.g. detail about Botox, the unfair comparison of how Obama handled negative stories )
• Oh well at least it’s not a gushing portrait
• It reads as an apologia of sorts  all those negative stories (Bathroomgate for example, which by mid-book I didn’t remember what it was) there was a reason for them
• My impression of Hillary as a geek who really had her facts down was correct. Apparently that’s not what it takes to be president
• Here’s a writing sample: “Hillary’s Iowa town halls became so frequent and intimate that they started to take on the familiar, if laborious, feel of catching up with an old girlfriend who cites GDP statistics over brunch”
• She didn’t (only) lose because she’s a woman but because she’s a geek. She promised to underpromise, which is hardly going to enthuse an electorate
• Who were Bernie’s people? In Amy’s experience, kids who go to NYU (i.e. rich kids and bros). On Bernie bros saying they’d vote for a woman, just not that woman: “Thirty years of sexist attacks had turned her into that woman. That sooner or later, the higher we climb, the harder we work, we all become that woman.

Ask Again yes, Mary Beth Keane 

After Commonwealth, I’ve decided I like these modern multigenerational family dramas. I like that they have happy endings these days Nietszche’s amor fati – if you had to say yes to your life again with all its failures and challenges, would you? A tragedy shatters the book but it also shows how it can all be put together again.

Galatea, Madeline Miller

This is a novella, really, and as with all Miller’s mythological stuff, it’s good. But it was also … fleeting.

Ayesha, At Last, Uzma Jalaluddin

Loved. Read my thoughts on the chick lit blog here.

 

 

 

 

Whirlwind Christmas

We weren’t supposed to be in India for Christmas. For one, my boss grumbled about giving me leave during the Christmas week again this year (which frankly was really petty because the Chinese people seem to get leave during CNY every year. This is the problem with Christmas becoming a universal holiday).

But also, we needed the kids to do school interviews in Bangalore and that could not happen during Christmas week because everything shuts down. So, the plan was to go to India in October.

Then it turned out that we would need to be in Bangalore during Christmas week for my V’s parent’s 50th wedding anniversary celebrations. I wasn’t sure how I was going to swing that, but I did a solo trip to Mumbai in October.

Finally, I told my boss, I’d work from India that week. I managed to take the same flight as V and the kids who were going for a longer stint. We flew in the day on Singapore Airlines, which was very nice, avoiding the midnight arrival in Bangalore.

Christmas in India is always hectic but worth it. Every alternate night was some sort of party. My sis-in-law who had broken her leg still organised a carol singing route. We went to V’s friend’s new house. There was a big Christmas lunch, by which time Mimi was exhausted and had multiple meltdowns, but we also had a fun big game of housie. My other sister-in-law had a dinner and had us stay over.

I had been rather skeptical about the big event – my in-laws’ golden wedding – because they don’t have the best marriage. It seemed like the epitome of hypocrisy for everyone to be doing this hoopla over an essentially toxic relationship. But my mother-in-law once said that it takes something to last this long. I dunno, I’m a quality over quantity kind of person.

But in the end, it was fun. There was a mass, at which I did a reading and then regretted it because a) I had to cover up by sari with this massive poncho b) the regular reader insisted on doing the first reading so I had to scramble with the second c) the second reading ended up being one that told wives to be subject to their husbands and even perhaps surprisingly husbands to love their wives.

There was party after with lots of dancing. Surprisingly, the chosen entertainment was a Bollywood dancer leading the crowd. Apparently, the south no longer hates Hindi music, though we did have a couple of Malayalam songs.

My one wishlist was to get some grooming done, and I managed to get my pedicure, waxing and blow dry done before the big event and receive lots of compliments on my transformation. I have not mastered the art of walking, leaving alone dancing, in a sari though.

Every year, my in-laws urge my parents to come down for Christmas. This year, being a big anniversary, they decided to, so we had everyone under one roof, something I’ve always been apprehensive about, but it was fine.

Amid all this madness, I worked four days, two in one sister-in-law’s house where I made the mistake of trying to work in the living room amid games of Taboo and general chit chat and two in the other’s where I learnt my lesson and set up my workspace on the terrace bar (closest to the router).

I went into this holiday feeling somewhat judgy and resentful but I came out of it feeling generally positive about my husband’s family. My sisters-in-law and their husbands not only went out of the way to accommodate me, but also my parents. They are gregarious and generous people who think it is perfectly normal to stretch themselves to the limit throwing massive parties and welcoming extended family into their homes. While this is not to be taken for granted, I have seen and benefited from it time and again. They are also full of drama and emotion, which I do my best to stay on the sidelines of.

I have been feeling this for a couple of years – and I touch wood while saying this – but V’s parents are pretty peaceful. They are very tolerant about whatever we do in their house, and I am not expected to rush around working. It took me over a decade to get to this place, and this is not to say that I have not been the recipient of MIL snark or that having two children, including the coveted male grandchild, did not help, but I am not anxious around them anymore and have realised that much of my earlier angst was the result of insecurity – on both sides.

Also, V and I managed to be on good, even great terms, over Christmas for the first time in a couple of years. I hate to say it but Bangalore suits V. He is among people he wants to be around and he is involved in stuff that doesn’t include me. We achieve the right balance of separate-and-together when we are there.

I managed not to fall sick this time, despite the long hours and party food, for which I am super grateful.

I was happy to fly back to Hong Kong a few days before V and the kids and get some recovery time in though. I spent New Year’s Eve catching up on sleep, taking a long walk and watching the Downton Abbey movie before crawling into bed at 10 pm. I went to office on New Year’s Day, even though there was a massive protest planned, only to find everyone else had decided to work from home. I was super excited to log into my two big screens after a week of swotting over a tiny laptop though. I treat myself to a greasy Shake Shack lunch, came home early and binged on the second season of Big Little Lies.

V and the kids came home a day later than they were supposed to, having missed their connecting flight and been put up in a hotel in Singapore. This was the high point of the trip for the kids, who totally loved the hotel room and three hotel meals, so we can’t complain. I spent the extra day writing a column, having lunch with friends and watching Little Women in the cinema, the kind of day I have not had in a long time.

The end of 2019 was all I could have asked for. 2020 promises to be interesting.

 

 

 

Hong Kong protests: coming full circle

Tags

hong kong protests, India protests

Today, when I came down from my building, having decided to leave work early, not because it was New Year’s Day, but because of the threat of protest violence and MTR shutdowns, I saw groups of people in black with masks on, including some children, with huge Pepe the Frog plushes hanging from their bags.

While most people spend New Year’s Day lazing about and recovering from the night’s festivities, Hongkongers came out en masse to push their government to do the right thing.

And after six months of an emotional rollercoaster since the protests began, I came full circle, finding myself once again awed by their spirit.

When the protests started out in June, I was inspired by the sheers numbers with which people took the streets, largely peacefully.  I was elated when they made what I thought was the impossible happen – the government backing down on a law it insisted it would push through, with the might of China at its back.

But as the protest violence escalated quickly, I grew disillusioned, not because I am against violent protests per se, but in the dishonesty with which violence was wielded.  There was violence from day 2 onwards when protesters threw objects, including bricks, at the police but the narrative insisted for quite a while on not acknowledging this violence and then on not condemning the most egregious examples of it while turning Cultural Revolution-style against anyone who voiced criticism of the movement,

While the international media presented a uniformly highminded picture of the protesters, I saw at the ground level a great deal of pettiness and stupidity.

Then the protests in India began. From afar, my sympathies were obviously with the protesters. But then the uniformity of the narrative coming out of India began to make me suspicious. Reading newspaper reports carefully, including the liberal ones, I began to see a similar pattern to the Hong Kong protests. Conversations with friends also highlighted to me how people cleave to the narratives they are drawn to, refusing to admit inconvenient truths.

And yet, I supported the Indian protesters fairly unconditionally. Why? Well, for one, I’m more ready to believe worse of the Indian police than the Hong Kong police. But also, because I supported the cause behind the protests.

Now, in Hong Kong, I also initially supported the cause behind the protests – the withdrawal of a law that would allow the extradition of people accused of criminal activity by China. But when that law was withdrawn, I was not sure that the protests need go on with this level of intensity, including violence.

While the Western media insists on portraying the Hong Kong protests as a pro-democracy movement – and I don’t deny that a demand that Hong Kong’s leader be elected by universal suffrage has long animated Hong Kong, having been the core of the 2014 Umbrella Movement – the current protests are about something more … basic. They are a protest against police misconduct in dealing with protesters and that those who were targeted in the initial crackdown not be charged and jailed.

The logic is: when violence is the only language the government responds to, those using that language in pursuit of a just cause should not be criminally prosecuted. Moreover, that those tasked with upholding the law must be held to the highest standard of the law.

This is a more complicated logic than a simple demand for democracy or the freeing of the innocent. However, I do believe that except in the most extreme cases of violence, those that put their own bodies on the line in defiance of the state should not be allowed to go like lambs to the slaughter through the prison industrial complex.

We are not in Gandhian territory anymore (and may I say how sick I am of hearing the Gandhi-Luther King-Mandela triumvirate cited at every turn). We are in the territory of righteous anger that refuses to accept the unjust power of the state.

Since Hong Kong’s historic district council elections (Western media please note, these are held by universal suffrage so it’s not like Hongkongers never vote. Heck, I have voted more than once in a single year), I was unpleasantly surprised to see the Hong Kong government continue to pander to the pro-Beijing camp which lost heavily in the elections instead of using the opportunity for some kind of reconciliation through concessions to the other side. Again, the government made it clear that peaceful expression of the public voice counts for nothing.

Interestingly, in conversation with a friend in India, she said that people were protesting not so much against the Citizenship Amendment Act but against the police treatment of the initial protesters, particularly university students. So a very similar logic there too.

After the siege of Polytechnic University, when thousands of students were rounded up after being holed up the university for days, many people thought the protest had fizzled out. But on the first day of the new year, Hongkongers showed us that this fight is far from over.

I can only humbly salute them.