The Blue Lotus 16

Lotus

Issue 16 2019

The Blue

Arts Magazine

in this issue Xue Qin Li Shahabuddin Ahmed Dibyendu Seal Ruhail Audrabi Pranjit Sarma William Gentry Kuntal Barai Prakash Ghadge Honey Khor 1

Lotus The Blue

Arts Magazine

The Blue Lotus magazine is an entirely free and non-associated publica

The Blue Lotus remains a wholly independent magazine, free from favour and faction.

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ation concerned with bringing Asia to the world, and the world to Asia 3

inside....

6 Editorial

Thoughts on the current issue

by the Founding Editor

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Robert Raymer Interview Chuah Guat Eng

28 Xue Qin Lin

Chinese pastel artist

32 Shahabuddin Ahmed

Freedom

56 Dibyendu Seal

Artist from Kolkata 66 Ruhail Audrabi

Poetry 72 MGM Macau

Art spaces

84 Pranjit Sarma

Etching 98 Heart of a Dog

Sreekrishnan K.P's independent film

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Front cover; William Gentry

Issue 16 2019

108 William Gentry

Paintings

118 Honey Khor

Teaching art to teachers in Zhuhai, China 130 Kuntal Barai

Displaced in Dhaka 144 Rob Burton

Christmas in China

148 Prakash Ghadge

Artist of tranquillity 158 Cuisine Made in China

Food

coming soon...

Chttaprosad

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Lotus Welcome to

The Blue Lotus Arts Magazine.

The Blue Lotus (as Dusun) was founded in 2011, originally to assist art students and nurture their curiosities in the history of Asian art, and to act as a conduit for Modern and Contemporary Asian art and Literature.

I created this magazine with the intent to 'give back' to the art and literary worlds for all those years of enjoyment that I have received from both.

The Blue Lotus is wholly free of favour. It is an entirely FREE magazine. No money is involved anywhere down the line except, that is, for my subscription to Adobe. This is my gift, for as long as I am able, to the world.

The Blue Lotus aims to be a platform for international cooperation, aiming to bring creative Asia to the world, and the creative world right back to Asia.

Now read on

Martin Bradley

(Founding Editor)

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CHUAH GUAT ENG interviewed by Robert Raymer

Chuah Guat Eng

Robert Raymer

I first met Chuah Guat Eng, if I’m not mistaken, when Sharon Bakar invited both of us to read our respec­tive work at a Read­ing@Seksan event in Kuala Lumpur in 2009. I had also picked up a signed copy of her first novel, Echoes of Silence (1994, 2008), which has the distinction of being the first novel writ­ten in English by a Malaysian woman. Her second novel, Days of Change (2010), a sequel, made the long list for International Dublin Literary Award in 2012. She is currently working on Whispers of Truth, her third novel that continues the series.

Guat Eng read English Literature at University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur, Ger­man Literature at Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich, Germany, and received a Ph.D. in 2008 from the Uni­versiti Kebangsaan Malaysia for her thesis, From Conflict to Insight: A Zen-based Reading Pro­cedure for the Analysis of Fiction. She was a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at Uni­versiti Putra Malaysia from January 2011 to March 2013, focusing on Malaysian novels in English. Currently she teaches part-time at Uni­ver­sity of Nottingham Malaysia and at the Faculty of Cinematic Arts, Multimedia University Johor on subjects related to literature and creative writing.

She has also published three collections of short stories, Tales from the Baram River (2001), The Old House and Other Stories (2008), and Dream Stuff (2014).

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Praise for Echoes of Silence… ‘…an intellectual as well as a tender novel about love…entertaining... intelligent…well-crafted…’ – T. Dorall, New Straits Times ‘…more postmodern than at first appears…the most accomplished Malaysian novel to date, a new and cultured voice…’ – Jun Mo, Far Eastern Economic Review “In March 1970, as a direct result of the May 1969 racial riots, I left Malaysia.” Thus begins Echoes of Silence, the story of Lim Ai Lian, a Chinese Malaysian. While studying in Ger­many, she falls in love with Michael Templeton, an English gentleman brought up in the district of Ulu Banir, where his father, Jonathan Templeton, owns a plantation.

While trying to solve a murder, Ai Lian, learns about racial prejudice, truth and deception, womanhood and love, and how past silences can echo into the present.

Robert: Your self-published novel Echoes of Silence is often cited as the first novel writ­ten in English by a Malaysian woman. Since then there have been several others, including Preeta Samarasan’s Evening is the Whole Day and Bernice Chauly’s Once We Were There.

Self-publishing a novel nowadays, even via e-book, often makes financial sense for a num­ber of writers. Some have even landed a tra­ditional publisher because of their self-pub­lish­ing success. What made you decide to self-publish your first novel in 1994? And your second novel in 2010? What have you gained and what had you lost, if anything, in choos­ing to self-publish your work?

Guat Eng: In 1994, I couldn’t find a single publisher based in Malaysia interested in publishing novels; all major publishers (e.g.

Heinemann) had either shut down or severely curtailed their Malaysian operations, perhaps because of political unrest as well as the extremely restrictive Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984. Of the UK and US publishers I approached, only two responded, one from each country. Both wrote glowingly about the parts that have to do with the colonial past but couldn’t see the point of the parts about contemporary Malaysia. Both suggested I rewrite the novel focusing only on the colonial past, the Japanese Occupation, and the Emergency. Since I saw no point in writing that kind of novel, I chose to self-publish – not because I wanted to see my name in print, but because I already knew I was going to write a sequel and feared that if I didn’t have the first one printed and out of the way, I would be fiddling with it until Doomsday – like Mr. Casaubon in Middlemarch.

In 2001, I accepted an offer by a local, well-established publishing house to publish my col­lection of retold Sarawak animal stories, Tales 10

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from the Baram River. It was such a bad experience – they gave me 10 complimentary copies and thereafter never responded to my queries about sales and royalties – that I’ve self-published all my fiction ever since.

What have I gained? Mainly peace of mind. But also the joy of working on the production – discussing fonts, layout, type of paper, and so on – with my choice of desktop artists and printers. And the sense of achievement from successfully promoting and selling my books.

I don’t feel I’ve lost out on anything – at least, not anything that I care about, since I don’t write and publish for fame and fortune. My books have generally received favourable reviews. Sev­eral of them have been used as texts in universities, and my novels have been the subjects of academic papers. In 2015, the National Library of Malaysia bought 500 copies of Dream Stuff for distribution to their district libraries. Echoes of Silence is currently being translated by an Italian publisher for publication as an e-book to reach the Italian-speaking world. Earlier this year, I’ve had to reprint Echoes of Silence and The Old House and Other Stories because they had sold out and people kept asking for them. I am content.

Robert: Yes, having that control can be rather ideal, especially when your book goes out of print and the publisher is reluctant to print another edition or they get taken over by an­other publisher. Heinemann Asia (Singapore), which had originally pub­ lished my collection of short stories Lovers and Strangers, had been bought out twice in fairly short order and dropped their entire fiction line to concentrate on business-related books.

For both of your books did you work with an outside editor or rely on your own editing skills?

Guat Eng: I’ve always edited and proof-read my books myself. Professor Quayum of the International Islamic University Malaysia offered to edit The Old House when it was first published; his only complaint was that I had left him nothing to do. I can’t say I’ve ever wished I had used the services of an editor. It sounds like arrogance, but it isn’t. I just feel strongly that if the book gets a bad review or is universally disliked, I want to be able to hold myself – and no one else – accountable.

Robert: I hired an American editor to rip apart my first book Lovers and Strangers, long after it had been successfully published, when I had an oppor­tunity to revisit the stories for an­other publisher. Like most writers, I have blind spots; also what may seem clear to a Malay­ sian reader, might be confusing to someone who has never visited Malaysia. A de­tailed critique made me reconsider adding another 12

scene or a flashback or a back story or extending the story beyond the original ending – some stories doubled in length, which I blogged about in the series The Story Behind the Story. My efforts were rewarded when it won the Popular Reader’s Choice Award and was translated into French. Setting aside your ego to have someone critique your published work, let alone your first or second or third draft, is a humbling process.

Do you recommend that young Malay­sian writers or writers no matter their age consider self-publishing their fiction today, which seems more acceptable and common place than in the past? A common lament is that most self-published books tend to lack rigorous (let alone) basic editing. Other than, perhaps, work­ing with an editor (ideally one with suitable pub­lish­­ing experience, especially if you’re writing fiction), what else would you advise those wishing to selfpublish in today’s market?

Guat Eng: I wouldn’t recommend self-publishing to just anyone, least of all young writers. Self-publishing is essentially a business enterprise, and those who want to take that route should have some entrepreneurial experience, inclination and/or skills. Anyone can get a book printed. The hard part is planning and managing its distribution, marketing, promotion, and sales – as every publisher knows.

Robert: My advice for seeking a local publisher in Malaysia or Singapore is to make sure you know what you are getting into.

Google the publisher and also look for complaints; far too many writers think they have signed with a legitimate publisher but failed to read the fine print and had to fork over hefty fees and the editing was nonexistent. The whole exper­ience was horrible. If you can’t find their books in a bookstore, that’s often a big clue. Also make sure you understand the royalty structure, or you might end up with a handful of copies and nothing else other than excuses. Ideally contact some of their published writers and ask, off the record, their experience.

If they’re getting a raw deal, they will tell you. They may even recommend another publisher, one you hadn’t even con­sidered, based on the experience of their own writing friends, which led me to MPH and a two book deal.

How did you end up studying German Literature at LudwigMaximilian University in Munich? How has that experience of studying literature and living in another culture, one quite different from Malaysia, benefited you as a writer? How long were you away?

Guat Eng: I learned German as an undergraduate in University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur and at the Goethe Institute (GI) in my postgraduate years. In 1970, I was given a GI scholarship to study for the Major Diploma in German Language and Culture in Germany, 13

first in Murnau and then in Munich. A few months after the sessions in Munich began, I got so bored that I (rather cheekily) asked the Director if I could attend lectures at the nearby university instead, but still sit for my GI diploma exam at the same time as my classmates. To my surprise and undying gratitude, he arranged for me to get a DAAD (German Academic Exchange) scholarship. For the rest of my three years in Germany, I attended lectures, seminars and tutorials on German litera­ture as a regular student of the prestigious LudwigMaximilian University, but was allowed to sit for and obtain the GI Major Diploma in German Language and Culture.

As a writer, the most obvious benefit of my stay in Germany is that I could use Munich as the setting for the beginning of the romance between Lim Ai Lian and Michael Templeton in Echoes of Silence. It was, for me, the perfect setting. Not only because I had firsthand knowledge of the places I mentioned; but, more importantly, because Munich is vital to a major theme embedded in the narration of their relationship; namely, the post-1969 non-Malay Malaysian’s feeling of disempowerment due to no longer being able to claim any place on earth as their homeland. In Munich, where they are both strangers but where Ai Lian feels slightly superior because she has been there longer, her self-confidence allows her to be confident of Michael’s love for her.

How­ever, in London and Ulu Banir, where Michael is at home but where she feels like an outsider, her loss of self-confidence causes her to question the sincerity of his love, his morals, and his trustworthiness as a human being.

My immersion in German language, literature, literary traditions, art and music has benefited me as a writer in other, subtler and more profound, ways; as have my travels both within Germany and to other European countries. Perhaps the most significant benefit is that I liberated myself from the Anglo-American influences that had coloured so much of my upbringing and earlier education. I left Europe with a clearer, surer awareness of my historical and cultural identity as a Malaysian – an awareness that has influenced all my writing.

Robert: All writers, ideally, should live overseas for an extended stay—a year or two, at least; you gain so much more perspec­tive about the world at large and about your own country. You view it differently, for better or worse. More importantly, you no longer take things for granted, and you often come away with a deeper understanding and better appreciation for your own roots.

You referenced ‘May 1969’….Your opening line in Echoes of Silence states matter-of-fact­ly, “In March 1970, as a direct result of the May 1969 racial riots, I left Malaysia.” Yet it seemed to me that you wrote very little about it or how it had affected the main character or her 14

family directly or indirectly other than her “leaving Malaysia”. This was a water­shed moment, so even her returning to Malaysia should have been emotionally difficult, so I was expecting a flashback scene or a long reflection about what had actually happened to her or her family (or even a distant rela­tive)…

Guat Eng: The whole novel is about the psychological impact of the May 1969 racial riots and its repercussions all the way down to 1994, when the main narrator begins her story….Those who have no memory or experience of life in Malaysia during and after May 1969 tend to imagine there was violence all over the country. The truth – based on personal experience, various official accounts written after the event, as well as unofficial accounts gathered from friends and acquaintances who had personally witnessed the violence, or whose friends and acquaintances had fallen victim to it – is that the riots were concentrated in a few places, mainly in KL. For the majority who lived outside the immediately affected areas (and even those who, like me, lived in KL at that time) the reality was first the shock of a total media blackout, and then the slow seepage of news about a curfew. In short, we saw no violence, not even on TV. We learned about the violence and its inter-ethnic nature from hearsay. And we were mainly concerned with how to overcome the everyday problems caused by the curfews, making sure we stored up enough food and never got caught out of doors during curfew hours.

You may ask why, since I was writing in 1994, I didn’t do the necessary research so that I could satisfy readers who want to see their imagined reality confirmed by fiction. The simple answer is that I wasn’t interested in creating more imagined realities. I was interested in recreating the “felt” reality of the psychological violence done to us by the “blanket of silence” (to use my main character’s phrase) cast over all of us: not just the tightly controlled media but also the laws prohibiting gatherings of more than five people, the spreading of rumours, and the raising of “sensitive issues”. The last prohibition was the most devastating; the term “sensitive issues” was never properly defined, which meant that no one could find closure because no one dared to speak about anything to do with the riots, race relations, and the fact that those responsible for the violence were never identified and brought to justice.

Robert: During Operation Lalang in 1987, my ex-wife was a reporter for New Straits Times, so we were very aware of those restrictions, and how vague they were. Anything could be mis­con­strued as racial bias or sensitive, even when writing about some­thing as innocent as hawker food in Penang. If you happen to mention “Malay” and the word “pork” too close together, there you go…

Guat Eng: As you may know, the post-1969 emergency laws were 15

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never repealed even after we returned to parliamentary rule and, starting with the curtailing of the autonomy of institutions of higher learning (Universities and Colleges Act 1974), the ensuing two decades saw a progressive tightening of preexisting laws prohibiting and inhibiting freedom of speech and information, increasing episodes of repressive police action (e.g. Operation Lalang in 1987) against political opponents and the media, Constitutional amendments diminishing the check-and-balance power of the traditional rulers, and – to top it all – executive interventions in the justice processes that undermined the independence of the judiciary, all of which enabled the ruling party’s rampant acts of corruption to be hushed up.

Writing Echoes of Silence in 1994, the main questions I found myself asking were: Why have we, the citizens of the country, accepted these further assaults on truth, justice, and rule of law since May 1969? Is it because we have been psychologically impaired by the post-riot blanket of silence that denied us the means to find closure? Is it because of the perceptions of authority we have inherited from our precolonial and colonial past? Or is it our various cultures and our individual psychology that make us willing to accept and even actively contribute to the silences – the misinformation, disinformation, and the withholding of information – that frustrate the quest for truth and justice? And what are the psychological effects of being party, voluntary or otherwise, to this stifling of truth and this extinguishing of the healing light of justice?

Given the multiplicity of punitive laws (e.g. the Sedition Act and the Internal Security Act) against freedom of thought, speech, and publications in 1994, I couldn’t have written openly and directly about such issues. So I made use of the murder mystery form for my exploration.

Robert: Thanks for clarifying that….I read in a book review about your interest of narrato­logy – the study of narratives and narrative structures and how they affect our perception. According to Jonathan Culler (2001) “narrative theory requires a distinction between ‘story’, a sequence of actions or events con­ceived as independent of their manifestation in discourse, and ‘discourse’, the discursive pre­senta­tion or narration of events.” Can you elaborate on how your interest in narratology affects you as a writer or even as a reader? (No doubt very similar to how someone’s interest in cinematography affects how they view films.)

Guat Eng: I define narratology as a study of anything that has to do with narration, or creating a narrative. It is not a fixed “Literary Theory” but an ongoing discourse on the theorization and systematization of critical terms for the analysis of narratives. What narratologists do, essential­ly, is they identify, describe, define, and give 17

names to the various narrative techniques authors use – “point-ofview”, “focalisation”, “free indirect discourse” – so that literary scholars have a vocabulary that can be used as a tool for analysis as well as a common language for discourse. The vocabulary is constantly evolving and expanding because as narratologists encounter new writers, especially non-Western ones who have their own literary traditions, whose narrative techniques do not find a perfect fit in existing concepts and terms (e.g. “Magic realism”), they may find a need to describe, define, and give names to these uncommon narrative techniques.

I first came across the term “narratology” while I was working on my PhD in the early 2000s, but soon realized its value: it makes me more knowledgeable about the techniques I had been vaguely aware of as a reader and had been applying intuitively as a writer. For instance, I discovered the difference between “story” and “plot” between the ages of 10 and 11. My first attempt at writing a story fizzled out because I got bored with having to think up one episode after another. A year later, I spontaneously told a story in class that had a beginning, middle and end centred on a single issue. Proof that I was on the right track came some years later: I rewrote it as a radio play, sent it to the Education section of (then) Radio Malaya, and received 30 dollars for it. But that intuition-led experience did not crystallize into knowledge until I read E. M. Forster’s definitions of “story” and “plot” in Aspects of the Novel, and that crystal of knowledge did not become refined until I read what narratologists have to say on the subject.

As a reader, I’ve always seen patterns, structures, and underlying meanings in books. I can’t explain why. It may have something to do with my childhood obsession with deciphering codes and solving puzzles, and the fact that I learned Latin in secondary school. These analytical tendencies were enhanced at university by my study of English Literature, fine-tuned by my study of German Literature, and given new spaces to play in through my research on Asian narratology and theories of fiction.

Robert: I too studied Latin in high school for two years and it had a tremendous impact on my English. I enjoyed the logic of the language and its grammar and wished I had studied it for four years, but switched to French, something I’m terrible at; I was too embarrassed to even attempt it when visiting France while backpacking around Europe.

Do you think some writers try too hard to be clever at the expense of the story; therefore, their writing or the story suf­fers? Is there a perfect balance between story and structure? Or can structure, in fact, make or define the story, if not elevate it to something truly special?

Guat Eng: As a critic and teacher of fiction-writing, I do often encounter writers who try too hard to be clever at the expense of 18

the story. However, I also find that their stories suffer not because they use structure but because they either use it badly or neglect it altogether. Speaking generally, I find that when writers try too hard, it’s usually because their ego gets in the way of the story. Some try to show how clever they are with words, allowing their infatuation with the sounds of words to master them when they should be exerting mastery over the precise meanings of words to tell a story. Others try to show how clever they are by aiming only to end their stories with a witty, unexpected, or sensational twist – nearly always at the expense of structure and plot.

Robert: I always hated that. Why ruin a good story with a horrible ending? I would tell my creative writing students, you had an “A” going until you wrote that final paragraph or that final line – which had nothing to do with the story. They just pulled it out of hat to trick you!

The internal logic of the story (and structure) must hold up until the end!

Guat Eng: As a writer, I find (as I did when I was 10 years old) that I can’t make headway with a narrative unless I have a structure. I’m not saying it’s the only way to write; I’m saying that it’s the only way I can write. Structure (i.e. the way I organise the different parts of my “story”) helps me to clarify and define my discourses (i.e. the issues I’m problematizing). Ever since I read Northanger Abbey at age 14, I have been intrigued by the potential of novels to poke fun at humanity’s willingness to confuse the imagined and the real. From my (much later) study of Zen, I learned that a similar intent underlies the tonguein-cheek narrative techniques of much of Asian “wisdom” literature (which is what gives them the “postmodern” flavour noted by many Western contemporary scholars). It is natural for me to want to write fiction that tends towards the deconstructive and the metafictional, and to look to Asian wisdom literature for the scaffold­ings I need for my structures. In my novels, these Asian frameworks allow me to work historical breadth, cultural depth, and additional layers of meaning into my metafictional discourses with an economy that I find aesthetically pleasing – simply because they make my creative/writing process so exhilaratingly challenging.

Robert: My own introduction to Asian writing came from a course in Japanese and Chinese studies and from reading the required novels before I travelled to both countries in 1980. Another text that I found enlightening was Literature of the Eastern World. Just being aware that there are many ways to tell a story (and stories that can be told about almost anything, including gourds and silkworms) and to experiment in structure and viewpoint (as I did in Lovers and Strangers Revisited) to find the most effective way to tell your story or to get to a deeper story is a great way to grow as a writer. It forces you out of your comfort zone. You have to read widely, though, just to be aware 19

what is out there – Western and Eastern! Sometimes you have to write the story/novel chronologically first before you can re­structure the scenes, so it would all make sense, even in reverse order as Preeta Samarasan did quite successfully in Evening is the Whole Day, which was discussed during a recent interview.

Guat Eng: Read at one level, Echoes of Silence is simply a murder mystery. But by using a structure based on an adaptation of the Mahabharata structure, I was able to plot my story as an interiorized dialectical discourse spanning three time zones (present, recent past, and distant past). The narration, while taking the reader back and forth between present and pasts, reveals the occurrence of parallel episodes of violence, silencing of truth, and miscarriages of justice in each time zone; and these parallels indirectly comment on one another through their thematic resonances and dissonances. The experiment in Days of Change was somewhat different. In this memoir-like narrative, my amnesiac narrator uses the I Ching to trigger the recovery of lost memories. Within the seemingly neat 64-day framework of the I Ching, the memories are not recalled and recorded in chronological order – deliberately so, because on one level (the fiction-as-mimesis level), the intention is to simulate the messy and capricious way memory works. But on another level (the metafictional level), the smooth-flowing and even polished prose style of the narration shines a light on the “fiction-making” way the narrator attempts to clean up confu­sions, re-order events, and fill gaps left by that most unreliable of narrators, memory. Thus structured and written as a proto-memoir, the novel serves to subvert the faithful-to-memory truth claims of historians and autobiographers.

I will be the first to acknowledge that most (or all) of my readers will never perceive the crafting that is so much a part of my writing process, and therefore never fully appreciate what I’m trying to do and say. Some may find the narratives confusing and think I’m trying to be too clever by half. But not being understood is the nature of the literary beast, and as long as my readers find my works enjoyable at the “story” level, I’m not going to worry about being fully understood.

Robert: That’s always the risk...of not being understood, or being misunderstood, or being accused of pur­posely muddying your own story to make it opaque or overly literary, thus losing your readers in the process. Many so called “great” books are said to be un­read­­able.

Finnegans Wake, anyone? Gravity's Rain­­bow? I once read MobyDick until 50 pages from the end and just gave up – I just didn’t care anymore if Captain Ahab got the whale or not! Great, epic story, but tedious to a fault, bogged down with endless mundane details about the whaling industry. Years later, I finally went back and finished it – I won’t spoil the ending.

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In a recent interview you said, “Wisdom, for me, means the understanding that every indi­vidual has his or her own concept of truth, his or her own story to tell; and we must some­how make space in our hearts and minds for all these concepts and stories without, how­ever, getting caught up in them.” Could you elaborate, especially in this era of Trump, Fake News, and ‘alter­native facts’ about how to avoid “getting caught up in them”? We (at least in the US) seem to be drowning in everyone’s concept of truth. Or is it even possible to keep straight all of the shifting narratives, let alone all of the political or personal spins upon spins with the so-called truth as to what really happened. Or the actual truth or even the agreed-upon truth as to what, in fact, did take place? Or should we even bother in the realistic fear that it will, sooner or later, drive us all crazy – even for us expats living in Borneo? Maybe what we need to do is pick up a good novel so we can lose our­selves in the narrative truth of the story...or just keep working on the inherent truth of our own creation and let it speak for itself…

Guat Eng: Zen philosophers have many ways to deal with the issues you mention. It would take too long to go into the various methods they recommend as means of distinguishing the imagined from the real. But one doesn’t have to be a Zen philosopher to ask the many kinds of questions offered in everyday discourse as means to distinguish real from fake news: Does this make sense? Who’s saying this? Which news media is responsible for this report? What’s their agenda? What’s the other side of the story? What are the political and geopolitical circum­stances that might give rise to such an action or statement? And so on.

Robert: Ah, Kipling’s six honest serving men will always get you to the truth!

Guat Eng: It seems to me there is no lack of probing questions that one may ask. What is lack­ing is usually the will to ask those questions and the determination to find the answers. Most people just find it easier to believe whatever their favourite politician or news media says, and close their minds to the idea that there is always another side to the story and another way of looking at things.

Looking for the truth with an open mind is hard work; here’s how Gautama Buddha describes the hard work one has to do before one accepts even his teachings: As the wise test gold by burning, cutting and examining by means of a touchstone, so should you accept my words after examining them and not merely out of regard and reverence for me.

Robert: Most of your professional life was spent in the corporate world as both a writer and as a creative and communications consultant, specialising in the development of strategies for advertising and 21

promotional campaigns, corporate brand building programmes….How has this benefited you as a writer or in developing your own brand as a writer?

Guat Eng: The corporate world taught me many things that were and remain valuable to me as a fiction writer. Probably the most important is self-discipline: meeting deadlines, managing time, and the sheer teeth-gritting doggedness of writing even when I don’t feel like writing in­stead of waiting for inspiration. The most enduring lessons relate to the art and craft of ego-less writing: to take myself out of the narrative, to draw my readers in and engage them, to make every word count, to communicate and inform, and never to show off. The most useful for me as a self-published writer are the technical aspects of producing a printed text: reader-friendly fonts and spacing, page layouts, paper choices, different types of binding and so on.

Apart from the fact that I am conscious of my Malaysian identity and am not prepared to exoticize myself or my stories simply to appeal to Western and Westernized readers, I am not conscious of developing my own brand as a writer. Certainly, before I worked on my first novel, I studied the market. I did research on the types of novel being written by other Malaysian writers (there were only a handful at that time), their subject matter, and their writing styles. I checked out what kind of novels most English-literate readers were willing to buy and read.

Based on the research, I decided what genre I should write in and who my primary target readers would be. But apart from the times when I am launching a new book, I don’t spend a lot of time promoting myself or my writings. I only give readings and/or talk about my books when I’m invited to do so. I depend mostly on the goodwill and word-ofmouth recommendations of friends and acquaintances to sell my books.

Robert: You were once a guest speaker at the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival in Bali. Tell us about your experience and why you feel writers must make an attempt to attend these literary festivals (or not). What are the drawbacks, if any? Any plans to return to Ubud in the future or to any other up­coming literary events?

Guat Eng: I was invited to the 2014 Ubud Writers & Readers Festival….If there were any draw­­backs, I no longer remember….All I remember now is that I had a great time, made some new friends, and sold some books. I found the whole event very well organized, loved my accommodations, and apart from some confusion over transport on the first day, really have nothing to complain about.

It’s a good festival to go to for book launches, networking, and self-promotion, which is what such festivals are designed for, and I would certainly recommend it to anyone who has such intentions and aims. But even if one didn’t have such intentions, or, like me, were not 22

much good at networking and socializing, Ubud is definitely worth going to.

The programme allowed time for my own explorations, which I took as much advantage of as I could. The highlights of my visit were the connections I made with the locals and Indonesians from other islands, who took me to the art and craft museums. The local people are very friend­ly; the most memorable parts of my stay there are the chats I had with the taxi drivers, especially the one who drove me to the airport for my return flight, who, as an artist in his own right, gave me an insider view of the life of local artists and the state of the local art.

I never attend literary festivals and similar events unless I’m invited, but always accept invita­tions when my schedule permits.

Robert: For me, attending a conference is just a great experience all the way around, whether it’s speaking on a panel at a conference in Kuala Lumpur or attending a major conference on my own dime in Hawaii – just to be around other writers. It was definitely worth the investment when I attended the Maui Writers Conference in 2006, which had about a thousand people from all over the US and then me coming from Malaysia. You’re from where? Meet­ing PulitzerPrize-winning writers, Oscar-winning screenwriters, award-winning novelists, plus editors from major pub­lishing houses and literary agents from New York (I attended sever­al pitching sessions) and then listening to their exper­ience, their advice, and picking up signed copies of their books….Quite heady experience. Graham Brown, one of the unpublished writers that I hung out with, met his agent at another conference and sold two novels and then co-wrote some books with Clive Cussler, proving making-face-face-contact can be invaluable, so long as you have the goods to back it up.

Attending a conference overseas can be expensive, but if you book low cost flights early, take advantage of early-bird specials, split accommoda­tion and car rental (if neces­sary) with other writers (I contacted the organizer in Maui and they found me someone with the same idea), or tie it to a planned vacation or a business trip or stay with a relative or friend living in the area...it can be done. If you do this too often, you can also go broke, so choose your conferences wisely, or find a way to get yourself invited as a guest speaker!

What advice would you give writers who are struggling to finish (or even seriously start) their first novel?

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Guat Eng: Here are 5 tips: 1. Don’t talk about it, do it.

2. Set a time-table for the completion of first draft of the novel, and organize the rest of your life around it.

3. Keep your project a secret. Don’t keep showing people bits of your work-in-progress and asking for opinions. You don’t want to be distracted by too many opinions. Listen to what your heart (your innermost self ) tells you.

4. If you get stuck, it’s probably because you haven’t been listening to your innermost urgings. Stop. Listen to what you heart wants you to write. Then write what it tells you to write. No more. And no less.

5. When the first draft of the whole novel is near completion, start a search for a good reader (not an editor; that should come later). If anyone is recommended, check with other writers who have used their services. Settle on the one you can trust to be sensitive to and supportive of what you are doing, willing to give honest and constructive criticism, and able to make reconstructive suggestions while giving you the leeway to reject the suggestions if you don’t agree. And yes, be prepared to pay them in cash for time spent and services rendered.

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one woman

Every so often a book appears that reveals and illuminates a project that might otherwise remain largely unknown by the outside world: ‘Colors of Cambodia’ is such a book. This is a highly personal and passionate account written by Martin Bradley and illustrated by Pei Yeou Bradley of her encounter with a remarkable art-based project in and around Siem Reap in Cambodia, and how she was drawn into practical involvement with the children for whom the project exists.

The book shows how a small NGO run by William Gentry in Siem Reap has been able to reach out to children in local schools, some in areas of great poverty, through the medium of art, and to give them hope for the future in a country that has suffered so much. The children and their families who are drawn into the project prove how art can cross all borders of language and culture. The book also tells of how Malaysian children and their parents have been encouraged to support the project and to become involved with the children and their work.

This is a highly personal and passionate account written by Marti remarkable art-based project in and around Siem Reap in Cambodia, for whom the 26

n’s journey

And there is the additional touch of magic as Pei Yeou and Martin tell of their meeting and of how he too was drawn into the story, and contributes to it, and of how it changed his life. His sensitive words and poetry add another colour to this unique book In a world in which the news is bad more often than not, this inspirational book tells a story of optimism and success, and of how dreams can become true.

Richard Noyce, Artist and Writer, Wales, July 2012 contact honeykhor@gmail.com martinabradley@gmail.com http://colorsofcambodia.org/

in Bradley and illustrated by Honey Khor of her encounter with a , and how she was drawn into practical involvement with the children project exists.

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Xue Qin Li Xue Qin Li Xue Qin Li was born in December 1976, in Zhong Xiang city, Hubei province, China. She now lives and works in Xiaogan city, Hubei province, China. , She graduated from the fine arts department of Hubei normal university.

In November 2018, her pastel work ‘A Jing’ was awarded the gold medal of the The 33rd Juried Exhibition of the International Association of Pastel Societies. Her ‘Dream Space’ was exhibited in the 46th (PSA) Pastel Society of America annual exhibition and won the Richard McKinley award. In February 2018, Xue Qin Li’s work ‘blossom age -- looking back’ was exhibited. In 2017, an excellent physical exhibition of works by online gallery of Chinese Pastel Art Network.

In December 2017, a pastel tone painting was included in the 13th Wuhan art works annual exhibition. In August 2017, another pastel painting was exhibited in the second national exhibition of Watercolour Pastel’s of Women.

In May 2017, a tone painting was selected for the 9th Barcelona international representational art grand prix. In February 2017, another pastel painting work was exhibited in the 2016 China Powder Painting Art Network "online gallery". In October 2015, her pastel painting works ‘blossom age’ and ‘Yellow Sang fish’ were exhibited as pastel painting works from teachers and students in Hangzhou, Suzhou.

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Looking

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Dream Space

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Woman 1

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Woman 2

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Water lily No.1

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Lotus leaves in Autumn

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Sea Fish

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Flight

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Shahabuddin Ahmed

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In his Dhaka studio

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Shahabuddin Ahmed Sbādhīnatā (Freedom)

by Martin Bradley Freedom from fear is the freedom I claim for you my motherland!

Freedom from the burden of the ages, bending your head, breaking your back, blinding your eyes to the beckoning call of the future; Freedom from the shackles of slumber wherewith you fasten yourself in night's stillness, mistrusting the star that speaks of truth's adventurous paths; freedom from the anarchy of destiny whole sails are weakly yielded to the blind uncertain winds, and the helm to a hand ever rigid and cold as death.

Freedom from the insult of dwelling in a puppet's world, where movements are started through brainless wires, repeated through mindless habits, where figures wait with patience and obedience for the master of show, to be stirred into a mimicry of life.

Rabindranath Tagore

Born September 11th, 1950, in the Narsingdi District of Bangladesh, Shahabuddin Ahmed had already exhibited his great strength of character, and zeal for freedom when taking time out from art school to fight as a platoon commander, in Bangladesh’s guerrilla resistance movement (Mukti Bahini), during the Liberation War (1971). Shahabuddin fought for his country’s eventual freedom from Pakistan and, at the age of 21, raised the Bangladesh flag (after a nine month struggle for freedom), on the roof of ‘Pakistan Radio’, December 16, 1971, at the culmination of the Bangladesh/Pakistan war. For this, in 2000, he received the ‘Shadhinota Padak’ (Independence Award - the highest civilian honour in Bangladesh).

In 1973, Shahabuddin finally graduated from the Dhaka Art College (now Fine Arts School of Dhaka). The then Prime Minister of Bangladesh (Sheikh Mujibur Rahman), encouraged Shahabuddin to go to Paris, France. Rahman (Bangabandhu, or ‘Friend of Bengal’) had suggested ‘… you must go, beat Picasso.’

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Rahman’s suggestion, that Shahabuddin should become greater than Picasso, spoke not only of Picasso’s greatness as an artist, but also of Picasso’s ceaseless desire for peace. Picasso had spent many years painting of war and of peace. He had, after all, created one of the most memorable war paintings ever - Guernica, in 1937. Guernica, a painting which depicts the graphic horror of the bombing of a Spanish town, is as impressive in its size as it is in its content. Overall it stands at 25.6 feet wide and 11 feet tall, and its full impact can be seen in Museo Reina Sofia, in Madrid. Picasso’s ‘Dove of Peace’, his symbol for the First International Peace Conference, in Paris 1949, became ‘the international emblem of the Peace Movement and a symbol of hope in the Cold War period’ (it mentions in the Tate Liverpool exhibition ‘Picasso: Peace and Freedom’, 2010). It was in Paris, that Shahabuddin finally saw the works of Pablo Picasso, up close and personal.

Armed with that scholarship from the French government, Shahabuddin Ahmed arrived in Paris to study painting at the Ecole Superieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris. Coincidently, it was in the autumn of 1974, that Francis Bacon arrived back in Paris, and settled into a studio apartment, at 14 rue de Birague, in the Marais district near the Place des Vosges. Paris was a city beloved of Francis Bacon, and one he spent much time visiting, discovering his own love for Picasso’s work, in Pierre Rosenberg’s gallery (1927).

In 1977, while still in Paris, Shahabuddin suffered the fate of all displaced persons and, ironically (as Paris was seen as the centre of postwar French Existentialism), had an existential crisis. Shahabuddin was, like Jean-Paul Sartre’s character Antoine Roquentin (La Nausée, or Nausea, published in 1938) thrown into worry about his existence, his worth and the worth of his painting. Sartre, of course, is renown for commenting ‘Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. It is up to you to give [life] a meaning’ An obvious nod to Friedrich Nietzche’s ‘Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves’. Shahabuddin’s crisis dissipated upon experiencing the power of Francis Bacon’s exhibits at Galerie Claud Bernard, 5,7,9, rue des Beaux-Arts, Paris 6, galvanising Shahabuddin, once again, into action, but this time with a paintbrush.

In those traumatised images and the free strokes comprising Bacon’s imagery, Shahabuddin had found his meaning. He was encouraged to continue, to wrestle his freedom to paint, and Shahabuddin had recognised in Bacon’s imagery, a kinship. Shahabuddin was adapt Bacon’s style, style, discarding the obvious horrors and the inherent violence of Bacon’s paintings, as Shahabuddin had had enough violence during the war, as his 2018 exhibition ‘Shanti’ (Peace, May - April 2018)) attends.

Shahabuddin had found his expression, the freedom and the will to energise his will onto canvas.

Thomas McEvilley, in his book ‘Capacity: The History, the World, and the Self in Contemporary Art and Criticism’ (1997), when talking about the Dakar Festival for the Revival of African Arts, made this comment - ‘Bangladeshi Ahmed Shahabuddin’s expertly executed canvases 46

Gandhi II

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Olympic Games

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Rabindranath Tagore

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seemed derived in part from Francis Bacon.’ Life has repeatedly brought Shahabuddin within the periphery of Bacon, and his work.

In time, due to the similarities in his work to that of France Bacon, Shahabuddin had earned the dubious title of ‘Little Bacon’ (according to an interview the artist had with Snehangshu Adhikari, in The Sunday Indian (April 3, 2011). It was a title Shahabuddin spent a lifetime dispelling, which he has by the sheer dint of his hard work and diligent concentration on moving forward with his style.

As Shahabuddin’s works matured, he too became exhibited in the very same gallery, in Paris, in which Francis Bacon's works had been exhibited. Bacon and Picasso had loomed large in Shahabuddin’s early life as a painter, but they were not the only Modernist’ painters who had shaped that borrowed style.

There is little doubt that Shahabuddin, this vital giant of Bangladesh painting imparts his the full force of his passion into his art, brimming with visual intensity and puissance, just as he had once flung himself into the fray to create freedom for his country. He and his work have also commonalities with Bangladesh artist Shilpacharya (great teacher) Zainul Abedin. As we witness in Zainul Abedin’s drawings and paintings, we have his sense of great movement, as that in Shahabuddin’s works too.

This is shown in works such as Zainul Abedin’s Rebel Cows’ (1975), ’Sangram’ (Struggle, 1976) and one untitled piece which was executed in 1967. It is an ink and pastel, on paper, depicting a group of figures in furious movement.

Shahabuddin Ahmed’s art frequently echoes the untamed organic landscapes imagined by British Graham Sutherland’s ‘organic’ surrealisms, such as ‘Green Tree Form’ (1940), ‘Twisted Tree Form’ (1944) and ’Sleeping Woman’ (1953). Bacon and Sutherland had been friends during the 1940s, with Sutherland advancing Bacon’s career, and with much painterly cross-fertilisation occurring. This becomes evident in paintings such as Sutherland’s ‘Gorse on Sea Wall’ (1939). It is no wonder then, that those ‘echoes’ occur, passed, as they had been, from Sutherland to Bacon, and to Shahabuddin. It is that metamorphosis, that evolving which is the product of freedom of the artist’s mind, freedom to experiment, for the artist to create without fear.

It is an arts tradition. ‘Apprentice’ (student) becomes a ’Journeyman’ at the completion of his/her apprenticeship and, eventually, a ‘Master’ in their own right. Although those antediluvian practices have evolved into studentship and teacher/lecturer/artist the relationship and its value remains. The Louvre in Paris (1793) and the Victoria & Albert Museum (1852) were created for the purpose of students gaining inspiration from past artists, who were considered masters of their trade and exemplars for students to learn from.

In 2017, Mexico’s Fine Arts Palace held the exhibition ‘Picasso & Rivera. Conversaciones a través del tiempo’ (Conversations Across Time). It charted a cross-fertilisation between two great artists, Pablo Picasso from Spain and Diego Rivera from Mexico, their similarities, their friendship and their ultimate falling out. Separately, they had both 51

studied at the San Fernando Royal Academy, Madrid, and separately moved to Paris, finally meeting in 1914. Rivera had ‘sampled’ Picasso’s ‘Cubism’, while Picasso had ‘sampled’ Rivera’s ‘Muralism’.

Another great Spaniard, Salvador Dalí, countryman to and admirer of Picasso’s works, engineered a mutual friend (the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca) to obtain an introduction to Picasso. This occurred in Paris, in 1926. The influence of Picasso’s work, over Dalí, was chartered in the exhibition Picasso Dalí/ Dalí Picasso at Museu Picasso, Barcelona, in 2015. Like Picasso’s relationship with Rivera, Picasso had a strained relationship with Dalí also. Picasso was to go on to influence many painters, including those from the Indian subcontinent, with artists such as F N Souza, Tyeb Mehta, M F Husain and, of course, Shahabuddin Ahmed admiring his freedom to create.

Shahabuddin’s paintings are about freedom. But not only the freedom from the act of war, or the ravages of war and the imprinting of such on the mind of a survivor, but a freedom of the spirit, of the soul (if we deign to use such language) and a freedom to experiment with creativity.

Shahabuddin’s struggle has not been just to wrestle with the after effects of war, or to represent the horrors or war in a new fashion, but to present his work as his own, freed from the strictures of being a ‘Little Bacon’, or bound to another artist’s vision of the world.

It would be a mistake to consider Shahabuddin’s work to be simply a ‘working out’, in his psyche, of 52

the traumas and dislocations of war, as some have intimated in the Indian press (Daily Sun). Even with his last exhibition (in Kolkata’s Ganges Art Gallery) ‘Shanti’, there was an underlining murmur of his days at war, Bangladesh’s liberation, the struggle etc. While this is undeniably true, and Shahabuddin has never denied the impact of the ‘Liberation’ war on him and his work, nor the fact that he had been galvanised into action by the

repressions inherent with the rule of Pakistan over his country. However, this should not be allowed to define the past four decades of this artist’s work. Shahabuddin’s vitality, seen in his paintings, has moved him on from war to peace (‘Shanti’, or Peace is the name of his exhibition).

Of course, it is difficult to talk of peace (Shanti), without talking first of war. One dictionary definition tells us that ‘Peace’ is ‘a state or period in which there is no war, or a war has ended. Another speaks of ‘no

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violence’. It is perfectly understandable why so much emphasis has been laid on Shahabuddin’s connection to a series of events which culminated with Bangladesh being created, freed from oppression, yet that is not the entire story.

As Shahabuddin (in an interview with Zahangir Alom, in The Daily Star, December 16, 2016) reminds us, artistic freedom is ‘….a difficult thing in the world. It is protected (by law) only in France.’ the French had that liberty, that freedom, enshrined in law from July 2016. While in other (South Asian) countries (according to The State of Artistic Expression) ‘Artists practice a degree of self-censorship for fear of losing state patronage’.

Srirak Plipat Executive Director of Freemuse (an independent international organisation advocating for and defending freedom of Passion

artistic expression) recently stated…

‘Freedom of artistic freedom and creativity does matter. It is recognised as a human right in key international human rights laws. But what makes artistic freedom matter is that it makes us who we are as a human being in society.’

Artists, or in common parlance ‘creatives’, may be identified as human agents having autonomy, or free-will, to decide (what to do), and the ability to act upon that free-will without repercussions. To be truly free, to be liberated in the mind to paint, free from the pettiness of social strictures, politics etcetera is, sadly, becoming rarer across the globe.

Countries which once embraced the idea of equality and freedom, change, and revert to old ways. France is the exception, hence Shahabuddin’s oscillation between his newly found home in Paris and the home that he fought for in Dhaka. Freedom has its own price.

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Désir

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Dibyendu Seal

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Circuits of Expression Works by Dibyendu Seal Dr Kallol Roy

The works in this exhibition have their origin in the moments of epiphany of the artist who by profession is a software engineer. Entrapped by the mechanical routine of everyday drudgery, his mind probes the nature of labour and existence—visual ruminations which allow him a sense of illusory freedom. The diptych and singular images have elements from the world of computer and gadgets interspersed with organic life-forms from nature.

The visuals compare the shapes from both worlds that not only bring up the aesthetic dimensions of the objects but also hint at the suppressed yearning for sustenance by being moored in nature, in the comforting cocoon of his ancestral home (the Corinthian pillars are metonyms for it) in a village which he had to leave behind. Thus his works are shaped by the dichotomies of existence in a contemporary world. With their lyricism and limited colour palette they narrate a gradual process of self-discovery.

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Ruhail Andrabi poems

This love had caught

some deep-slumber. so, now, let this restless heart rest.

Take it to the land of grief where broken metaphors festoon ruthless poetry, In the name of beloved.

Take this heart to the city of drunkards who gyrate a cyclone of love with smoke of opium.

Yes, take this heart to a place -- where, bereft leaves revive withering hearts with stories of intoxicating love.

Take this heart to a place -- where, streams of unrequited love water the bushes of eternal happiness; where oceans of joy flow through barren unconsciousness, to mingle itself with every single debris of nothing else, but love.

Take this heart, to a place -- where, my soul and heart become envious to the beauty of my beloved.

Take this heart, to a place -- where, lovers of autumn dance with roasted souls.

Take this heart to a place -- where, sunset kisses farewell

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to swaying evening.

Take this heart to a place -- where, the chaotic sky sings songs of loneliness in the rhythm of burning stars.

Take this heart to that country of rural soul, where my existence fades amidst the smoke of peaceful desolation.

Tell me how you can stab a heart, already shrouded with the garb of laceration hemmed by apathy ?

Tell me how you can arrest a lover thrown into the dark dungeons of desolation; already drunk in martyrdom?

Tell me how you can blind those eyes, already spun by threads of dream and freedom?

Tell me how you can defeat them, When they hurl stones of invincible faith?

Tell me how you can defeat them, when they celebrate death, and blow trumpets in funerals?

Tell me how you win, by carrying a cold lifeless body, whose coffin shrieks your inhumanity?

Tell me how you can destroy them, when they dance in the extenuating rhythm of the Gunshots?

Tell me!

Tell me..

Can you?!

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ill you not come to listen to the song of death In the company of crowd to sprinkle rain on the dust of my body on the ship of fate to see your name inscribed on the pores of my skin just like a leaf shattered on the floor of autumn and the cracks on its face is the poetry of sufferings Seen through the window of your soul my heart is crying In the garden of eternity chanting your name in the shadow of a forbidden tree painting your sketch on the marvels of white soil drawing your innocence on the walls Heaven will not come to see your rhymes written on the Windows of my heart will you not come to see the secrets of your beauty that I decorated in the temple of my heart 68

Will you not come to see the city of my Heart where your name is flowing through its arteries Will not you come to my funeral To listen to the songs that I will sing in the desolated streets of my coffin to read my poetry on the shroud of mystery to see my soul dancing on the memories of your love inside the ribcages of the grave Tell me will not you come to free my soul from the torment of solitude to see the essence of my being worshipping in the darkness of sacred night for I'm waiting for you on the shores of the holy Ocean Will not you bring those lullabies written on the sacred doors of your heart You used to sing for me in the midnight of loneliness my heart is only echoing your name on the hills of love.

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The Moon card by Rohit Arya, Jane Adams

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Last curfewed night,

decked today's dawn, with corpses and coffins Intimidating was the darkness of the deep night that carried the brooks of silence inhuming broken wishes of corpses alive.

The malignity of the night muffled the elegies of fall with brutality of terror.

A shy moon was tarnished with stains of blood, dripping from souls, so innocent.

A storm of bloodshed, peeled every soul, gifted every mind a pain so unbearable.

The curtain of cursed night, was caste off; parched streets redolent of roasted smell of bullets. baying winds infused with songs of Martyrdom hue and cry symphonies trumpets of mourning.

From the heights of Zabarwan to depths of Jhelum, every, single, thing shrunk.

Ah! Wishes to ashes turned. bodies of blood turned into corpses, so cold; blood of Martyrs metamorphosed into ink of folks, to indite tales of brutality, until, the sunrise of victory kisses the weeping coffin Of that Martyr.

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MGM Art Space is the only dedicated gallery space in a Macau resort designed specifically for art and cultural exhibitions. From classical Renaissance to cutting-edge contemporary, it offers wondrous, immersive and interactive experiences for visitors of all ages.

The 5,000 square feet gallery welcomes guests at the top of the grand staircases in the picturesque Grande Praça.

MGM Art Space opened in 2013 with a Renaissanceinspired exhibition: “Botticelli’s Venus: The Life and Times of a Goddess.” As part of the exhibition, MGM MACAU brought over Botticelli’s legendary Venus (c. 1482), as well as other national treasures from Italy. This was the very first time these pieces had been shown in Asia. Since then, the gallery has hosted three classical and contemporary exhibitions, which were all complemented with interactive elements and background stories relating to the featured exhibit.

MGM Art Space is more than a traditional gallery or museum. It’s where contemporary design and art come together, creating new and unexpected ways for audiences to view, interact and connect with the pieces on display. MGM Art Space also hosts workshops and creative programs, allowing participants to discover the stories behind the exhibits. It is built for flexibility and functionality and reinvents itself with each individual art show or exhibit.

Located at the heart of Grande Praça, the breathtaking 8-meter tall cylindrical MGM Aquarium gives a 360-degree unobstructed view of the aquatic lives. Visitors can appreciate the beauty of each fish and immerse themselves in magnificence where the water meets the sky.

At MGM MACAU, visitors can witness a wide array of exotic fish such as Panther Grouper, Blue Moon Angelfish, Clown Triggerfish as well as Cownose Stingrays being fed by qualified divers at selected times. Marvel at how the fish interact with each other and with their environment inside the MGM Aquarium.

Outside MGM Salvador Dali’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ stands, while inside is his ‘Dalinian Dancer’.

used with permission from MGM Macau

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Pranjit Sarma

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etchings 85

My works are a metaphoric representation of the social-political chaos of Northeast Indian states, realised visually. I tend to portray the superfluous power structure and its effects through the symbolic presentation on the issues related to the naive inhabitants/ tribes of my land. These are individuals who have not received judicial proclaim to their problems. Therefore my works speak loudly about the sufferings of the tribal peoples from the hegemonic political discourses intending to recover their muted voices.

As an artist, on one hand I lend lo follow a documentary approach and a psychoanalytical on the other. This is not to reform the subjects, but to capture them through a printing medium. My works dwell on questions between various perspectives of society and my acceptance regarding this social perception. These issues are deeply rooted in my psyche which, in a way, help me in the process of understanding myself.

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As I was brought up by a strong mother, I am so much aware of the emotional, and mental stages of childbirth. It is a dual process of nourishment and attachment. But at the same time I am also intertwined by the patriarchy of the society in which we live in. The gender bias and inequality play dominant roles in few of my works. To pay homage, and gratitude, to motherhood which has been overshadowed by patriarchy at times.

It is a matter of pleasure that I had been passionate about art since my childhood. In this respect, my family has created a fertile ground for me to nourish an imaginative psyche inside me. As, I hail from a small village called Balikaria, located in Assam, north-eastern part of India, I was always eager to understand my Multiple Cultural diversity.

As a child, I grew up amidst different communities, where I witnessed the multiple shades (cultural diversities) from attractive costumes to 87

different traditional cuisines. All these elements of the society served as fan the fuel my innovative thoughts.

My land, North East India, is known for its scenic beauty. From the age of 14, I extensively travelled to different parts of this region, because of my father's transferable job and as an artist when started discovering my inner self. I realised that nature and it's dynamic creations actually mesmerised me throughout. These took a dominant shape in the process of making my own art.

After completing my 10111 standard, I decided to move to Guwahati (city) to continue my study further. That is where I was introduced to the discipline 'fine arts’, in a brief manner. Fascinated by this, I decided to enrol myself into the Assam University soon after my higher secondary examination.

Finally, in 2012 I joined the Department of Visual Arts, Assam 88

University and completed my bachelors in Visual Arts with specialisation in painting, in 2016. During that period I received multiple experiences regarding experimentation with various materials. Simultaneously I got an academic guide to develop my conceptual journey. After finishing my bachelors in visual arts from Assam University, I came to Bangalore University and I was selected for Masters in Print making, in 2016. In 2018 June I appeared for my final examination of masters.

These two years were a tremendous journey, I learnt dynamic dimensions of print making and it became the core of my interest area.

Within these two years of voyage as a print maker, I received several opportunities to explore my ideas. Beyond a single edition print, I created two major installation projects, based on my regional sociopolitical condition. I learnt aquatint, lithography, and woodcut techniques during my academic course, but I preferred to work in etching techniques 89

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(aquatint) mostly. I believe that for any contemporary art practitioner there is always room to subvert change in his/her works, which expands the horizon of artistic thoughts. Brand new ideas can flourish and can be improvised only in dynamic environments. And each new space gives us new ingredients to gain knowledge for our artistic endeavours.

Pranjit Sarma

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Heart of a Dog A Malayalam film by sreekrishnam kp

Film Synopsis Based on Mikhail Bulgakov’s acclaimed novel ‘Heart of a dog’, the film digs deeper into the text in search of the philosophical undercurrents and bring forth refreshing dimensions on the anthropomorphic nature of all the human constructs. Ultra experimental in cinematic form, it creates a hybrid, synthetic and inter- textual imagery through which the filmmaker achieves something unusual; converging the ideas and emotions rooted in time into spatial forms. Film tries to go beyond all the conventional storytelling methods and breaks the spatiotemporal continuity to deconstruct the mainstream ideas on representational realism and show us how simulated the narraturgy is. It transcends all the structure of filmic form / content through disconnected, fragmented and various contradictions which creates a refreshing mosaic of audio-visual landscapes. Film achieves a kind of poetic quality through going beyond the existing ideas and creates a polyphonic , kaleidoscopic break in the cinematic form and content which is truly epistemological in filmic nature.

Direction Sreekrishnan K P Produced by Sathish C M Photography Sakyadeb chowdhury Editing Midhun Mohan Cast Ramachandran Mokery, Kannan Unni, Divya Surjith, Murukan, Dhanya Nair, Vinaya, Hari K B, C C Rajan

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Movie editor's statement. ( Midhun Mohan. Visual artist ) As an artist working with moving images, my collaboration with the film 'Heart of a Dog' was- as one of the critics wrote- "Hyper- Experimental".

To achieve the Bulgakov inspired dystopian landscapes and devilish interiors we used various imaging techniques which in turn made the film a hybrid visual assemblage. We layered the cinematographic footage with drawings and paintings, glitches, animated loops and textures. In the process, we went in deep research with Constructivist art works, Soviet and Nazi propaganda art to make the spaciotemporal setting of this film. It was quite exciting to manipulate the rural semi-urban space of Kerala by bringing those elements together. During the process, we were working with more than twenty software, along with hard media artists like painters and sculptors, which made this a 'handmade film' . I would say, I felt like making a digital/new media critic to the visual aesthetics of the whole 'Modernist Utopia'.

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A captivating journey through the mythical allusions of many things canine, from Kafkaesque to Bulgakovian, all canned in with an intentionally deceptive parodic title, The Heart of a Dog. The movie, a reality-bound fantasy train tells the story of a crazy doctor who performs one of the least invasive organ replacement surgeries medical science can ever imagine. But the twist comes when we realize the replacement of the genitalia is not simply an adaptation of the satire (of the same title), but a coup de tat of multiple sorts. A set of revolution aspirants of 70s are separated by the guilt of the frail murder of an innocent renegade. In a later era, one of the murderer-of-conscience evolve as a highbrow surgeon. He speaks with panache about da Vinci, alluding to his own household surgical mastery in human anatomy. He advises his patients not to have breakfast while reading the local Pravda, as a prescription. But not surprising, as you can see that similar intellectual appendicitis characterises most of the acting bodies - feminists, toddy tappers, auto rickshaw drivers and even the migrants in this panoramic portrayal. The doctor turned political murderer, constipated further by the pig sty left government, plots with accuracy the thrilling prognosis of the future until he finds a peaceful death at the end of a coincidental pilgrim’s trail to the working-class village where the pastor-turned concubine of his is the bride and the bridge to god. Let alone the aliens and the UFOs, the doctor makes a smart arrest of the simulations which are in contest to rule the universe. The doctor has a simple solution which can make Elon Musk, the poster boy of simulation, feel proud.

‘If reality is a simulation created by super intelligence’, the world needs the greatest allegory to represent it. The craft is not when you create a wearable testis. Instead, what you see is a dogbot in action. The essentials of a castrated dogbot lives between the legs of a lesser human mortal.

Postmodern allegory at its best with a series of shock treatments to the audience around the doctor with smart allusions that titillate the cultural memory of everybody. Even the digitally bred are victims of gender bias, as man perceives it. The same gender hegemony and the binaries lead to the damnation of the activism named life as the male dog bot with eligible testicles go under an analog knife. The best resistance is an eclectic hybrid. In simple terms, unlike the portrayals of human end at technology’s hand, this is an intelligent intervention to equip men of analogs to face technology. Set in the backdrop of a country where people are politically blackmailed using an ideology drafted in 1800s, the movie portrays a digital blackmail, of a satirical fantasy of 1900s that was antithetical to the first. Perhaps the doctor repeats the game with a an interplay of a simulation, with a 3d printed dogbot making "surgical" interventions into the cultural memory of analogish mortals. A crisis of representation where humans try to resist the 'appearance' of a digitally bred canine Avatar with the helpless allusive black magic ranging from biblical escapades to Bulgakovian comic reliefs and a prick of consciences.

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William Gentry William Gentry is an award-winning artist whose paintings, drawing, and prints are deeply influenced by surrealism and his experiences travelling the world and living in Southeast Asia. His works are owned by collectors throughout the world and in 1988 he won the prestigious Painting of the Year Award from the Palo Alto Art League in Palo Alto, California.

From his home base in Singapore, William continues to travel the world advancing his “Art Will Save the World” mission. He recently launched the Art Will Save the World Shop, a nonprofit website that sells works by young and upcoming artists from underrepresented communities.

William is the founder of Colors of Cambodia and the current president of A World of Difference. He started travelling to Cambodia to teach children art in 2003. He perceived a wealth of potential talent in the children of Cambodia. His efforts grew into what is now the Colors of Cambodia Art School and Gallery in Siem Reap.

In 2005 William started Imagical Arts, a multimedia company in Singapore, and in 2010 Imagical Arts produced the Bollywood Indie movie “The Genius of Beauty”. Imagical Arts has also created numerous animations and original pieces of music.

Born in California, William graduated from Indiana University in 1981 with a bachelors degree in fine arts painting.

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The Empress

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The Three Fish

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I do not paint and draw for intellectual purposes. I began to do art long before I even knew what art was. Art is life itself. It is tactile, it is feeling, it is sensuous, and in time it has become, for me, full of heart.

I do not paint with my brain. I paint with my yearning skin. It is my soul seeking something divine, alive, delicate, angry, on fire, and impassioned.

Painting is breathing. It is Linga. It is wet on wet, dry on wet, moisture meeting flame. It is the contours of bodies, barely lit, amidst the power of life, and locked in an eternal embrace.

My art is a journey. Every work has a new element that alters the course, elevates the path, always. Every work seeks something new, and the knowledge — the nuances of information accumulated, borrowed or self-discovered, then refined — pushes my art forward to something more ideal, even enlightened.

Darkness will show you the light, and light exposes the lines, contours, and weaknesses that make us special. The peace in meditative drawing, what the Yogi craves without craving. Life’s a cold day in winter, when you’re blinded by the sun!

Lady with the Squirrels Surrealism Surrealism is a style of art that “stresses” the subconscious, nonrational imagery arrived at by the exploitation of chance effects and unexpected juxtapositions. It is the practice of producing fantastic or incongruous imagery.

Surrealism can also be a way of life! A culture that embraces the power of God, chance, and the whims of nature and harmony through opposites.

Don’t be afraid to jump into the unknown.

William Gentry

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We Are All Part of This Beautiful World

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Empress Mandala

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Guardians of Love

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Life Births Life

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The Empress Buddha

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Buddha

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Co teaching a

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olors of Cambodia's Honey Khor art to teachers at Jiakang, Zhuhai, China

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Teaching Therapeutic Art to Teachers in Zhuhai, China

by Martin Bradley

Malaysian Artist Honey Khor

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Malaysian Chinese artist, business woman, and teacher of therapeutic art to children and adults, Honey Khor, was recently invited to Zhuhai, on the southern coast of Guangdong province, China. She had been requested, by the newly founded Jiakang Academy, to spend some time teaching the basics of art and creativity to the teachers, many of whom had not interacted with art since leaving school, and were, quite understandably, more than a little apprehensive but nevertheless excited, at the prospect of having a more practical understanding of a creative process.

In Malaysia, Honey teaches art to children and adults, both in her own ‘tuition centre/art studio’ (Sri Madu) and in an art gallery (Zhe Xuan Fine Art), in Kuala Lumpur. Over the years, she had began to specialise in the teaching of art, as a form of therapeutic interaction, to children diagnosed with ‘Asperger Syndrome’ and those individuals on the ‘Autistic Spectrum’.

One success had lead to another, and encouraged Honey to train in the ways of ‘art therapy’. Honey studied Rudolf Steiner Anthroposophic (phenomenological) art therapy with the Department of Artistic Therapies and Therapy Science at Alanus University (on outreach in Malaysia).

Those years of study encouraged Honey to fly to Germany, to take up one of the annual short residencies at the Havelhöhe Community Hospital (Berlin), curtesy of Alanus University. Having these experiences behind her, Honey was confidently able to fly off to China, to teach the teachers who work with children experiencing various degrees of autism.

Jiakang, situated in the same tower as City Comfort Inn, Zhuhai Gongbei, produced six teachers willing to ‘go back to school’ to learn the rudiments of art, and pass their experiences on to their young students. Honey led, explaining why she was encouraging the teachers to explore their fine motor skills, as children would. She took the teachers through basic ‘scribbling’, helping them to remember what it was like before they could write, in words, yet nevertheless convey meaning.

Initially, it was difficult for the Jiakang teachers to leave their inhibitions behind. However, as time progressed, the teachers’ movements became freer, less constrained and, when Honey introduced the concept of using pastel colours, not directly from the pastel stick but grated through a sieve, leaving a powder to improvise with, they were able to use their fingers,

Simple materials

hands and imaginations to smear and spread the colours into designs, or simply leave a uncontrolled subconscious abstract after their ‘play’.

Smiles on the teachers’ faces, as they held up their ‘drawings’, said it all. Satisfaction beamed into the climate controlled room, with each teacher proudly holding their sheet of white paper with their ‘masterpiece’ on. Next it was the turn of the Jiakang students.

Children being children, the experience of bringing art to them was a wholly different affair. The children had none of the preconceptions of the adults, none of their apprehensions or fear of the materials.

All in all, Malaysian artist Honey Khor’s mission to assist Jiakang, with introducing art into their curriculum, was a huge success and plans were being made for a ‘catch up’ via Skype.

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Learning new ways of colouring

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Taking instruction

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Feedback

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Proud teachers

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The Orang Asli Storybook Project These six stories were written as part of project working with teachers, parents and pupils from Six Orang Asli schools in the Kuala Langat district of Selangor in West Malaysia.

They are based on traditional stories from the indigenous Mah Meri and Temuan tribes as told by elders during the community events held at each school during this project.

Through gathering these stories and creating this beautifully illustrated book we hope to preserve the language and culture of these tribes. Reading and storytelling are pathways to imagination, creativity and effective language learning and by translating these familiar cultural stories we to engage children in English.

This one-year project was run by the British Council with support of the Selangor Department of Education, with funding from Wisdom Club. Publication of the book was organised and funded by Wisdom Club who would like to thank all the fund-raisers including Harith Iskandar, Jo Kukathas, Hannah Azlam, Andrew Netto, Poova, and venue sponsor, Bobo KL as well as and donors for their time, effort and generosity.

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Displaced

By Kunt

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d in Dhaka

tal Barai

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Dhaka -- the capital city of Bangladesh -- has reached the pinnacle of crisis. The busy metropolis has a 'life' of its own and its unplanned growth threatens to disavow its past glory and also any ideal frame anyone might have about its future.

Home to a 8.5 million people, according to a recent survey, this mega urban space is now smarting under problems of overpopulation, traffic congestion, and a mad development spree that is unparalleled in all respects. If this city seems like a heaven for a few who choose to remain in their safe heavens, for a majority of its inhabitants the challenge is to survive with dignity on a daily basis.

My project is a survey of all of the above and more. As an artist, my work takes into account the chaos as well as the sense of loss we have developed over the years since the city undercuts the normal rhythm of life. Still there is an organic form of life in this chaos, through which some kind of new vision may one day burst into view.

So my work is neither a mere depiction of the lived experience, nor is it only an interpretation where the real has been dissolved into formal aesthetic qualities.

It is, in fact, a mixture of both.  Â

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Impression Dhaka ride

Dhaka, a mishmash of a city with which one can only forge a love-hate relationship, despite its gross deformities, still excites artistic response.

Kuntal Barai is one of many such artists who have continually returned to the busy roads and bustling public places with the hope of translating some of its essential features from a personalised, and even, aestheticised perspective.

John Berger, in his attempt to differentiate a painted picture from a photograph, once declared that a photograph is a "received" trace of the actual object encountered in real time, while a painting or a sketch is a "translation" of the object done in the time of its own. With this difference in time and process in mind we are able to appreciate how Kuntal, in his attempt to showcase his city of residence, by resorting to sketch, collagraphy and painting, lend primacy to the process rather than the final appearance.

The young artist seeks to restores some of the positive energies that might 134

elude the visitors looking for the harmony of nature and build environment Dhaka once stood for. One of the oldest urban centres in the region, it has become unmanageably chaotic in the last two decades.Yet Kuntal finds ways to celebrate his daily encounters with places and peoples. By evading the bigger pictures -- those that stand-in for Dhaka's myriad inconsistencies and seem overwhelming -- the artist takes up the task of cobbling together references he picks up from urban life trigger his process of art-making.

Though reductive in their approach, the imageries of his recent oeuvres are not fully devoid of recognizable realities. The visual cues that go into his works are derived from cars, rickshaws, electric poles and wires, etc., but the artist intentionally deprived them of a fuller treatment. Instead, he makes do with gestures that might echo their existence. The elements that are recognisable thus collapse into artistic 135

ciphers. The only exception he makes is with the wheel of cars and rickshaws. As the recurring motif it too is sometimes rendered ethereal as if under the force of execution the tangible aspects have been shredded to accommodate the felt-reality, the embodied experiences.

An intensification of this emotive process can be sensed in the series of drawings displayed under the title "Impression Dhaka Ride".

In another series presented under the title "Disharmony", the cars and roads are all flattened out to make visible faint patterns of the urban scenes. These are hollowed out imageries that are ambivalently placed between abstraction and representation. This ambivalence lends them a visual quality that evokes desolation. This is the only series where the artist withdraws from the zest he has otherwise summoned in forging the impressions of the mega city.

All things considered, "Displaced in Dhaka" is not about gathering the fragments from the encountered realities in this incoherent city. Pictorial facts preside over the scraps and fragments as well as images of the city he inserts into his paintings and sketches..

The smudges, lines and shapes become his primary means to arrive at an image in most of his oeuvres. The works in this solo exhibition 136

Wheel of Dhaka 1

can be described in terms of the "moods" they capture, since mood seems to animate the otherwise torpid anatomy of the fragments Kuntal amasses in his work. If some of the works are windy as such ethereal, some are restive though still hovering over the ground, while some appears to carry a sense of weight. If the images from the "City Life in Foolscap" series seem to have been born out the wind, and the more earthy "Frame by Frame" images apparently verge on the abstract, while "Disharmony," a cluster of prints, seems indistinct but gives indication of things that are firmly grounded on earth.  Kuntal is committed to a project of "small world-making" as opposed to a "big-picture" concept. Instead of organising his aesthetic realm around a unifying vision, he builds it in sequence using bits and pieces that resonate with all while transporting the energy rather than the appearance of the actual world to the world of art.

Mustafa Zaman Artist and art writer

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Wheel of Dhaka 2

Displaced in Dhaka A Solo by Kuntal Barai

Cities have inspired artists of many ages and many places in their creative expressions. Both the form and the life in cities have attracted the imagination of artists. We remember EL Grcco’s ‘Toledo’ (1600 AD), Edvard Munch’s ‘Oslo’ (1892), Camilo Pissaro’s ‘Paris’, the Boulevard Montmartre at Night’ (1847), Joseph Stela’s ‘Brooklyn Bridge’ (1918) or Mark Tobey’s ‘Universal City’ (1951), just to name a few from Western art.

At home in recent time Abdur Razzaque (1931-2005) was of course one who kept his interest in Dhaka City throughout his artistic career for over 5 decades since the early 1950s. His early water colours on the Burhiganga river-front, the historic mosque of Musa Khan and old Dhaka neighbourhoods and later works on busy streets in new Dhaka in semi-abstract style evoke nostalgic images. Many artists of the 1970s and following decades also found cityscapes and city life absorbing subjects, but someone like Kazi Salahuddin Ahmed (b.

1963) seems to have been in total unison with Dhaka City, almost 138

exhausting himself with expression of Dhaka’s physical reality in a rather surreal manner lamenting the architectural glory of old Dhaka.

In recent years Capital Dhaka has become very infamous for its extremely chaotic and catastrophic traffic situation. An interesting work of art on Dhaka’s traffic mess came from Rokeya Sultana (b. 1958) showing a traffic police frantically trying to manage the unruly situation. As a contrast to the horrific absurdity of the city’s vehicular traffic, the rickshaws of Dhaka have received art enthusiast’s attention for the exciting art works on the body of the three wheel manual transport which number an unbelievable half a million or more. It is indeed a mobile art exhibition.

Dhaka City’s traffic situation, rather the horrendous congestions or jams on its streets, has almost overwhelmed the artistic personality of young Kuntal Barai (b. 1987). The traffic jams caused by varieties of vehicular transports, which include private motor cars of all kinds, SUVs, CNG auto rickshaws, yellow cabs, tempos or `lagunas’, minibuses, buses, double deckers, articulated buses and motor cycles are the subjects of Kuntal’s paintings in acrylic, mixed media works, drawings and installations. He is apparently excited by the aerial view of long wide city arteries filled with hundreds and thousands of vehicles of many colours, shapes and 139

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sizes. Chaos of crowded transports or the clusters of ramshackle parts of a truck or bus or a car. Kuntal makes an innovative combination of (a) a long view of hundreds of vehicles on the avenue with squares or rectangles of small to miniature sizes and (b) a number of canvas paintings of scenes of city roads or transport vehicles in a single installation, such as the one which brought him an Honourable Award at the 17th Asian Art Biennale Bangladesh held in 2016. His installation at the 22nd National Art Exhibition in 2017 was another interesting venture, it had a roomful of dozens of black and white drawings and sketches covering the side walls as well as the ceiling.

Kuntal’s paintings in acrylic are generally compact compositions depicting jumbled up old motor vehicles. He appropriately titles his works as ‘Wheel of Dhaka’ or ‘Dhaka Road’. The images he uses are almost all cars and trucks or their different parts, particularly the wheels, which are normally symbolic of movement and speed, but in Dhaka these are mostly static- no mobility due to their huge number on the street and utterly hopeless traffic management.

In painting Kuntal develops colour areas joined together by swiftly sketched strokes in brush. His favourite colours are greens, blues, brick red and black. He has scope for blank white spaces in between darker colour fields. Although the motor vehicle is Kuntal’s primary object, the rickshaw which is so ubiquitous on Dhaka streets,also has a dominant presence in his works.

In the present solo exhibition which Kuntal Barai titles 141

‘Displaced in Dhaka’, he arranges four installations with numerous small works, some eight paintings and nearly 30 prints.

The unbearable traffic jams and dangerous road accidents dominate his latest creative outputs. Like him almost all citizens of Dhaka feel `displaced in the city’. A deep sense of insecurity pervades.

In such a situation, Kuntal, the artist, finds self confidence through full time creative exercise. To be a free lance artist at his age is not at all an easy vocation in Dhaka. He is trying to make a `place’ in the capital’s art world. I am sure he will succeed.

Professor Nazrul Islam Academic, Urbanist and Art writer Dhaka: 25 April, 2018

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Christmas in China

by Rob Burton

Christmas in China is a strange affair. The trappings of the festival are all around festooning the shops, offices and public spaces. It’s the usual tat, glitter, greenery, ribbons, images of Santa, reindeer, Santa hats and snowy vistas. The Chinglish versions of popular Christmas songs are on a loop in all the big stores and cafes like Starbucks. “On a one horse open sleigh” But who is it for? Surely not for the average Chinese man and woman on the street? They have a veritable smorgasbord of festivals of their own to choose from and indeed their own, immensely popular and huge Spring Festival is arriving very soon where they welcome their own New Year in.

The Chinese Spring Festival which incorporates their New Year takes place over fifteen days and most Chinese will take a month off work so why they are in thrall of the Christian festival Christmas takes some thinking about. Chinese New Year is the longest and most important festivity in the Chinese calendar. The origin of Chinese New Year is itself originates as

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far back as -2300 B.C. and gains significance because of several myths and traditions. Whereas, what we know as Christmas is barely 1600 years old.

The celebration of the Chinese Spring Festival originates from the Emperor Yao. According to the history of the festival, one day around 2000 B.C., Yao took the throne and led members of his court to worship the heaven and the earth. Since then, people began to take that day as beginning of the year and marked it the first day of the first lunar month. This, of course, is the simplistic version as many other myths and traditions come together to make the whole festival.

The modern Western Christmas also shares a quite convoluted history which is tied up in paganism and burgeoning Christianity. It wasn’t until about the 4th Century that Pagan and Christian leaders agreed that the old festival of Saturnalia, held in December with its Red also seems to be an important colour for both festivals. Red symbolises the blood of Jesus and at Christmas time, we see red everywhere.

Santa, thanks in part to the Coca Cola company’s 1930’s advertising campaigns, sports a bright blood red costume. Red is also a very popular colour for Christmas decorations, especially when teamed with green, for example the green foliage and the red berries of the holly bush which has both pagan and Christian associations.

Red is the dominant colour of the Chinese spring festival too. Red, corresponding with fire, symbolizes good fortune and joy for the Chinese. Red is found everywhere during Chinese New Year and other holidays and family gatherings. Red clothes are bought and worn.

A red envelope with money inside is given to children and friends.

The red envelope is looked forward to as intensely as a child in the West’s waits for his or her presents on Christmas Day. Red is also worn at weddings as it is the traditional symbolic colour of happiness.

Each society has its traditions which are linked to a particular event and/or history. So why the crossover, why is Christmas starting to make more of an appearance in Chinese society? A website purporting to represent Jackie Chan (http://www.jackiechankids.com/files/ Christmas_in_China.htm) tells us that if you walked around a major Chinese City 20 years ago you wouldn’t have seen many signs of Christmas. That this has now changed has I would argue more to do with the Gods of Mammon than the birth of the Christian God child.

Christianity actually has a long history in China but it’s a history of waxing and waning of popularity since around the 7th century. Most 145

recently, of course, after the Revolution, religion was discouraged by the State and was to all intents and purposes banned. However, the modern Communist party places no such restrictions and a recent report tells us that as of December 2011 (The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life) it is estimated that there are over 67 million Christians in China which is about 5 per cent of the population.

So despite the fact that many, many Chinese workers in the factories of the interior spend their lives making the plastic rubbish related to Christmas time in the West they probably have very little or no idea about what the tinsel, baubles, nativity scenes and plastic Christmas trees, made by the millions, actually represent.

A Christmas in China can only mean one thing and that is as a marketing opportunity for the canny Chinese businessman, not only to sell to the expats, desperate for their Christmas fix, but to the burgeoning middle class Chinese that has money to burn. That Christmas first started to take off in the big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou is no accident, these cities have large numbers of expats and financially secure Chinese.

A Chinese Christmas is celebrated as a happy occasion for gettogethers of friends and couples, without any religious attachment. It is a good time to celebrate with presents, good food and entertainment.

Christians in China celebrate by lighting their houses with beautiful paper lanterns and decorating their Christmas trees, which they call "Trees of Light". They decorate the trees with paper chains, paper flowers, and paper lanterns. (http://www.chinahighlights.com/festivals/christmas. htm). Nominally, however, nothing stops, should Christmas Day fall on a weekday, work still carries on, and the schools are open for teaching.

A Christmas without any religious attachment has to be the worst possible of all scenarios. Whilst a Western Christmas is rapidly moving towards that there is still a semblance of religious meaning attached to the holiday. For Christians in the West it still is their major festival, celebrating the birth of Christ. For many others including non-practicing Christians the focus is upon the joys of spending, presents, eating, consuming and being with one’s family and friends.

And behind all of that there are still the subliminal Christian messages such as 'Goodwill to All', 'Peace on Earth’, the rejection of scroogism and a focus on charity whether through giving of money or the giving of time at homeless shelters – the success of Charitable appeals at this time of year support that. It is a time when we try to reconcile ourselves with family and friends, to bury the hatchet, to bring harmony and joy to the world and our lives, however spurious and short lived those attempts might be.

Although, it must be said, most of the time is spent, drinking, gorging and watching crap TV – a spooky reflection or indeed a return to, the more basic instincts and bacchanalian pleasures of the earlier pagan times.

Indeed, perhaps that’s all we want to do at Christmas – Eat, Drink and Be Merry – wherever and whoever we are in the world!

Ho Ho Ho.

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Prakash Ghadge

Artist of Tranquillity

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Peace 17

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Monk 15

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Monk 18

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Prakash Ghadge was born in 1955, Maharashtra, and is a Mumbai based artist.

He completed his art education at J.J.School of Art, Mumbai, an exclusively uses pen and ink on canvas or paper, to render exciting and, at times, placid, calm, images.

Although much of his work has a photographic look from a distance, up close and personal his draftsmanship astounds the viewer with his meticulous placement of stipples and crosshatching, bringing a sense of inner peace or a tranquillity much needed in the hustle bustle of modern life.

Monk 17

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cuisine mad

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de in china

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Portuguese Egg Tarts

Beef offal stew with curry sauce

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made in macau

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zhuhai street food

Veggie Crepe Omelette

Fried Bread

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Various Steamed Breads

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Steamed 'Pau' (dumplings)

Making Steamed Chee Cheong Fun

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zhuhai street food

Various 'Breads'

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zhuhai fine dining

Abalone in Sauce

Appetisers

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Fresh, Chilled, Salmon Slices

Wood Ear Fungus with Bamboo Shoots

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Pear Soup in Teapot

Pork with Fried Veggies

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zhuhai fine dining

Braised Pork with Mantou (steamed bread)

Deep Fried Pork with Spices

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Mixed fried Veggies

Sweet deep fried fish

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zhuhai fine dining

Pork with Almonds

Red Rice Rolls

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Dusun Publications The Blue Lotus Publications

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Books by Martin

Bradley 173

Books By Ma

Luo Qi and Calligraphyism (2019) China Academy of Art China One of a series of biographies concerning the Chinese artist Luo Qi, and his contemporary blend of the ancient art of Chinese calligraphy and Western concerns with 'Modernism' in art.

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The Journey and Beyo (2014) Caring Pharmacy Malaysia

A brief pictorial look at history of 'Community Ph in Malaysia, charting the community pharmacies an roots in Singapore and M

artin Bradley

ond

t the harmacy' rise of nd their Malaysia.

Uniquely Toro (2013) Walters Publishing House The Philippines A 'Retrospective' concerning 'Toro' an enigmatic artist from Manila in The Philippines, whose dynamic Pollack like paintings have captured the Asian imagination

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Books By Ma

Remembering Whiteness & Other Poems (2012) Bougainvillea Press (digital) Malaysia Martin's first collection of poetry concerning his life in South East Asia. Many in this collection have been read in performance across Asia and Europe.

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A Story of Colo (201 Everday Art Stu Mala

This is the jo Malaysian artist into working wit children's char and joy of giv and eventually education of Khm book is about the of learning alo volunte Profusely illust Honey Khor (K

artin Bradley

ors of Cambodia 12) udio & Educare aysia

Buffalo & Breadfruit (2012) Monsoon Books (digital) Malaysia

ourney of one t (Honey Khor) th a Cambodian rity, the beauty ving, teaching sponsoring the mer children. This e ups and downs ong the way to eering. trated by artist Khor Pei Yeou).

Martin unwittingly discovers, that there is nothing quite like uprooting yourself from your home of fifty-four years in suburban, temperate England and transplanting yourself into rural, equatorial Malaysia. with its trial and tribulations.

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Antho

The Best of Asian Short Stories (2018) Kitaab Singapore

Best of Southeast Asian Erotica (2010) Monsoon Books Singapore

New Malaysian Essays 2 (2009) Matahari Books Malaysia

Story - Bougainvillea

Story - Awakening

Story - Colourful Language

A sequel to Martin's 'The Good Lieutenant". Reggie Gold's younger son, John, pays his respects and discovers more than he bargained for in the process.

It is a journey into John's past. A journey from John's comfort zone of Blicton-on-Sea, to equatorial Ipoh, and to emotions and cultures he did not know he was ready for.

In the heated atmosphere of an Indian Malaysian 'roti' shop, pubescent passions become inflamed. It is the awakening of young, innocent, desire and the complications which arise.

Not so much a story, as a light hearted essay about the difference between American English and British English, the notion of Malaysia's continuing Colonisation of the mind, and the effect of the West's materialism on Malaysian young minds.

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ologies

Urban Odysseys KL Stories (2009) MPH Publishing Malaysia

Silverfish New Writing 7 (2008) Silverfish Books Malaysia

Silverfish New Writing 5 (2005) Silverfish Books Malaysia

Story - Mat Rempit

Story - The Good Lieutenant

Story - The Orchid Wife

A Mat Rempit is a Malaysian term for "an individual who participates in immoral activities and public disturbance with a motorcycle as their main transport", usually involving underbone motorcycles. This is the story of one wannbe Mat Rempit, 'Abangah', and what happens to him in Kuala Lumpur.

The story of British Lieutenant Reggie Gold, working for the Federation of Malaya Police, and his family in England, during the days of Malaysia's 'Emergency'.

This story underlines the sacrifices undertaken by British soldiers, in Perak, Malaya, during a very difficult time for Malaya.

This is, ultimately, the story of an Indian Malaysian couple, Devi and Chandran, living in Butterworth, near Penang. It is a story of the cruelties and abuses within marriage and how they become resolved.

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CAMBODIA CHINA ITALY

WITH MARTIN BRADLEY

MALAYSIA PHILIPPINES SPAIN 180