Happy Chinese New Year

The year of the dog, woof. I'm a rooster, my year just ended, roosters have a fifty percent compatibility with dogs. Not supposed to wear white today and not supposed to swear, although not being Chinese I think it only applies to me when convenient.
My own way of celebrating Chinese New Year will be to get food from Tang's - the best Chinese food in Portsmouth, at least out of the small fraction of restaurants I have been to. It is pretty good though. Poor Mrs. Tang having to serve Chinese food to strangers on New Years Day.

Ben and I watched a programme about Mount WuDang where there are three temples and Kung Fu and Tao are practised and taught to young children. This seems like a good regime to me, the children get beaten for not making their beds properly, in fact doing the chores that surround their living is an important part of their education.
Master Wang was showing us how to deflect the aggressive Yang with the lesser yielding force of the Yin, he also made the children stand for an hour at night in the riding horse stance to balance the Yang force of the day with the Yin of the night. The self control of these children was amazing, they were learning strategy and skill and Master Yu showed us how these relate to guerilla tactics.
Master Li on the other hand, wants to use Kung Fu and Tai Chi to live for ever and to become a god, well, it's a tough job but someone has to do it, indeed, Madam Li -no relation- who presides over one of the temples is 103 and still practises Tai Chi and Kung Fu three times a day. She was thrown out of the temple when the peoples' army came to power, protected her pupils and refused to leave. She helped people through a famine in 1960.
It is difficult to not get caught up in the sheer beauty of the mountains and the simplicity of the life and discipline, but then what is the point of this monastic life?
Jade dragon, a little girl of ten has been sent there by her adoptive family to curb her excesses, except that the real problem seems to be her adoptive father who beat her relentlessly. She borrowed the film crew's phone to speak to her adoptive mother whom she misses achingly. On the other hand, beautiful dragon loves the life so much he will most likely annoy his family by becoming a monk and thus ending the bloodline.
I guess the answer is that religion, any religion, is not just the opium of the people, addicting and stupifying them, but it can be something that gets people through. This is more though. One morning I was up early enough to be walking across the park opposite our house as all the Chinese seniors were practising Tai Chi movements, they had appeared like mushrooms in a field with the early morning dew. As I walked across the field, they were all around me, each silently channelling the energy that keeps them healthy in mind and body. It is not just the focussing of the mind, but that it comes with movements that makes it different from many western religious practices.
I have Lao Tzu's 'I Ching' at home, when I get back I'll open it again, of course I also have 'The Tao of Pooh'.

On a different and yet oddly connected tack, the January sales are grinding to a halt and this is good, because they are almost giving things away, granted not always things one would actually want, but in there somewhere you can sometimes find a pearl. I myself bought a cashmere blend cardi reduced from 59 to ten pounds yesterday. Whilst I was - once again - in Debenhams, I noticed a spiel on a notice board for one of their designers, John Rocha. Now I have bought John Rocha's designs before, they are generally well cut, in nice colours and fairly plain, simple styles. But underneath a picture of the man himself, the poster claimed that his 'compelling collection was a fusion between John's Chinese and celtic roots'. Excusez-moi ? I mean 'come again squire?' He designs mostly jumpers and T-shirts, the T-shirts all largely consist of his own signature or name written in big letters. Now I can't remember the Celts ever wearing T-shirts, and although I suppose many Chinese people now do, I'm not sure I think of them as being essentially Chinese, maybe if he had a more Chinese name, like Master Wu. Tunics of rough fabric dyed in plant colours with a dragon and 'Master Wu' on them, maybe I'd see that as a fusion between the two cultures, otherwise frankly that sounds like meaningless pretension.

Happy Chinese New Year, may the year of the dog be all you make it and may your chinese food never contain any unidentified knobbly bits.