Friendly note: the author of this article, Fili 周 Gibbons, identifies in plural terms and pronouns (we/they/us). When writing in plural they may be referring to themselves.
This silk scarf was a gift our mother Chung-Ying Chou 周瓊瑩 brought back from her visit to Taiwan in 2017. This was her first visit to Taiwan since immigrating to Canada in 1973, at the age of 14.
When first entering public school in Toronto, she remembers that her limited English skills at the time made it difficult to participate in most classes — except math, and visual arts. She later studied fine arts at the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD), and obtained a masters of social work at Laurier University.
Our mother got us into creative arts from a young age, teaching us how to make collage and use pencil crayons in the attic. She is definitely the main creative force and influence in our life.
She is also an avid gardener, to say the least!
The scarf Chung-ying is holding carries the calligraphy of the Song dynasty emperor of China, Huizong 徽宗 (1082–1135). Huizong was an accomplished artist who invented his own calligraphy style called ‘slender gold’ 瘦金體.
For all his cultivation and education, Huizong was not a skillful ruler. His officials were generally austere and corrupt, and the country was weak, and prone to frequent invasions, unrest, and revolt.
The most famous rebels of Huizong’s time were the ‘Outlaws of the Marsh’ from the celebrated Chinese classic, Water Margin 水滸傳. But it was the Northern Jurchen people that were most instrumental in the downfall of the state. In the end, Huizong lost half of China’s territory to invasion and spent the last 9 years of his life imprisoned in Manchuria.
In Chinese calligraphy, the form of the characters is important, but so is the energy quality (or ‘qi’ 氣) they carry. The quality of motion expressed in the writing is a form of communication in itself— it can be seen but also felt. This extends from the ancient idea that the creation of symbolic images has the power to regulate one’s personal energy, to transform consciousness, and even to heal.
Our mother explains the characters like this:
“The visuality of the calligraphy speaks for itself in terms of touching people’s experience. Many people who are not familiar to the language feel drawn to and inspired by the way it looks. A lot of energy and effort has been put into the evolution of the characters, so that when practised with diligence the characters look very balanced and pleasing to the eye.”
In the first half of the 20th century alone, China experienced two decades of civil war, 11 years of Japanese invasion, widespread banditry, six famines, and the Second World War. It’s uncommon to hear these aspects of Chinese history mentioned today — even though most of them took place less than 100 years ago. We are humbled and astounded by the resilience of anyone who lived through those times.
In the same era, Western-educated Chinese writers and officials debated cultural shifts that were ‘necessary’ in order to modernize China and protect it from the foreign exploitation by Japanese, US and European governments. They seriously considered abandoning Chinese writing, and adopting a system based on the roman alphabet. Thankfully they did not.
The Communist government defeated the Nationalists, who fled mainland China in 1949. The new People’s Republic of China put in place a number of intensive reforms in the years to follow.
In the 1950s and 1960s the writing system in mainland China was changed into a ‘simplified form.’ The idea was to make the characters more accessible and efficient to learn and use, and also to distance China from its ‘superstitious’ and ‘elitist’ cultural legacy and build new society.
In many cases characters containing ancestral images with rich layers of significance were replaced with different, more abstract and simplified glyphs. Some of these glyphs lose the original logic of the character composition, and some don’t carry meaning at all, more similar to the modern Western relationship with the alphabet.
This was a massive shift in Chinese culture, and one that has its roots as both a reaction to colonialism, and an adaptation of Western modernist ideologies. It’s also unproven that character reforms were helpful in terms of literacy. In Taiwan, the traditional script writing continues to this day in a highly modern society, with a literacy rate 98.5% for the 15+ years old population.
These and many other cultural and political differences between China and Taiwan have not been reconciled. And this year there appears to be a growing interest towards polarization and turning my mother’s place of birth into a battlefront. Taiwanese people are gearing up to defend their country in the midst of the increasingly aggressive posturing of China and the US.
Economically speaking, war in Taiwan could result in terrible loss of life and intangible culture. It could also damage global microchip manufacturing infrastructure (most of which is located in Taiwan) and cripple digital technology as we know it — along with first-world expectations of business-as-usual.
So today we’re thinking about transience, security, and ancestry. This collection of photos is our peace prayer. Everything feels very fragile, but this awareness makes life and continuity worth the effort.
We have mixed feelings about Emperor Huizong— his story is a reminder of the power of creative immersion, but also a reminder to pay attention to the changing winds. To realize that life is not what we think or say it is, and it’s not about being ‘absolute’ or ‘right’.
We feel that resilience and freedom can come from keeping a peace-of-mind with different perspectives. Even if those perspectives seek to erase your body, your identity, and what you stand for — it’s through peace-of-mind that we can discern and find a meaningful response. This is a step towards actualizing self-empowerment and independence.
Huizong’s failed dynasty, and the legacy of the the defeated Nationalist party in 1949 are a sobering reminder: all the sophistication, affluence and cultivation in the world cannot last without proactive work to address our weaknesses, our dependencies, and our interconnection with others.
As artists, though we might possess comparatively little in terms of material power, we can greatly impact our societies. We can help prepare people for what’s to come by understanding better where our essential materials come from. What does our current society depend on? What works today? Is it actually working? What might work tomorrow? (What might not?)
Paying attention to history, and feeling into the present and things to come, we can offer our communities a possibility for beauty, grounding, and a life that matters.
We can’t control outcomes. But when times seem tough, we can trust the light and determination of ancestors, knowing that we have come to this place many times before.
The words of the poem:
‘Evening Breeze’
穠芳依翠萼，煥爛一庭中。零露霑如醉，殘霞照似融。丹青難下筆，造化獨留功。舞蝶迷香徑，翩翩逐晚風。
Here is a nice translation that we found on the website of author and scholar Hyatt Carter:
“Boat orchids, blossoms emerald-green, fresh and fragrant;Pervading the courtyard, their luminous presence shines,
So moist, so dappled with dew, floating in air, exultant.
On the horizon scattered clouds merge in twilight’s rosy glow.
Awash in such color, it’s hard to put down the artist’s brush,
Knowing that only Nature, and our work of creation, abides.
Ah, butterflies now, dancing in air, lost along fragrant pathways;
Flitting, fluttering, see how they flow, painting the evening breeze.”
In Chinese poetry, the meanings are often more layered and ambiguous than in English. If you have a different interpretation or reading, let us know in the comments.
About the Author
Fili 周 Gibbons (we/they/us) are an artist and recording engineer working across a range of community and professional contexts to support plural voices, expressions, and sonic experiences.
They work with artists and creators, drawing on listening, memory and intuition as guiding forces in collaborative making practices with sound and video medias.
They are the creator of Soundgarden, an artist-accompaniment service offering sound skills training for creators.