Welcome to the online studio of Francisco Mattos, built w/ printed pieces, experiments, souvenirs, personal projects.
-| March 2021 |-
LUNAR ZODIAC
CORNERS OF HONG KONG
The first road built in Kowloon was in 1904 by governor Sir Matthew Nathan. Beginning harborside at Tsim Sar Tsui, the boulevard ran just over two miles north to Sum Sui Po and Boundary St, where the New Territories begin.
•
HK residents can travel to the portuguese port by ferryboat, hydrofoil or amhibian plane; the former takes an hour, the others are faster. In 20th-c. Macao, the only means for its residence to catch an airplane was first travel to HK. Both ways, the traveler crosses the Pearl river delta while skirting the South China sea.
•
A commercial venture next to Ma Tau Gok went bust when entrepreneurs Mr Kai and Mr Tak could not develop the land they had reclaimed from Kowloon Bay. This prompted the HK government to purchase the waterfront property and, in 1912, build an airfield.
|-¶-|
Decommissioned in 1998, Kai Tak Airport will no longer offer arriving airplanes a careening welcome onto a harbor runway when pilots need to perform demanding and exacting maneuvers each and every time. (Photo by Christian Hanuise)
•
The english bridge connects the isle of Shameen (left) w/ Canton on the right. There is also a french bridge. A sandbar in the Pearl river was reclaimed and built upon by british and french merchants wanting residences in town.
•
The 1958 cha-cha-cha champions of HK Bruce Lee and his dance partner. A dance craze emanating from Cuba in the early 1950s, swept HK youth into dance classes to learn how to execute two consecutive quick steps.
•
When the british government conducted the first census, Sek Pei Wan (Aberdeen) had zero population; at the time it was just a pirate’s cove. Graced w/ a tiny yet excellent harbor. Tanka (boat people) eventually made it a homeport, an important one among many dotted along the coastline.
|¶|
After the Second World War, Hong Kong took pains to rebuild its transportation infrastructure. Roads were widened and new routes were created.
|¶|
An integrated transportaon system came into play, w/ single and doudecker bus service. A tramway running the length of H.K. island on the harbor side and a second one just for the Peak. Two passenger ferry routes between H.K. and Kowloon and one ferry route dedicated to vehicles.
|¶|
User-friendly driving calmed grateful trucks, taxis and private cars, heeding traffic cops and easy-to-spot stop signs and signals.
|¶|
Tony got his driver’s license when he was 35 years old. The war had ended seven years ago, and having to drive on bald tires became a thing of the past.
|¶|
Tony’s first and only car was a Simca, a Fiat built in France, and he drove it to work every day. He took his wife grocery shoping and his family on regular Sunday drives to every nook and cranny of H.K., Kowloon and the New Territories that was accessible by car.
≡| Heir
|¶|
Baby Tony was baptized a week later in the Catholic Cathedral. Two days after that he received registration papers stating that he was a Hong Kong citizen. He went to school at 9 and graduated in 1932.
|¶|
Tony’s father José was born on February 21 1892 in the parish of Freguesia de São Lourenço, Macau, to Filomena Russurreição da Silva Oliveira (b.1864) and Pedro de Alcantara de Oliveira Mattos (b.1864).
He was 21 when he married Cristalina Cristiana Collaço, at that time a minor, at the Cathedral in Canton. Their first child Maria Lucia was born, and five years later my father. They had five more: Regina, Victor, Teresa, Adelina, and Gloria Cristina.
José supported his family as a clerk w/ the Asiatic Petroleum Co., a joint venture of Royal Dutch and Shell Oil in China.
|¶|
According to some, José boarded a steamer headed for California.
• (excerpt)
“The Portuguese in Hong Kong” by Cyril Neves 2003
❛❛
When the British Fleet the Britsh Fleet dropped anchor and raised the flag at Possession Point [in H.K.] on a January morning in 1841, the first people ashore were clerical staff from the British trading companies in Macau. Ever since, the Portuguese have woven a rich and splendid thread through the history of Hong Kong. ... Everyone knew what a Portuguese was, but after centuries in Africa, Inies, Goa, Japan and China, it was sometimes difficult to explain. Intermarriage over the generations had blurred the lines. ... There were no Portuguese who were not Catholics. ...
≡| Graduate
• (excerpt)
“China Cycle” by Richard P. Dobson 1946
❛❛ I filled in forms and collected the necessary visa in a hurry, and by the following dawn was at Kai Tak aerodrome embarking in a Pan-American Clipper.The Clipper was a mighty machine. I reclined in a bunk, and they brought me tea, then sandwiches, then beer. When I arose there were light refereshments and buffet lunch in the lounge, so the passengers were kept happy until after about five hours the distant blue sparkle of the sea gave way to the vivid green of forest and jungle and soon we hissed smoothly in to the naval anchorage at Cavite. ... Everything was expensive. Manila is one of the most costly places to live in that I know --
≡| Adult
|¶|
Tony was living at 51E Wyndham Street in 1936 when he found a job w/ the Hongkong Electric Comany to work in its showrooms. Salary was HK$60 per month and hours were weekdays 7 to 5 + Saturdays 7 to 1.
¶|
When the Second World War reached Asia, Tony and his family left British HK for neutral Macau. He and his brother became gendarmes -- armed guards on patrol. He left service w/ a tattoo.
¶|
One of Tony’s duties was to stand watch at the border w/ China. Daily he watched as people fled from bullets and bayonets. One day he caught the eye of someone, who must have also locked eyes w/ him because they most certainly began a love affair.
≡| Witness
• (excerpt) “Birdless Summer” by Han Suyin 1938
❛❛
The offensive of the Japanese against Canton started on October 12 1938; on the 21st Canton was taken, even though there were 200 Chinese troops there. On the order of Chiang Kaishek there was no resistance, they were withdrawn. The Japanese attacked both by land and sea, 30 warships sailed up the Bocca Tigris, 20,000 men landed. 43,000 Canton Volunteers put down their names to fight for their city, but the officials were fleeing, no one would give them weapons. The bridge which spanned the Pearl River and the city was bombed; on the afternoon of the 21st, Japanese motorized units entered Canton. By this action Japan placed her military power in position for a thrust, three years later, upon the British colony of Hong Kong.
|¶|
During the war, Tony read history and learned about the world by collecting stamps.
• (excerpt) “Tales of Hong Kong” by Gene Gleason 1967
❛❛
Two Japanese divisions invaded [HK] from China on December 8 1941, conquered the New Territories and Kowloon in ten days, and crossed to the north side of HK Island at several points btw. Lei Yue Mun Pass and North Point. Outnumbered and w/out air cover, the British, Canadian and Indian defence forces took their main stand at Wong Nei Chong Gap to prevent the Japanese from driving south to cut the island defences in half. The Japanese defeated the defenders decisively at the Gap and pushed forward to complete the cuf-off at Repulse Bay.
• (excerpt) “Fragrant Harbour: A Short History of Hong Kong” by G.B. Endacott and A. Hinton 1968 ❛❛
For nearly four years [HK] remained under Japanese military occupation. British civilians were interned at Stanley in the St. Stephen’s College and Prison area. Under war conditions the Japanese were unable to feed a large population in HK or to maintain health and other public services, so a large number of people returned to the mainland and the population shrank to some 600,000. The war ended in August 1945, and on August 30 1945, British warships entered the harbour and accepted the surrender of the Japanese garrison of 21,000 men. The British once again took control of the government.
≡| Partisan
|¶|
In his late twenties Tony was paying attention to the buzz on a free Angola. He was careless and for his troubles a letter arrived from the British Consulate in Macau:
13th January, 1945.
Sir,
I feel I must draw to your attention that certain of your associations may in future draw the unfavourable attention of British Authorities. I feel I need specify no further since you will be able to know to what I refer. I suggest that for your own good you sever these associations as soon as possible. I am, Sir, Your obedient servant, (H.B.M. Consul.)
|¶|
A quick search of Tony’s room did not find a pamphlet and a map that he had hidden well.
≡| Spouse
|¶|
In 1943, police guard Tony married domestic Patsy at St Anthony in Macau, according to and conforming to the Rite of Saint Mother Church Catholic Apostolic Roman. He signed but she did not, “because she could not write.”
|¶|
Tony took a photo of his first-born and captioned it on the back:
|¶|
Tony’s wife was born on July 7 1918 in Nam-Hoi, Canton. When war reached her village she left w/ two sisters for the coast and never saw her family again.
|¶| The eldest, Say Yee Ma (no.4), would open a tucks shop and die in Hong Kong, the youngest, Luk Yee (no.6) would return to China to live. Patsy, the middle sister, went to America.
≡| Husband
|¶|
His 1946 passport (no. 241) listed Tony as a British subject by birth. Five feet nine inches, dark brown eyes and hair.
|¶|
By 1958 Tony was a father to five children. He sent a postcard to his eldest, living then in Manila:
≡| Electrician
|¶|
After the war, he was rehired by the Hong Kong Electric Co. and by 1957 was made a second assistant engineer. It took eight more years to become a testing assistant and issued a War Department Pass.
≡| Petitioner
|¶| By 1966, the Cultural Revolution had spilled over to Hong Kong. Red Guards marched to Government House for redressing of past behavior.
|¶|
Tony had gone through one war w/ Patsy they did not want to again, not w/ a family. He sought to immigrate and wrote to his mother and older sister in America.
|¶|
On May 6 1969, Tony handed in his resnation and was granted early retirement so that he could take up residence in the United States.
≡| Emigré
|¶|
In 1969, Tony brought Patsy and their three youngest aboard the President Cleveland, docked in HK. After a stopover in Yokohama, they arrived in Honolulu on June 13, where he declared his intention to immigrate w/ his family to the United States of America.
|¶|
Patsy passed away suddenly in 1973 from cancer. Widowed, Tony filled out a statement of facts for a petition to become a naturalized citizen. He was 56.
≡| Widower
|¶|
Tony worked in a mailroom in San Francisco, happy to be among stamps. Then his work performance suffered, and in 1980 he was let go. After deductions, his last paycheck came to 301.74.
|¶|
Lost in thought, Tony is comforted by his mother.
|¶|
Falling into despondency, Tony moved to the Tenderloin, signing in as “Antonio O. Mattos” and taking Room 303 at the Marlton Manor.
≡| Paterfamilias
|¶|
Tony was 67 when he passed away. Thirty-seven people went to his funeral, incl. siblings Adele and Victor, and all his children. He liked to go night fishing by himself, and was a member of the Hong Kong Philatelic Society (POB 446) from 1950 until he left his hometown.
PHONE BOOK of ANTONIO AGOSTINHO de OLIVEIRA MATTOS
All Tony’s children get listed (incl. their old addreses, employers, roommates), his sisters and their families, his ex sister-in-law in Toronto, and his mother.
Tony joined UMA Inc and stayed in contact w/ his HK friends, incl. the Alvareses, Browns, Carneiros, Carvalhos, Collaços, Gregorios, Ribeiros, Rochas, Rozas, Silvas, and Xaviers. He had many Chinese friends back home, new ones in America; there are at least eight New York addresses.
His primary physician was Dr Gerald Roberts and the secretary’s name was Marilyn. How to contact Medicare, Medi-Cal, Neighborhood Legal Assistance, Mt Zion Hospital, and the Radiation Oncology Tumor Institute.
SF’s Arrow Stamp Co. and Sunrise Stamp Co. Library hours. Bus info. Where to get bait. Two bank accounts. Nearby restaurants serving Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, satay, fish-&-chip. Japanese words daijobu, gohan, ichi ban, ofura, sashimi and what they mean.
|- 2.28.1921 – 11.28.2013 -|
My father’s youngest sister. She ran the concession stand on the Peak, and took the Peak Tram to work everyday, after crossing the harbour by ferry from Kowloon side.
69 | Benjamin Leung Gok Wing
|- 2.7.1944 – 9.4.2013 -|Ben visited Hong Kong at the beginning of 2013. What he must have thought about his hometown he is not aorund to tell me, but I know it’s the first vacation he’s had in a while. | It was there that Ben met my sister Sylvia, when they were both young and working in the same office. At that time my sister was learning to drive a stick-shift car and for hours and hours after dinner she would be out taking driving lessons w/ an instructor to god knows where. | Ben would also go off on his own as a young man, but where he went you can always find on a map: a local swimming pool, or the nearby basketball court. He left these pursuits behind when he came to San Francisco, and eventually took up gardening: on 44th Avenue, and later out on Bay Farm Island. Both had sandy soil, hard to take care of. | On Bay Farm he had a wisteria in ground next to a loquat tree in a pot. Ben was fearless and grew everything. And those that took to his care, he made green.
87 | Renee Lym Robertson
|- 8.4.1928 – 1.4.2015 -|
❝I bowed 3 times at the casket of Renée Lym Robertson. Auntie Renée died at the age of 87 in her stunning Nob Hill apartment. She was the daughter of Art Lym, the founder and head of the Chinese Air Force under the Nationalist government. She was born in Shanghai and fled to Hong Kong in 1949 as a refugee after the Communist Revolution. She was a noted beauty in her day and was a fixture in the international Hong Kong society that centered on the Peninsula Hotel; where she caught the eye of Clark Gable and became his girlfriend and lover. I will miss her beauty, her style, those jungle red nails and lips, the jade and diamonds, her stories and her wicked wit and wisdom. Auntie Renée was my Auntie Mame.❞
– Wylie Wong
76 | Pamela Rita de Oliveira Mattos Zauberer
❝Great cook, talented at crochet, creative, child-like, excruciatingly honest, tenacious, compassionate and sensitive; my mother was all these things.❞ — Jasmine
|- 5.2.1940 – 5.3.2016 -|Pam led a glamorous life as a 1960s airline stewardessfor Cathay Pacific Airways, based in Hong Kong, where she was born and raised. At work she would be pulled into photo shoots when film and television stars flew in.
| Chosen to represent the airline, she participated in fashion shows, ad campaigns, and public relations as the face of flight. She traveled around the world, accruing trinkets from all cultures and a lifelong admiration of all cuisines. She traveled to all the airports in Asia, and in her suitcase out would pop magazines from everywhere else.
| After landing in America, she struck out to be on her own and moved to New York, abandoning us all here in California. She dated the house photographer at Mad magazine, and lived a stone’s throw from Maxwell’s Plum, a “…flamboyant restaurant and singles bar that, more than any place of its kind, symbolized two social revolutions of the 1960s — sex and food,” located at 64th and First Avenue in Manhattan. Her walk up had a bathtub in the kitchen, sharing a hot faucet w/ the sink.
| While helping a friend help sell at her friend's street-fair booth, Pam met many folks, including a man who immediately offered some helpful advice. Pam shot back and challenged him to come around to the other side and manage the booth himself, since he “...clearly knew what to do.” Laszlo disappeared and came back w/ two hot dogs and a lemonade, walked around the booth, and sat down next to her; two weeks later they were married.
|
Laszlo Zauberer, native of Hungary, was driving a cab in NYC when he met Pam on his one day off. An accomplished painter of diverse subjects, and the love of her life, they remained inseparable for the next 40 years.
| After the birth of their daughter, Pam and Laszlo made the move to upstate New York. Never one to shy away from conflict, her generosity, thoughts and sometimes vengeance were doled out as she saw fit to those who crossed her path. Whether it was redeeming a raincheck at a grocery store or haggling over an item at a yard sale, her sense of fairness and authority got her into heated debates.
| On the night of May 3 2016, Pamela Rita de Oliveira Mattos Zauberer passed away at home and in her bed w/ Laszlo and Jasmine by her side. In true stoic fashion, she had no complaints of pain. She had just celebrated her birthday the day before, and ate carrot cake, her favorite. She was 76 years old.
33 | George Choy
|- 2.6.1960 – 9.10.1993 -| George was rocking a mohawk, so I took a pix, to remember our Passage through a rather brief moment in time. He now has one of the many plaques lining Castro Street.
|¶|
After the Second World War, Hong Kong took pains to rebuild its transportation infrastructure. Roads were widened and new routes were created.
|¶|
An integrated transportaon system came into play, w/ single and doudecker bus service. A tramway running the length of H.K. island on the harbor side and a second one just for the Peak. Two passenger ferry routes between H.K. and Kowloon and one ferry route dedicated to vehicles.
|¶|
User-friendly driving calmed grateful trucks, taxis and private cars, heeding traffic cops and easy-to-spot stop signs and signals.
|¶|
Tony got his driver’s license when he was 35 years old. The war had ended seven years ago, and having to drive on bald tires became a thing of the past.
|¶|
Tony’s first and only car was a Simca, a Fiat built in France, and he drove it to work every day. He took his wife grocery shoping and his family on regular Sunday drives to every nook and cranny of H.K., Kowloon and the New Territories that was accessible by car.
≡| Heir
|¶|
Baby Tony was baptized a week later in the Catholic Cathedral. Two days after that he received registration papers stating that he was a Hong Kong citizen. He went to school at 9 and graduated in 1932.
|¶|
Tony’s father José was born on February 21 1892 in the parish of Freguesia de São Lourenço, Macau, to Filomena Russurreição da Silva Oliveira (b.1864) and Pedro de Alcantara de Oliveira Mattos (b.1864).
He was 21 when he married Cristalina Cristiana Collaço, at that time a minor, at the Cathedral in Canton. Their first child Maria Lucia was born, and five years later my father. They had five more: Regina, Victor, Teresa, Adelina, and Gloria Cristina.
José supported his family as a clerk w/ the Asiatic Petroleum Co., a joint venture of Royal Dutch and Shell Oil in China.
|¶|
According to some, José boarded a steamer headed for California.
• (excerpt)
“The Portuguese in Hong Kong” by Cyril Neves 2003
❛❛
When the British Fleet the Britsh Fleet dropped anchor and raised the flag at Possession Point [in H.K.] on a January morning in 1841, the first people ashore were clerical staff from the British trading companies in Macau. Ever since, the Portuguese have woven a rich and splendid thread through the history of Hong Kong. ... Everyone knew what a Portuguese was, but after centuries in Africa, Inies, Goa, Japan and China, it was sometimes difficult to explain. Intermarriage over the generations had blurred the lines. ... There were no Portuguese who were not Catholics. ...
≡| Graduate
• (excerpt)
“China Cycle” by Richard P. Dobson 1946
❛❛ I filled in forms and collected the necessary visa in a hurry, and by the following dawn was at Kai Tak aerodrome embarking in a Pan-American Clipper.The Clipper was a mighty machine. I reclined in a bunk, and they brought me tea, then sandwiches, then beer. When I arose there were light refereshments and buffet lunch in the lounge, so the passengers were kept happy until after about five hours the distant blue sparkle of the sea gave way to the vivid green of forest and jungle and soon we hissed smoothly in to the naval anchorage at Cavite. ... Everything was expensive. Manila is one of the most costly places to live in that I know --
≡| Adult
|¶|
Tony was living at 51E Wyndham Street in 1936 when he found a job w/ the Hongkong Electric Comany to work in its showrooms. Salary was HK$60 per month and hours were weekdays 7 to 5 + Saturdays 7 to 1.
¶|
When the Second World War reached Asia, Tony and his family left British HK for neutral Macau. He and his brother became gendarmes -- armed guards on patrol. He left service w/ a tattoo.
¶|
One of Tony’s duties was to stand watch at the border w/ China. Daily he watched as people fled from bullets and bayonets. One day he caught the eye of someone, who must have also locked eyes w/ him because they most certainly began a love affair.
≡| Witness
• (excerpt) “Birdless Summer” by Han Suyin 1938
❛❛
The offensive of the Japanese against Canton started on October 12 1938; on the 21st Canton was taken, even though there were 200 Chinese troops there. On the order of Chiang Kaishek there was no resistance, they were withdrawn. The Japanese attacked both by land and sea, 30 warships sailed up the Bocca Tigris, 20,000 men landed. 43,000 Canton Volunteers put down their names to fight for their city, but the officials were fleeing, no one would give them weapons. The bridge which spanned the Pearl River and the city was bombed; on the afternoon of the 21st, Japanese motorized units entered Canton. By this action Japan placed her military power in position for a thrust, three years later, upon the British colony of Hong Kong.
|¶|
During the war, Tony read history and learned about the world by collecting stamps.
• (excerpt) “Tales of Hong Kong” by Gene Gleason 1967
❛❛
Two Japanese divisions invaded [HK] from China on December 8 1941, conquered the New Territories and Kowloon in ten days, and crossed to the north side of HK Island at several points btw. Lei Yue Mun Pass and North Point. Outnumbered and w/out air cover, the British, Canadian and Indian defence forces took their main stand at Wong Nei Chong Gap to prevent the Japanese from driving south to cut the island defences in half. The Japanese defeated the defenders decisively at the Gap and pushed forward to complete the cuf-off at Repulse Bay.
• (excerpt) “Fragrant Harbour: A Short History of Hong Kong” by G.B. Endacott and A. Hinton 1968 ❛❛
For nearly four years [HK] remained under Japanese military occupation. British civilians were interned at Stanley in the St. Stephen’s College and Prison area. Under war conditions the Japanese were unable to feed a large population in HK or to maintain health and other public services, so a large number of people returned to the mainland and the population shrank to some 600,000. The war ended in August 1945, and on August 30 1945, British warships entered the harbour and accepted the surrender of the Japanese garrison of 21,000 men. The British once again took control of the government.
≡| Partisan
|¶|
In his late twenties Tony was paying attention to the buzz on a free Angola. He was careless and for his troubles a letter arrived from the British Consulate in Macau:
13th January, 1945.
Sir,
I feel I must draw to your attention that certain of your associations may in future draw the unfavourable attention of British Authorities. I feel I need specify no further since you will be able to know to what I refer. I suggest that for your own good you sever these associations as soon as possible. I am, Sir, Your obedient servant, (H.B.M. Consul.)
|¶|
A quick search of Tony’s room did not find a pamphlet and a map that he had hidden well.
≡| Spouse
|¶|
In 1943, police guard Tony married domestic Patsy at St Anthony in Macau, according to and conforming to the Rite of Saint Mother Church Catholic Apostolic Roman. He signed but she did not, “because she could not write.”
|¶|
Tony took a photo of his first-born and captioned it on the back:
|¶|
Tony’s wife was born on July 7 1918 in Nam-Hoi, Canton. When war reached her village she left w/ two sisters for the coast and never saw her family again.
|¶| The eldest, Say Yee Ma (no.4), would open a tucks shop and die in Hong Kong, the youngest, Luk Yee (no.6) would return to China to live. Patsy, the middle sister, went to America.
≡| Husband
|¶|
His 1946 passport (no. 241) listed Tony as a British subject by birth. Five feet nine inches, dark brown eyes and hair.
|¶|
By 1958 Tony was a father to five children. He sent a postcard to his eldest, living then in Manila:
≡| Electrician
|¶|
After the war, he was rehired by the Hong Kong Electric Co. and by 1957 was made a second assistant engineer. It took eight more years to become a testing assistant and issued a War Department Pass.
≡| Petitioner
|¶| By 1966, the Cultural Revolution had spilled over to Hong Kong. Red Guards marched to Government House for redressing of past behavior.
|¶|
Tony had gone through one war w/ Patsy they did not want to again, not w/ a family. He sought to immigrate and wrote to his mother and older sister in America.
|¶|
On May 6 1969, Tony handed in his resnation and was granted early retirement so that he could take up residence in the United States.
≡| Emigré
|¶|
In 1969, Tony brought Patsy and their three youngest aboard the President Cleveland, docked in HK. After a stopover in Yokohama, they arrived in Honolulu on June 13, where he declared his intention to immigrate w/ his family to the United States of America.
|¶|
Patsy passed away suddenly in 1973 from cancer. Widowed, Tony filled out a statement of facts for a petition to become a naturalized citizen. He was 56.
≡| Widower
|¶|
Tony worked in a mailroom in San Francisco, happy to be among stamps. Then his work performance suffered, and in 1980 he was let go. After deductions, his last paycheck came to 301.74.
|¶|
Lost in thought, Tony is comforted by his mother.
|¶|
Falling into despondency, Tony moved to the Tenderloin, signing in as “Antonio O. Mattos” and taking Room 303 at the Marlton Manor.
≡| Paterfamilias
|¶|
Tony was 67 when he passed away. Thirty-seven people went to his funeral, incl. siblings Adele and Victor, and all his children. He liked to go night fishing by himself, and was a member of the Hong Kong Philatelic Society (POB 446) from 1950 until he left his hometown.
PHONE BOOK of ANTONIO AGOSTINHO de OLIVEIRA MATTOS
All Tony’s children get listed (incl. their old addreses, employers, roommates), his sisters and their families, his ex sister-in-law in Toronto, and his mother.
Tony joined UMA Inc and stayed in contact w/ his HK friends, incl. the Alvareses, Browns, Carneiros, Carvalhos, Collaços, Gregorios, Ribeiros, Rochas, Rozas, Silvas, and Xaviers. He had many Chinese friends back home, new ones in America; there are at least eight New York addresses.
His primary physician was Dr Gerald Roberts and the secretary’s name was Marilyn. How to contact Medicare, Medi-Cal, Neighborhood Legal Assistance, Mt Zion Hospital, and the Radiation Oncology Tumor Institute.
SF’s Arrow Stamp Co. and Sunrise Stamp Co. Library hours. Bus info. Where to get bait. Two bank accounts. Nearby restaurants serving Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, satay, fish-&-chip. Japanese words daijobu, gohan, ichi ban, ofura, sashimi and what they mean.
As his official residence was under construction, on a large parcel some 500 feet above Hong Kong harbor, governor John and Lady Bowring began to putter around in their backyard, a steep slope cresting straight up to the Peak. And what they accomplished, and passed on, has now become the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens (兵 頭 花 園).
A living laboratory, won in war, seeded
by transplants who were assigned by the british government to administer -- or more like be marooned -- on this barren rock, a stone’s throw off the South China coast.
|…|
Children from a bygone age took to the young science of botany and re-imagined Eden. These studious observers of nature resolved to quantify history from the first day onwards, to quest and assign names, to design knowledge for mass consumption -- basic eminent victorian pursuits.
|…|
In 1871, beginning its manicured existence as the backyard garden to a governor and his wife, a now public botanic garden has long ago tamed the unfriendly slope that it rests on, a slope which keeps rising. Teams of landscape engineers, masons and laborers introduced native plants to their tropical and sub-tropical selves. Banyans tucked together create backdrops. The only india rubber tree for many miles around lives here. Into the pampered soil went palm trees from near and far. Fern forests sheltered an undergrowth world.
The original garden had shady boulevards and extensive flowerbeds. There was an aviary and a green house filled w/ orchids, bromeliads, ferns and climbers. The main feature was a fifty-feet wide circular pond w/ a water feature on a fountain terrace. Home to water lilies, the lip of the pond was raised just so to allow for sitting.
British botanist Charles Ford was the first superintendent of gardens, and he began the documentation of local flora and fauna.
-|- two whole gingsengs on a botanical drawing
-|- water color of chinese clove w/ two branches
-|- a sprig of the dawn redwood
-|- cutting of chinese elm on a plate
-|- framed drawing of a flowering chinese lantern
This public garden was deemed safe enough that, late into the evening, couples took to strolling between gas-lit walkways and holding hands in the shadows, serene in ordered nature. Scents from the orange-jassamine, white jade orchid tree, mock lime and sweet osmanthus, mingle w/ the heady kwai-fah and swirl the air. This open air conservatory soon turned into a paradise for adams wanting somewhere to take their eager Eves.
The animal house was first introduced in 1876, and though its inmates have rotated through the usual classifications over the years, it wasn’t until 1976 that beleaguered beasts were given new digs and more humane treatment by staff. Reptiles and mammals finally had separate quarters. The bird cage was moved to another part altogether. Today 900 species live side by side and learn how to get along in a very crowded city.
- Jules Verne was invited in 1865 to help document the life aquatic in the harbor. The author altogether spent six months researching this water world, picking up the local tongue, talking to folks who would know. Disgarding the bulk as a concoction, little made it into Verne’s final manuscript, yet he decided to send the cuts to a friend working at a magazine. In the June 15 1884 issue of L'Algerie are the rejected notes of Jules Verne, accompanied by illustrations from Alphonse de Neuville, Édouard Riou, and George Chinnery.
Built in 1932 as a vertical landscape to enhance the property of a Hong Kong tycoon’s mansion, the Tiger Balm Gardens of Aw Boon Haw is an over-the-top folly.
On the steepest hillside imaginable, inhospitable to real estate development, Aw Boon Haw envisioned a human-size depiction of a moral Chinese universe. The land was his, and he lived w/ his family next door. The garden was a grand retreat containing sculpted scenarios from daoist practices, w/ dollops of buddhist mindfulness swirling by mythologies of plaster-of-paris and confucian paint. At the apex of this miniature cosmology perches a seven-storey pagoda, and steps leading to the top.
A visitor to this psychedelic park can count on being ambused by deities and demons; also, phoenix, unicorn, gorilla, kangaroo, others. Historical tableaux seemingly trot out: Journey to the west; fairy scattering flowers on Buddha; others.
Staircases multiply and are passageways between locales -- these altitude adjustments then melt any sense of bearing.
Natural ledges and spurs were leveraged for bridges, lookout points, nooks. Vistas start to appear then vanish; shortcuts and forks accrue. Destinations take on labyrinthean lengths.
This garden of steep and narrow steps enhances mystical states of ascension and descension. The cloud caves of heaven above, below the stockades of hell. Both are bound to make your acquaintance.
The garden is built from several applications of plaster-of-paris shaped w/ chicken wire in wet cement. Cement staircases were created from buildouts and brackets enhance existing rock. Covered w/ paint, the Tiger Balm Gardens became incarnate – finished forms found only dreams.
The gardens are from the imagination of Mr Aw Boon Haw; there were no plan drawings. Concocted by master craftsmen Kwek Hoon Sua and Kwek Choon Sua, bros from Swatow, abetted w/ a crew of workers.
|█⁕█|
The first steps to the garden already beguile.
Coimbra, a city in northern Portugal, is the see of a bishop, the capital of a province, and a center of learning. In 2013, UNESCO designated the University of Coimbra as a University Town Recipient for its World Heritage Sites, “… an integrated university city, w/ a specific urban typology, as well as its own ceremonial and cultural traditions.” The property consists of two areas: a hilltop complex of buildings, Uniersity Hill, and a series of scattered structures which all played a part in the university’s history.
There is a 12th century Augustinian monastery which was the first school, and the original library.
The Inquisition swept into Portugal in 1567, and Coimbra was one of the three local centers tasked to conduct it. Outlasting these strictures, the university bounced back, w/ strengthened statutes, a reorganized syllabus of studies, greater emphasis on education in the vernacular, and the re-establishment of freeom of research. The old castle on the hilltop was finally pulled down to make way for new buildings.
A seal was then struck, a praxe, consisting of a spoon (symbol of punishment), scissors (symbol of unruliness), and a stick (symbol of self-defense).
University of Coimbra
Founded in 1290, the University of Coimbra is the second oldest continuous institution of higher learning in Europe (the University of Paris is older), and the first university town in the world. In this northern Portuguese city, a world treasure become sited inside a national treasure, the school moved into a former royal palace on the summit of the hill, and grew to become a gathering spot for academics, writers, artists, who nicknamed this the Lusitanian Athens, ‘Lusa Atenas’.
⇞
CAMPUS
An early champion of the new science of circumnavigation, an observatory was built to make spatial sense of the stars.
Investitures and major events take place in the ‘Sala Grande dos Actos,‘ below portraits of kings and queens. A cathedral, already there when the university arrived, was gifted by Jesuits. The throne room is now used for PhD candidate examinations, and nothing else.
The four rooms of the ‘Museu de Arte Sacra’ contain, among holy habits and chalices, books of early sacred music. There is a museum of natural history. A colonnaded walkway by the grand patio was added in the 18th century, the ‘Via Latina.’ The campus chapel, ‘Capela de Sao Miguel’, means that no student need run downhill to another one.
A Botanical Garden blossomed in 1772, that delightful Victorian experiment of Eden on earth, sprouting wherever colonialism circled.
There are five faculties (‘theologia’, ‘direito’, ‘medicina’, ‘mathematica’, ‘philosophia’) w/ disciplines in judicial and European court systems, interdisciplinary nuclear science, and the arts. (The university had begun by teaching law, rhetoric, mathematics, theology, medicine, grammar and Greek.) The teaching staff consisits of some 70 professors and lecturers. Semester is from autumn to the start of summer, when two months of exams take place. The ordinary degree resulting in the title ‘licenciado’ lasts five years. The degree of ‘doutor’ takes another year and another examination. Medical students study eight years.
The university has a digital repositorium inside a tech park involved in research and incubation. There is a repository for the project April 25, documenting the toppling of a dictatorship. Auxiliaries of the city-wide university system take on citizen practices such as sports, theater, and botany and preservation; there are several kindergartens and nurseries under its wing.
⇞
LIBRARY
When the university outgrew the original city library, a second one was built in the 18th century, on University Hill, the ‘Biblioteca Joanina’, the oldest university library in continuous use in the world, and housed in three large and resplendent Baroque rooms w/ painted ceilings.
The first room has a light green palette, the second a darker green, and the third room has a “… shade like that of orange Niger leather”; rich in gilt and exotic wood, lined w/ 300,000 volumes in galleries runing around the walls, incl. arguably the most valuable collection of Bibles in the world.
There are unpublished manuscripts of Domenico Scarlatti, thought lost but rediscovered in the 20th century, because they were incorrectly catalogued. By the front door, a passageway can take one down to the river, the ‘Palacios Confusos’, by a series of steps posing as alleys, past houses of different styles and years.
⇞
STUDENT BODY
The student body numbers about 25,000, and the dress code is a black Prince Albert coat, worn w/ black trousers, black cape batina, black dress tie; generally students go bareheaded. A military hospital happens to be located nearby, because.
Freshmen may not be on the street after the bell has rung at 6pm, on penalty of being shaved bald, if caught. Another form of punishment is to measure the long bridge over the Modego w/ a match, and it must be done w/ meticulous accuracy.
Even a good and sinless freshman must be prepared to run errands whenever required to do so by a sophomore or junior, but he may be “protected,” and the errand countermanded, by a friendly senior (‘quartanista’).
In turn a sophomore and a junior are known as a semi-harlot (‘mejo prostituo / prostituta’) and a total harlot (‘total prostituo / prostituta’) respectively.
These ‘estudantes’ make up about a third of the town’s inhabitants. Their graduation ceremonies take place in May. It’s then that a localized form of ‘fado’ is sung, by male students only, and only on the steps of the old cathedral when 10pm comes around, w/ lyrics more intellectual and romantic than the genre asks for, love songs tuned to the passions and sentiments of the students, who perfume the air w/ their lamentations until dawn.
⇞
STUDENT REPUBLICS
In the mid-1950s there were eleven “republics” or student organizations, active in the university.
One of them is ‘Pra-kys-tao‘ (Here We Are), a fraternity of ten students for the mutual benefit of themselves and their always-slender budgets, and to satisfy wants such as traditional evenings of wine and shrimps in town. Membership was open, upon unanimous favorable vote, to students of any race, color, religion or political creed except, during that period, communism. In the most pratical way, the student who had been a member longest is automatically president. Using a rotation system, two students, followed by two more then two more, serve as executive officers for fifteen days.
They run the republic and must explain and justify all outlays of money, and a debate on this topic may be opened at any time, all decisions being made by majority vote, and to be taken at the dinner table. Freshmen may not vote on money matters but on anything else.
This particular republic had only 13 electric light bulbs for 15 rooms, incl. the dining room, kitchen and hallway. Pin-up girls papered over every wallspace, the harem of the eye (‘Harem do Olho’). One wall had graffiti: “Artillery Exported to Pra-kys-tao for the Protection of the Marshall Plan.”
Certain campus traditions take place to mark the academic seasons, involving parades through the city, each rife w/ its own occult rituals. The noisy Latada - Festa das Latas (celebration of end of class), and the older Queima das Fitas (burning of the ribbons), which goes on for eight days, involving light blue ribbons for the Sciences, dark blue for Letters, yellow for Medicine and purple for Pharmacy.
⇞
CITY OF CULTURE
The original footprint of Coimbra has spilled downhil, and locals distinguish between the older Upper Town and the Lower Town.
The area bordering the Modego River is Cicade Baixa, downtown, where commerce happens amid Romanesque, early Baroque, Rococco, and Gothic structures, sporting Moorish shadows and sucumbing to the nautical notions of the Manueline style.
A Portuguese queen is buried downtown, in a silver tomb housed in the convent of ‘Santa Ciara-a-Nova’. The Fountain of Life, waiting for you since the 14th century, is behind this church.
Unto the 1920s Coimbra was all but inaccessible by road to travellers, not to mention damp beds and dangerous foods. Sacheverell Sitwell visited in the 1950s:
“…
At Coimbra not only has there been wanton and appalling destruction of what was old and beautiful, but new University buildings have been erected which are really shaming in their blatant ugliness. The sculptures, particularly, are of an insulting hideousness. …
Not that there is anything in the least Portuguese about these abominable buildings of Coimbra. But it is sad, too, because, Coimbra being the university town of Portugal, so many Portuguese retain memories of Coimbra and an affection for it all through their lives, and those memories will now forever more be tinged and coloured by the ugly buildings. There is no possible excuse for hideousness upon this scale; but it might, at least, be practised elsewhere and not in Coimbra.”
⇞ LUIS DE CAMõES
The Lusiads
Arguably the most famous student of the University of Coimbra is Luis de Camões, who (might have been) born in Coimbra in 1524 but known to have passed age 56 in Lisbon. His fame is partly based on supreme mastery of the Portuguese language and is its lyric poet, and his most famous work is a tour de force recounting the tragedy of Indes de Castro of Spain and her love Prince Pedro of Portugal, and her murder by jealous courtiers. She was killed by a fountain in the Garden of Tears (‘Quinta das Lagrimas’) in the convent of Santa Clara; where pond lilies are have been known to flower red.
A stone slab by the fountain bears the following verse by Luís Vaz de Camões (Lusiads, Ill, 135), here in a translation by Lord Byron:
Mondego’s Daughter-Nymphs the death obscure
Wept many a year, with wails of woe exceeding;
And for long memory changed to fountain pure,
The floods of grief their eyes were ever feeding;
The name they gave it, which doth still endure,
Revived Ignez, whose murdered love lies bleeding.
See yon fresh fountain flowing ‘mid the flowers,
Tears are its water, and its name ‘Amores.’
⇞
MANUELINE STYLE
Flush w/ wealth from the Spice Trade, Portugal experienced a brief period where money became as abundant as sea water, and lavished it on an indigenous artform.
The discoveries brought back by the sea voyages Pedro Alvares Cabral and Vasco da Gama aroused the already composite Portuguese style, toying w/ Flemish, Italian and Late Gothic elements. The newly rich gathered the bounties of the sea trade and repurposed them an architectural vocabulary in churches, monasteries, palaces and castles, and a maritime motif applied to furniture, sculpture and painting.
The style was given a name in 1842 by the Viscount Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen, in his description of the Jeronimos Monastery. The characteristics of this Manueline style, named for King Manuel I (1495-1521), resulted in ornate portals, bevelled crenellations, conical pinnacles, and eight-sided capitals.
There were semicircular arches on doors and windows, columns of carved rope, and a wanton disregard for symmetry.
There were symbols of Christianity and latter-day Templars, botanical flourishes, artifacts found on ships, all garlanded by Islamic filigree work and Moorish traceries.
⇞
AEMINIUM
▶ SOURCES:
[1] California and the Portuguese by Celestino Soares, SPN Books Lisbon 1939.
[2] Eyewitness Travel Guides: Portugal w/ Madeira & the Azores, DK Publishing Inc London 1997.
[3] The Finest Castles in Portugal, text Julio Gil, photographs Augusto Cabrita, Verbo 1996.
[4] A History of Spain and Portugal in two volumes, by Stanley G. Payne, The University of Wisconsin Press 1973.
[5] The Nagel Travel Guide Series : Portugal, Nagel Publishers Geneva 1956.
[6] A New History of Portugal 2nd Edition by H.V. Livermore, Cambridge University Press London 1976.
[7] Portugal and Madeira by Sacheverell Sitwell, William Clowes and Sons London 1954.
[8] Portugal the Pathfinder: Journeys from the Medieval toward the Modern World 1300-ca.1600, edited by George D. Winius, The Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies Ltd, The University of Wisconsin Press 1995.
[9] Port and the Douro by Richard Mayson, Faber and Faber London 1999.
[10] Portuguese Concise Dictionary 2nd edition, Harper Collins 2001.
[11] Spain and Protugal, Handbook for Travellers by Karl Bedacker, fourth edition. Leipsic: Karl Baedeker, publisher. London: George Allen & Unwini Ltd., New York: Chas. Scribner’s Sons. 1913.
[12] A Traveller's History of Portugal by Ian C. Robertson, line drawings by John Hoste, Interlink Books New York 2002.
[13] World Food by Lynelle Scott-Aitken and Clara Vitorino, Lonely Planet 2002.
▶ CREDITS Culled from reporting by Tim Pozzi,the University of Coimbra website, the Internet, and guide books. Photographers incl., among others, Francisco Antunes.
▶ STREET NAMES
[ 14 ] Some Coimbra street names include: Rua Anthero de Quental, Alameda do Jardin Bot, Estrada da Beira, Rua do Loureira, Couraca dos Apostolos, Rua das Padeiras, Rua das Solas, Rua da Moeda, Rua da Louca, Rua do Corvo, Rua do Joao Cabreira, Rua da Sophia, Rua de Mont’arroio, Rua do Corpo de Deus, Rua do Borralho, Rua dos Estudos, Rua Lourenco d’Almcida, Rua Venancio Rodriguez, Rua Garrett, Rua do Thomar, Rua de Alex Herculano, Rua Ferreira Borges, Rua do Visconde da Luz, Rua da Sophia, Rua de Castro Mattoso, Rua de Oliveira Mattos.
That morning I heard water being poured into a teapot. The sound was an ordinary, daily, cluffy sound. But all at once, I knew you loved me. An unheard-of-thing, love audible in water falling.
The must-dos for brewing a proper pot of tea, and how a constitutional drinking game, made palatable w/ sugar and milk, calmed a nation’s nerves.
Cream or Lemon A steadfastness in dutiful habiting is a core definition of Britishness in all matters related to tea, and in 2013 was due for a review:
❝ … the official six-page specification for how to make a cup of tea, is officially “under review”. But don’t panic. It is standard procedure for the British Standards Institution (BSI) to do a “systematic periodic review” of each of its many specifications which, piecemeal, define nearly everything British.
|-¶-|
Belying stereotypes of peremptory rigidity in anyone or anything that officially tells the populace what’s what, the BSI is nice about what it does”. British Standards are voluntary in that there is no obligation to apply them or comply with them, it says. The standards are “devised for the convenience of those who wish to use them”. That sentiment appears in the 44-page specification, copies of which are available free of charge.❞
In 2013, Christopher Hitchens gave an account of George Orwell making tea:
Just after World War II, during a period of acute food rationing in England, George Orwell wrote an article on the making of a decent cup of tea that insisted on the observing of eleven different “golden” rules. Some of these (always use Indian or Ceylonese—i.e., Sri Lankan—tea; make tea only in small quantities; avoid silverware pots) may be considered optional or outmoded. But the essential ones are easily committed to memory, and they are simple to put into practice.
If you use a pot at all, make sure it is pre-warmed. (I would add that you should do the same thing even if you are only using a cup or a mug.) Stir the tea before letting it steep. But this above all: “ [O]ne should take the teapot to the kettle, and not the other way about. The water should be actually boiling at the moment of impact, which means that one should keep it on the flame while one pours.”
This isn’t hard to do, even if you are using electricity rather than gas, once you have brought all the makings to the same scene of operations right next to the kettle. It’s not quite over yet. If you use milk, use the least creamy type or the tea will acquire a sickly taste.
And do not put the milk in the cup first – family feuds have lasted generations over this – because you will almost certainly put in too much. Add it later, and be very careful when you pour.
Finally, a decent cylindrical mug will preserve the needful heat and flavor for longer than will a shallow and wide-mouthed – how often those attributes seem to go together – teacup.
Orwell thought that sugar overwhelmed the taste, but brown sugar or honey are, I believe, permissible and sometimes necessary.
Manchester, England – November 13 2015
Middleton officer Andy Richardson: “Just dealt w/ a 95 year old couple, called and said they were lonely. What else could we do?”
He and a fellow officer ended up going over to the couple’s house and sharing a cup of tea over a 30 minute visit, and later tweeted about the call.
“We’ve got to look after people as well. It’s not just fighting crime, it’s protecting people in whatever situation they find themselves.”
Fred Thompson, the elderly man who made the call: “You feel somebody cares and oh that does matter … simple things they talk about, nothing very special but they showed that they cared by being there and talking to you.”
In the 1935 movie Ruggles of Red Gap, Charles Laughton is a british butler transplanted to America, where he instructs the town spinster on the importance of making tea properly:
She: (looking at water) It’s hot! ... He: Can I be of any assistance?
Oh no. Men are so helpless in the kitchen. (Picks up kettle, proceeds to pour into teapot.) Oh no. Always bring pot to the kettle, never bring the kettle to the pot.
Well listen –I’ve been making tea for longer than I can remember–
Don’t let’s get into difficulties about this. But you must listen to an Englishman about tea. When making tea, always bring the pot to the kettle and never the kettle to the pot.
Oh, your knowledge is surprising. ...
Don’t see why you should say surprising. The best cooks have always been men. I myself have pronounced views on the preparations and servings of food.
Have you? ... Oh yes.
You know something nice that would go w/ tea? ... Eh yes, yes. The ingredients are quite simple. Do you have a little flour?
Oh would you? ... Flour, butter, milk and salt.
Oh you seem so at home in the kitchen. ... Ah it would be difficult to describe the intense satisfaction that I’ve always derived from cooking.
In 1997, Morrissey was asked in a sit-down interview: Do you ever get sick of drinking tea? Given the moment, the former singer for The Smiths expounded on how this custom is practised in his home:
... I absolutely never get sick of drinking tea. It’s a psychological thing really, it’s just very composing and makes me relax. It’s just so much a part of your culture. ... ‘Oh yes yes, I’m very avid, I have to have at least four pots a day.
For those of us who don’t know how to make a pot of tea, what do you do?
Well I would do that without even thinking about it. ... Right and also you have to use real milk you can’t use the UHT fake stuff, you have to use proper milk. ... Well you really have to put the milk in first which many people don’t.
Put the milk in with the water, before you boil the water? ... No, you’re confused already no, you put the milk in before you pour the water in or the tea, whichever.
Okay, so what about the actual brewing of the tea? ... The brewing of the tea, it’s very important that you heat the pot before you put the water in, if you use a pot. I know most people who just throw a teabag into a cup but in England of course you have to make a pot of tea and you have to heat the pot first w/ hot water and then put the teabags in – I can’t believe I’m saying this – and then put the hot water in and then just throw it all over yourself, rush to Out Patients and write a really good song.
❝The popularity of tea in England ... was due to a Portuguese infante, Queen Catherine, whose predilection for that beverage rendered it fashionable. In an ode to her, Waller sings: The best of queens and best of herbs we owe / To that bold nation who the way did show / To the fair region where the sun doth rise, / Whose rich productions we so justly prize.❞
Historic Macao by C. A. Montalto de Jesus 1984. Oxford University Press.
Buried under sand for hundreds of years, slowly being dug up going on years now, is Qatar’s largest archaeological dig, and a very fine example, preserved, of a merchant town c.1800s. This site is the ruined coastal port famous for its walls and known as Al-Zubarah. Founded by merchants in the late 1700s, this settlement had thrived as a pearl-fishery industry and also as a trading post — it is centrally positioned on the main sea route in the Persian Gulf.
In 1811 there was a successful siege and what remained was abandoned and eventually was covered by sand. The property Al Zubarah Archaeological Site which comprises the 2013 UNESCO World Heritage Site is a fortified town, built w/ traditional Arab technqiues, that faces a harbor, w/ an original sea wall (exists still in part). A second, inner wall came later. The original fort still stands, there is another fort, two more walls, and a canal to the sea.
The largest domestic structure dug up gives a sense of the wealth enjoyed by the town’s richest, and why so coveted by its attackers: Nine inter-connected courtyards inside a building complex, surrounded by a high wall and having corner defense towers. Water fountain features are to be found, incl. ponds where a game played by children, called turtles-&-pearls, takes place underwater. Using a pet turtle, each player attempts to shoot a colored pearl into a row of different-colored pearls, w/ an aim of hitting out another pearl of the same color, all the while not disturbing the rest.
Blessed by superb symmetry, taking on its shape five thousand years ago, locus for ascetic buddhism of the shinto blend, standing alone in the center of the country, source of artistic inspiration since the 11th century, Mount Fuji’s conic silhouette has been copied by Japanese potters down through history and in due course has left blueprints on mid-century kitchen gadget design, chockful with its ergonomic effortlessness and sensuous surfaces. The designation by UNESCO of this mountain as the 2013 World Heritage Site Sacred Space Recipient consists of 25 properties including the mountain itself, shinto shrines, five lakes, and a haunted forest.
Shinto has been practised in Japan since at least the 7th century, and its cosmos is populated by a kami (diety) living in every imaginable natural formation unto a blade of grass. Mount Fuji’s kami is the Princess Konohana-sakuya, the shinto embodiment of nature, and you will know of her presence by the sight of cherry blossoms on the way up a very attractive mountain. The fujiko school of shinto adds a soul and believes the mountain to be a being. While all this bonding is going on, the buddhists sit back and regard the mountain as a gateway to another world. The crater is ringed w/ eight peaks and a walk all around takes a couple of hours, could this be what the buddhists had in mind?
The area around Fujisan-konohana-sakuahime (“Fuji causing the blossom to brightly bloom”) also contains other mystical marvels. Five lakes, the Fuji-goko, ring the mountain.
The northwest quadrant is a 14-square mile pine forest, the Aoki-ga-hara-jukai (Sea of Trees), which can be alarmingly dark during the day, forming a half moon around the base. This forest is home to goblins, demons, ghosts, and has been a destination suicide spot for many years.
It has come to pass and for as long as anyone can remember, there is and always has been a choice of only four trails leading pilgrims to the summit. All things here being of a magical quality, these four paths might very well allude to the Four Elements in a cosmic setting: rarefied Air at the summit, plentiful fresh Water within reach, Earth in its proudest seasonal garbs are all visited by the fire goddess Fuchi once a year, taking off her buddhist beads for a powwow w/ the princess. This takes place end of summer at a trail stop in the village of Yoshida, rife w/ rustic rumors insisting on a peculiar religiousity shared by fire festivals everywhere including the most famous, Burning Man,
although it must be noted that the Yoshida Fire Festival is done and over with in a night and the following day, involving ceremonies to conclude the climbing season.
Sunrise as seen at the summit by all-night climbers has its own dedicated name, goraiko, as in “my goraiko was obscured by clouds with rain blotting out the horizon.” For the fortunate ones, though, words like "awesome" and "bright red" and "a figure" readily roll off their tongues when recalling the alpine sight of the sun peeking over a watery horizon, the shedding of darkness around the self, the wonderment that immortals are hovering nearby, a palpable sense of alignment with gravity again, maybe even new eyes for the descent. It has been likened to something we all know happens regularly and “see” but not see; kind of shinto. It is one of Japan’s three Holy Mountains, together with Mount Haku and Mount Tate, and is on the island of Honshu.
Fuji is an active and relatively young volcano 62 miles south-west of Tokyo. It sits on a “triple junction” radiating techtonically down to the Filipino Plate, west to the Eurasian Plate, and east towards the North American Plate, the Okhotsk. It has erupted 21 times, the last was on October 26, 1707 (an 8.4), and destroyed 72 houses and three buddhist temples. It was powerful enough to blow a scoop out at the tip, becoming an actual new crater on the eastern flank. On February 4, 2013, a metereological ticker tape came through the wires:
The volcano remains calm. However, an increased number of small quakes near and under Mt Fuji are visible on our latest data plot of nearby earthquakes (within 30 km radius). While all of these are very small and the number is certainly not alarming, the volcano remains interesting to watch….
| MT FUJI NOTES:
[1]
Four views of Mt. Fuji.
[2]
The Princess Konohana-sakuya is patiently gazing around wondering what is taking so long for her date Fuchi forever to arrive.
[3]
(top left) The Sea of Trees.
[4]
Four photographs taken from the summit at sunrise – a goraiko; anime of a sun goddess by Jayne Aw.
[5]
Mt Fuji in fact and fiction.
| Fujisan (富士山). Names of the five lakes: Kawaguchi, Motosu, Sai, Shoji, Yamanaka. The four trails are Yoshidaguchi, Subashiri, Gotemba, Fujinomiya. Photos by Brian Chu, Daisaku Ikeda + screen captures.
The first road built in Kowloon was in 1904 by governor Sir Matthew Nathan. Beginning harborside at Tsim Sar Tsui, the boulevard ran just over two miles north to Sum Sui Po and Boundary St, where the New Territories begin.
•
HK residents can travel to the portuguese port by ferryboat, hydrofoil or amhibian plane; the former takes an hour, the others are faster. In 20th-c. Macao, the only means for its residence to catch an airplane was first travel to HK. Both ways, the traveler crosses the Pearl river delta while skirting the South China sea.
•
A commercial venture next to Ma Tau Gok went bust when entrepreneurs Mr Kai and Mr Tak could not develop the land they had reclaimed from Kowloon Bay. This prompted the HK government to purchase the waterfront property and, in 1912, build an airfield.
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Decommissioned in 1998, Kai Tak Airport will no longer offer arriving airplanes a careening welcome onto a harbor runway when pilots need to perform demanding and exacting maneuvers each and every time. (Photo by Christian Hanuise)
•
The english bridge connects the isle of Shameen (left) w/ Canton on the right. There is also a french bridge. A sandbar in the Pearl river was reclaimed and built upon by british and french merchants wanting residences in town.
•
The 1958 cha-cha-cha champions of HK Bruce Lee and his dance partner. A dance craze emanating from Cuba in the early 1950s, swept HK youth into dance classes to learn how to execute two consecutive quick steps.
•
When the british government conducted the first census, Sek Pei Wan (Aberdeen) had zero population; at the time it was just a pirate’s cove. Graced w/ a tiny yet excellent harbor. Tanka (boat people) eventually made it a homeport, an important one among many dotted along the coastline.
❝Great cook, talented at crochet, creative, child-like, excruciatingly honest, tenacious, compassionate and sensitive; my mother was all these things.❞ — Jasmine
Pam led a glamorous life as a 1960s airline stewardessfor Cathay Pacific Airways, based in Hong Kong, where she was born and raised. At work she would be pulled into photo shoots when film and television stars flew in.
| Chosen to represent the airline, she participated in fashion shows, ad campaigns, and public relations as the face of flight. She traveled around the world, accruing trinkets from all cultures and a lifelong admiration of all cuisines. She traveled to all the airports in Asia, and in her suitcase out would pop magazines from everywhere else.
| After landing in America, she struck out to be on her own and moved to New York, abandoning us all here in California. She dated the house photographer at Mad magazine, and lived a stone’s throw from Maxwell’s Plum, a “…flamboyant restaurant and singles bar that, more than any place of its kind, symbolized two social revolutions of the 1960s — sex and food,” located at 64th and First Avenue in Manhattan. Her walk up had a bathtub in the kitchen, sharing a hot faucet w/ the sink.
| While helping a friend help sell at her friend's street-fair booth, Pam met many folks, including a man who immediately offered some helpful advice. Pam shot back and challenged him to come around to the other side and manage the booth himself, since he “...clearly knew what to do.” Laszlo disappeared and came back w/ two hot dogs and a lemonade, walked around the booth, and sat down next to her; two weeks later they were married.
|
Laszlo Zauberer, native of Hungary, was driving a cab in NYC when he met Pam on his one day off. An accomplished painter of diverse subjects, and the love of her life, they remained inseparable for the next 40 years.
| After the birth of their daughter, Pam and Laszlo made the move to upstate New York. Never one to shy away from conflict, her generosity, thoughts and sometimes vengeance were doled out as she saw fit to those who crossed her path. Whether it was redeeming a raincheck at a grocery store or haggling over an item at a yard sale, her sense of fairness and authority got her into heated debates.
| On the night of May 3 2016, Pamela Rita de Oliveira Mattos Zauberer passed away at home and in her bed w/ Laszlo and Jasmine by her side. In true stoic fashion, she had no complaints of pain. She had just celebrated her birthday the day before, and ate carrot cake, her favorite. She was 76 years old.
69 | Benjamin Leung Gok Wing
|- 2.7.1944 – 9.4.2013 -|Ben visited Hong Kong at the beginning of 2013. What he must have thought about his hometown he is not aorund to tell me, but I know it’s the first vacation he’s had in a while. | It was there that Ben met my sister Sylvia, when they were both young and working in the same office. At that time my sister was learning to drive a stick-shift car and for hours and hours after dinner she would be out taking driving lessons w/ an instructor to god knows where. | Ben would also go off on his own as a young man, but where he went you can always find on a map: a local swimming pool, or the nearby basketball court. He left these pursuits behind when he came to San Francisco, and eventually took up gardening: on 44th Avenue, and later out on Bay Farm Island. Both had sandy soil, hard to take care of. | On Bay Farm he had a wisteria in ground next to a loquat tree in a pot. Ben was fearless and grew everything. And those that took to his care, he made green.
93 | Regina Maria de Oliveira Mattos DaSilva
|- 2.28.1921 – 11.28.2013 -|
My father’s youngest sister. She ran the concession stand on the Peak, and took the Peak Tram to work everyday, after crossing the harbour by ferry from Kowloon side.
87 | Renee Lym Robertson
|- 8.4.1928 – 1.4.2015 -|
❝I bowed 3 times at the casket of Renée Lym Robertson. Auntie Renée died at the age of 87 in her stunning Nob Hill apartment. She was the daughter of Art Lym, the founder and head of the Chinese Air Force under the Nationalist government. She was born in Shanghai and fled to Hong Kong in 1949 as a refugee after the Communist Revolution. She was a noted beauty in her day and was a fixture in the international Hong Kong society that centered on the Peninsula Hotel; where she caught the eye of Clark Gable and became his girlfriend and lover. I will miss her beauty, her style, those jungle red nails and lips, the jade and diamonds, her stories and her wicked wit and wisdom. Auntie Renée was my Auntie Mame.❞
– Wylie Wong
33 | George Choy
|- 2.6.1960 – 9.10.1993 -| George was rocking a mohawk, so I took a pix, to remember our Passage through a rather brief moment in time. He now has one of the many plaques lining Castro Street.
As his official residence was under construction, on a large parcel some 500 feet above Hong Kong harbor, governor John and Lady Bowring began to putter around in their backyard, a steep slope cresting straight up to the Peak. And what they accomplished, and passed on, has now become the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens (兵 頭 花 園).
A living laboratory, won in war, seeded
by transplants who were assigned by the british government to administer -- or more like be marooned -- on this barren rock, a stone’s throw off the South China coast.
|…|
Children from a bygone age took to the young science of botany and re-imagined Eden. These studious observers of nature resolved to quantify history from the first day onwards, to quest and assign names, to design knowledge for mass consumption -- basic eminent victorian pursuits.
|…|
In 1871, beginning its manicured existence as the backyard garden to a governor and his wife, a now public botanic garden has long ago tamed the unfriendly slope that it rests on, a slope which keeps rising. Teams of landscape engineers, masons and laborers introduced native plants to their tropical and sub-tropical selves. Banyans tucked together create backdrops. The only india rubber tree for many miles around lives here. Into the pampered soil went palm trees from near and far. Fern forests sheltered an undergrowth world.
The original garden had shady boulevards and extensive flowerbeds. There was an aviary and a green house filled w/ orchids, bromeliads, ferns and climbers. The main feature was a fifty-feet wide circular pond w/ a water feature on a fountain terrace. Home to water lilies, the lip of the pond was raised just so to allow for sitting.
British botanist Charles Ford was the first superintendent of gardens, and he began the documentation of local flora and fauna.
-|- two whole gingsengs on a botanical drawing
-|- water color of chinese clove w/ two branches
-|- a sprig of the dawn redwood
-|- cutting of chinese elm on a plate
-|- framed drawing of a flowering chinese lantern
This public garden was deemed safe enough that, late into the evening, couples took to strolling between gas-lit walkways and holding hands in the shadows, serene in ordered nature. Scents from the orange-jassamine, white jade orchid tree, mock lime and sweet osmanthus, mingle w/ the heady kwai-fah and swirl the air. This open air conservatory soon turned into a paradise for adams wanting somewhere to take their eager Eves.
The animal house was first introduced in 1876, and though its inmates have rotated through the usual classifications over the years, it wasn’t until 1976 that beleaguered beasts were given new digs and more humane treatment by staff. Reptiles and mammals finally had separate quarters. The bird cage was moved to another part altogether. Today 900 species live side by side and learn how to get along in a very crowded city.
- Jules Verne was invited in 1865 to help document the life aquatic in the harbor. The author altogether spent six months researching this water world, picking up the local tongue, talking to folks who would know. Disgarding the bulk as a concoction, little made it into Verne’s final manuscript, yet he decided to send the cuts to a friend working at a magazine. In the June 15 1884 issue of L'Algerie are the rejected notes of Jules Verne, accompanied by illustrations from Alphonse de Neuville, Édouard Riou, and George Chinnery.
Built in 1932 as a vertical landscape to enhance the property of a Hong Kong tycoon’s mansion, the Tiger Balm Gardens of Aw Boon Haw is an over-the-top folly.
On the steepest hillside imaginable, inhospitable to real estate development, Aw Boon Haw envisioned a human-size depiction of a moral Chinese universe. The land was his, and he lived w/ his family next door. The garden was a grand retreat containing sculpted scenarios from daoist practices, w/ dollops of buddhist mindfulness swirling by mythologies of plaster-of-paris and confucian paint. At the apex of this miniature cosmology perches a seven-storey pagoda, and steps leading to the top.
A visitor to this psychedelic park can count on being ambused by deities and demons; also, phoenix, unicorn, gorilla, kangaroo, others. Historical tableaux seemingly trot out: Journey to the west; fairy scattering flowers on Buddha; others.
Staircases multiply and are passageways between locales -- these altitude adjustments then melt any sense of bearing.
Natural ledges and spurs were leveraged for bridges, lookout points, nooks. Vistas start to appear then vanish; shortcuts and forks accrue. Destinations take on labyrinthean lengths.
This garden of steep and narrow steps enhances mystical states of ascension and descension. The cloud caves of heaven above, below the stockades of hell. Both are bound to make your acquaintance.
The garden is built from several applications of plaster-of-paris shaped w/ chicken wire in wet cement. Cement staircases were created from buildouts and brackets enhance existing rock. Covered w/ paint, the Tiger Balm Gardens became incarnate – finished forms found only dreams.
The gardens are from the imagination of Mr Aw Boon Haw; there were no plan drawings. Concocted by master craftsmen Kwek Hoon Sua and Kwek Choon Sua, bros from Swatow, abetted w/ a crew of workers.
|█⁕█|
The first steps to the garden already beguile.
Coimbra, a city in northern Portugal, is the see of a bishop, the capital of a province, and a center of learning. In 2013, UNESCO designated the University of Coimbra as a University Town Recipient for its World Heritage Sites, “… an integrated university city, w/ a specific urban typology, as well as its own ceremonial and cultural traditions.” The property consists of two areas: a hilltop complex of buildings, Uniersity Hill, and a series of scattered structures which all played a part in the university’s history.
There is a 12th century Augustinian monastery which was the first school, and the original library.
The Inquisition swept into Portugal in 1567, and Coimbra was one of the three local centers tasked to conduct it. Outlasting these strictures, the university bounced back, w/ strengthened statutes, a reorganized syllabus of studies, greater emphasis on education in the vernacular, and the re-establishment of freeom of research. The old castle on the hilltop was finally pulled down to make way for new buildings.
A seal was then struck, a praxe, consisting of a spoon (symbol of punishment), scissors (symbol of unruliness), and a stick (symbol of self-defense).
University of Coimbra
Founded in 1290, the University of Coimbra is the second oldest continuous institution of higher learning in Europe (the University of Paris is older), and the first university town in the world. In this northern Portuguese city, a world treasure become sited inside a national treasure, the school moved into a former royal palace on the summit of the hill, and grew to become a gathering spot for academics, writers, artists, who nicknamed this the Lusitanian Athens, ‘Lusa Atenas’.
⇞
CAMPUS
An early champion of the new science of circumnavigation, an observatory was built to make spatial sense of the stars.
Investitures and major events take place in the ‘Sala Grande dos Actos,‘ below portraits of kings and queens. A cathedral, already there when the university arrived, was gifted by Jesuits. The throne room is now used for PhD candidate examinations, and nothing else.
The four rooms of the ‘Museu de Arte Sacra’ contain, among holy habits and chalices, books of early sacred music. There is a museum of natural history. A colonnaded walkway by the grand patio was added in the 18th century, the ‘Via Latina.’ The campus chapel, ‘Capela de Sao Miguel’, means that no student need run downhill to another one.
A Botanical Garden blossomed in 1772, that delightful Victorian experiment of Eden on earth, sprouting wherever colonialism circled.
There are five faculties (‘theologia’, ‘direito’, ‘medicina’, ‘mathematica’, ‘philosophia’) w/ disciplines in judicial and European court systems, interdisciplinary nuclear science, and the arts. (The university had begun by teaching law, rhetoric, mathematics, theology, medicine, grammar and Greek.) The teaching staff consisits of some 70 professors and lecturers. Semester is from autumn to the start of summer, when two months of exams take place. The ordinary degree resulting in the title ‘licenciado’ lasts five years. The degree of ‘doutor’ takes another year and another examination. Medical students study eight years.
The university has a digital repositorium inside a tech park involved in research and incubation. There is a repository for the project April 25, documenting the toppling of a dictatorship. Auxiliaries of the city-wide university system take on citizen practices such as sports, theater, and botany and preservation; there are several kindergartens and nurseries under its wing.
⇞
LIBRARY
When the university outgrew the original city library, a second one was built in the 18th century, on University Hill, the ‘Biblioteca Joanina’, the oldest university library in continuous use in the world, and housed in three large and resplendent Baroque rooms w/ painted ceilings.
The first room has a light green palette, the second a darker green, and the third room has a “… shade like that of orange Niger leather”; rich in gilt and exotic wood, lined w/ 300,000 volumes in galleries runing around the walls, incl. arguably the most valuable collection of Bibles in the world.
There are unpublished manuscripts of Domenico Scarlatti, thought lost but rediscovered in the 20th century, because they were incorrectly catalogued. By the front door, a passageway can take one down to the river, the ‘Palacios Confusos’, by a series of steps posing as alleys, past houses of different styles and years.
⇞
STUDENT BODY
The student body numbers about 25,000, and the dress code is a black Prince Albert coat, worn w/ black trousers, black cape batina, black dress tie; generally students go bareheaded. A military hospital happens to be located nearby, because.
Freshmen may not be on the street after the bell has rung at 6pm, on penalty of being shaved bald, if caught. Another form of punishment is to measure the long bridge over the Modego w/ a match, and it must be done w/ meticulous accuracy.
Even a good and sinless freshman must be prepared to run errands whenever required to do so by a sophomore or junior, but he may be “protected,” and the errand countermanded, by a friendly senior (‘quartanista’).
In turn a sophomore and a junior are known as a semi-harlot (‘mejo prostituo / prostituta’) and a total harlot (‘total prostituo / prostituta’) respectively.
These ‘estudantes’ make up about a third of the town’s inhabitants. Their graduation ceremonies take place in May. It’s then that a localized form of ‘fado’ is sung, by male students only, and only on the steps of the old cathedral when 10pm comes around, w/ lyrics more intellectual and romantic than the genre asks for, love songs tuned to the passions and sentiments of the students, who perfume the air w/ their lamentations until dawn.
⇞
STUDENT REPUBLICS
In the mid-1950s there were eleven “republics” or student organizations, active in the university.
One of them is ‘Pra-kys-tao‘ (Here We Are), a fraternity of ten students for the mutual benefit of themselves and their always-slender budgets, and to satisfy wants such as traditional evenings of wine and shrimps in town. Membership was open, upon unanimous favorable vote, to students of any race, color, religion or political creed except, during that period, communism. In the most pratical way, the student who had been a member longest is automatically president. Using a rotation system, two students, followed by two more then two more, serve as executive officers for fifteen days.
They run the republic and must explain and justify all outlays of money, and a debate on this topic may be opened at any time, all decisions being made by majority vote, and to be taken at the dinner table. Freshmen may not vote on money matters but on anything else.
This particular republic had only 13 electric light bulbs for 15 rooms, incl. the dining room, kitchen and hallway. Pin-up girls papered over every wallspace, the harem of the eye (‘Harem do Olho’). One wall had graffiti: “Artillery Exported to Pra-kys-tao for the Protection of the Marshall Plan.”
Certain campus traditions take place to mark the academic seasons, involving parades through the city, each rife w/ its own occult rituals. The noisy Latada - Festa das Latas (celebration of end of class), and the older Queima das Fitas (burning of the ribbons), which goes on for eight days, involving light blue ribbons for the Sciences, dark blue for Letters, yellow for Medicine and purple for Pharmacy.
⇞
CITY OF CULTURE
The original footprint of Coimbra has spilled downhil, and locals distinguish between the older Upper Town and the Lower Town.
The area bordering the Modego River is Cicade Baixa, downtown, where commerce happens amid Romanesque, early Baroque, Rococco, and Gothic structures, sporting Moorish shadows and sucumbing to the nautical notions of the Manueline style.
A Portuguese queen is buried downtown, in a silver tomb housed in the convent of ‘Santa Ciara-a-Nova’. The Fountain of Life, waiting for you since the 14th century, is behind this church.
Unto the 1920s Coimbra was all but inaccessible by road to travellers, not to mention damp beds and dangerous foods. Sacheverell Sitwell visited in the 1950s:
“…
At Coimbra not only has there been wanton and appalling destruction of what was old and beautiful, but new University buildings have been erected which are really shaming in their blatant ugliness. The sculptures, particularly, are of an insulting hideousness. …
Not that there is anything in the least Portuguese about these abominable buildings of Coimbra. But it is sad, too, because, Coimbra being the university town of Portugal, so many Portuguese retain memories of Coimbra and an affection for it all through their lives, and those memories will now forever more be tinged and coloured by the ugly buildings. There is no possible excuse for hideousness upon this scale; but it might, at least, be practised elsewhere and not in Coimbra.”
⇞ LUIS DE CAMõES
The Lusiads
Arguably the most famous student of the University of Coimbra is Luis de Camões, who (might have been) born in Coimbra in 1524 but known to have passed age 56 in Lisbon. His fame is partly based on supreme mastery of the Portuguese language and is its lyric poet, and his most famous work is a tour de force recounting the tragedy of Indes de Castro of Spain and her love Prince Pedro of Portugal, and her murder by jealous courtiers. She was killed by a fountain in the Garden of Tears (‘Quinta das Lagrimas’) in the convent of Santa Clara; where pond lilies are have been known to flower red.
A stone slab by the fountain bears the following verse by Luís Vaz de Camões (Lusiads, Ill, 135), here in a translation by Lord Byron:
Mondego’s Daughter-Nymphs the death obscure
Wept many a year, with wails of woe exceeding;
And for long memory changed to fountain pure,
The floods of grief their eyes were ever feeding;
The name they gave it, which doth still endure,
Revived Ignez, whose murdered love lies bleeding.
See yon fresh fountain flowing ‘mid the flowers,
Tears are its water, and its name ‘Amores.’
⇞
MANUELINE STYLE
Flush w/ wealth from the Spice Trade, Portugal experienced a brief period where money became as abundant as sea water, and lavished it on an indigenous artform.
The discoveries brought back by the sea voyages Pedro Alvares Cabral and Vasco da Gama aroused the already composite Portuguese style, toying w/ Flemish, Italian and Late Gothic elements. The newly rich gathered the bounties of the sea trade and repurposed them an architectural vocabulary in churches, monasteries, palaces and castles, and a maritime motif applied to furniture, sculpture and painting.
The style was given a name in 1842 by the Viscount Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen, in his description of the Jeronimos Monastery. The characteristics of this Manueline style, named for King Manuel I (1495-1521), resulted in ornate portals, bevelled crenellations, conical pinnacles, and eight-sided capitals.
There were semicircular arches on doors and windows, columns of carved rope, and a wanton disregard for symmetry.
There were symbols of Christianity and latter-day Templars, botanical flourishes, artifacts found on ships, all garlanded by Islamic filigree work and Moorish traceries.
⇞
AEMINIUM
▶ SOURCES:
[1] California and the Portuguese by Celestino Soares, SPN Books Lisbon 1939.
[2] Eyewitness Travel Guides: Portugal w/ Madeira & the Azores, DK Publishing Inc London 1997.
[3] The Finest Castles in Portugal, text Julio Gil, photographs Augusto Cabrita, Verbo 1996.
[4] A History of Spain and Portugal in two volumes, by Stanley G. Payne, The University of Wisconsin Press 1973.
[5] The Nagel Travel Guide Series : Portugal, Nagel Publishers Geneva 1956.
[6] A New History of Portugal 2nd Edition by H.V. Livermore, Cambridge University Press London 1976.
[7] Portugal and Madeira by Sacheverell Sitwell, William Clowes and Sons London 1954.
[8] Portugal the Pathfinder: Journeys from the Medieval toward the Modern World 1300-ca.1600, edited by George D. Winius, The Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies Ltd, The University of Wisconsin Press 1995.
[9] Port and the Douro by Richard Mayson, Faber and Faber London 1999.
[10] Portuguese Concise Dictionary 2nd edition, Harper Collins 2001.
[11] Spain and Protugal, Handbook for Travellers by Karl Bedacker, fourth edition. Leipsic: Karl Baedeker, publisher. London: George Allen & Unwini Ltd., New York: Chas. Scribner’s Sons. 1913.
[12] A Traveller's History of Portugal by Ian C. Robertson, line drawings by John Hoste, Interlink Books New York 2002.
[13] World Food by Lynelle Scott-Aitken and Clara Vitorino, Lonely Planet 2002.
▶ CREDITS Culled from reporting by Tim Pozzi,the University of Coimbra website, the Internet, and guide books. Photographers incl., among others, Francisco Antunes.
▶ STREET NAMES
[ 14 ] Some Coimbra street names include: Rua Anthero de Quental, Alameda do Jardin Bot, Estrada da Beira, Rua do Loureira, Couraca dos Apostolos, Rua das Padeiras, Rua das Solas, Rua da Moeda, Rua da Louca, Rua do Corvo, Rua do Joao Cabreira, Rua da Sophia, Rua de Mont’arroio, Rua do Corpo de Deus, Rua do Borralho, Rua dos Estudos, Rua Lourenco d’Almcida, Rua Venancio Rodriguez, Rua Garrett, Rua do Thomar, Rua de Alex Herculano, Rua Ferreira Borges, Rua do Visconde da Luz, Rua da Sophia, Rua de Castro Mattoso, Rua de Oliveira Mattos.
That morning I heard water being poured into a teapot. The sound was an ordinary, daily, cluffy sound. But all at once, I knew you loved me. An unheard-of-thing, love audible in water falling.
The must-dos for brewing a proper pot of tea, and how a constitutional drinking game, made palatable w/ sugar and milk, calmed a nation’s nerves.
Cream or Lemon A steadfastness in dutiful habiting is a core definition of Britishness in all matters related to tea, and in 2013 was due for a review:
❝ … the official six-page specification for how to make a cup of tea, is officially “under review”. But don’t panic. It is standard procedure for the British Standards Institution (BSI) to do a “systematic periodic review” of each of its many specifications which, piecemeal, define nearly everything British.
|-¶-|
Belying stereotypes of peremptory rigidity in anyone or anything that officially tells the populace what’s what, the BSI is nice about what it does”. British Standards are voluntary in that there is no obligation to apply them or comply with them, it says. The standards are “devised for the convenience of those who wish to use them”. That sentiment appears in the 44-page specification, copies of which are available free of charge.❞
In 2013, Christopher Hitchens gave an account of George Orwell making tea:
Just after World War II, during a period of acute food rationing in England, George Orwell wrote an article on the making of a decent cup of tea that insisted on the observing of eleven different “golden” rules. Some of these (always use Indian or Ceylonese—i.e., Sri Lankan—tea; make tea only in small quantities; avoid silverware pots) may be considered optional or outmoded. But the essential ones are easily committed to memory, and they are simple to put into practice.
If you use a pot at all, make sure it is pre-warmed. (I would add that you should do the same thing even if you are only using a cup or a mug.) Stir the tea before letting it steep. But this above all: “ [O]ne should take the teapot to the kettle, and not the other way about. The water should be actually boiling at the moment of impact, which means that one should keep it on the flame while one pours.”
This isn’t hard to do, even if you are using electricity rather than gas, once you have brought all the makings to the same scene of operations right next to the kettle. It’s not quite over yet. If you use milk, use the least creamy type or the tea will acquire a sickly taste.
And do not put the milk in the cup first – family feuds have lasted generations over this – because you will almost certainly put in too much. Add it later, and be very careful when you pour.
Finally, a decent cylindrical mug will preserve the needful heat and flavor for longer than will a shallow and wide-mouthed – how often those attributes seem to go together – teacup.
Orwell thought that sugar overwhelmed the taste, but brown sugar or honey are, I believe, permissible and sometimes necessary.
Manchester, England – November 13 2015
Middleton officer Andy Richardson: “Just dealt w/ a 95 year old couple, called and said they were lonely. What else could we do?”
He and a fellow officer ended up going over to the couple’s house and sharing a cup of tea over a 30 minute visit, and later tweeted about the call.
“We’ve got to look after people as well. It’s not just fighting crime, it’s protecting people in whatever situation they find themselves.”
Fred Thompson, the elderly man who made the call: “You feel somebody cares and oh that does matter … simple things they talk about, nothing very special but they showed that they cared by being there and talking to you.”
In the 1935 movie Ruggles of Red Gap, Charles Laughton is a british butler transplanted to America, where he instructs the town spinster on the importance of making tea properly:
She: (looking at water) It’s hot! ... He: Can I be of any assistance?
Oh no. Men are so helpless in the kitchen. (Picks up kettle, proceeds to pour into teapot.) Oh no. Always bring pot to the kettle, never bring the kettle to the pot.
Well listen –I’ve been making tea for longer than I can remember–
Don’t let’s get into difficulties about this. But you must listen to an Englishman about tea. When making tea, always bring the pot to the kettle and never the kettle to the pot.
Oh, your knowledge is surprising. ...
Don’t see why you should say surprising. The best cooks have always been men. I myself have pronounced views on the preparations and servings of food.
Have you? ... Oh yes.
You know something nice that would go w/ tea? ... Eh yes, yes. The ingredients are quite simple. Do you have a little flour?
Oh would you? ... Flour, butter, milk and salt.
Oh you seem so at home in the kitchen. ... Ah it would be difficult to describe the intense satisfaction that I’ve always derived from cooking.
In 1997, Morrissey was asked in a sit-down interview: Do you ever get sick of drinking tea? Given the moment, the former singer for The Smiths expounded on how this custom is practised in his home:
... I absolutely never get sick of drinking tea. It’s a psychological thing really, it’s just very composing and makes me relax. It’s just so much a part of your culture. ... ‘Oh yes yes, I’m very avid, I have to have at least four pots a day.
For those of us who don’t know how to make a pot of tea, what do you do?
Well I would do that without even thinking about it. ... Right and also you have to use real milk you can’t use the UHT fake stuff, you have to use proper milk. ... Well you really have to put the milk in first which many people don’t.
Put the milk in with the water, before you boil the water? ... No, you’re confused already no, you put the milk in before you pour the water in or the tea, whichever.
Okay, so what about the actual brewing of the tea? ... The brewing of the tea, it’s very important that you heat the pot before you put the water in, if you use a pot. I know most people who just throw a teabag into a cup but in England of course you have to make a pot of tea and you have to heat the pot first w/ hot water and then put the teabags in – I can’t believe I’m saying this – and then put the hot water in and then just throw it all over yourself, rush to Out Patients and write a really good song.
❝The popularity of tea in England ... was due to a Portuguese infante, Queen Catherine, whose predilection for that beverage rendered it fashionable. In an ode to her, Waller sings: The best of queens and best of herbs we owe / To that bold nation who the way did show / To the fair region where the sun doth rise, / Whose rich productions we so justly prize.❞
Historic Macao by C. A. Montalto de Jesus 1984. Oxford University Press.
Blessed by superb symmetry, taking on its shape five thousand years ago, locus for ascetic buddhism of the shinto blend, standing alone in the center of the country, source of artistic inspiration since the 11th century, Mount Fuji’s conic silhouette has been copied by Japanese potters down through history and in due course has left blueprints on mid-century kitchen gadget design, chockful with its ergonomic effortlessness and sensuous surfaces. The designation by UNESCO of this mountain as the 2013 World Heritage Site Sacred Space Recipient consists of 25 properties including the mountain itself, shinto shrines, five lakes, and a haunted forest.
Shinto has been practised in Japan since at least the 7th century, and its cosmos is populated by a kami (diety) living in every imaginable natural formation unto a blade of grass. Mount Fuji’s kami is the Princess Konohana-sakuya, the shinto embodiment of nature, and you will know of her presence by the sight of cherry blossoms on the way up a very attractive mountain. The fujiko school of shinto adds a soul and believes the mountain to be a being. While all this bonding is going on, the buddhists sit back and regard the mountain as a gateway to another world. The crater is ringed w/ eight peaks and a walk all around takes a couple of hours, could this be what the buddhists had in mind?
The area around Fujisan-konohana-sakuahime (“Fuji causing the blossom to brightly bloom”) also contains other mystical marvels. Five lakes, the Fuji-goko, ring the mountain.
The northwest quadrant is a 14-square mile pine forest, the Aoki-ga-hara-jukai (Sea of Trees), which can be alarmingly dark during the day, forming a half moon around the base. This forest is home to goblins, demons, ghosts, and has been a destination suicide spot for many years.
It has come to pass and for as long as anyone can remember, there is and always has been a choice of only four trails leading pilgrims to the summit. All things here being of a magical quality, these four paths might very well allude to the Four Elements in a cosmic setting: rarefied Air at the summit, plentiful fresh Water within reach, Earth in its proudest seasonal garbs are all visited by the fire goddess Fuchi once a year, taking off her buddhist beads for a powwow w/ the princess. This takes place end of summer at a trail stop in the village of Yoshida, rife w/ rustic rumors insisting on a peculiar religiousity shared by fire festivals everywhere including the most famous, Burning Man,
although it must be noted that the Yoshida Fire Festival is done and over with in a night and the following day, involving ceremonies to conclude the climbing season.
Sunrise as seen at the summit by all-night climbers has its own dedicated name, goraiko, as in “my goraiko was obscured by clouds with rain blotting out the horizon.” For the fortunate ones, though, words like "awesome" and "bright red" and "a figure" readily roll off their tongues when recalling the alpine sight of the sun peeking over a watery horizon, the shedding of darkness around the self, the wonderment that immortals are hovering nearby, a palpable sense of alignment with gravity again, maybe even new eyes for the descent. It has been likened to something we all know happens regularly and “see” but not see; kind of shinto. It is one of Japan’s three Holy Mountains, together with Mount Haku and Mount Tate, and is on the island of Honshu.
Fuji is an active and relatively young volcano 62 miles south-west of Tokyo. It sits on a “triple junction” radiating techtonically down to the Filipino Plate, west to the Eurasian Plate, and east towards the North American Plate, the Okhotsk. It has erupted 21 times, the last was on October 26, 1707 (an 8.4), and destroyed 72 houses and three buddhist temples. It was powerful enough to blow a scoop out at the tip, becoming an actual new crater on the eastern flank. On February 4, 2013, a metereological ticker tape came through the wires:
The volcano remains calm. However, an increased number of small quakes near and under Mt Fuji are visible on our latest data plot of nearby earthquakes (within 30 km radius). While all of these are very small and the number is certainly not alarming, the volcano remains interesting to watch….
| MT FUJI NOTES:
[1]
Four views of Mt. Fuji.
[2]
The Princess Konohana-sakuya is patiently gazing around wondering what is taking so long for her date Fuchi forever to arrive.
[3]
(top left) The Sea of Trees.
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Four photographs taken from the summit at sunrise – a goraiko; anime of a sun goddess by Jayne Aw.
[5]
Mt Fuji in fact and fiction.
| Fujisan (富士山). Names of the five lakes: Kawaguchi, Motosu, Sai, Shoji, Yamanaka. The four trails are Yoshidaguchi, Subashiri, Gotemba, Fujinomiya. Photos by Brian Chu, Daisaku Ikeda + screen captures.
Buried under sand for hundreds of years, slowly being dug up going on years now, is Qatar’s largest archaeological dig, and a very fine example, preserved, of a merchant town c.1800s. This site is the ruined coastal port famous for its walls and known as Al-Zubarah. Founded by merchants in the late 1700s, this settlement had thrived as a pearl-fishery industry and also as a trading post — it is centrally positioned on the main sea route in the Persian Gulf.
In 1811 there was a successful siege and what remained was abandoned and eventually was covered by sand. The property Al Zubarah Archaeological Site which comprises the 2013 UNESCO World Heritage Site is a fortified town, built w/ traditional Arab technqiues, that faces a harbor, w/ an original sea wall (exists still in part). A second, inner wall came later. The original fort still stands, there is another fort, two more walls, and a canal to the sea.
The largest domestic structure dug up gives a sense of the wealth enjoyed by the town’s richest, and why so coveted by its attackers: Nine inter-connected courtyards inside a building complex, surrounded by a high wall and having corner defense towers. Water fountain features are to be found, incl. ponds where a game played by children, called turtles-&-pearls, takes place underwater. Using a pet turtle, each player attempts to shoot a colored pearl into a row of different-colored pearls, w/ an aim of hitting out another pearl of the same color, all the while not disturbing the rest.