Cultural Awareness

Our group had a distinctive dinner at orient department store floor-1 in XINJIEKOU, on the 18th of the December in 2008 at 19:00pm. Exactly some Grade 12 students accompanied us to go there. Before we went there, we expostulated with one another about where we could go, because the American food is so common, Japanese food is not cater to our taste, as Korean food, we have eaten it for many times, for French food, that is also a bit disgusting, because we don’t like to eat goose’s lung. At last, all the things culminate to great alacrity. We decided to go to helvetic restaurant; we were attracted by its specific pizza, scented butter rice, and some westerners’ flavor------ beef.

When we arrived there, in my first sight, I felt that was a special place. The restaurant is designed in occidental style. The treating room is not very commodious, but it is quite “resplendent”. On the wall, it had some paintings, perhaps in westerners’ mind having dinner is not only for live, but also a kind of relishing. Besides the painting there are some different kinds of knives, some belonged to ancient butchers, whose job was to kill the poultries, some looked obvious like the swords which were used for battle, except the swords, there were also some medals hand on the wall. I didn’t know what did they represent but at least I felt Switzerland had a special history.

As the food, there were many kinds of drinking, desserts, staples, like the pizza, shrimp hot pot, cheese soup, butter rice, mushroom pies, beef which had different raw level etc. for me I don’t like the hot taste, so I ordered a plate of butter rice, half plate of the pizza, and shared the mushroom soup with Grade 12 student. Just I taste it, in the twinkling of an eye, I felt the taste was a bit intangible, although food was made of rice, inevitably that was different from the common rice which we ate every day, personally I felt the rice was more scented, enticing, and that kind of taste echo in your mind for a while, as the butter, that was more dense than Chinese. You can hand it for a while, if you raised it. As the pizza, it looked cuter, some shrimps were embroidered on the pizza, it taste was mixed, that was a bit salty. As the mushroom soup, that was the most popular food I that restaurant, as far as l know its ingredients were made of: mushroom, butter, cheese, sugar, salt, potato, vegetable seasoning, mixed sauce etc. in my mind that was a hybrid between eastern food and the western food, and in this restaurant all the food seemed had inordinate oil, that could make people feel dizzy. As the beef, that could be the most disgusted food, because when you were eating, the blood could just flowing from the meat, furthermore that looked so bloody… at least I don’t like this kind of taste…

Unfortunately, at that time there were not many foreigners at the restaurant, there were just some Chinese customers at there, but they were very gentle, during the eating, I found most of them use right hand to hold the fork, and left hand hold the knife. Altogether the atmosphere was not enthusiastic, instead it was so tepid, and nothing special seemed happen. The service was good, but not good enough to let you feel satisfied. Although that is not what you want to see, in fact I still want to recommend you to go there and have a try, the taste is so memorable.

Arts and Design

ARTIST: WU WEI SHAN.
TITLE: “MOTHER AND SON”
DATE: 2001


THE title of this artwork is christened “MOTHER AND THE SON”, the artist is WU WEI SHAN, that was made in 2001, when I first saw it, I didn’t recognized it, because the materials which the artist used were too simple, he seemed only to use gypsum, wood and some pigment to make it, the surface of the work didn’t exude many details, but the artist used an astute way, that artwork told us, a mother and her young son, she used her arm to lift the son, one of her hand touched son’s neck, the other held his waist, and her son seemed to ride on her shoulder , and burrows his face into his mother’s , from the work, mother used her shoulder to hold her son’s whole weight. This is not colorful, and doesn’t have many shapes, lines, but it has an “elaborate” structure and the contour, from the different direction, you could see the silhouette from it, the subject of this work are the mother and her son, if you saw it from a long distance, you could see a contour, which a mother who used her shoulder to support her son.
The artwork makes me feel a sense of nostalgia about my infancy, when I saw it, it made me recall my childhood, and the sense of the past things seemed blurring before my eyes. I remember when I was in Grade one, when I first went to school, I rode on my father‘s shoulder, he tried to encourage me be braver, be more masculine, because before I went to school I often stayed at home, and seldom met strangers, so that day, I remembered I cried seriously, I cried for going to school, I was afraid of anything, my noise seemed to make us more conspicuous, in other people’s minds, they saw a father used his shoulder to carry his son, who was crying. Now when I mentioned it, I feel that is so “ridiculous” and nostalgic.
Personally, I think this art work represent people’s domestic things, it doesn’t relate to other events in the world, but it has the relation to the classes, this work just represents the people who live in middle class, and the lower class, because in my mind, as a family, the more wealth it is, the less harmony will people get. If a father was extremely rich, he nearly gets all the things in his life, but my subconscious mind tell me, he will not use his shoulder to carry sons, because of the etiquette, gentle, and the genteel manner, he will not do it, instead if a father didn’t have enough money to support his family, I feel he gets one important thing-----family harmony, his solicitude for his son could be inconceivable, he could die for his children, let alone carry them!
So in my opinion, the main intention which the artist wants to tell us is the harmony between family members, but also alludes to the hard working nature of the lower class.

I like this art work, because in my mind, the artwork use the most mediocre materials to make the greatest symbol, the artist told us the natural relation between the family member-------harmony, and the hard working for our parents, in this artwork, the artist seemed to empathize the mother’s shoulder and the arm, these parts of body were given more lines, expression, shapes than other part, the artist also use the light brown to paint these parts, so I feel professor WU wants to let us know how hard the mother is, when she wants to rise up her son, from the arm.

Different people must have their own aesthetic, some of them could have a similar opinion as me, some could not think so, because they could think, the artwork is so rough, it lacks details, the materials are so low standard, it has thousands of howlers in it, it totally doesn’t have poetic felling…However as me, I have my own opinion, altogether, I like this kind of recondite work.