Author: catsynth

Weekend Cat Blogging: Really almost back to normal

Luna is back home again after the China trip and final round of construction at CatSynth HQ. Things are almost back to normal.

We now get plenty of sunlight again.

But we still have much of the paper and plastic material covering the floors, and we are anxiously awaiting the cleaning crew. Cleaning day is supposed to be today actually, but so far no sign of the crew. Not having the cleaning done today would be annoying for a variety of reasons, some of which are not appropriate topics for WCB. For now, we are simply eager to start putting everything back in its place, including our artwork:

But meanwhile Luna continues to demonstrate that she, too, is a work of art, very graceful and elegant.

Sir Tristan Tabbycat Longtail hosts a very manly Weekend Cat Blogging in honor of tomorrow’s big game.

The Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos returns to its roots with Megan and Bad Kitty Cats.

The Carnival of the Cats will be going up this Sunday at Mind of Mog

And of course the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Jackson Pollock’s Birthday

Yesterday (January 28) was the birthday of the artist Jacskon Pollock.

Regular readers know that we at CatSynth are big followers of modern art, and Pollock was one of the most well-known and influential artists from the rich period of American art in the 1950s and 1960s. He is most often associated with the large and diverse movement abstract expressionism, but his work is quite distinctive even with in that context, and his large “drip paintings” are instantly recognizable.

I first encountered Pollock’s work at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and later at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). I did have an opportunity to see a major retrospective at the MoMA in 1999, which brought together not only his large iconic paintings, but his earlier works that mixed abstraction with Native American and folk influences – although these works were “modern” they were more conventional for contemporary art of the time. I managed to find this article from the News Hour (PBS) discussing Pollock and the 1999 retrospective.

Although Pollock is held in high regard by those who follow and care deeply about modern art, he is often treated derisively by people who simply don’t like modern or abstract art. He is perhaps the most associated with the phrase “my five year old could do that.” The idea is laughable. This is unique and skillful art, especially on such a large scale. Such paintings were not seen before the 1940s, and centuries of five-year olds never produced anything like it.

Google has a tradition of honoring major artists on their birthdays with a themed home page, and yesterday they did so for Jackson Pollock:

Thanks to The Madville Times for capturing the above image.

Fun with Highways: Chinese Edition

Well, it has been a while since I have done a “fun with highways” post here at CatSynth, so why not visit some of the highways I traveled while in China?

Shanghai has a series of highways, most of which are designated with the letter “A” followed by a number:

A20, (12) A2 to Donghai Bridge Exit 2km and A1-Pudong Airport overhead signage
[photo by ramonyu]

During my trip, I became quite acquainted with the A11 (Huning Expressway) that connects Shanghai to Suzhou and beyond. However, one cannot really view either city from the A11. Nor can one really see the details of the delta region. It’s just a big highway traversing sprawling suburban development like one can see in many parts of the U.S.

By contrast, the A9 extends into the center of Shanghai as the Yan’an Elevated Road. Shanghai makes a distinction between “expressways” and “elevated roads”, though I don’t really see much difference.

The elevated roads are multi-lane freeways, and the Yan’an cuts right through the downtown of the city, closely paralleling the pedestrian thoroughfare Nanjing Road and People’s Square, before ending at The Bund along the river.

Yan'an Elevated Road Next Exit The Bund 1.5 km and Tunnel overhead signage in Shanghai, China
[photo by ramonyu]

Essentially, it parallels a major part of my walking tour only a few blocks away.

Photographer Liao Yusheng has a fantastic series of architectural and landscape photos along the Yun’an Elevated Road, along with this description:

Yan’an is part of a sprawling elevated highway system in the heart of Shanghai that epitomizes the gung-ho mega public-works projects that are going on all over China at the moment. This is a six-lane highway that is literally jammed into the middle of a densely packed modern city. Hundreds of thousands of families were displaced and hundreds of millions of dollars were spent to make this happen. In forcing this monstrosity onto an already fully-developed (yet still evolving) megalopolis, Shanghai has created a conduit with which to examine the multilayered texture that makes up this city.

I only discovered his work in preparing this article, but it was a great find and reminds me of my own urban and architectural photography. I encourage readers to check it out!

The story does remind me of the highway development in New York City in the 1950s and 1960s, where entire neighborhoods were demolished to build, among others, the Cross Bronx and Bruckner Expressways. Somehow, we often end up back there.

I did also find that China has it’s own highway enthusiasts, including the blogger Wang Jian Shuo.

Weekend Cat Blogging: Cats of China

This weekend, we visit the cats of my recently concluded trip to China.

Suzhou is renowned for its silk. The climate is particularly suited to silkworm cultivation (though one would not think so given the freezing temperatures during this trip), and the city has long been a center for both production and craft. Cats are a common motif on the “two-sided” embroidered silk paintings of Suzhou:

Outside the Suzhou Number One Silk Factory, I encountered this stray cat running through the parking lot.

Cat in Suzhou, near the Number One Silk Factory

In Shanghai, I saw this cat in a clothing shop on Dingxi Road:

Dingxi Road is a commercial street in an outer neighborhood, not far from Zhongshan Park and completely devoid of foreigners. The shops that line the street cater to local residents, and the clothing shop where I encountered the cat was no exception. I think the shop’s owner was surprised and delighted to encounter a foreigner – and more surprisingly, a scruffy “white guy” – who was interested in cats. On the other hand, I think the cat was a bit annoyed by the attention and would prefer to sleep:

Some things are the same everywhere.

We are spanning continents, as Weekend Cat Blogging #190 hosted by Kashim at Paulchens FoodBlog in Vienna.

In the far away state of Florida, Pet and the Bengal Brats host the Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos.

The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted this weekend by the House Panthers (of which Luna is a member).

And of course the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Back home in 旧金山

Most U.S. cities have transliterated names or at least phonetic approximations in Chinese, i.e., New York sounds somewhat like “New York”. Similar phonetic names exist for Chicago, Los Angeles, etc. But San Francisco has a unique name: 旧金山, which translates to “Old Gold Mountain”. This isn’t simply a nickname, but the official Chinese name, as it appears on my visa.

It is good to be back home, though there always more I could have done on such an overseas trip, both personal and work-related. But now it’s time to pick up where things left off here. Lots of work to do, lots personal projects…and hopefully all the construction and drama at CatSynth HQ will wrap up in about a week.

Suzhou Humble Adminstrator’s Garden and Tiger Hill

In addition to its many canals, Suzhou is famous as one of the major centers of classical Chinese gardens. Perhaps the largest and best known is the Humble Administrator’s Garden.

The garden is about 13 acres and about 500 years old (at least one site suggests it is exactly 500 years old, having been built in 1509). The “humble administrator” was a government official Wang Xianchen, who clearly could not have been that humble with a spread like this. It is interesting to note that gardens such as these were almost always private, and the idea of maintaining them is relatively recent.

The elements of the garden include the plants, water, architecture (much of it the more minimalist and geometric Ming Dynasty style) and rocks, such as the lakebed rocks in the photo above. The natural and geometric elements fuse in a way that seems very fresh and modern, and one can see where many twentieth century artists, architects and designers may have gotten their inspiration.

This is the sort of place where I could easily get lost in the visual elements for a long time.

But of course we had to move on. We next visited one of Suzhou’s other well-known landmarks, Tiger Hill. The highest point in the city, Tiger Hill was originally the site of a king’s tomb, and later a Buddhist monastery and temple.

Although this photo makes the pagoda at the top of the hill look perfectly straight, it is actually leaning quite strongly to one side:

Supposedly, it is the many attempts over the years to locate and excavate the tomb in the hill that has led to the weakening of the ground below the tower and its severe tilt. The entrance to the tomb was finally discovered in the 1960s in pool lower on the hillside during a sever drought. However, it has remained unexcavated, lest the tower tilt even further.

The top of the hill supposedly provides a spectacular view of Suzhou, but with the dense winter fog I was not able to see very much.

Close call

One final and rather scary note from my Weekend in Shanghai. On the way to lunch on Sunday, we passed through a large bank of food stalls, apparently part of a regular weekend event. We had just talked a girl at a stall and were leaving when all of a sudden there was a loud explosion. We turned around to see that stall had burst into flames. Even though we were already some distance away, the heat was rather intense. Along with many others, we immediately left the area for safety. I sincerely hope no one was badly hurt, though I am especially worried for the girl who was inside the stand. It also hasn’t escaped me how things would be very different right now had that explosion happened only a minute earlier…