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2021
ECHO OF TIME:
The Origin And Meaning Of Family Mantras In Rural China
The Origin And Meaning Of Family Mantras In Rural China
Wenzhou, China
In 2020, the Propaganda Department of Taishun County Party Committee and the Wenzhou-Kean University Education Development Foundation began a collaboration to investigate the cultural heritage of Taishun as a creative source of envisioning the community's future. In response to this opportunity, the Department of Architecture at WKU began a series of research works to gather and examine various historical and cultural artifacts in the area.
This exhibition examines the Chinese practice of a four-letter family mantra plaque, Paibian (牌匾), commonly found in a central courtyard of a traditional rural village house as a literary threshold to investigate the life and culture of the land as it once existed in the past. The collection will critically analyze highly contextualized concepts with distinct origins and meanings to their immediate surrounding time and space.
Zhejiang (浙江) means land where rivers bend, and Taishun’s mountainous plateau is formed to spell out Zhejiang’s very definition. The abundance of water combined with the geographical time has created a landscape in flux, full of twists and turns. Though China may not be as old as its mountains and rivers, its culture mirrors this geographical time, becoming synonymous with nature in its sense of origin and permanence. There is universal reverence for the idea of old:長(chang) and longevity:壽(shou): to be old is close to nature in the Chinese psyche. Natural elements embodying longevity, such as stone, water, and other flora and fauna, have been the constant source of Chinese applied and fine art subjects throughout history.
Paibian is neither applied nor fine art. Instead, it is a literary synthesis of transactions that requires consensus among different groups of people at a given time in the history of the land. The auspicious four-letter words may signify poetry, hidden message, soundbite, obscure references, etc. It is an anthropological receipt of concentrated time and place.
We discovered in our journey that many Paibians are stolen from their sites, and a handful of originals remain today. Newer Paibians do not hold the same value as the older ones. They are seen as a simple graphic display of calligraphic style and fail to attain any historical layer of meaning behind them, even if they recite the same famous letters from the past.
Findings from the fieldwork reveal that society once functioned in a highly complex structure and hierarchy that balanced delicate lines of exchange between education, ethics, politics, class, and kinship, which generated its history and culture. Today, many of these experiences are becoming fragmented and isolated while increased technology and prosperity constantly deliver more information at little cost of emotional and intellectual accountability.
This exhibition examines the Chinese practice of a four-letter family mantra plaque, Paibian (牌匾), commonly found in a central courtyard of a traditional rural village house as a literary threshold to investigate the life and culture of the land as it once existed in the past. The collection will critically analyze highly contextualized concepts with distinct origins and meanings to their immediate surrounding time and space.
Zhejiang (浙江) means land where rivers bend, and Taishun’s mountainous plateau is formed to spell out Zhejiang’s very definition. The abundance of water combined with the geographical time has created a landscape in flux, full of twists and turns. Though China may not be as old as its mountains and rivers, its culture mirrors this geographical time, becoming synonymous with nature in its sense of origin and permanence. There is universal reverence for the idea of old:長(chang) and longevity:壽(shou): to be old is close to nature in the Chinese psyche. Natural elements embodying longevity, such as stone, water, and other flora and fauna, have been the constant source of Chinese applied and fine art subjects throughout history.
Paibian is neither applied nor fine art. Instead, it is a literary synthesis of transactions that requires consensus among different groups of people at a given time in the history of the land. The auspicious four-letter words may signify poetry, hidden message, soundbite, obscure references, etc. It is an anthropological receipt of concentrated time and place.
We discovered in our journey that many Paibians are stolen from their sites, and a handful of originals remain today. Newer Paibians do not hold the same value as the older ones. They are seen as a simple graphic display of calligraphic style and fail to attain any historical layer of meaning behind them, even if they recite the same famous letters from the past.
Findings from the fieldwork reveal that society once functioned in a highly complex structure and hierarchy that balanced delicate lines of exchange between education, ethics, politics, class, and kinship, which generated its history and culture. Today, many of these experiences are becoming fragmented and isolated while increased technology and prosperity constantly deliver more information at little cost of emotional and intellectual accountability.
We cannot return and reproduce the past today as we all live in the present. However, if we think about imagining our future differently, we can question how we construct a relational experience that matters today.
