Liu Village Drumming at Carnival

[Left Behind Families] Liu Village Dancing and Drumming

 BY CNMCARE13 JUNE 2014FIELDWORK, MULTIMEDIA, VIDEO

During his trip to the rural Liu village, Dr Kang Sun noticed how its traditional drumming and folk dancing practices are still active despite the condition of the settlement. He collaborated with the left-behind villagers to organise cultural activities as part of a healthy lifestyle and they were given the invitation to perform their drumming and dancing at the local carnival. Dr Kang documented the whole process in this short clip.

BOOKMARK THE PERMALINK.

Not Only for Memory's Sake

I dug up this piece of history, for a purpose to memorize it and to revitalize it. The following post is originally published at http://blog.nus.edu.sg/cnmcare/2014/05/ as such:

The Spurious Kang: An Ethnographic Account of Culture’s Place in a Chinese Village – A Talk by Dr Kang Sun

 BY CNMCARE26 MAY 2014FIELDWORK, MULTIMEDIA, VIDEO

Recognizing numerous elements of culture in the field can pose challenges to researchers. The concrete, unexpected, practical, and sometimes tedious issues that need to be addressed add rich and dynamic meanings as well as messiness to projects. Frequently, such recognition results from constant negotiations with history and present, first impressions and in-depth knowledge acquired through trial and error. In this presentation, Dr Kang showcases the uncertainties and negotiations of recognition experienced in a village that is both familiar and strange to him, his hometown. As an ethnographer, he argues that recognition of cultural elements is a social process that often defies simple academic categories. Only by accepting such social processes that take place in the real field, can real inquiries of interests be identified and investigated. In his case, field research has been an ongoing process in which he and other participants have discovered the importance of an old local art form and worked together to push for its revival. This presentation is marked by its visual impact.

Follow this link: https://youtu.be/49t6JeoNxFQ

Out of This World

There is this place where mountains are covered with snow at the hottest time in summer and the sea encircles the dwellers' as a womb to an unborn baby. This is a place where you can be wet-kissed by the splashing waves and astounded by subtle layers of colors of twilights. This is a place where the modern city is at its best rate of development, yet can be quickly left out of mind by driving away to the most pristine nature of mountains and sea, grass and trees, inner lands and islands, secluded huts and houses on the islands where the most ubiquitous modern conveniences such as your smartphones cannot reach.

In here, you are as close to modernity as you are to nature. Still, you are as close to the nature of nature, as you are to the nature of its human beings.

Our trip of 19 people, over six days, was transformed directly into sweet memories of precisely guided tours of the city and its surroundings, carefully prepared dinner banquets, well-coordinated change of tasks between helpers, you the owners, and as the capstone to all these, of one night of secluded living in island and one day of riding the motorboat to hunt crabs, and cut seaweeds freshly floating just beneath of surface of the deep blue seawater. And the relaxed conversations, and the caring to crack the crab shells for our ease of consuming the freshness insides, and the pictures that hold our desire of saving another yet another copy. It is out of this very world, yet it feels to be out of the world.

Too good, but still true! Good day, Seattle! Goodbye, Seattle!