learning to swim from Deng Xiao Ping

swimming deng
cover art for a non-existent book, layout is by J.

I saw some footage of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping swimming in the sea on tv some nights ago.

It seemed that swimming in the sea was among Deng's many interests, which included watching the sports channel and playing billiards. The footage I saw was of Deng's last dip in 1992. At the age of 88, his doctors had disallowed Deng from swimming in the cold waters of Beihaide. But perhaps knowing that it would be his last, he kept up his questions such that in the end the doctors relented. They made him a special safety vest for this last swim.

In a country (Singapore, that is) on an endless push for progress and "relevance", so obsessed with "Change is the Only Constant" that it becomes a self-fulfiling prophecy, growing old can be pretty depressing.

BreastFeedingMOM
Filial piety. "Mommy mommy, I want milk!" " You silly boy, everyone's starving, let grandma drink first!" Photo by J, tiled pic on the wall of a house at the backstreet of Little India

Going by the folk tales on aging that this guy has collated on his website, all cultures throughout history have their stories to warn against mistreating or disregarding the old. I remember this Japanese folk tale I read when I was very young, about some chap who had to piggyback his grandma up the mountain and to leave her there, because it was the practice in his village to abandon their old folks. But he couldn't bear it in the end and hid his grandma at home. I can't quite remember what happened, but grandma saved the village in the end and this practice was abolished.

All I know is that if I get to live till 88, like Deng, I would like to still be able to take a swim.
_______
p/s Jing is planning a photography project on old folks in Singapore, and is calling for ideas and collaboration. If you are a writer, artist or have superb planning/organisation skills, get in touch with him.

Comments

tcn afen said…
AAAAAAAHHH stress.
correction:it's not just a photography project, but a mix of factual articles and artistic exploration in various mediums (including photography)

thanks for the link...interesting.I wonder if there is any asian equivalent? folklore regarding the theme of elderly people/growing old

I'm writing a paper that will highlight the objectives, scope, target audience, etc etc regarding this project by next weekend...hopefully that will be helpful? keep me informed of any ideas on your part...
11:54 pm
ampulets said…
don't stress! these projects should be fun ;>
6:38 pm
Anonymous said…
think you are talking about "Mountain of Abandoned Old People" from Japan. In this eleventh century tale, old people were taken by their children and abandoned on a mountain, as was the custom. Two sons take their father to be abandoned but find themselves lost, unable to return home. They return to their father who directs them home. They are so grateful that they hide him under the floor but look after him well. One day the lord issued a notice that the people had to make a rope from ashes and present it to him. The people tried but failed. The two brothers asked their father for advice. He told them to make a rope from straw and then burn it and present the ashes to the lord in the shape of a rope. The lord was impressed and asked how they possessed such wisdom. They told him about their father. It was proclaimed from that time on that no one should abandoned the old people again.
12:57 am
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

miracle man

Image
I can never quite tell if Ma J is asleep or just pretending The old lady in the bed next to Ma J's is in hospital because of a second stroke. When we were visiting Ma J this afternoon, the old lady's middle-aged son was also there. He was in his usual round-neck tee tucked into a pair of blue jeans with a belt made of buffalo hide. His limbs are slim, but his belly is round. His bald head, too, is round and abnormally large for his small frame. Let's call him Ah Biao , or if you prefer an English name, you can think of him as Bill (after his buffalo hide belt). When J and I walked out of the ward, Ah Biao or Bill followed us. Three of us stood around the counter by the nurses' work area. J and I were quiet, enjoying the break. Then Ah Biao wanted to show us something special. "Eh, I show you something." Ah Biao unzipped his black waist pouch and took out a small yellow cloth pouch. He untied the colourful string that secured the opening of the pouch. He weigh
Read the rest of this post

on a Hou Hsiao Hsien movie set

Image
By the tracks of the Jiji Station, the oldest train station in Taiwan OK, not quite. We did not even manage to go all the way south to Hou Hsiao Hsien's KaoShiung or even Tainan, but we did venture out from Taipei for 3 days to Taichung. But the real takeaway was actually this supposed feature of Hou Hsiao Hsien's films - trains! Trains are about the best thing about traveling. Unlike cars and taxis, trains are a social mode of transport. Train stations allow for reunions and departures, points to assess and affirm relationships. I admit that all this fades away when you are tired or in a great hurry (or both). But seriously, cars (oh, 4-wheelers!) have only brought about pollution and wasteful consumption, traffic jams, asphalt, mindless obsession with speed and countless quarrels in the stressful, enclosed interiors of cars. Friends, take it slow. Take the train. Read a book. Hold your partner's hand. Be there with the people around you. With Taiwan's highspeed rail
Read the rest of this post

fear not history

Image
Fiction on this island has never quite flourished. Perhaps because we've never quite made peace with our histories. But two genres of fiction hold special place in Singapore as a result. Ghost stories - the art of unresolved pasts. And that even stranger fruit of fact-as-fiction/fiction-as-history. Part speculative history. Part documentary fiction. A romance of obscurity. The Lan Fang Chronicles , Choy Ka Fai's work supported by the Arts Council's Arts Creation Fund and commissioned for this year's Arts Festival, is maybe of this latter genre. Choy Ka Fai chances upon the Lan Fang Republic, supposedly the first democratic republic in SEAsia, set up by the Hakka Chinese in West Borneo. His research in West Borneo, China and Holland takes him through archival material, abandoned sites, photocopied photographs, a supposed descendent of Luo Fang Bo (founder of Lan Fang) and accounts of Dutch missionaries and colonists. These materials allow him to re-construct a sk
Read the rest of this post