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Shanghai Expo 2010 - Pavilions

Snail haircut

A person familiar with Buddhist iconography can perfectly distinguish which Buddha or Bodhisattva is portrayed. Studying the facial characteristics or even the robes and jewelry can be enough to place a Buddha statue in place and period.

People don't need such an extensive knowledge to recognise a Buddhist statue. The serene expression of South-East Asian Buddhas, the Chinese Happy Buddha's belly, the fierce looks of Tibetan guardian gods, ...

According to the Buddha legend, upon his birth 32 marks and 80 lesser marks of a great man were discovered. There also exists a list of 108 characteristics. Some of these features, being noted in one of these list, are visible and different Buddha figures. Others like a fragrant smell and a golden radiant body are difficult to represent.

Buddha would have had : long and slender fingers and toes (sometimes all fingers and toes have the same length), webbed toes and fingers, a small knob on his forehead symbolizing knowledge, long ears for long life, a flame/halo of enlightenment, ...

Not all of these characteristics are literally from the 32 marks revealed after his birth. During the centuries Buddha images have been depicted in different ways but with a certain consistency.

For 300 years after Buddha's death there were no images made of him. In Buddhism no god is venerated, Buddhism is a way of living a philosophy. This thinking changed and as humans always tend to be in need of more practical ways for beliefs and religions, images of Buddha were being created. The first statues made of Buddha have a clear Greek influence.

Alexander The Great had a Great Empire in the 3 Century BC. He fought his Persian wars and even had some campaigns in the Indian subcontinent. Now India is of course the home of Buddhism and when the first Buddha statues were sculpted, the Hellenistic influence was clearly visible. These prime Buddhist images (Gandhara period) had strong torsos, almost Greek style clothes, moustaches and Curly Greek hair.

In Buddhist tradition the hairstyle of the Buddha is called referred to as the snail or shell hairstyle. In Sri Lanka the Buddhist tradition tells a story where Buddha was in meditation. In order to protect the Buddha from sun strokes and rain a few hundred snails crawled up on top the his head and protected him. In the end the snails died and Buddha kept his hairstyle like this, respecting the rescuing animals.

Of course this is just a story and according to several scientists, this type of hair style was a development out of the Greek hair style:

1) Apollo Belvedere, 350 BC

2) Buddha (Gandhara period), 1st Century BC

3) Leshan Buddha , 8Th Century AD

Green hat

Chinese is a difficult language to master. It has it's own writing in characters, almost no grammar and short pronunciations according to tones. These tones are for foreigners probably the most difficult part.

Chinese always make jokes about how "long noses" foreigners make mistakes concerning the right tone.

In Mandarin there are 4 tones and in Cantonese even up to 8 so if you don't have a musical ear it's kind of difficult to grasp.

A few years ago I made a mistake that I still remember very clearly.I was looking for an Internet bar in Beijing. And asked a lady in the street, as I asked it she frowned on me, but understood my mistake and told me where I could find an Internet shop.

Later I asked a friend of mine what mistake I made.

In Chinese Internet bar/shop is pronounced "Wang ba" 网吧 wǎng​ba, pronounced in a bit of a singing tone going up and down.

Now there is a word very similar this this: "Wang ba" 王八 wáng​bā , which is pronounced with a slightly different tone. The meaning is different as well. In Chinese it means tortoise, but it has a very negative connotation to it. The tortoise can refer to a man whose wife is cheating in him. But he is as slow as a tortoise and doesn't realise it.

So luckily I asked a women where I could find a "Wang ba" and not a man. Asking a man could have got me into problems if he would have taken it the wrong way, because this is one of the worst insults in China.

Just as a tortoise refers to a man whose spouse is cheating on him. There is also an item referring to this. A green hat! You will never find any green coloured hats in China, because of this bad reference. If you are visiting a Chinese friend, please don't offer him a green, it would be a great insult to him.

Cultural differences are just so interesting, aren't they!

Paint it white!

This year was a disastrous summer for most Asian countries. As it becomes a yearly habit, heavy rains translate in killer floods and landslides. More than 2000 people were killed in Pakistan and millions of people were left homeless after the 2010 floods. China suffered from floods ans landslides.
I was in China during August 2010 and it was daily news to read that there had been a deadly landslide somewhere in the PRC. End of July Chengdu International airport had to be closed because of heavy rains. Landslides in Yunnan and Sichuan killed several people. But it wasn't until 8 August when about 1500 were killed at night because of a deadly landslide.
It seems that every year during the rainy season China and other Asian countries get hit harder and harder.
Of course the reason is clear to most of us. We have a lot of environmental problems. Watching the news or reading any newspaper/magazine will get you quite depressed on this topic. I guess the people's opinion towards environmentalism has dramatically changed over the last decade. We are aware of our problems and this generation has to face this tremendous task.

By now we should all know that global warming and pollution are ruining our planets. Overpopulation is probably according to me the biggest issue.
The disasters during the monsoon season can be explained. Farmers destroyed forest to cultivate crops and the water-absoring quality of the soil, deprived of trees, diminishes. Mountainsides or hill slopes are very sensible to this. Building cities on marshes and swaps, or transforming these natural wetlands into farmer's land will again reduce the water containing capacities of the earth. So basically the water has no place to escape and can not get in the ground.

An article form Newsweek magazine (7 June) has an interesting article concerning the Himalayas. Three major parts of our planet are covered with eternal snow. The Artic, Antarctic and the Himalayas.
The eternal snow from the Himalayas and its lower parts provides the primary rivers of Asia; Yellow, Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, Irrawaddy, Brahmaputra, Ganges, Indus, Amu Darya and Tarim.
The temperature in this vast Mountain range has risen to 0,74 degrees C over the last century, next century it will rise, according to scientists, with another 5 to 6 degrees C.
The rise of temperature is the main reason why more of the eternal snow has evaporated and poundered down on Asia during monsoon season.
Temperature changes have occurred thanks to global warming but also thanks to the main power resource of India and China: burning of wood and coal. 80% of China's emerging economy is powered by coal. Even the brand new solar panels fabricated in China and sold to the rest of the world are produces by factories using coal as their power source. Heating and cooking systems in rural China are composed of coal fires.
The dust and soot particles generated by these stoves and the combination with of combustion of diesel and fuel (China will have 200 million cars by 2020) turns the Himalayas into a heat absorbing area. Dark particles of dust and coal attract more heat and the more snow melt the worse it gets. When the white snow melt ans evaporates, more rain will be formed. But the surface of the Himalayas will be robbed of its white snow and the rock surface, which has a black rock colour, will protrude. Absorbing even more heat.

Mr Eduardo Gold of Peru won the 2009 "100 ideas to save the planet" competition. His idea was simple, but very pragmatic. With the $200.000 he won he is currently painting the Peruvian Andes white! His idea is that if the Andes rock peaks are painted white, the will reflect sun and heat and the Andes tops would become cold again and produce snow again.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10333304

Quite brilliant! I would even go an absurd step further. Paint your house white and especially the roofs. Throw away your black clothes and dress in white, paint the roads white, ... THINK WHITE, PAINT IT WHITE! Keep our planet COOL.

For anyone interested in environmentalism a must read book:
"Collapse" By Jared Diamond