Week 12 and 13 Panel Discussion: Arts

This two week's discussion is about Arts. Arts in like many forms like singing, dancing, playing instruments, and many many more. But here today I will talk about the instruments of the east Asia and the South Asia.

As I've always said that different places have different types of things that they are proficient in. But for music, for instrument playing, they have their pros at both of the civilization. Just that the pros in the field of instruments are different. There are so many types of instruments throughout the world and we can't really like identify how many if we don't do a specific research. China alone have more than 20 instruments that could be played. For example, we have Er Hu （二胡）, PiPa (琵琶）, and more and forth. Er Hu is somehow similar to Violin and the PiPa is somehow similar to the Guitar.

For Indian, I can't tell for sure. But they also have a variety of instruments that they play. So I have to do my research on that. So, what are we gonna do with all these things? We use them for performance of course. For Chinese, our traditional instruments are basically used as talents. Many of us do not play those Chinese Traditional Instrument anymore. It is because the way we write on the music scores are totally different from the west.

Speaking of West. Something pops out in my mind. Why does all these instruments not in the Western Countries? When we go to the western, we can hear the more frequent used instruments. We know that the European Country did came to Asia and started taking over places like China and India. But when they were there, they took a lot of the paintings and porcelains. But why did they not take the instruments? Why did they not learn for the music?

Do they think that Chinese Music is not one of the treasures? Somehow when I think of it, I do feel quite lucky that they did not take it. It they do, now, there are even lesser people that will be playing on the instruments. Just a fact.

So here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkjRrM5k_Co. This is a fusion of East Asian and the Western music instruments. Have a look.

So because this topic is quite short, I will be adding on some of my own topics that I've read for the panel discussion. I've forgotten to say. This two week's discussion were being done in a Panel Discussion way. In a group of three to four members, we are to discuss on the readings that we were given and discuss. Not present but discuss. My topic is on GuoHua which means National Paintings.

China had been such a wealthy country for century. It's full of treasures, in the sense of the jewellery, paintings, arts, porcelains, and many more. Just that paintings are far more easier to be taken. So when the europeans went to China, they took mostly gold and paintings. Half of them were taken, half of them were burnt when the Chinese tried to defend their palace, some were missing and some, I don't even wanna talk about it.

People in the Republic of China are looking more heavily towards this paintings. When time passes, the people had to adapt to the system. A lot of the painters changes their way of drawing the painting from using floral and animals to draw on love and filial piety and yeah some other stuff to what they draw today, of politics, economics, well mostly on the current matters that they faced.

So it is very hard to find someone that is proficient in drawing using Calligraphy brushes and ink. One painting nowadays using calligraphy brush from a painter can cost up to thousands but if you have the traditional paintings from the Ching or Ming Dynasty, you could be a millionaire in the matter of minutes.

So here, I am going to end my topic. I'm gonna do a little conclusion on the subject.

Throughout the semester, I've learn so many things that I have not had ever dreamt of studying. I had actually no interest in the subject. When I saw that I have to choose between Psychology and this, I had a brief idea of taking on psychology and not this. But in the end, I chose this. I explored so many things. Things that were not in my comfort zone. I've learn to scan texts and not read the whole passage form head to toe. It had been a wild journey for me in my university life so far but it had been a great experience.

I must thank my lecturer, Dr. Clarissa for guiding us throughout the semester. Without her guidance, I think I will die doing this course. Initially from the previous lecturer, this course was to be a lot of memorizing and theories but Dr Clarissa changed it. She changed it to be more to reading and understanding of the texts. So much thanks for it.

It was fun being able to write all my thoughts and I am so proud of myself to see how I've grown as a student. In the way of thinking and everything. I've learn so so much from this whole course. So I think this is getting faker. So I'm going to stop here.

Lastly, I really thank Dr. Clarissa for everything. For more information on Dr. Clarissa, Please do visit her blog. https://scandalousthoughts.wordpress.com/

This is it for Eastern Civilization Forum Posting.
I hereby announce that I've finally ended in writing the blog posting.

Cheerios,
YiXin

P/S: If you still have question and comments, you are always welcome to post something or comment on something. XD