Posted in Art, Asian culture, Travel on 02/25/2010 03:57 pm by admin
This dragon recently flew over to frigid northeastern China to visit the Harbin Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival. Didn’t enjoy the chilly Siberian winds but the amazing art made it well worth the journey! (Even a cold-blooded creature like me gets cold when icicles start forming on my scales!)
This festival, one of the world’s four largest ice and snow festivals, includes humongous ice buildings built from the frozen waters of the Songhua River, gigantic snow sculptures, and ice slides. (Kind of an icy version of Burning Man at night!)
I loved the multi-colored night lights that illuminated the sculptures from both inside and outside. Really cool to see the brilliant and dazzling lights against the dark night sky. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Art, Asian culture, Cultural diversity, History, Travel on 02/12/2010 06:50 pm by admin
On a rainy day in San Diego, this dragon blew into the Mingei International Museum in Balboa Park on free museum day. (There was actually a tornado watch going on outside! I love to fly in a storm but tornados really tear up my wings!)
Inside I found an amazing exhibit called Sonabai, Another Way of Seeing. For a decade and a half, Sonabai Rajawar only contact was with her husband and child! In response to this isolation, she created an entirely new artistic expression of color, light, and fun.
How amazing that she had no instruction or guidance, but was able to create such joyous art! Years later, quite by chance, the Indian art world discovered her and later gave her India’s highest honor, the prestigious President’s Award.
Sonabai’s story clearly expresses the capacity of human beings (including dragons) everywhere to meet their challenges head on and to draw from within themselves the strength and insight to change their lives. Sonabai found ways to transform her oppression into expressions of courage, beauty, and joy in living. What an inspiration!
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Posted in Asian culture, News on 01/15/2010 10:53 am by admin
This dragon applauds the stand Google is taking over censorship and hacking in China. This is what Google said in their recent blog (yeah to the power of blogging)!
“We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all,” the world’s leading search engine posted on its official blog yesterday. “We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”
This dragon is especially shocked by the possibility that the Chinese government might have been hacked into Google to monitor the email accounts of human-rights activists.
What would it truly be telling the world if the Chinese government resists Google’s demands for an impartial search engine, or if the implied accusations against the government that it hacked into Google are true?
Even the White House on Thursday backed Google’s decision to no longer submit to China’s Internet censorship:
“We will be issuing a formal demarche to the Chinese government in Beijing on this issue in the coming days, probably early this week. It will express our concern for this incident and request information from China as to an explanation of how it happened and what they plan to do about it,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters.
And from China (not very meaningful in my opinion):
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said Thursday at a regular press conference that “China welcomes international Internet companies to conduct business within the country according to law.”
Google is in a tough place. It knows that bad things are happening to its service in China (such as hacking and censorship), and it thinks it may have to pull out of China. But is that the right thing to do? What do you think?
Posted in Asian culture, Dragons on 01/05/2010 06:43 pm by admin
This dragon managed to find an IMAX theater big enough to squeeze into to see the movie Avatar. (Finding dragon-sized glasses was a bit more challenging though!)
Had heard there were awesome dragons in the movie and boy, were they the coolest. Without them the battle between the native N’avi and the mean old imperialist, materalistic “civilized” people would have been lost!
Reminded me of how the early Americans treated the American Indians and the current treatment of Tibetans by the Chinese.
Also, the spiritual beliefs of the N’avi somewhat echoed some of the tenets in Taoism and Buddhism.
- Taoism’s central principle is that all life, all manifestation, is part of an inseparable whole, an interconnected organic unity which arises from a deep, mysterious, and essentially unexplainable source which is the Tao itself.
- Buddhist teacher Dharma Daishi shared Buddhism through incredibly rigorous physical lessons that taught people the necessary discipline required for the true Hindu meditative journey to Moksha, or release from earthly bondage, otherwise known as Nirvana.
Buddhism also believes the a self is not subject to birth and death.
What a great reminder to us all that we are all part of the same energy (dragons and people alike!) and presented in such an entertaining way!
And I really loved the “I see you” used by the N’avi, very much like the “Namaste” said after a yoga class! (Namaste roughly translates to “I bow to you” or more poetically “The light within me honors the light within you” or “I bow to the divine in you.”
But the coolest thing of all is still how the big dragon saved the day!
What was your favorite part of this movie?
Posted in Asian beliefs, Asian culture on 12/23/2009 05:53 pm by admin
This dragon believes in the power of eights! Ever notice how many Asian restaurants have many 8s in their phone number? That’s because 8s are considered to be lucky to Asians.
As mentioned in an earlier blog about feng shui and the stock market, this dragon has been playing the stock market and doing really well! One of my continued strategies for success has been to use the number 8 in almost all of my stock trades. (For example, I’d put in a buy or sell for a stock at $12.88 or buy 288 shares. See the example below.)
So far by using this strategy I’ve doubled my cow purchasing power within the last year!
Now you know why there’s Eight Treasure Rice Pudding for the Chinese New Year, eight sides in the Ba Gua (the heart of Feng Shui), and eight arms in Patanaji Ashtanga yoga!
Try the power of eight for yourself today and send me a comment on how’s that’s worked for you!
Posted in Asian culture, History on 12/02/2009 01:44 pm by admin
Way cool! This dragon recently flew over to see the new exhibit “Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China’s First Emperor” at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, DC. How rad is it to come face to face with Emperor Qin Shihuang’s life-sized eternal army. (I last saw these when my pal the emperor was just getting started on this massive project.)
I met the dear emperor in my younger days (around 250 B.C.), as he was starting to plan for his afterlife.
You see death was perceived as a prolongation of life, and an emperor’s mausoleum was his afterlife palace, mirroring the magnificence of his palatial life on earth. As an old Chinese saying instructs, “treat death as life.”
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Posted in Feng Shui, Food, Specials, Travel on 11/24/2009 07:38 pm by admin
After placing a horse in my travel position, this dragon was blessed with a trip to Cancun. Though I took my Blackberry phone with the red paper behind it and never turned it on, the red paper and phone still performed its magic! (See my earlier article on the wonders of red paper behind your business phone.)
With Blackberry in claw, I started out in a rustic, mosquito-ridden hotel room on the island of Isla Mujeres and soon manifested a major “free” upgrade by moving to Sun Palace, an all-inclusive resort on the hotel zone.
I ended up in a suite big enough for this dragon, including a huge in-room jacuzzi, ocean view, and awesome fire show on the beach! I got massaged, “facialed,” seaweed wrapped, and manicured as part of the package deal! (My scales have never felt or looked better!)
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Posted in Asian culture, Food on 11/02/2009 10:30 am by admin
This dragon went trick-or-treating around Asia the other day since eating cow was getting boring. Got to try some very odd foods. Still not sure if those were tricks or treats, as I’ve had bad belching and gas ever since! (Fried a pasture of bushes around me so got to get some anti-acid soon!)
In the Philippines, I’d heard of this delicacy called balut. After seeing these partially developed chicken embryos served out directly out of their eggs, I changed my mind about being hungry. They looked a little too much like baby dragons to me. Though I’m carnivorous, I’m not cannibalistic! (And I gave up eating road kill a while back after moving to America. Balut fans eat balut like we eat chicken nuggets! Bleck!)
Moving on, I was ravenous by the time I landed in Thailand. While wandering the streets, I discovered bat stew. Didn’t care so much for it since it took me two days to get the bones unstuck from my teeth. Also, after eating 20 bowls, I was still hungry!
So I hopped over to Japan, where I decided I needed some caffeine to give me some much-needed pep. I came upon some very tasty coffee. After gulping down 10 gallons of Kopi Luwak, I discovered the secret ingredient: weasel poop! It’s made from coffee berries eaten, partially digested, and then pooped out by cute Asian weasels—and priced at $120 per pound! (After getting over the grossness factor, I thought I might want to buy some more of this coffee. I was happy to find it on Amazon
!)
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Posted in Art, Politics on 10/27/2009 09:14 pm by admin
This dragon has often envied the ability of my distant chameleon cousins to camouflage themselves. (Check out this amazing cousin in camo… If I’m extra good in this life, perhaps I’ll come back with that camo skill in my next life. This could a really useful skill for a big dragon!)
Speaking of camouflage, while surfing the net today I discovered an amazing Chinese Da Vinci named Liu Bolin. Some call him the “Invisible Man” and for a really good reason! (Yes, dragons do surf the net, despite our difficulties in using a mouse.)
This very talented dude’s photos have people painted to appear to be invisible or disappearing. It’s his way of showing how he feels Chinese citizens are being treated by the Chinese government.
“It is not so much the body that is concealed in the environment,” says the Invisible Man, “as the surrounding world that swallows up human beings, without giving them any option.” What a cool and a unique way to make a political statement!
See if you can find the invisible people in following pictures! Kudos to the artist and the patient people in these pictures!
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Posted in Asian culture, Cultural diversity, Dragons on 10/27/2009 08:34 pm by admin
This dragon thinks it’s really cool how Asian culture has co-mingled so much into every day mainstream life in America, the current lair of the dragon, where people love us dragons…
Today in America, many of us practice yoga and meditation for stress management. (In fact, most fitness centers now carry yoga classes.) Martial arts and Tai Chi have also become popular activities for many.
In the area of alternative medicine, more and more of us are turning to Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda and Oriental therapies for health and well-being, and most people have heard of Deepak Chopra, the “poet-prophet of alternative medicine.” (This dragon turns to acupuncture when its scales get too scaly or its flames start to sputter, especially since many health insurance companies now cover acupuncture!)
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