May Day was yl a massive single concentration was organized around Beijing in the Olympic Park. There, near the Water Cube, thousands of people lined up to enter the Bird's Nest would host the biggest concert of Mando-pop (pop in Mandarin) of recent times. Amid all the commotion, with the strokes of his calligraphy ephemeral water, and again insisted on writing the date of the day: a great contrast, that stolid sexagenarian meantime come and go.
called me attention to its characters. It was strange indeed! I guess it seemed strange that a foreigner was motivated by his handwriting. He approached me, perhaps we approach them. "Cuban," he said. To my surprise I spoke not of "Luis" yes ", the first word associated with Cuba for young Chinese: the nickname Mireya Luis, Cuban volleyball player, celebrated after their team wins against Lang Ping led China. On the contrary, I said I spoke English. Surprised, I said "Hi", I replied with "Ni Hao" and called me "old friend."
De Cuba knew more than the average Chinese. In a great monologue mentioned words that I recognized: Ca-si-tu-luo (referring to Fidel Castro), Gue-Ba-La (Che Guevara). He spoke of the snuff of the island and even more from friends of his father Cantonese were back in the early nineteenth century.
"I write in traditional Chinese, simplified never learned. I do not like "and said he could not read pinyin, the romanization of Chinese characters used today in education and thus saves us foreigners trying to deal with the Mandarin.
His father was a teacher of those times in the last throes of the Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China. Since the late 1910's had its own academy. The teacher taught part of that aristocracy associated with the declining empire. It was his father and teacher. "I owe him this script."
And indeed, they were perfect their strokes, "online in mind and soul," as the Chinese say to express the fullness and beauty leaving his big brush with water. During the Cultural Revolution and that Great Leap Forward, convened by Chairman Mao, and barely mentioned in contemporary times, he worked in a munitions factory where iron melted in vivo part of household goods, and scrap lumber provided by the people "to make weapons and defend the country against possible aggression in the future."
Desde los años 50, el xiheyuan (casa china tradicional de patio cuadrado central), la vivienda heredada de su familia fue plagada, poco a poco, de desconocidos. No supe cómo y tampoco pregunté. Hace cinco años, su casa, otrora academia del padre, fue demolida para ceder espacio a las bases de un moderno edificio. Me apenó preguntarle dónde vivía. Hubo vacíos en su narración; periodos de su vida que quiso saltar. No conoce internet. Apenas lee el periódico, impreso en caracteres simplificados. Ni siquiera mencionó a la televisión; pero tiene un radio a través del cual escucha those interminable monologues, in which a speaker (or actor) narrates, is split into dissimilar characters and tells a story without music or sound effects: the only form of "dramatized" the radio in China. For him, the world has been stopped.
not know Inti Illimani, but even today, despite the omissions, gaps and omissions claims that " The people united will never be defeated ."
at a price that I otherwise would have seemed too high, I bought one of the fans with his drawings in ink. "The ink lasts and the water is ephemeral, "he said. I replied that with so much dust in the atmosphere of the spring, the water would calligraphy on the pavement for long. It was then, when he wrote my name and for the first time I saw it written in traditional characters.
Upon leaving, he turned to shake hands with all the symbology and the polysemy of language, I said, again in secret: "Cuba is a flower in the garden of America ".
