Saturday, October 20, 2007

WaterGate in Suzhou

This is the real WaterGate in Suzhou – the Pan Gate (盤門) – the waterway entrance into the old Suzhou City. Most of Suzhou’s city walls have been torn down. But a few sections have been preserved, including this one at the south-west corner of the city. Suzhou is truly a beautiful city. The rectangular old city is still surrounded by moats, and criss-crossed by many waterways.

Near the Pan Gate, this man was making beautiful calligraphy on the ground, in water. Appreciate the poise, the control, the stamina. It is an uniquely Chinese art form. Within minutes, the water dried, and he overwrote on it. The art is both ephemeral and eternal.

The ponds were teaming with golden carp. They look well-fed. Yet they could not resist fighting for the scraps, with their big mouths wide open. We humans find them amusing. Yet we hunger in the same manner after fame, fortune and other fancies. I wonder if God finds us similarly amusing.




2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My daughters also find it amusing to feed the golden carp as it satisfies them to manipulate the fishes. They'd simple swim after the food. It's fun for my girls that they can play God for a while and decide which fish gets the meat. But I find it sometimes quite ugly to see the revelation of greediness and the cruel fact of striving for survival. The way that they open their mouthes so widely, wider than my expectation, the way that they squeeze and the way that they even jump for food terrifies me.

StephenC said...

Yeah. It is good they don't have teeth and claws. Otherwise it can be ugly.