Yin Yu Tang House

 Hi everyone. Happy Wednesday. Fair warning-my post is a little bit long today.

I still have a few photos  from my visit 2 weeks ago to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts that are worth sharing. Today I thought I would take you through an actual Chinese house that is at this museum.

The Yin Yu Tang House is from the southeastern part of China in the  Huizhou region. I had to look that up on a map. It's the darker orange part.

 This house was built by a prosperous merchant by the name of Huang and was where  his family lived for over 200 years. It was taken apart and brought to Salem in 1982 where it was reassembled. 

If you leave the museum and walk around the back of it, you see this view of the house. One thing that's interesting to notice is that there  are no windows.

To visit the house, you have to be inside the museum. When you go into the house you first enter this courtyard area. As I just mentioned, this house does not have windows, and the only natural light coming in is from above this courtyard. If you look at the top of the photo you can see some glass panels. These were added by the museum to protect the structure from rain and snow, but in China that part of the building would have been open to the environment. It would be  how light would enter the building.

The rooms are on both the left and right sides of this courtyard with stairs at either end. There are also 2 water sources here, both for home's occupants to use and  as a protection in case of fire.

The person who looks like they are on their phone in the forefront of my photo is actually listening to the device they lend you to self-tour the house.

Many of the rooms off of the courtyard were bedrooms. Next is a photo of one bedroom on the first floor. This huge bed took up much of the room.  It was a place of honor to have your bedroom on this level.

There was also a little storage alcove on the first floor too. I liked this bicycle and all the texture on the walls and floor.

 This next photo is the kitchen. It's not anything  I'd think of as a kitchen, maybe more of a dining room. The actual cooking would have taken place out in the open courtyard because this family did not own modern stoves. I'm actually curious how they would have cooked. I am sure it would have  been in a wok, but did they cook over a fire? I know during the cultural revolution Mao outlawed cooking at home, so perhaps that  is why there was no sign of a place to cook.

This house also had no heat. I never photographed them, but there were lots of small handheld pans where hot coals would be added. You could carry that heat around with you. I'm not familiar with the environment in this part of China, so maybe it was not a particulary cold area.

I showed you the next 2 photos previously, and I thought I'd include them again. Everyone was required to hang a picture of Mao during the cultural revolution. That's creepy and sad if you ask me, but it is history.

Here's another bed and then just a wall with some interesting texture.

And below is a high chair. This was in a storage room. The box behind this high chair was actually a coffin. I'm not sure whose it was or why it was there, but perhaps it was ready for when the family elder passed.

The family and this house were around during the time of Chairman Mao and his cultural revolution. Here's another photo they were required to hang. 

Mao looks so friendly, but if you're familiar with what he did during the Cultural Revolution, it was not a very friendly time.

This next photo is up on the second floor, looking across the courtyard.

And then looking down into the courtyard.

This is the walkway along one side of the second floor. The walkway went around the whole of the second floor. The rooms in this photo were to the left of this walkway, and the courtyard is on the right.

These stairs look a little bit steep to me. 

Looking down into the courtyard you can see the 2 water/well features.

Here's a few more "random" views from inside the rooms.

This next bedroom was wallpapered, and  it was a wedding gift when the eldest son married. 

It's interesting to think about the number of people who lived in this house at various times. Often there were 3 or even 4 generations living here. However the men, who were merchants, were gone for long periods of time to their offices down along the coast, probably near or in Hong Kong.

These next photos are from an upstairs storage area, but I liked them so I'll share.

And finally, here is one of the water features. They would have contained large goldfish (koi), although the ones here are tiny. Those water lilies don't look real either.

I hope you enjoyed your tour of the Chinese home. It is definitely a treasure of this museum.

Faces at the Peabody Essex Museum

Hi everyone. It's already Friday again. Happy end of another week to you. 

Last week  as many of you already know I visited the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. I've visited the museum several times before, but always for special exhibits. This time I actually visited most of the rest of the museum, which has quite an eclectic mix of art. And I'm with you who commented yesterday that making the flags out of human hair could make you a little bit uncomfortable. It did me, but it certainly makes a statement.

Today for Nicole's Friday Face Off I will share some faces from the museum with you.

And I am also linking up to Gillena's Friday Lunch Break.

I'll start my eclectic mix of faces with these screech owls. These birds  were in a small section of the museum that had some animal art as well as a wall of OLD taxidermied birds. 

And these next 2 faces in this Chinese sculpture were part of the animal art in that room.

And here's an interesting war club, with the story about it in the photo that follows it.

Here's a mask and

an Indian protector goddess.

And I believe this next photo  shows a Chinese Foo Dog statue. There were actually 2 of these, and Chinese Food dogs are  put up in pairs. One would be male and one female. I've read that the female is the yin and symbolically protects the people in the house and the male is the yang. He protects the house structure itself.

The Peabody Essex is in Salem, Massachusetts. That city is famous for its 1692 Witch Trials, which were horrible events because 25 men, women and children died. This city is also famous for being the home of the author Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote the novel The Scarlet Letter back in the early 1800's.  If you're not familiar with this American literary classic, it is set back in the early days of Salem when the Puritans ruled the roost. Because a young woman had a child out of wedlock, she had to wear a red letter A. The A stood for adulteress. This next painting shows an artist's take on this novel. (And I didn't get the artist's name :(  either.)

And here's a portrait of the young author.

Salem was once one of the richest cities in the early United States because it was the home of spice and Asian Trading. Ships home based in Salem would sail to Asia bringing back some of the spices Americans craved. These ships would also bring back artifacts from Asia also. That is one of the reasons there are so many Asian artifacts in the Peabody Essex Museum.

Because of this connection to Asia, the museum has a complete Chinese house that they brought over and reassembled. It is called the Yin Yu Tang house, and it was the family home of a prosperous Chinese merchant family named Huang. The house was in the Huang family for more than 200 years before it was brought to Salem in 1982. 

Many of the artifacts in this house also belonged to the family. I'll do a house post another time, but there were a couple of faces to share so I'll do that today.

The first one is from post-World War 2 China. You probably recognize Chairman Mao. Everyone was required to have pictures of him put up in their homes.

And in one other room there were these early fashion pictures.

And that's all my faces for this week.

Have a wonderful end of the week and weekend. Thanks for visiting my blog too.

 

How I Spent A Lot of Last Week

 Hi everyone. Happy Thursday.

Today I have an art journal page to share for both Elizabeth's Recycle, Reuse, Repurpose challenge at Art Journal Journey and also for Rain's  Art and Dinner Date. Rain's theme this week is brushes, and you can see the one big brush image on my page.

This is a spread from my most recent junk journal project. The background has scraps of magazine paper and also  wrapping paper pieces. The feather paper is from the birthday gift that my daughter gave me.  The rest of the images on the pages are made using magazine images that I fussy cut out.

Last week I had a lot of art time, and this week, with some appointments and nice weather, I haven't had hardly any. Nor have I had a lot of interesting cooking time, so instead of any food this week for the dinner date part of this post, let me share more of my trip to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. 

Let me start with this really amazing exhibit.  There was a light in the black/grey box hanging in the center of the room, and that light created these amazing shadows while passing through the designs in the box that hung around it.

And one other interesting exhibit was this hall of flags. The actual name of the exhibit is United Nations.

They may not look like  typical flags because they are made out of human hair.

The artist, Gu Wenda, wanted to show how all people are alike, no matter what country they live in. He chose to use human hair because  we all share it, and he wove the hair into flags from around the world.

Here's a couple of close ups.

Gu Wenda was also the artist who created the light box in the first 3 photos from the museum. 

Gu Wenda is an interesting artist, and as I learned, one of the most influential to come from modern China. I had never heard of him before my museum visit, but I read about him on Wikipedia. You can read about him here if you are interested: Gu Wenda.

The artist began this United Nations project in 1993, and this is one of his most notable works.

I found my visit to the Peabody Essex Museum very interesting not only because of the art. Since I had just finished reading a book about China (Wild Swans by Jung Chang), so much of what I saw had a connection to that book. That includes this artist. Even though he wasn't mentioned by name in the book, his biography talked a lot about how he became an artist after the Cultural Revolution.  In the book I read the author wrote a lot about the Cultural Revolution, and how after it ended, many things, such as art, returned to China.

OK, that's enough for me. I hope everyone is having a great week so far. Thanks for visiting.

T Stands for April Events

 Hi everyone. Happy Monday night/ Tuesday and happy T day. 

Last week I had a somewhat quiet week. Those weeks make the best art weeks though. 😀

I watched a lot of snow melt too, and it was ice out week on the big lake near us. This was the first time I ever remember the big lake becoming ice free before most of the little lakes. We're wondering if that happened because ice-in on the big lake was very  late this year (not until February),  and only the smaller lakes were able to get a really thick layer of ice. 

I can't take credit for this photo. My husband snapped it when he was at his Mom's house Sunday night to turn off a switch he realized he'd accidentally turned on (and since no one is living there no one would be around to switch it off). You can see the ice and pretty sunset colors. I didn't know he was such a  good photographer. Smile.

Ice out is an important spring milestone in my area because it means spring is really here. Although I must admit I still have a little bit of snow left in my backyard.

For a while now it's been tough with the spring melt and some  rain to find places to walk. The trails  (since most are unpaved) are still wet and muddy in places, and the tides don't always work at the beach unless you want to walk before dawn or after dark. Instead of walking around parking lots because nowhere else was quite up to par,  last week my walking friend and I decided to do something different. We did something  that's been on our to do list. We went to Salem, Massachusetts and visited the Peabody-Essex Museum.

I've visited some of the special exhibits at the Peabody-Essex several times, but I've never taken a  tour of the whole museum before. It's a really eclectic mix of exhibits with lots of Asian art, some Native and Colonial American art, some modern glass, some ecological creations as well as some fashion. It was a fun visit, and I have many things I can share.

For today's post let me take you on a museum T tour. I am linking up for T day over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog . All you need to join is to share your drink related posts.

This table is all set for us to sit down and enjoy our drinks.

This coffee urn is full for those of you who drink coffee.

And there's tea, sugar and cream for those of you who prefer that drink over coffee. Or if you really want a lot of coffee and don't want to keep getting up, the coffee server is here also. And of course you might want cream and sugar in your coffee too.

Perhaps Colonial America isn't your thing. Or maybe the tea isn't very good because they threw so much of it overboard in Boston during the big tea party a couple of hundred years ago.

If you feel like something more exotic, here are some T choices for you in the Yin Yu Tang house, a complete structure transported from China and  then reconstructed at the museum. 

And if you'd  rather wine and play drinking games, here are some table cards for a Chinese drinking game as well as a cup for your wine. Don't pick the card that says drink 2 glasses if you want to remain sober-smile.

This guy is named Mr.No Body. He's offering  a T day drink if nothing else has yet  excited you.

Perhaps your style is more modern and you'd like to be in a modern cafe somewhere. There's a very cool glass teapot on the top right of the next photo. (And some gorgeous glass bowls too.)

And if none of the T styles I have shown speaks to you, perhaps you prefer your drink in  something from Japan. I'm not sure how this pot works, but I love the view of Mount Fuji.

Sadly I cut off a bit of the black teapot that was with it in this next photo. It was shaped like a turtle.  Luckily there's enough tea bowls at the bottom of this photo for more than just me to enjoy a cup of Matcha tea. (Actually, I'll skip the matcha so there's enough bowls for 3 others.)

Do you need to travel to the teahouse in style? This is a Japanese litter for wealthy women. Two men would transport you in your litter to the teahouse or wherever you were going.

But you had better be small because that seat in the left corner is very tiny. Of course you'd need room for your kimono.

And if none of these work for you, you can join me for my favorite teapot of the day. I'll take my T from one of these spouts.

That's all for me. Have a wonderful T day and week ahead.