East Asian Horses.

“Now young Mr Kim you know and I know that…”

The state broadcaster, the ABC, in the State of Queensland, before Christmas, showed a minute or so segment of human interest on the educational stay of students from the Horseriding School of Korea at an equestrian stud near Ipswich, west of Brisbane.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-13/korean-horsemanship-students-southern-queensland/8097874

The internet report doesn’t show what was on the television broadcast. One of the Korean horse riding students, young Mr Kim, said, “Australian horses are so good and nice. Not like Korean horses.”

Now young Mr Kim you know and I know that…every thoroughbred from Jangsu to Japan, Ireland to New Zealand, Kentucky to the horses owned by the Queen, or trained by Bart Cummings (1927-2015, 12 time Melbourne Cup winning trainer 1965-2008) to even a cousin of mine with a horse stud (wealthy spouse!)…they’re all related. Every horse! Descended from The Byerly Turk (1680s), The Darley Arabian (1704), and The Godolphin Arabian (1729).

If you mean the thoroughbreds in Korea (from the Jangsu Stud for example) are not as nice and gentle as Australian cross-breed horses, then that may be true. But I find it hard to credit that Korea’s indigenous horse, the Jeju pony is a difficult customer compared to our Australian ones 🙂

I should add one more thoroughbred ancestor. The horse with the most identifiable coat.

The grey thoroughbred today is descended from Alcock’s Arabian. Owned by an ancestor of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria’s Consul to Fuzhou and Envoy Plenipotentiary to Japan and China, Dr Sir Rutherford Alcock, perhaps!

I wondered what other East Asian horses besides the Jeju pony were out there. First stop. Naturally.

FUZHOU, FUJIAN PROVINCE, CHINA:- The Jinhong.

Difficult to find. And that’s just photographs. There is one in Hendricks’ International Encyclopedia of Horse Breeds (2007, p.242), but of a teenage Chinese girl sitting on a Jinhong in the 1960s. Description is of a Fujianese chestnut-colour rural pony. I only hope it’s not this…

Time to make a phone call (full disclosure, I visited The Fuzhou Zoo on a school excursion circa 2010 of the photos’ purported taking but I did not see the above).

“Hello, Director of Entertainment, Fuzhou Zoo? You know that painting by The Great Stubbs? It’s his imagination of a lion on a horse. Not a model scene for a live action spectacular.”

“The Great Stubbs”, well I think he deserves the title. Read in some art book that the likes of Raphael, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Titian, Velazquez, Rubens, Rembrandt and all the Old Masters never quite got the horse right. Until George came along. You could argue that they couldn’t be bothered getting the horse anatomically accurate since they didn’t have the Newmarket Racecourse in Italy, Spain, The Netherlands with its attendant aristocrat/gentry fans of The Byerly Turk, The Darley Arabian and others willing to shell out big money for George’s paintings. A very English contribution to Art.

Would it not be a grim irony, however, if it is the Jinhong pony in the photos that the Fuzhou Zoo is helping to preserve, albeit through this circus-style display? Alert: Jinhong is an Endangered Species.

Merci beacoup aux Francais passione contributeurs des pages chevaux en Wikipedie. Excuse my French. Only on this page, not on any other in the English language, despite our English/Australian/New Zealand/Canadian/USA interest in horses will you find the true state of the Jinhong Pony. Google does translation into English.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinjiang_(cheval)

Time to make another phone call:-

“Hello, Cousin? Do you have room on your horse stud outside Melbourne for a matching pair of Jinhong ponies? It’s all in a good cause.”

I haven’t been at the forefront of environmental conservation of flora and fauna in its myriad forms but I will now urge…

“NEVER MIND THE PANDA. SAVE THE JINHONG!”

Next Stop.

HOKKAIDO PROVINCE JAPAN:- The Ban’ei.

Hokkaido, the most northern of the Japanese Home Islands is in a sense the most modern. In horse-terms. It’s not that the Japanese people never knew of Hokkaido but moving north from Honshu and encountering the Emishi (sort of Ainu original inhabitants) the annexation of the big island occurred at a similar time to the Settlement of Australia. From the 1770’s (when Stubbs was painting) and for similar reasons (the Japanese/cannot let the Russian Tsar grab this big island, the British/cannot let the French grab this big island). How were the settlers in both countries to clear the land, farm the land, and transport its food and goods?

Thank you Scotland! The Clydesdale to the rescue (Scottish animal breeding at its best, from the iconic small terriers to the world’s biggest horse). “The horse that built Australia.”

And for the Hokkaido settlers, similar massive horses, though, from France and Belgium.

1840’s Australia – my earliest Jones’ ancestors on the northern rivers of New South Wales, logging trees and moving them, if we go forward 70/80 years to this cine-camera film from 1920, I don’t think the scene and the technology (maybe better wagons!) would have changed all that much.

Much less than 70 years, now a mere 13 year jump from 1920 to 1933. Daimler-Benz’s internal combustion engine was doing for the draft horse in the West with the invention of the tractor and the truck. On the repeal of Prohibition in the US in 1933, the Busch’s (father and son) owner and heir to Budweiser Beer hit on a marketing idea to get Budweiser back in public recognition. Clydesdales! Delivering beer kegs to former Governor Al Smith of New York, to President Roosevelt in Washington, and for Clydesdale teams to appear throughout America, which they still do.

12 years on to 1945. The end of WW2 and British author George Orwell has written his political fable, “Animal Farm.” Is it coincidence that the only sympathetic character (animal or human) in the novel is the draft horse, ‘Boxer’?

Boxer, is politically naïve, but Orwell never suggested that the revolt by the animals against Farmer Jones(!) with Boxer delivering a mighty kick was not justified.

And so to Hokkaido and within the last week (The Ban’ei keeps going during the Japanese winter). The Hokkaidens remember the draft horse and invent a new horse race not seen anywhere else around the world.

Over 200 metres with 2 hills. Not a test of horse-speed (used in Daimler-Benz derived automobile engines to this day) but of…horse strength.

The only horse race where you can walk alongside your horse and cheer on.

A Japanese mobile phone company stepped in to save the last Ban’ei track on Hokkaido, which were down from four to one. I doubt any other internet provider including national telecoms (let alone Cook of Apple/Zuck of Facebook et al) would hasten with sponsorship to save a regional/community sport.

Last stop. Australia.

My New Sport. http://horsearchery.com.au/

I retire from cricket. (just joking). However, there are probably as many members of the Australian Horse Archery Association as there are members of the Helensvale Cricket Club! Have done bow archery near Namwon (whence the horse-school visitors to Ipswich, Queensland, including young Mr Kim arrived). So that’s half the skill. Now I just need to learn how to get on a horse. Haven’t done that since I was 16 on a family holiday in the Snowy Mountains near Canberra. 🙂

Cui Bono кто кого

Cui Bono. Latin. “To whose benefit”? Cicero quoting a former Consul, Cassius Longinus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cui_bono кто кого (kto kogo). [cyrillic and latin alphabet] translation. ‘who, whom?” attributed to Vladimir Ulyanov a.k.a. Lenin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who,_whom The problem of the who has obviously been of central concern to political philosophy since the time of the Romans but I also think it is one for the newer subject of Business Studies.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, a nice rock and roll band from Shepherds Bush, London, The Oo.” (Stage Announcer, The Isle of Wight Festival, 1970.). The first minute is all you need to watch.

Currently on Australian television there’s a Tom Hanks’ produced documentary, ‘The Sixties’. The episode on pop music of that decade had one music-industry fellow saying on ‘The Who’.

“You could not tell who was supposed to be leading the band on stage, it could be Daltrey the singer, or Moon the drummer, Townshend, the guitarist, or even Entwistle the bass player.”

“We really have absolutely nothing in common apart from music”. (Keith Moon).

Well is this not a problem for the finest scholars of the Harvard MBA faculty? How can there be an effective team when a team leader cannot be identified? And why did The Who sound as a unit when they are all playing individually and trying to take the lead? I’m sorry, but the maxims of management theory (cliches more likely), “There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’.” “A champion team will always beat a team of champions.” need re-thinking. Have billions of dollars been wasted over the past thirty years paying management consultants (with MBAs) through all the advanced economies to little or no avail trying to create team-bonding? Should do a Case Study on this!  Photo Keith Moon Copyright Barrie Wentzel.

Shepherd’s Bush/Acton/West London. The Academy would say it’s unknowable. Or worse, ludicrous linguistics. I don’t think so. Americans speculate on what possible English accent George Washington may have spoken.

http://dialectblog.com/2012/07/04/how-george-washington-spoke-brief-thoughts/

Somerset bordering on Cornwall or possibly even Black Country/Birmingham (I don’t think George Washington would have sounded like Ozzy Osbourne/Tony Iommi/Geezer Butler/Bill Ward of Black Sabbath but let it pass!). Only 80 years (or less) on from Washington, Ealing a suburb in West London. And then in 1970, Pete Townshend announcing to the concert goers on The Isle of Wight, “Stand up, Sit down, Sit down, Stand up, we like our audience fit.” I can think of someone who may have shouted something like this. “Stand up, Sit down, Sit down, Stand up, in Foochow I like my Fukienese street mobs cowed.”

It would only be 125 years on from Fuzhou to the Isle of Wight! Who’s to say that Dr Alcock and Pete Townshend didn’t sound similar?! You can hear the “Stand up” audience greeting on the YouTube audio-visual above but the sound quality is not the best. The DVD of the concert is much clearer; other excerpts of Townshend’s speech are on the Isle of Wight concert YouTube.

600 000 people on the Isle of Wight in 1970? I suppose it’s just about feasible for three days with that number of visitors to accomodate in tents with their washing, feeding, ablutions etc. For all the energy of ‘The Who’, on stage in August 1970. Townshend in his white suit jumping around and Keith Moon in his tee-shirt flailing at the drums, it wasn’t ‘The Who’, I would argue, were the most influential men in white clothes in the culture of England at that point in time. Instead millions more would be following/listening on the radio/watching on television the M.C.C. who were to fly out on their tour of Australia and New Zealand (1970-71) and which commenced in Port Pirie, South Australia, in late October 1970. Sussex fast bowler, John Snow, was expending as much artistic energy with off-cutters and short-pitched deliveries at Australian batsmen as Townshend or Moon. More scary for being in black and white.

Nor to The Who did the biggest chart-topping hit album of the last months of 1970 belong. In the USA that was, “Come on Get Happy”. By the Partridge Family!

For me, the most interesting member of ‘The Who’ is not Roger Daltrey twirling his mike around his platinum afro while pursuing a 1970s movie career, nor the sadly self-destructive ‘Moon the Loon’. Townshend with his devotion to Zoroastrian Persian mystic, God in human form (and schoolboy cricketer!) Meher Baba did show some complexity it must be admitted…

No. The most interesting is…The Ox! John Entwistle. The only man with musical training in The Who. The only man who held a job before the band. And what a job too…one with which I am familiar! From his Wiki…

Entwistle’s mansion in Stow-on-the-Wold in the Cotswolds and a number of his personal effects were later sold off to meet the demands of the Inland Revenue; ironically, John Entwistle worked for the agency in 1962–63 as a Tax Officer before being demoted to filing clerk, prior to joining The Who.

Nor do I think his personal theology lacked anything by comparison with Townshend’s eastern exoticism.

One aspect of John Entwistle’s life emerged after his death that came as a surprise even to those closest to him, including the members of The Who. “It wasn’t until the day of his funeral that I discovered that he’d spent most of his life as a freemason”, said Pete Townshend.

Ringo Starr (may he long be with us) turns out to be a member of the Scottish Lodge…wouldn’t surprise me!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Lodge_of_Scotland

The Ox’s haircut, though? One could just about imagine a ‘Swinging Sixties’ London hairdresser remembering high school textbooks with pictorial reproductions and thinking…”Wouldn’t this be cool, the most violent men in English history, The Wars of the Roses, looked like this.” “I’ll give The Ox this haircut.” Who, though, among Seoul hairdressers in the early years of the last decade (I would guess Seoul, the style would have later arrived in the Jeolla region of Korea) decided that the haircut of The Ox would be suitable for Korean schoolgirls? Who indeed!

Notes. MCC Tour of Australia and New Zealand 1970-71. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCC_tour_of_Australia_in_1970%E2%80%9371 Townshend’s Avatar, Meher Baba, may well have thought of ‘Who, Whom?”, drawing on Zoroastrian/Sufi beliefs in the early decades of the 20th Century, before Lenin arrived at his improvement (if it could be called that) to Karl Marx’s theories. Interestingly, Townshend regards himself as a communist. More interesting is a Meher Baba retreat for worldwide followers…just north of Brisbane! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar%27s_Abode And most interesting of all is this photo. Photoshopped? Looking at it either Townshend was astral travelling with that leap (no record of Meher Baba being into such levitation) or he should have been on tour with MCC in 1970. Higher delivery stride than John Snow or even, in all modesty, myself! Tom Hanks’ tv series, “The Sixties.” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3268200/

The Invention of Tradition.

Chinese-Scottish community tartan 2006.

Sir Walter Scott is credited with inventing the Scottish ‘Highlander’ through his novels like “Waverley” and “Rob Roy”, and in particular his role as 1820 organizer of King William IV’s State Visit to Edinburgh, encouraging everyone, from the city residents to visiting Highland clan chiefs, to dress up in tartans.

Point taken.

I doubt your average Highlander from western Scotland and the Islands, before 1745 or 1820, patted his pet dog.

Colonel Malcolm, the laird of Poltalloch, brought the West Highland White Terrier breed to current appearance in the late 1800s.

Took a sip of Black Douglas whisky.

Blended whiskys originated from mid 18th Century. Black Douglas now owned by Fosters Group Australia.

And adjusted his bonnet before charging into battle.

Certainly, the average Highlander wasn’t kitted out quite like the above. But then this painting of the Battle of Culloden (1745).

using Highland Clansmen POWs from the battle to model for the painter suggests an already existing lifestyle; couture would be putting it too high at the level of fashion, before Sir Walter Scott came along with clan tartans for all. Though, with the bonnet, there is pictorial evidence of its existence 5 years before the King’s visit to Edinburgh in 1820.

Detail of a Highland Regiment at the Battle of Waterloo, by Felix Philippoteaux

Or is there? Philippoteaux was born in 1815 so could not have had any personal direct recollection for visual evidence of Highlanders at the Battle of Waterloo. But then I could find out about the uniforms of Australian soldiers in the Vietnam War since the diggers are still with us. Not proven, to use the old Scottish criminal law jury verdict.

Watching another one of these innumerable food shows on Australian television, Our Food, in which the BBC presenters travelled around the UK looking at the various food producing regions. Presenter Giles Coren went to the Outer Hebrides, islands off the west coast of Scotland, and started chatting about Scottish salmon. Whenever I’ve thought of Scottish salmon, which isn’t a lot, it’s of trawlers off the coast and inland anglers landing salmon in streams and lochs.

That is a tad outdated an image. The Victorians were already onto the idea of factory producing big fish using roe, the eggs. The Norwegians had solved the problem of a fish being farmed in a pen in salt water/fresh water (or vice versa) in the mid-sixties. By 1968, Hebrides’ salmon farms had been set up with the right technology, ready to produce the first farmed salmon in 1971. And what a money-spinner. Bigger than whisky by 2020 going on Asian and worldwide demand for salmon.

In 1968 something else new was being produced on the other side of the world from the Outer Hebrides.

And here was I thinking that Jangsu apples had existed since time immemorial. Make that 1968, in their modern form, thanks to Mr In-Seok Yoo of Gyenam town, Jangsu introducing M.26 type seedlings.

 

The evidence was packaged and printed in front of me all the time. Who told me that Korean idiom? A teacher/administrator in Jangsu? Someone in the provincial capital, Jeonju? A Korean-American perhaps, or even someone else? “To receive a Jangsu apple box.” (Australian-English equivalent, “To receive a brown paper bag.”). i.e. a not-so-legal cash payment hidden in its container. Only from 1968 onwards into the 1970s would there have been enough money in South Korea to go whizzing around the country hidden in the base of apple boxes. The invention of tradition indeed!

NOTES 

Chinese-Scottish tartan. http://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=636

The Invention of Tradition, Terence Ranger, Eric Hobsbawm (1915-2012). http://www.amazon.com/Invention-Tradition-Canto-Classics/dp/1107604672

Felix Philippoteaux http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_F%C3%A9lix_Emmanuel_Philippoteaux

Our Food http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01flrfl

Scottish salmon farming http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/scots-salmon-farmers-reveal-the-secrets-1118946

Jangsu apples http://www.invil.org/english/speciality/fruit/apple/contents.jsp?con_no=104883&page_no=1

“Time Immemorial“. Actually a time not beyond the reach of tradition but only 1186 when early Anglo-Norman lawyers defined that as the date beyond which title could not be proved based on custom etc. The date no doubt chosen to defeat any native Saxon claims made against the lawyers’ Norman-French landowning clients.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_immemorial

Three Sims and Three Diffs.

“…collapsing into a vortex of repetitive hackdom.”

OR

“A recurring leitmotif in the camera work of Jones’ visual mise-en-scene is the frame within the frame, as seen in Yahoo 360 blog entries such as the offshore islands of China near Xiamen. This visual device can also be noted in the fictional films of Michelangelo Antonioni, “Blow Up”(1966) and in the non-fictional documentary photography of Dr Robert Rines at Loch Ness (1972, 1976).”

Take your pick of those interpretations!

We see here a Gold Coast sky.

But look closely.

There is a small plane within that sky.

Thinking the other day, “What are the visual differences between Australia/Korea/China?” On second thoughts I realised it was a question to which the answer would be infinite! So I decided to limit it to 3. And further refine the set by asking “What would you see in 2 of those countries (Australia/Korea/China) that you wouldn’t see in the third?”

Similarity-Difference One: Private Aviation

Light planes always buzz overhead in Australia or at least they always have in Sydney and Queensland in the places where I reside. I can understand why they wouldn’t in China. The airspace is reserved for the military and commercial aviation. But why not in Korea? Plenty of Koreans could afford a Cessna. I then saw the problem. If your adjeosshi pilot had a soju hangover and made a turn in the wrong direction he’d be over the DMZ in 2 minutes with every SAM (Surface to Air Missile) of the Peoples Republic of Korea aimed at him. Not an acceptable risk to the South Korean Republic hence no light planes for individuals. I wonder if West Germany pre-1989 also prohibited.

So…Korea and China the same. Australia different. 

Similarity-Difference Two: Uncooked Vegetables

Well this is rather based on the premise that all Chinese dishes consist of cooked vegetables. Which is probably not the case if you considered all Chinese regions’ cuisines. However, going on Fuzhou food and recalling what the Headmaster said when I prepared my attempt at an Australian dish (schnitzel [which is more Austrian than Australian] 🙂 and salad); “This is just like on my (the headmaster’s) visit to Melbourne – the vegetables are served like this, uncooked.” (telling the other school staff members accompanying).

So…Korea (with the kimchi) and Australia the same. China different.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

If the answer is Julia Gillard.

It must have been a heck of a question.

Indeed it was. What the heck could Australia and China have in common visually that Korea doesn’t? I could not solve this until our Prime Minister on a recent visit to Seoul dropped in for a visit to the students at Gyeseong Girls Catholic School.

Similarity-Difference Three: Catholic Nuns in Public

Here is a nun in a classroom with her students and the PM. I saw no nuns in China. Do they even have nuns in China? Not such an odd question, considering the Catholic Church in Fuzhou has a large church built by the French in 1932.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Dominic’s_Cathedral,_Fuzhou

And in Australia? If I could allow myself a concluding indulgence in repetitive hackdom or recurring leitmotifs from previous Y360 entries…along with

1. midgets
2. people with Down’s Syndrome
3. lift operators/drivers

you can add 4) Catholic nuns to the list of people you would have seen in the public space in my childhood/teenage years but not now. I haven’t seen a nun since my return.

So…Australia and China the same. Korea different.

Australian not Austrian.

Korean G20 figurine in Seoul. Middle-european dress. The flag is right though.

In fairness to Korea, the recent anniversary of ‘The Sound of Music.’

“The San are alive, with the sound of Julie(a).” 🙂

Jack Marx’s reading on ‘The Sound of Music’. http://blogs.theage.com.au/thedailytruth/archives/2007/03/these_aint_a_fe.html

KEEP OUR SCHOOLS.

A reminscence from Korea, the least number of sts u have teached? Or taught!

English, or Welsh education has the same problem.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/aug/13/capel-iwan-school-no-pupils

Donghwa Elementary, a talkfest I won on ‘what school have you taught with the least number of students?’.

Big Love!

It was good to meet a lot of the folks up in Korea this past month on my 2 week holiday. Sorry I didn’t get around to seeing everyone. I pretty much got what I went for – eating massive American style meals and buying copious amounts of books/magazines in the english language ie the activities I find difficult to carry out in Fuzhou! And if we had a cashflow liquidity crisis towards the end of the second week it nevertheless came good through Jeolla teacher (and offers from other parts!) generosity and the mysteries of international ATMs suddenly making available Chinese funds towards the end of my stay!

PHOTO

Me (on the right) meeting my good mate S. in Namwon.

NO! IT ISN’T!

It’s US Ambassador to China, and former Governor of Utah, Mr Jon Huntsman, who was in my neck of the woods in January on a visit to Xiamen, the second city of Fujian Province. Now I know visitors may well prefer to go to Rio de Janeiro instead of Brasilia, New York instead of Washington DC, Auckland instead of Wellington (!), Sydney instead of Canberra (heck I know I would!), Toronto instead of Ottawa. Would it have been too much to have dropped in on the provincial capital, Fuzhou? It is bigger than Xiamen after all! I suppose everything was designed to keep the visit low-key. And no visit to Fuzhou! From America in Xiamen website.

“On January 21, Ambassador Huntsman met with Xiamen-based media representatives.  Although national media reported on the Ambassador’s visit to Xiamen, the Fujian press (although present at the media event) was apparently prevented from publishing news about the Ambassador’s visit.”

Make of that what you will!

PHOTO CAPTION: America in Xiamen website.

On January 22, Ambassador Huntsman visited the Xiamen manufacturing facility of Lifetime Products.  Headquartered in Utah, Lifetime Equipment makes portable basketball standards, folding tables and chairs, and other recreational and playground equipment.  During the visit, Lifetime CEO Richard Hendrickson highlighted the company’s new eco-housing concept and the company donated two of their basketball standard systems to the Tong Xin Charity Orphanage located in Xiamen.

Now could Hollywood be less subtle? An impossible ask I suppose. “Strip away the tinsel of Hollywood you find the tinsel underneath.” (a Hollywood veteran’s quote). Ms Bigelow and her ex-spouse Mr Cameron at these recent Academy Awards. “Strip away the subtlety, you’ll find the obviousness…!”

Big Love, an HBO show about a Utah family with an alternative lifestyle (produced by Tom Hanks, Hollywood big name). Drop the ‘d’ and you get…not Richard Hendrickson (Lifetime Products CEO meeting Ambassador Huntsman in Xiamen) but Bill Henrickson, main character of the show and owner of a similar hardwear/outdoor furniture business!

QE’D’! Gary ‘De Man’ Oba, US State Department Rep to Fuzhou (and a graduate of Brigham Young University) looks on wryly at the meeting.