Stronger Than You

holy shit is this gorgeous.

so quite a lot of people expressed interest in a guide to lion dance! and since the lunar new year is coming up in a couple weeks, which means everyone’s exposure to lions is probably going to increase, i figured i’d go ahead and make it! right click + open in new tab to fullview, etc etc, i hope it’s helpful, although if you only take one thing away from this powerpoint, it’s this: lions are not dragons

disclaimer: i learned fut san style at an american university, and the senior members of the troupe were almost all from hong kong and taiwan, so most of my knowledge is drawn from what they taught me. lion dance varies widely depending on the style and the country of origin, and many schools do things differently! this is just an attempt to establish a baseline and give you a really basic intro to one of my favorite art forms. :)

cr: 百变花央

I’m out here buying tshirts and pants like a chump while some people are just wearing the world’s best rectangles

Pre-manufacturing cultures will really be like, here is the most elegant and gorgeous outfit you can imagine, and it’s achieved entirely with rectangles, ropes, and pins.

Over and over again, across the world, in cultures that never even knew of each others’ existences. Just, rectangles, knots, and pins. And I love that for them.

The world’s best rectangles. Yes

斩马刀zhanmadao in tang dynasty by 含亮老师

engrave traditional chinese seals

Traditional chinese craftsmanship for architecture and furniture 榫卯 sǔn mǎo 

The mortise and tenon technique does not use glues or nails and creates furniture that is usually very strong and durable. 

This is carpenter Grandpa Amu making a Luban stool out of a whole piece of wood using traditional chinese joinery technique 榫卯 sǔn mǎo.

In my linguistics class we had a Chinese girl who had adopted a European name. We all didn't speak Cantonese and understood her wish to not have her name butchered all the time, except for one of us, a guy who thought he knew to differentiate between tones perfectly because he was learning Vietnamese. He saw himself as super woke and he thought it was wrong for her to adopt a European name when we should just try harder to pronounce her Chinese name (which honestly is just really difficult if you don't speak the language at all, even for linguists). So he would constantly call her by her Chinese name which she initially didn't even want to share, but he kept asking her for it, and from the look on her face I could tell that he did not get it right, and that she didn't like it at all. The first time he did it she even told him it wasn't correct, but he kept going, so sure he knew how to pronounce it. So like I 100% agree that we should put in effort to pronounce names from foreign languages and not give up on the first try if we get it wrong, but we should also respect people's wishes when they know we can't do it/they know it takes too much effort for them to teach us how to pronounce it. In that case, we should just use the name we're being told to use. It's that simple.

Fellow linguists, don't be that guy™

wearing faguan发冠 for men with traditional chinese hanfu in style of ming dynasty by 曠某 faguan is a type of hanfu headdress that has the appearance of a small headpiece with one or two pins that can be passed across it to hold the hair in a bun. It can also be used to match with various hanfu hats.

The following pictures are some historical faguan made of various materials such as jade, agate and gold.

chinese hanfu by 豆沙饼饼一口一个

i dont hear much abt asian zodiacs??? anyways im year of the dragon how bout yall

I found out recently there’s an elemental component too, every sign is connected to every  element on a 60-year cycle

water monkey

wooden dog

Technically a Wooden Pig.

Metal goat

Earth Tiger