Your Japanese word of the week is...

"jidai" 時代 which means "(time) period" or "era". It also means the same in Chinese, although it's read differently (si doi, in Cantonese). While it's most often refers to eras in history, it can be used to refer to any period of time- "These young whippersnappers these days, no respect at all! It really is an end of an era."

And while it doesn't directly refer to generations (that's a different word), you could use it to mention different decades people have lived through. Much like the decades I heard about from my grandmother and grandfather when I met them for lunch a few days ago. I was especially happy to see my grandpa again partly because I haven't seen him in a long time (since 2003 I believe...) but more so because he seemed more alert and stronger than I last saw him, which is always good.

More to the point, the reason "jidai" is the word of the week is because today I took a browse through the Hong Kong Museum of Art. Interestingly, I pretty much ended up in the museum by accident as, seeing I had a few hours to kill, I picked a random train station and upon exiting, a quick glance at the map directory pointed to this and the Hong Kong Space Museum in Tsim Sha Tsui.

To get the bad part with out of the way, despite costing a meagre $10HKD (a touch more than $1.50 CAD), the Space Museum wasn't that great. While it does have lots of bits and pieces of information about astronomy, space research, and space exploration, it didn't amount to much more than a well researched and comprehensive display of pictures and captions.

The Museum of Art, however, was much better. Even with its two separate Special Exhibits under renovation, the other main exhibits, including a modern art exhibit with local Hong Kong artists and a huge range of antiques and fine art from various Chinese dynasties, were great. And it also costed $10HKD.

This display is essentially a coffin-sized crate padded like a bed. A sign encouraged people to lie inside it for a nice "sleep". It was surprisingly comfy...

While red, white, and blue are typically associated with America (or France, I suppose), the "red-white-blue" canvas bags are one of the most recognizable symbols of Hong Kong. This table and backpack is matched with another exhibit outside of the room of a couch and mini-fridge, also fashioned out of the iconic fabric.

Interestingly, next to the display outside are two couches with life-size stuffed caricatures of the museum director. A video suggests giving the stuffed dolls a hug and recommends a short nap with one of the dolls to help you explore your dreams...

This really neat display is essentially an spectrum analyzer reading of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5. What you see are basically the physically representation of the peaks of various frequencies at each beat of the most well known part of the piece (the beginning), mounted to a wall. Obviously few people see music in the form of wave frequencies, but it made for an interesting art piece nonetheless.

In the antiques section, these monochrome Ming pottery examples really stole the show for me. The exhibits covered the entire range of pottery from various Chinese dynasties and while the very detailed, very intricate pottery that Chinese culture is known for were present, these monochrome ones stood out, not in the least because of their stark contrast to the more well-known (or perhaps best known) blue-on-white porcelain also from the Ming dynasty.

I particularly liked these because they looked minimalist and modern, like they'd be right at home on an Ikea shelf. Even the colour (if they were indeed such bright hues), are trendy. But the absolute best part is that really subtle and elaborate designs are engraved into the porcelain. You can't see it until you're up close (and you can barely see it in the pictures), but these simple looking bowls and cups are actually really elegant once you put some time into examining them. I like that...

However, the neatest part of the entire museum was a little area of 15 paintings in the fine art section. Titled "One Painting - One Story", each classic painting was numbered and visitors were encouraged to write a short 80 word explanation about what they thought a certain painting represented. The stories were submitted and then posted under their respective painting.

Take the above painting for example. I overheard a 6-year old future museum curator explain it as:

"One day, everyone got on a bus to go pick up their kids. But they were all annoyed because the bus was going really slow. They all said, `Why is the bus going SO slow?`. Then the bus driver said, `Because there's a cow walking across the street.` Then everyone said, `Why are there so many wheels?` And the bus driver sai-"

Then his mom said they ran out of space on the paper...

Here's one final story. I actually took a picture of the paper so what follows is a direct transcription:

"There is once a monk called Chris, who always have illosions. He once have a illousion about his Friend, Domini Lau betray him. Of course, it was a illousion but Chris thought it was real, and balled his friend. But this is not the worse one. One day Chris decided to go camping. he walked up a mountain and went to the top. There's a cliff. Chris thought there was a door. He made a 大 position and thought he opened the door. He thought he saw Issac's stove. He jump and bow. But instead he fell down the cliff. He's dead. So the illousion guy was gone.

By Issac"

I love art... =P