Despite the multitude of Chinese merchandise and snack bars in Ukraine, China remains terra incognita for many Ukrainian citizens. In the early 1990s, intensive “shuttle” business contacts with the People’s Republic of China dispelled some of the enigma, but by and large the Central Country remains a land of myths, from the Great Wall to Tibetan monks to ideology (the latter considered archaic but somehow remaining functional).
The Taras Shevchenko National Museum recently hosted an exhibit featuring Chinese decorative applied art, another myth of the Middle Kingdom, dating back six thousand years when they had first started making painted earthenware. Subsequently, the mandarins (as the Chinese were known in medieval Europe) would amaze the West with their inventions: paper, gunpowder, silk... They were not only useful, but also beautiful. For example, the famous Chinese applique’ work, ivory figurines (surprisingly reminiscent of decorations worn by Siberian Khanty), numbering several thousand years. Before the second half of the first millennium BC, this love of art had destroyed all the elephants in China, so they had to be imported from countries of the “South seas.” The exposition featured quite a few such decorations. Made, of course, considerably later, they were evidence that the uniqueness of Chinese culture is the striking authenticity of style. The same materials and the same meticulousness used hundreds of years before. For example, pictures for New Year’s (e.g., postcards) were among the first to influence Chinese art. For centuries painters have willingly returned to the theme. Giant fans and parasols, vases and all kinds of lamps. Compositions of seashells and wood, executed with a jeweler’s precision and with the minutest details, such as leaves on a tree branch as thin as a cobweb, ritual bronze utensils... In a word, enough for a real connoisseur to know what the phrase about the Orient being a subtle affair actually means.
Ivan Drach, attending the opening ceremony, recalled that he had visited the PRC under the Great Mao and had an unforgettable experience, exploring the Great Wall. The Ukrainian writer stressed that Chinese academic chairs are being established, the language is studied in Ukraine, and a greater emphasis is being made on Chinese history at good schools; Ukraine can learn a lot from China. People who know Chinese could recognize some Oriental truths by visiting that exhibit. But even those to whom the hieroglyphs meant nothing were almost as impressed. Chinese characters are not just a way to communicate; they form a separate philosophy. A series of hieroglyphic pictures on display were crowned by Beijing Opera masks. Concealed behind their crafty countenances are mysteries of China still to be uncovered, reports The Day’s Yuri ZELINSKY.
