Ringing of the Bells, the Asian edition

Val and I are in Washington, D.C. for a week. Val is attending a training course in the city and I am on vacation mode, fresh from boot camp. This trip fulfilled one of my biggest dreams: visit the Smithsonian.

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Whenever I think of tolling bells, I think of the lyrics of "Carol of the Bells":

Hark how the bells

Sweet silver bells

All seem to say 

Throw cares away

But the bells I saw in the Freer | Sackler Art Gallery were not the bells I have been exposed to. In fact, I wouldn't think that they were bells if there was no note that they were bells. According to the galleries' website, bells were among the first metallic objects created in China. They were there even before Jesus was born! 

Many of the bells I've seen before are hollow cups with smooth surfaces... and were generally tiny But these ancient Chinese bells (called bo) have raised mounds and other intricate designs (dragons or snakes) in bas-relief. The loop on top of each bo is probably used to suspend the bells. Because of their size, I could imagine that they gave out rich deep tones when struck.

Aside from these bells, there were fancier pieces. The cats (tigers) were most likely not bells; instead, they act as the feet of the bell frames or stands (from which the bells were suspended).

I took a closer look to see just how intricate the design of one of the bells is. Were they dragons or birds? I wasn't sure. But seeing this design brought me back to the time I was staring at the façade of the Paoay Church while listening to Dr Paul Zafaralla talk about the Chinese influences on Earthquake Baroque architecture in the Ilocos region. 

My favourite part of the bells exhibit was where viewers could actually ring the bell! We were given two bells to compare: a western bell and a Chinese bell. The screen in front of us had horizontal green lines indicating that the bell was not struck yet. The aim of the experiment was to see how different the sound waves are when the two different bell types were struck.

What I learned was that no matter where I hit the western bell's rim, only one tone could be made. However, the Chinese bell had two tones: gu (lower tone) and sui (higher tone). I might have hit the bell too gently because I wasn't getting the high peaks shown in the examples. 

I wish I had more time. Frankly, I should have allotted more time to immerse in the Freer | Sackler Galleries' bell exhibit. However, there were so many more things to see in the other exhibits and I just had to move on.