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.

---

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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for dropping by!

Before moving on, please share your thoughts or comments about the post. :)

Thanks again!

Popular posts from this blog

Skyflakes

-
One of the more famous Philippine exports is Skyflakes , a wheat-based, salty cracker. It is one of my emergency food items: I typically have some stocked at home and in my handbag in case I become hungry (like in traffic jams). When there's no electricity and it's impractical to cook rice (because the leftover would spoil), I'd open a pack of Skyflakes and generously coat each cracker with Cheez Whiz... if I had a bottle of it within reach. Anyway, each time I spent more than two weeks outside the Philippines, I'd be elated to see boxes of Skyflakes inside Asian stores (particularly when in I was Australia and in the USA). Back then, I took it as a sign of homesickness. When I moved to California, I didn't miss Skyflakes because Mommy made sure that there's a steady supply in the house. Skyflakes is embedded in Filipino gastronomy as a snack, a panawid-gutom , that anyone who reacts positively upon seeing Skyflakes outside the Philippines must have spe...
Read more

10 things I learned while driving on Marcos Highway to Baguio City

-
I went on a day trip to the City of Pines, which was around a 700-km drive from my house. I drove  going up there and then from the city to Victoria, Tarlac. After that, my dad took over the driving duties. It was day trip with Tita Ising and Tito Sibing with us. Anyway, this trip was my first time to go to Baguio City with me behind the wheel. As everyone who drives up knows, there are three main routes to Baguio from the lowlands: Kennon Road, which ascends from Rosario, La Union. It was out of my options because it's too dangerous to use that road in the rainy season. The second route is via Naguilian Road, which makes my trip a lot longer because the beginning of the ascent is in Bauang, La Union (further north). The last route, and the one I took, was the Marcos Highway, now known as the Aspiras-Palispis Highway. This 47-km road starts from Agoo, La Union and is touted as the safest route among the three.  As I drove up and then down (on the same day; we were in...
Read more

Surat Mangyan

-
Image
In high school, part of the Filipino curriculum was learning about one of the country's ancient native scripts called Baybayin . I learned back then that this script was eventually abandoned because the Spanish, and eventually the Americans, encouraged the use of the Latin script for written communications. But that's in the lowlands; the rules were different up in the mountains. In the lush mountains of Mindoro, groups of indigenous people called Mangyans  live largely in isolation away from the Christianised Filipinos. This isolation has led to the continuous development of the Mangyans' old script, Surat Mangyan . As I walked inside the Ayala Museum , I saw this bamboo tube (I'm not sure if it's an instrument) with Mangyan script written all over it. I suppose that this was equivalent to a book or a song. But I haven't figured out what's written yet, despite the translation guide provided. What I can do, however, is write my name in Ma...
Read more