It has to be Chinese

Posted on September 14, 2024 Posted in Memories, UncategorizedTagged Chinese, Chopsticks, dailyprompt, dailyprompt-2061, Food, Indian, Life, Memories, Mother, Tasty, vesta chow meinLeave a comment

What are your favorite types of foods?

Our mother would take us out for meals occasionally when we were children. Sometimes it was Indian, but mostly Chinese. I like the flavours, the textures, the combination of ingredients. Duck with hoisin sauce, chicken chow mein, special fried rice, beef with spring onions and black bean sauce. All kinds of other things. I just like it, although I have read that the Chinese food in the UK is not authentic.

Mom got us to use chop sticks which added to the unique and special feeling it was to eat out. In those days the only other form of Chinese food was Vesta Chow mein which came in a box and you added hot water to it I think, and fried prawn crackers. But they were good memories.

Dragon coffee pot

Posted on April 25, 2024April 25, 2024 Posted in Fine Art, Memories, UncategorizedTagged 1950's, Ceramics, Chinese, Coffee pot, Japanese, Memory, Mother, Pottery, Time, wedding presentLeave a comment

Something my mother collected, possibly a wedding present from the 1950’s? I’ve always loved this set. I borrowed it off my sister so I could use it in some college work about dragons.

This is a Chinese dragon I think? It might be Japanese, the way to tell is the number of toes on its feet. I think I remember that Japanese dragons have three toes and Chinese have four or five? If you know please remind me.

The coffee set was probably made for the export market and won’t be worth a great deal but I like it, it’s quirky and interesting. I think the dragon itself is quite humerous. I like the colours, also the airbrushing and the slip trailed areas.

I just Google imaged this, it’s Japanese Moriage Bone China.

Chinese, Japanese, Indian

Posted on November 24, 2023 Posted in Memories, UncategorizedTagged Chinese, cuisine, dailyprompt, dailyprompt-2129, Eating, experience, Exploring, Family, Food, Indian, Japanese, Memory2 Comments

What are your family’s top 3 favorite meals?

We were introduced to more exotic food at quite an early age. My mother and father would take us out for meals to local restaurants. Mostly Chinese, but sometimes Indian eateries. It was there we learnt to use chopsticks. We ate tandoori or baltis. We never really ate anything too hot or spicy though. My favourite Indian meal had orange flavours in it, very mild, a house speciality of a local restaurant.

Then a few years ago I discovered a Japanese Restaurant near us. I had not really understood the difference between Chinese and Japanese food so it was a revelation. I soon got other family and friends to try the cuisine there. We sometimes have birthday meals there. I don’t think I have really explored world foods, but at least we have tried some.

Back to college

Posted on January 20, 2022January 20, 2022 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Chinese, College, Colour, Dragons, Fun, George and the dragon, History, Illustration, Life, Literature, Scales3 Comments

I need to start working on my college project. I’ve given myself time to recover from a bad cold, but I can’t ignore it. I need to produce a portfolio of images and a report to go alongside it. I’ve decided to write about the history of dragons in illustrations. Their images in world history, moving forward in time to medieval art and then the present day including their appearances in literature and film. My portfolio will be illustrations and text for a children’s book exploring colour and pattern alongside an adventure. I hoe it works out.

Tea pot?

Posted on December 11, 2021December 14, 2021 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Chinese, Drink, Flavour, gourd, Life, Photo, Poem, Poetry, shiny glaze, stem, Tasty, Tea, TeapotLeave a comment

I think this is a tea pot

It has a spout

A handle too

It’s shiny glaze

Is red not blue

Gold and black

Organic shape

Like a gourd

With stem entwined

I’d love this pot

To pour a drink

Nice and hot

Of tea, I think…

Xie Xie, thanks in chinese.

Posted on March 22, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Blogging, Chinese, Doodle, Drawing, Fish, Sketch, Thank you, Xie Xie6 Comments

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I was just sitting in my local Chinese takeaway restaurant and decided to draw one of the fish they have swimming round in a large tank. When I had done it and the food was ready I showed my drawing to the lady behind the counter. I explained that it was a quick sketch as the fish kept swimming. It looks a bit worried but that’s just my drawing.

I asked how to say thank you as the food there is always lovely and the people in the restaurant said xie Xie and wrote it down next to the sketch. They are Mandarin speakers. I had asked if they were Cantonese. But they said no. The words are very similar in both languages but that the writing of Chinese script is the same in both languages (dialects). I think I remember reading that in a friends blog here, that even if the words are pronounced differently the script is the same.

Anyway it was a tasty supper and it’s nice to communicate even if it’s only with a few shared words.

Thinking about it the words I have learnt in other languages like Greek and Thai all tend to be the ones meaning please and thank you. I must have been bought up right!

Tea kettle?

Posted on March 4, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Ceramic, Chinese, Glaze, Kettle?, Lustre, Ornamental, PotteryLeave a comment

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We saw this amazing peice of ceramics today. It was on top of a cupboard so hard to get a close look, but I think it was over two foot high. Ceramicists will probably know a lot about it? It seems to have red calligraphy on the front, and what is the branching handle supposed to look like? Perhaps like a chopped tree branch.

There are drips of coloured glaze over the body of the pot the handle and the spout, it appears to be some type of lustre ware.

Sitting next to it are some figures on a boat? This plate seems to be a based on Chinese landscape painting.

I love the accessories people choose to decorate places. I know the fashion is to declutter but I think having interesting objects can make the world a more varied place. I would love to give this space in my home.

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: Chinese