Something pretty

Back to my recent Singapore trip:  one of the new places I visited was this - 

That's the new Peranakan Museum, housed in a old private school building, which makes for a very nice interior too:

As for the term Peranakan, one site explains:

In Singapore today, the term “Peranakan” generally refers to a person of mixed Chinese and Malay/Indonesian heritage. Many Singapore Peranakans trace their origins to 15th-century Malacca, where their ancestors were thought to be Chinese traders who married local women. Peranakan men are known as baba, while the women are known as nonya (or nyonya).¹ From the second half of the 19th century to the mid-20th century, Peranakans were also known as the Straits Chinese, as they were born in the Straits Settlements.² While some Peranakans have retained their cultural practices, many have assimilated into the larger Chinese community today.

Peranakan in Indonesian and Malay means the uterus or womb, or someone from a mixed marriage between a local and a foreigner.³ Not all Peranakans are of Chinese ancestry.⁴ Non-Chinese Peranakans in the early 20th century include the Bugis Peranakans, Arab Peranakans and Java Peranakans.⁵ In the Straits Settlements, there was also a small but significant community of Peranakan Indians known as Chitty Melaka.⁶ The origins of the Peranakan Indians were said to have traced to around the same time as the Peranakan Chinese, when Tamil merchants began marrying local women.⁷ The Jawi Peranakan community was another notable Peranakan group of non-Chinese descent, comprising Straits-born Muslims of mixed Indian (especially Tamil) and Malay parentage.

The impression one gets from the museum is that a lot of what was distinctive about Peranakan culture was to do with the aesthetics of how they lived:  their sense of style in relation to furniture, ceramics and dress, as well as their food and things like marriage traditions.   Without wanting to sound sexist, this makes for a museum which I reckon has a particular appeal to women.  Certainly, the guided tour group I was with had about a 4:1 ratio of women to men.   But that's fine - I can be very impressed with exquisite detail in things like old hand crafted furniture, and ceramics in particular.   (The love the Japanese have for ceramics is also one of the most appealing and distinctive things to look into when visiting there.)

I mean, how can you not admire the detail in these Peranakan pieces:

This one, we were told, is a (particularly large) spittoon that women playing cards would use while chewing betel nut (I didn't realise that habit had been a thing in Singapore, and you apparently can still buy betel leaf in Little India):

There is something I find very pleasing about the colour and patterns typical in this style, even if it tends to feature pink and pastels and feel somewhat feminine because of that.

As another site explains:

This distinctive type of pottery, unique to South East Asia, typifies the blended culture of the Chinese Peranakan communities in Penang, Melaka and Singapore.  Once underrated by ceramics experts for its inferior quality and over-gaudy style, Nyonya ware has finally come into its own and is now considered highly collectible – with a hefty price tag to boot!

Nyonyaware uses the famille rose enamelling technique, although its decorative features are exclusive to the Straits and are quite distinct from other examples of Chinese ceramics of this style, which were usually more ornamental pieces.  Straits Ceramics were intended for use at the family dining table on special occasions, and the pieces are entirely functional: bowls, teacups, teapots, spoons, plates, and lidded containers such as the kamcheng and katmau. They were commissioned from China by wealthy Peranakan families on the occasion of their daughters’ weddings; many contain specifically requested motifs or incorporate the family name, making them unique pieces of family history. Although blue and white Swatow ware was used for everyday purposes, the highly decorated famille rose ware took pride of place for fine dining.

Most ascribe Jingdezhen as the place of production for Straits Ceramics because that was where the finest examples of Famille Rose pottery were made, but experts have challenged this view. Shards of Straits-style crockery have never been found in the area. It is more likely that Peranakan families ordered their porcelain wedding sets from humbler kilns in Fukien province, and that these are actually examples of coloured Swatow ware (now usually referred to as Zhangzhou ware) using the enamel famille rose technique, but of inferior production....

Even the Japanese made some:

Some Straits porcelain was even Japanese made, for there was a time when Japan supplied these colourful ceramics to South East Asia. Japanese potters made exact copies, even down to Chinese stamps, and are difficult to distinguish other than by their softer shades of pastel. It is unclear whether Japan was trying to break into the overseas ceramics market or whether they were filling in the demand when wars in China disrupted production. No doubt it was probably a little bit of both!

Apparently, given that it is no longer produced, the antique trade in this style of ceramics has taken off.  It was only produced in a relatively short window:

As the window to Peranakan culture was open for only 150  to 200 years, Wong says only its ware that was made between 1856 and 1945 is identified as such. “These wares are generally identified on the basis of their period and origin of production, distinct motifs, colour combination and areas of distribution in Southeast Asia.

“The earliest Nyonya ware was generally thought to have been made in the era of Emperor Tongzhi (April 27, 1856, to Jan 12, 1875) in China. And production is thought to have ceased after World War II (1939 to 1945) due to the declining demand in Southeast Asia, particularly in the former Straits Settlements of Penang, Melaka and Singapore, where the main Baba Nyonya communities were established.”

How's this for a nice dining set:

And how is this for a fancy bed for the wedding night:

The guide said that wedding customs included putting a hen and rooster under the bed, and the first to emerge indicated the sex of the firstborn child. Also, the page boy would roll over the bed three times, to encourage the birth of a son.   (And that Lee Kwan Yew counted as Peranakan, and was of an age where he had probably performed that role as a boy.)  

The Museum is not huge, but particularly with a guide, it was an educational and interesting way to avoid the daytime heat for a few hours.  Recommended.

Chicken dinner noted

I haven't tried this recipe, but the combination of flavours sounds like it might be OK?  Although mint leaves at the end?  The trouble is, my wife doesn't much care for fruit with meat dishes - whereas I quite like them.

Maybe dark energy is evolving?

A lengthy article here at the New York Times about recent observations indicating that dark energy may not have been constant - which has big implications for the future of the universe.

 

A reasonable pushback to "sex assigned at birth"

This article in the New York Times (gift linked) argues cogently (and respectfully) against the use of "sex assigned at birth".     

I should also note that I'm pretty sick of seeing the vitriolic back and forth on the JK Rowling and Scottish Hate Crimes on Twitter.  (Mind you, more and more people are leaving Twitter for good reason - watching Elon Musk stupidly endorse multiple Right wing conspiracies - and removing Community Notes when it suits him - is both irritating and kind of depressing.  If it weren't for a handful of holdouts - David Roberts, Noah Smith, etc - I would stop reading it too.   I am at a loss to understand why a competitor that works as close as possible to the old Twitter hasn't taken off.) 

Something to look forward to (sarc)

A story from the ABC:

New climate modelling suggests Australians should be preparing for the possibility of megadroughts lasting more than 20 years.

Research from the Australian National University, published in a special edition of the journal Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, has indicated future droughts in Australia could be far worse than anything experienced in recent times — even without factoring in human impacts.

Climate scientist Georgy Falster said while megadroughts occurred naturally, climate change would make them more severe.

"We have this situation where on the one hand, there's the possibility for naturally occurring megadroughts that can last multiple decades and might come along every maybe 150 to 100 years," Dr Falster said.

I posted in 2012 about about evidence that severe droughts are very much part of the pre-European colonisation history of America:

A 2004 paper by Schubert and others looking at the causes of the drought side of the 1930's starts off by noting that there is long on-going cycle of drought in the mid West:

Drought in the Great Plains is not unique to the last century. A number of proxy climate records indicate that multiyear droughts comparable to those of the 1930s and 1950s are, in fact, a regular feature of the Great Plains climate, having occurred approximately once or twice a century over the last 400 years (Woodhouse and Overpeck 1998). Looking still further backin time, there is evidence for multidecadal droughts during the late thirteenth and sixteenth centuries that were of much greater severity and duration than those of the twentieth century (Woodhouse and Overpeck 1998). For example, tree-ring analyses in Nebraska suggest that the drought that began in 1276 lasted 38 years (Bark 1978)!

So, yeah, doesn't surprise me that the same thing may have happened in Australia.

  

 

A late "my trip to (Chinese) Hell" post

Back in January I made a quick trip to Singapore, because I could, quite cheaply.  I've only posted once about it, but I said I would make a separate post about Singapore's most unusual semi-touristy site to visit, Haw Par Villa.

Wikipedia confirms that it's only moderately famous now - there was an attempt to make it into a "theme park" but that didn't pan out, so now the large grounds are just open for free, with only one paid section, the cheerily named Hell's Museum, which is discussed below.

For the uninitiated,  the grounds are the site of a former mansion and gardens built in the 1930's by the rich family which came up with Tiger Balm - a product still very much associated with  Singapore.

Here's a photo of the mansion which, in a feat of poor timing, was finished in 1937:

The Japanese took it over after their invasion, ruined the place, and it was demolished after the war.  Given it was such a distinctive modernist/art deco-ish design, I wonder if anyone has the internal floorplan: it would be extremely cool to see it rebuilt.   Now, there's just some concrete where it used to stand:

 

The surrounding gardens were filled with a large number of somewhat eccentric looking dioramas  mostly about Chinese and Buddhist folklore and morality - said to have been made to entice the builder's younger  brother to come live with him in Singapore.   So some of it dates back to the 1930's, although other parts (including I think the most famous part - the garish and luridly violent depiction of the 10 courts of Chinese Hell) was built after the war.

It's these weird and wonderful sculptures and dioramas, most of which are in reasonable repair, which people - although fewer over the years - come to see:

 

The Monkey King is at the top of that one:

There are many dioramas showing vices with a 1930's flavour:

Some sculptures (more modern ones I think) are just wacky for the sake of wacky, it seems:

But as mentioned above, the most famous section is the Chinese Hell part, which is now incorporated in the relatively new Hell's Museum, for which there is an $18 entrance fee.

To my pleasant surprise, this smallish but well curated Museum deals in a very erudite fashion with the whole question of belief in an afterlife in history and various cultures.  It was obviously created with detailed input from one or more academics in the field of comparative religion.   This is right up my alley - it felt very compatible with the Youtube content on Religion for Breakfast which I like watching.  It's worth waiting for the free guided tour, which saves a lot of reading of quite extensive notes on the walls.   

The tour ends in the enclosed area depicting various parts of Chinese Hell.  Most scenes are graphically violent, but in such lurid way it's hard to take offence.  From memory, it starts with a preliminary trial:

then the good proceed to Paradise via the Silver or Golden bridges: 

 but for the sinner, it's a look into the Mirror of Retribution:

and onto the various courts overseen by various Kings, with punishments designed for different types of sin.  There didn't seem any particular rhyme or reason for the types of punishment to matching the sin, though:

Some court examples:

I think one of the above was for cheating students, and said to be the most popular for parents to show their kids (!).   Oh yeah, it's in the one involving dismemberment.  

 

 

Here we go - I assume this woman "caused trouble" for her parents?:

After (I think) 3 years of trouncing through Hell, the soul is given a herbal elixir in the Pavilion of Forgetfulness that causes them to forget everything about their past lives before they are reborn, as animal or human (or something else?), again depending on past karma.  

I'm not sure how canonical this depiction is, so to speak.  I think other versions have 18 courts, and I see on some website that the 10 courts are given these titles (which don't match up exactly with the Haw Par version?):

 I'm particularly amused to see the "Office of Fair Trading" in there - although the "Sixteen Departments of Heart Gouging" also sounds amusingly bureaucratic.   

Anyway, it seems clear that the downside of no internet, TV or cinema back in the day was too much time for people to imagine horrors.  Although, I have to admit, there is a high degree of - um - entertaining elaborate adventurousness? about a lot of Chinese supernatural folklore, isn't there? 

I didn't know about this Buddhist character, for example (see the sign following):

 

Yeah, yeah, I suppose Christians have St Michael slaying a dragon, and Jesus himself doing something ill-defined during the Descent into Hell:  but if it were written by the Chinese, it would have been with a glowing sword with which 10,000 demons were slayed...or something more elaborate.

Finally, one of the oddest (and surely most photographed) sculptures is this one, which the guide said was intended to illustrate a folkloric story about the good young woman and mother who forsook her own hungry child to feed breast milk to her ill and hungry mother:

 

Yes, a heroine for filial piety:  but a bit extreme for Western tastes.

So, as you can tell, I was very happy with this visit to a pretty uniquely eccentric, and actually educational (if you go into the Museum) place - I hope it manages to survive well into the future.

Some videos with unusual stories

First, the poor Nepalese have been preyed upon to sell kidneys to Indian surgeons.  (Not sure if the typical customer is a rich Indian - but it wouldn't be surprising if foreigners seeking a fast and cheap option did this too): 

 

Next, Sabine Hossenfelder seems impressed with a recent paper that argues quantum gravity would affect causality.  As she says at the end, some might argue that this means gravity can't be treated that way, after all.  Who knows?

 

In other sciencey news, I think I might have seen this aircraft before, but it is deeply weird looking. Apparently, the company is only selling a system for testing hypersonic flying devices - it's not even about launching into space (AFAICT):  

 

And finally, the All Knowing Algorithm put me onto this guy for the first time, who has been taking a decade or so to provide geographical summaries of every country in the world (and as he is up to Vietnam, that's about to end.)   This video is not one of his formal summary ones, but just a tavelogue of his trip to Ho Chi Minh City.   He seems quite interested in the same things I am - he likes visiting temples and considering the nature of local religion and spirituality.   It's very likeable content:

Hot in Singapore

I've noticed some people on Twitter complaining about the heat in Singapore over the last couple of weeks.  Given that it seemed to me every time I have been there that it's a pretty uniform 30 - 33 degrees maximum there, I thought I would look at current temperatures:

 

Yes, they have had good reason to complain.

The government takes very seriously the problem of future climate change.   As they should.

Some notes on Kobe

I never got around to talking much about the days spent in Kobe on my last trip to Japan.

Given that it's a popular port on cruise ship itineraries, I think quite a lot of people have been there on a quick day visit, despite it not exactly being renowned for any "must do" site to visit.   That said, I thought it was a very pleasant city, with interesting geography, being  hemmed in between mountain and the sea:

 

It has quite a few European style buildings, including some old traders' houses, tree lined streets, and a popular Chinatown:

 

But the best thing we did there, and which is probably not so well known by visiting Australians, is to catch the cable train and cable car to the old onsen town of Arima.

The cable car situation there is a little confusing, because there is one that goes up to a lookout that leaves from close to the centre of town (and which we did not visit); the other one is a cable train a bit out of the centre of town that goes up to Mount Rokko, where you then catch a bus to a cable car that takes you to Arima.  Here's the map showing their departure points:

It's the Maya Cable station which is the one to get to Arima.  (We caught a bus to get to the cable station from our hotel in the centre of town, but it wouldn't be too expensive via taxi either.)   Here are a few photos:

And at the top of the ride, you are greeted with a spectacular view back over the city:

The most distant island there (on the left side) is the airport that is built on an artificial island of which, later on the trip, I happened to get a good picture from my flight:

Anyway, you have to catch a bus from the cable train to the cable car station, but on the way there is a small botanical garden which you can hop off and see.  It was rather pretty, being autumn and all:

 

Oh, and look, more odd sculpture:

(In case you can't make it out, it's an upside down peeing boy balancing on a pink figure's foot.)

Anyway, you then continue on the mountain bus to another lookout, when you can see over to neighbouring Osaka, as well as back to Kobe:

Need I say, it's a spectacular view.

Then onto the cable car, which only takes about 12 minutes or so to get to Arima, but the views again are great:

And Arima itself is a pretty charming old onsen town, with some narrow streets and lots of onsen to stay in overnight:

 

And you should stay in an onsen at least one night on any visit to Japan.  They're great.

That temple, unfortunately not open, is very old:  according to the sign, established in 727 and restored in 1191 - with the cherry blossom tree 270 years old.

 

Incidentally, to get back to Kobe we just caught a bus, and given that it can travel through a tunnel or two, the trip is very quick - about 45 minutes from memory - but not nearly as scenic as going via Mount Rokko, of course.

So yes, I would recommend Kobe, at least if the weather is nice and you take the opportunity to make this very spectacular side trip.

Drug issues noted

This story on the ABC this Easter weekend seemingly came out of nowhere.  It's on a topic we very rarely hear about:  people who have persistent perception/mental health issues after the use of hallucinogenic drugs:   

Sheree da Costa lost her son Joey to suicide and believes he would still be alive if he hadn't developed hallucinogenic persistent perception disorder (HPPD) as a teenager.

"That was the actual tipping point for Joey," she said.

HPPD results in disturbed vision, where a sufferer may constantly see visual snow, haloes or trails.

Many also experience out-of-body sensations and extreme anxiety.

It's triggered by the use of psychedelic drugs and has been described as the "trip that never ends".

With the use of illegal drugs on the rise and the emergence of psychedelics in the treatment of mental health disorders, there are calls for greater awareness and more research into the condition.

Sheree said her son's experience of HPPD was "a living hell".

Joey developed HPPD after taking a psychedelic drug at the age of 17 when he was in his final year at school, affecting his vision.

"Where school was concerned words were starting the slide off the page so he couldn't study, he couldn't read, and reading was something that he was very good at," she said.

Joey dropped out of school and eventually told his parents, who tried to help as much as they could.

"But to be honest we were in the dark as well until we started to do research of our own," Sheree said.

"Even to us it seemed hopeless because, where do you go? Especially here in Australia."

Ms da Costa said she and Joey often talked about raising awareness about HPPD together.

Now she is advocating on his behalf to call for more research into the condition.

Well, yeah, I knew that some hippy LSD users going nuts and never recovering in California in the 1960's was a real thing (and led to its criminalisation - while others call it a mere "moral panic" that wasn't justified), we all know that in recent years a "pro-psychedelics" push back has been happening.   Yet in this article, we have a couple of researchers (father and daughter, actually) talking about HPPD as a significant issue:

Researcher Anneliese McConnell said HPPD was reported to affect about 5 per cent of hallucinogen users, but she thinks the real numbers are much higher.

"It's not a small population we're talking about," Dr McConnell said.....

Much of the existing research on HPPD is focused on describing the condition.

Psychiatrist Harry McConnell said a lot more research needed to be done into the basic mechanisms of how it occurred, who was at risk and treatments.

He and his daughter Anneliese McConnell — a researcher at the Western Sydney University School of Medicine — have looked into whether HPPD is associated with other disorders such as migraines accompanied by visual auras or tinnitus.

"It's difficult to get funding in this area. I think it's difficult to get funding in a lot of areas related to drug and alcohol use and HPPD is no exception here," he said.

It's seems that while it has been known about for a long time, it's been only gradually getting more attention: 

To get some more detail on prevalence, I'll quote a 2021 review article:

Of the various health issues caused by the steady, worldwide increase in illicit drug use, HPPD is an underreported and still poorly understood condition (UN Office on Drugs Crime, 2019). Sound prevalence rates are lacking, but the DSM-5 suggests that 4.2% of all hallucinogen users experience HPPD-like symptoms (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). In their literature study, Halpern and Pope (2003) estimate that such symptoms emerge in <5% of all patients treated with LSD-assisted psychotherapy but in up to 50% of polydrug users. Sometimes two subtypes of HPPD are distinguished based on their severity and comorbidity. Type 1 is considered to be the milder variant, where perceptual symptoms are infrequent and barely affect general functioning, with the experiences being predominantly denoted as pleasant (and occasionally as “free trips”). The prognosis is said to be good, with the course often being self-limiting and not requiring professional help (World Health Organization, 2018). Type-2 HPPD, however, is described as causing significant impairment in daily and occupational functioning, while the prognosis is poor, with symptoms lasting up to years or even decades, albeit that large-scale follow-up studies to back this up are scarce (Noushad et al., 2015).

Although it is unknown what proportion of those experiencing HPPD seek professional help, only a small group manages to procure the help they need. This is at least partly due to a lack of knowledge of HPPD among general practitioners and medical specialists. It is widely believed that pharmacological treatment regimens and psychotherapy have little to no effect on HPPD (Lerner et al., 2014c). Since evidence-based treatment guidelines are still to be developed, patients often receive practice-based interventions with off-label medications such as adrenergic agonists, antidepressants, antiepileptics, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines, beta blockers, calcium-channel blockers, catechol-o-methyl transferase inhibitors, and opioid receptor antagonists. The evidence for the effects of these treatments is lacking since they have only been described in case reports and open-label treatment studies.

This seems to be another case where my innate leeriness of recreational drug use finds some evidence falling into its lap, so to speak.  

I also find it a bit odd that the ABC seems to be quite open to running cautionary stories about hallucinogens lately.   (Is there some story commissioning producer there who has a relatively conservative attitude to illicit drug use?)  I say this because don't think I ever got around to noting here this story that appeared on 7.30 in February that highlighted psychiatrists who worry that people are getting entirely the wrong impression from the TGA's decision to legalise the use of psilocybin and ecstasy under strict guidelines:

The Royal College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) says people may be getting the wrong impression about the availability of some psychedelic drugs, following an historic 2023 decision to take them off the prohibited drug list.

"There's a definite risk of patients having significantly elevated expectations," says the chair of RANZCP's Psychedelic Steering Group, Professor Richard Harvey.

"Some of the marketing, what we see on the web … is suggestions that these are treatments or substances that everybody should use, that all psychiatrists should be prescribing — there's absolutely not, by any means, the evidence that is the situation."...

The drugs are only available for therapeutic use in conjunction with intensive therapy carried out by authorised practitioners.

7.30 can only confirm two cases of psychedelic drug prescriptions since the TGA's decision came into effect in July last year.

Dr Cassidy says the process was complicated and expensive.

But the information in the story that most caught my eye was this:

Professor Susan Rossell from Swinburne University of Technology says there's a trend across published psilocybin studies.

"About a third seem to have some very positive effects, a third nothing really, and a third do have some negative long-term consequences about the so-called bad trip," she said.

Professor Rossell's team is trying to find out what are the predictors of success.

"We know this intervention is going to be really expensive, it involves a lot of therapy.

"So if we can make some predictions as to who it's going to benefit the most, wouldn't that be the best way forward?"

About a third can have negative long term consequences!   We don't see that talked about much, if at all.    I mean, I get that people who are going to try it are probably doing so as something of a last resort, but nonetheless, her comments indicate that there is still a very significant risk of making their problems worse.  How many treatments are allowed with a risk profile that high?

Anyway, in other odd drug news this Easter, it was surprising to read that the victims of a drug overdoes on the Gold Coast were a group or women in their early 40's - not the typical age range or gender group you expect to be going on a recreational drug binder.  (Well, unless they are rich and doing cocaine.)    But it turns out that the woman who died was a new age eccentric:

Known as a “Shamanic medicine woman” on her social media, Whittaker proudly worked to “build an army of courageous, empowered, soul driven women who are here to create change and make magic”.

Her work revolved around New Age spirituality.

As to the drugs that killed her (and sent her friends to hospital too), it's not yet known for sure, but:

...early reports have referred to the substance as a "drug cocktail," including ketamine, GHB or fantasy. 

And in yet more drug use news, it was widely reported that Queensland had decided to allow pill testing at a music festival for the first time.   The TV news reports showed it to be a very modern hippy-ish style where the point of being there is to be off their collective faces.

I don't know - I would prefer to deal with the problem by banning festivals I don't like the look of!  But I would say that, wouldn't I...