Daily in April will be posted a written story: 'How Dragons Shaped China'; the Hindu Ramayana from SITA's point of view; and from Korea, 'Taming of Tiger'; from my days of telling verbal stories at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. These tradi...
Connect to other countries, worlds, and realities in other times and places or now through STORY that resonated in our bones from the ancient past with time-honored plots.
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When telling stories at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, I had the opportunity of my life, immersion in ancient and modern Eastern culture learning about the arts, history, and stories: myths, folktales, legends, and cautionary tales. I call this education my 'Doctorate' in Storytelling.
My first set of folktales is about DRAGONS and their importance in the shaping of Chinese history. Dragon is a mystical beast and part of the Chinese Zodiac which started about 5,700 years ago. This first drawing of a dragon was found in on a shell about 7,500 years ago.
The Dragon represents creation, magic, strength, respect, honor, good fortune, prosperity, wisdom, good health and power, which leaders used and Emperors wanted. The traditional stories selected for DRAGON SHAPES CHINA depicts a mythical beast's reputation, purpose, and knowledge.
The second set is a mythical legend from the Hindu Ramayana. The epic adventure of King Rama, SITA, the loyal wife of Rama, his brother, and the ten-headed twenty-armed Demon Ravana, who abducts Sita, and of course, Hauaman, the devotee of Rama. Sita is the narrator of these events: her love, marriage, kidnap, abduction and banishment from Rama, a human man of greatest Dharma.
The third set of folktales is simple short history THE TAMING OF TIGER from ancient Korea and the Man of the Mountain, who stands with Tiger. Today they appear at festivals together. Tiger represents dignity, courage, power, is fierce, unpredictable, territorial, cruel, and greedy, has passion, devoted, adventurous, can bring good luck and solitary. Tiger has powerful muscles, swims, untiring, hunts slowly, silently and carefully at night, and is a good parent. Tiger is the third in the Zodiac. In Korea, the King of Beast and the Lord of the West.
I re-arranged the characters to fit the landscape and combine the story within a story to suit my tales, which I told in the Asian Art Galleries 2002 to 2012.
