"Eulogy" Ink, charcoal and watercolour on paper. 2011. (c) Judith Huang. All Rights Reserved. Click here for the full set. When my grandfather died last year, I had a dream about him. I do not remember what he said, but I remember his smile. There was something calm and beautiful about that smile, and also cheeky. It was very him as I remembered him. Why did he come to see me? Because I was in no state to return to see him off for the funeral. I cried and cried and cried because I had loved him very much. He was in every way a pioneer. He left his country (China) for a promised land he had never seen, on the backs of a strange call, a strange promise. In our family, I am a sixth generation Christian, as far as I know. I have always felt a resonance with those promises in the Bible that mention "you and your household" being blessed for the actions of a single man.... it is not as though we each did not have to make a decision to stay within the faith, but there is a special grace given to those who have learned the love of Him in imitation of someone they love. It is a form of 灌输，not 洗脑, because growing up in a Christian family also makes you rebel against it, also makes you question. It can make you grow cynical when you see hypocrisy. In the end it is all about testing your heart, but I have come down on the side of faith every time I grow a little agnostic. And honestly, it is the material witness of my ancestors, particularly my great-grandmother (b. 1905), the matriarch of the family who is also the mother of the grandfather I am talking about. I felt that her death in 2004 sealed my fate, that the thought that she intercedes for me on my behalf daily (as she did when she was alive) is what ensures I can never, never let go, no matter what sophisticated philosophies and caveats I acquire. Moses himself had doubts. Moses himself walked through the wilderness and failed God, elevating himself to the status of God, and was smited for doing so. He never got to see the promised land, except from the cliff overlooking Canaan. Tired out, his hands raised by the hands of his descendants, he longed for the thing he had worked all his life to see, only to miss it, just, on the cusp of the grasping of it. Isn't this true of all pioneers - the ones who did not live to see their reward, lived only to see the old dreams of their homeland fade into memory, the colour slowly leaching out into rivers of angry tears? Isn't this true of all artists, who must resign themselves to obscurity, who are dedicated to the truth of art, and know their reward will come only after their lifetime, if at all? This painting is a symbolist eulogy for all those pioneers, the ones who have gone before, and the ones who will come after. They are the seers, the prophets, the lovers, the artists - the ones who will stand like a voice in the wilderness, calling on the stubborn people to follow. They are the ones who see clearly because of a special gift, a special restlessness, a special sense of injustice that must be put right. They are the ones who will move mountains with the blind faith seeded in them, by blind hands and blind and reckless love. They are foolish and wise, and they will cry down the kingdom, they will weep at the walls, at the feet of the statues and at the foot of the ruins. They are the ones whose voices will echo through time and down the corridors of eternity. --- Footnote: how long does it go back? The Jesuits first reached out to China in 1552. Xavier never reached the mainland, dying after only a year on the Chinese island of Shangchuan. Three decades later, in 1582, Jesuits once again initiated mission work in China, led by several figures including the Italian Matteo Ricci, introducing Western science, mathematics, astronomy, and visual arts to the imperial court, and carrying on significant inter-cultural and philosophical dialogue with Chinese scholars, particularly representatives of Confucianism. At the time of their peak influence, members of the Jesuit delegation were considered some of the emperor's most valued and trusted advisors, holding numerous prestigious posts in the imperial government. But even before the Jesuit missions, traders such as (most famously) Marco Polo would have already brought Christian thought and concepts to China along the old trade routes. The earliest my family adopted the faith would probably still be only the 1800s (my great-great-grandfather converted to Christianity after the death of his only son from a tragic illness). To put this in perspective, in the 1800s the world was experiencing a seismic change as the echoes of the French Revolution were felt throughout the world. In South-east Asia, the gradual decline of Spanish/Portuguese influence worldwide meant there was an opening for a new colonial power - the French, English, Dutch (and much lesser extent Germans) scrambled for Asia, particularly the spice islands. These great forces would also form the "pull factors" for the Hua Qiao like my great-grandmother to "come down the South Sea", or Xia Nanyang. The ascendancy of a militant, colonial Protestant Christianity helped to justify the "gold, god and glory" colonialism, which still so dominates society today. However, I am eager to point out my family's faith pre-dates Singapore's colonization (and anyway didn't occur in Singapore but in the rural outskirts of Foochow). First Published at http://judithhuang.com/blog/?p=808