• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure
that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin
the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that
other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like
your teasers!
My Teasers:
"Phnom Penh has only attained its fixed status as a capital city recently. This is true despite the fact that it was Cambodia's capital for about thirty years in the fifteenth century, and for short periods in succeeding centuries."
PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT with either the link to your own Teaser Tuesdays post, or share your ‘teasers’ in a comment here (if you don’t have a blog). Thanks!
While reading Stay Alive My Son, the brilliant and chilling memoir of Pol Pot times by Pin Yathay (and absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in Cambodia), I came across this casual reference to the Cambodian understanding of Dana, the Buddhist concept of generosity. In this passage he is discussing the forced exodus from Phnom Penh in the days immediately following the Khmer Rouge takeover, as people became gradually hungrier and more desperate:
"Even though Buddhists would normally give generously, we refused them all, except an old lady with her grandchild, to whom I gave a handful of rice. It could have been my own mother out there, and my heart went out to her. But as she went on down the line of people and vehicles, my mother said from the back seat, 'Don't do that again, Thay. Think of your own family first.'"
Apart from brilliantly evoking the mood of those horrendous days, this passage also helps us see the natural association Buddhists make between the practice of their religion and the practice of generosity, known in Pali as Dana. It means not just giving, but finding joy in giving, in seeing generosity as an expression of one's own humanity. It is indeed a beautiful idea.
This word Dana has become well-known in Western Buddhist circles because many Buddhist associations host what they call "Dana Days" in which the community collects together to assist the temple materially and financially.
The British Buddhist teacher Sangharakshita says that Dana is the fundamental Buddhist virue - without giving no other cultivation is possible. Giving, and delighting in that giving, is the first evidence of a higher thought, of a more moral intention. It is the action of a Bodhisattva. Those who are unwise and immoral are easily identified by their selfishness. Interestingly, being called "stingy" is a gross insult across Buddhist Asia - obviously connected to the Buddhist moral imperative towards Dana.
The Recollection of Generosity is one of the Paths to Purification suggested in the Visuddhimagga, one of the most influential commentary texts in Theravada Buddhism. In that text the scholar-monk Buddhagosa suggests that the Buddhist cultivate extreme generosity by vowing: "From now on, when there is anyone present to receive, I shall not eat even a single mouthful without having given a gift."
People far away often ask me what are the major differences between Vietnam and Cambodia.
Now, to answer that question would require several hefty volumes, but to me, a regular habitue of Buddhist monastic spaces, one of the most significant differences is that between Buddhist statuary in each of the countries.
This is my special interest area, you see, though I have zero training in Buddhist art and iconography. I am merely a keen amateur.
I have long been in love with Khmer Buddhist art, particularly if it is popular or modern.
Of course, it is easy to wax lyrical about the exquisite transcendence of the Buddhist statuary of the Angkorean period. It is without equal.
But I am talking about the everyday stuff, the statues rendered in cement and plaster, gaudily painted and often left open to the elements in small temples across Cambodia.
These are the images that interest me most, and I think they are possessed of their own special beauty.
You should really take the time to read this free e-version of young Cambodian writer Sok Chanphal's chilling little story 'The Buried Treasure'.
It's in English, and so offers a unique opportunity to look at the kind of style, content and subject being dealt with by contemporary Cambodian writers.
It also happens to be very good.
Chanphal's is one of the most recognisable names in contemporary Cambodian writing. He is a novelist and contributes to magazines as well as blogging and e-publishing, an increasing area of literary exploration in Cambodia. But, perhaps most influentially he is a popular song writer with one of Cambodia's biggest star-making studios, and his songs have entered the popular imagination of contemporary Phnom Penh.
I finally got around to seeing Lost Loves, a by-now legendary Cambodian film detailing the horrors of the Pol Pot years, directed by Chhay Bora.
There were only a few of us in the cinema, most others having opted to go and see John Carter in 3D instead. I guess that says someting about taste and the collective memory in 21st century Cambodia.
It is a dramatised account of one woman's experiences during the Khmer Rouge years, and it was quite a gripping and emotional film. I knew I was in for trouble when I started to get teary in the first two minutes.
It is well-made and the subtitles are mostly excellent, and it is a fantastic film to watch if you don't know much about this period in Cambodian history. Of course, for those who know and love Cambodia there can sometimes be a bit of "Pol Pot Years" fatigue, as most of what is presented to foreigners about Cambodia is about this period. There seems to be a concerted effort to keep this film before the public eye, as it is subtitled in English (none of the Cambodian romantic comedies or horror films I go to see are) and it continues to be shown at the major cinemas, despite the less-than-impressive audiences. I saw it at the Sorya Mall, and there fewer than 8 of us in the audience - more on that later.
Stylistically, the film obviously owes a debt to the Indian soap operas that are enormously popular in Cambodia right now. The dramatic panning in on faces twisted by emotion, the slow-mo replays of painful events, the pans across sad family members' faces - all of these things are instantly recognisable from my evening TV viewing with friends. That is not to say that it is in any way an unsophisticated film - on the contrary, I was impresed by its emotional restraint and its simplicity. The script is very well done, and it doesn't seem to run a moment too long.
The film is based on the director's mother-in-law's real-life story, and it is this premise in real life which renders it all the more emotionally engaging. I am not going to indulge in spoilers here, but let me just say that the present-day resolution at the end of the film is beautifully handled and quite effectively emotional.
The performances are also impressive. Sophisticated, reserved and ultimately highly representative of the moods and emotions I witness among the Cambodian people around me every day, each was thoroughly believable. My only gripe was that, over the four year period the film covers, the children never age. I know this is small thing, and that I need to suspend some disbelief, but it began to nag at me by the end of the film.
And a word on Cambodian cinema audiences. Despite a little public-service announcement at the begining of each and every film asking people to refrain from texting, talking and telephoning during a film, people talk, text and telephone from the moment they walk in. More than that, they get up and walk around the cinema, often shouting to friends in the back row. You cannot allow this to get to you - any attempt at remonstration will be met with bewilderment. People have come to the movies for a good time, and a good time for them entails the freedom to engage with all modern forms of communication at all times. So, the team of young women who were the only other people present in the cinema with me had a grand old time, shouting, laughing, making and taking calls, leaving to buy snacks and coming back for a quick meander around the auditorium to see if anything had changed in their absence. Resistance is futile.
Even more strangely, at key moments in the film (there is a particularly long sequence of a child dying), these young women wept loudly and heavily, when not 30 seconds before they had been shrieking comments at each other and texting their boyfriends. The cinema is a communal experience in Cambodia, so public expressions of emotion only contribute to the experience.
One of the wonderful contradictions that I love in Cambodia is the twin devotions people display to tradition and to modernity.
So young people are likely to know about old music and traditional Cambodian arts in a way that I have never experienced in Vietnam, but they are also hugely enthusiastic about nightclubbing, hip-hop and all the forms of K-Pop. Cambodians are the biggest K-Pop fans I know, and you can stay abreast of all the latest Korean music just by wondering around some of Phnom Penh's shops and cafes.
The K-Pop song that I am loving the most at the moment is Trouble Maker. It is insanely catchy, with its hokey whistled refrain. Someone at the cafe I am stting in at the moment has set that whistle as their text message alert on their phone, and each time it goes off I get excited.
See for yourself how fabulous it is :-) Be prepared for a strangely violent, and quite sexy, video clip:
This blog was first established way back in 2009 as a collection point for my thoughts and experiences about Vietnam, containing many things that would eventually go into my first book, Destination Saigon.
That book has, for a long time now, had its own website, which you can see here, and where you can continue to read all sorts of interesting stuff about Vietnamese religion and culture, Vietnam travel advice, the Vietnamese community in Australia and my own interactions with things, people and matters Vietnamese.
I am about to embark on a long trip to Cambodia to finish my second book, which will, as you might already have guessed, be about my love for that country and my many wonderful journeys and connections there.
So please join me as I begin to explore more publicly my travels in Cambodia and my engagement in, and fascination with, Cambodian culture in all of its incredible complexity and wonder.
Welcome to my new blog, which is now called A Book About Cambodia.
