Sketching a Journey to the East
Carol Xie
This summer, Carol traveled to three countries in East Asia to fully indulge her interest in its cultures: Darkhan, Mongolia, for volunteering, Tokyo, Japan, for summer courses, and Shanghai, China, for an internship. Throughout her journey, not only did Carol witness culture differences and interfusing norms in East Asia, she also recorded HER experiences through free-handed drawings. Her little red sketchbook accompanied her journey to freeze these precious moments, and also to present such a journey to everyone interested in art and traveling.
In the sketch above, I traveled to the countryside with my host family and other volunteers on the weekend. The drawings documented the evening when we arrived in Ogii Lake. The clouds created a magnificent foggy atmosphere, with prairies filled with wandering cows and an occasional eagle flying overhead. Living in the gurt and burning manure for heat was a fascinating experience.
After school hours, I had the chance to tour around the Chiyoda City in Tokyo and recorded the moment through sketching. I finished my visit in the Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and decided to use my own artistic take to breathe in the vibe near the Imperial Garden. I enjoyed the relaxed arrangement of the stone tiles and the greens, while was shocked by their striking contrast with the high-rising buildings in close proximity. Isn’t it a representation of 21st Century’s culture? It is mixed, vibrant, hybrid with both elements of the “past” and the “present”. Drawing quickly on my hands, I wondered what the “future” meant in my head.
When I visited Hangzhou, China, I had the chance to ride a boat to explore the renowned West Lake. The scenery was authentically “Jiangnan,” the southeast region of China, as the fog humbly shielded a layer of misery and distance on the mountains and towers. I was interested in exploring the Japanese block print style I enjoyed in Tokyo and maximized the simplicity in this sketch with no direct representation of water and texture. The numerous tourist boats were like pearls dispersing on the voidness of water; within simple lines, I found a resonance in Japanese and Chinese scenery paintings.