French take on Chinese culture

FIRST PERSON Jone Vergnolle, is a French teacher in Beijing.

I’ve been living in one of Beijing’s traditional alleyways for a year. Although I’m from France, I’m very interested in China’s calendar culture. The new ones are functional and guide us to do practical things in life, but what I really like are the older ones — the collectors’ items — such as those from the time of the “cultural revolution” (1966-76).

Most calendars today are mass produced, but the handmade calendars have some elements of art to them. It’s a nice way to discover Chinese art. And I think they’re very valuable.

In France, we also have calendars, but they are more practical. My grandparents would buy the kind identifying the phases of the moon because they were farmers. They were looking at the moon the same way people did in China. They used the phases for agricultural and maritime purposes.

Of course, over time, we lost that. Today we don’t have calendars because phones and computers have replaced them.

Where we live now in Beijing is small, but when we have a bigger house, l want to decorate it Chinese style, which will include Chinese art such as old calendars. Because when you look at the calendars it is like a time machine. You can go back to those periods and explore.

For those who are interested in antiques and collecting, this (Jin Anguang’s calendar shop) is a valuable place because of the historic and artistic value of the items. If he would sell me older ones I’d be happy to pay a good price.

Unfortunately, however, this type of shop is something that isn’t going to last. But this is part of Beijing’s alleyway culture. Jin’s store is a nice place, and my daughter has designed a big sign for him to attract passers-by to the shop. We hope more people will visit.

We also want to display items on a website and are working on that with Jin. He is not yet convinced that the digital age can bring lots of virtual traffic. Jone Vergnolle spoke with Li Hongyang.