Nendil's Procrastination Outlet

As promised, I'm here to give a thorough rundown and review of Jui Guoliang's Chinese Tarot deck. I'll be showing scans of most (though not all) of the cards, which are hopefully small enough to not err... incur un-fair usage... but I do encourage you to click through and take a look at the very nice artworks even if you don't read my humongous info-dumps (and I can't blame you for that XP).

Overall I like these cards very much as an art deck, though the tarot associations are not as strong as they could be. I would have used many more archetypal characters from Chinese mythology & literature (and even history), and I'll be explaining my own choices for each card down below. (Granted, I'm far from an expert on Chinese culture and a large deal of my knowledge comes from Journey to the West... but the most popularly-known cultural elements are the strongest and most archetypal, right?) Nonetheless, I think the deck has a relatively fair compromise between Chinese references and relatability to a Western audience - in fact, there are a lot of things that people without a Chinese cultural knowledge wouldn't get even after reading the included Little White Booklet. And that's why I'm making this post!

(Apologies for using Simplified Chinese in these posts. I would have used Traditional to match the text on the cards, but I tried to figure out how to type in the Traditional Chinese input systems a while back and failed miserably. I need my pinyin!!)

( Major Arcana 1/3 )

This may be tl;dr for you to read but it's even more time-consuming for me to research and type out. :P More next time!

Art!
A commission that I actually might finish this time!  ...if Painter doesn't collapse from the massive RAM-age.
Closeup to the EXTREEEEME
I'm trying to learn from Anry, does it show?

Writing!
( Due to popular request, the first half of chapter 4 just to show that it ain't dead )
Argh, this chapter is boring.  No wonder it's not getting done.

Travel!
Tomorrow I'll be hopping on the train to Shanghai!  A couple days after that I'll be on a plane back home!  Looking forward to life without mosquitos and squatting toilets! ^^;;

Man, page 135 and the train's just arrived at Hogwarts.  How long is this book again?

Oh well, you know what's up:

( Lots O' Pics, part 4 )

And that's all of the photos!  All of the best ones, anyway.  I had to leave a lot on the cutting room floor...

A couple of random observations I had forgotten to note:

- Crossing the street in China is like playing Frogger.  I've learned to duck subtlely around the relative I'm walking with so that they face the oncoming traffic first.

- There is also American Idol in China.  ...Except obviously it's not called American Idol.  And I think it's only girls who bother participating.

- I hate that I can't access Photobucket for the life of me anywhere in China. =(

Anyways, onto business.

( Lots O' Pics, part 2 )

Yeah, let's do bullet points.

- 九寨沟 has the most beautiful water you'll ever see.  Ever.  Pictures to come soon.  Many many many pictures.

- I like Chengdu, it's a nice clean modern city.  But not because of like omg hi-tech, it's still got the feel of a bustling Chinese city.  But without most of the grime and rush of most Chinese cities.

- Everyone's got Harry Potter except me =/  We got to visit a bookstore today but they're liek of course totally out.  Worse comes to worse, I'll borrow it from one of the girls I'm tutoring, who's ordered it all the way from Shanghai.

- On the other hand, I got nifty books on using Maya, and The Wolf Totem which is apparently gonna be Peter Jackson's next project.

- Tomorrow we'll be on tour for another three days, then I'll be getting more settled down.