忍 TOLERANCE
(Place cursor over picture for explanation.)
Chinese people have a saying, 百忍成金 - "Hundreds of TOLERANCES turn everything into Gold".

The character on this plaque is 忍, pronounced as 'ren', which means to tolerate, to resist or to endure. It is made up of two components - 刃('ren', edge of blade) and 心('xin', heart).

It is commonly used to encourage and 'remind' one that it is worth enduring a long, painful and miserable hardship. In return for doing that, there will be more peace (on earth) or great rewards.

This is the first and only carving which is of a 'pop-up' character. For all the other carvings, the characters were carved into the wood but in this one, the background was carved into the wood, leaving the character elevated!

It sure takes alot more effort to do the 'inverted' version. I had to be very careful to make sure that the area I carved on the background was even and uniform and the border of the sunk area was smoothly edged.

This piece of wood was actually the remainder of my artwork - Sharing the Moon..., in my previous post! Brian cut it into the shape I drafted on the 'left over' wood and since the size of this plaque is only about 10" x 6", I decided to carve just one character on it. I had also been wanting to tryout a somewhat different kind of carving : the pop-up character type, so I did.

I painted the frame of this plaque to resemble stone or granite. I was taught how to do this during one of my primary school art lessons. It was fun, really. First, I had to prepare different shades of grey paint. Then I simply dipped a toothbrush on the paint and brushed it onto a comb! Repeating the procedure with the different shades of paint results in the stone effect.

It is not easy to tolerate. However, it is the Chinese traditional culture that it is very important to be tolerant. If one can do that, many unpleasant happenings can be avoided. In fact, it is one of the beautiful parts of character-building in our social education.

In our life, we tolerate. Sometimes we even tolerate the intolerable.
At home, although we love our family, there are times when we must tolerate each other's behaviour.

At work, we have to deal with our duties, bosses, colleagues, clients, etc. We must extend our tolerance beyond the home and into the workplace. We have to control and adjust our temper, anger and dissatisfaction sometimes to avoid unneccessary quarrels, unhealthy arguements or ruined relationships.

In other situations, we have to tolerate or 'resist' temptations. We must resist unhealthy habbits, criminal acts and even the temptation of delicious desserts if we are dieting.

Happy Tolerating!