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2. Calligraphic
In the vernacular signs, calligraphy writing do not always demonstrate the most refined of practice. Depending on its usage, some of them on signages need not to be excellent as long as it is legible.
This is a menu banner, commonly found in Chinese restaurants situated nearby housing areas. Red, blue and green verticle bars of regular script on yellow cloth. These are done by trained calligrapher from advertising agency. It is amazing that an advertising agency has to be capable of writing in calligraphy, a custom no longer practised in urban conurbations. This one (6-8ft) can cost around RM80.
The thrifty ones prefer to write for themselves. The calligraphy at the bottom left is in the clerical script. I do find it a lot better than computer-generated texts on the right.
Very proportionate regular script. Pretty well done.
The Chinese signboards found in Serdang are mostly written and then framed, not engraved as per tradition. I suppose those engraved ones are more common in Penang. (FYI: There is a well-known practitioner named Kok Ah Wah) Words written on signboards can be greetings, fortune bringers, surnames and origins.
Printed pairs of new year scroll are distributed to students of SJK(C) Serdang Baru 1 & 2 annually, it is a polite way to ask for school donation from the parents and public before Chinese New Year. Chinese primary schools have always been independently funded and supported by the local community. You can witness many of these scrolls in Serdang, old or new. They collectively hint at societal support towards Chinese education. The printed scrolls, although artificial, remain meaningful and become part of Serdang’s visual identity.These are written by 蔡炎标 (pronounced as Chai Yan Biao), an experienced calligrapher/teacher, husband of a Chinese teacher in SJK(C) Serdang Baru 1.
3. Advertising
There is a prominent advertising agency called “Ah You Advertising” in Serdang which has done many signboards for the surrounding businesses. During the 70s and early 80s where printers were not available, they hand-painted many signboards. They have mastered skills for calligraphy and basic typographic layouts. Most types were condensed to fit in a small board. Their business continues to run till today. Located beside the main road of Serdang new village, their contribution to Serdang’s identity is notable. Catching up with the latest technology, of course they now do print – mostly print.
By Ah You Advertising. Typeface selected by the shop owner. Done during the 70’s.
Another one from the same agency.
Melody Bakery, since 1987. They used to be right beside the main road in new village, now shifted to the shop lots in the vicinity of Taman Jinma and Bukit Serdang. If you notice the discoloured images on the right, they were taken from an older signboard. This new signboard has the same layout and types, the only difference is the colour and it has been digitised.
Woon Wah grocery store. They started their business during the 60’s. Their signboard was designed around 1979 by themselves.
Pooi Li Goldsmith at Jalan Besar, since 1986. Cool classic font in 3-D.
4. Symbolic
A number of Chinese words evolved from images. These abstracted forms carry meanings and blend easily with the patterned grilles found in most Chinese villages, below are the variations you can find in Serdang;
Surrounded by s-shaped clouds, the round maze-like symbol at the centre is a graphical form of “寿” (longevity). Some love it double, some quadruple, some have it on both grilles and gate; longevity is always in the Chinese syllabus. In fact, they are a number of Chinese folk stories about elixirs or pills that confer immortality. Significant one is the legend of Chang’ e. This pattern is the most popular.
Customised “福” (prosperity). I only found one of this.
The intimate “双喜” (double happiness).
Alien symbols? Any clue? Nobody was in the house when I intended to inquire about its meaning. I went to ask the neighbouring uncle instead. According to him, some of these grilles were picked up from their work place as some were left unwanted. They will firstly measure the width of their entrance and look for one that fitted. So yes they could be second-hand and the circular pattern can be customised according to personal preference.
Loitering in Serdang with a DSLR camera and a notebook in hand, I came to realise that the vernacular art speaks a distinctly local dialect. It merges into the essence of this village and come to embody the hopes and dreams of each respective villagers. During the short interviews I have conducted, some villagers were reticent, some got intimidated by my camera, some would happily mingle with you and tell you more about their stories. This article is merely a documentation of what I found interesting and valuable today, insufficient to provide an overview for the visual expression and form of communication in Serdang.
I should end this with my favourite photo before I wander off again.
~
(TZH)
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Yeah, my aunt is living in Serdang new village, and I’ll (I mean my mother) occasionally visit my aunt…
Interestingly, the main Chinese dialect in Serdang is Hakka, as in Ampang…
Charming. Be careful of falling into nostalgia thought mmmkay?
If it weren’t for Pin Yin, I wonder if the Chinese could have entered into modernity. Perhaps the Chinese language should go further like the Koreans and Japanese and have an additional alphabetic system to their language (anyone with good links on Asian typography design?).
Without limiting your characters, it’s more difficult to develope a viable form of typography design. What you have left is this cottage business and the appearance of occasional talents and eccentricities you find in Serdang.
Even with the technology of today, I’m sure coding and typing chinese characters must be a real bitch compared to typing ABCs.
Intellectually, i think it might have really screwed the chinese people. Despite having invented printing so much earlier than the europeans, financial, and economical cost of type setting ideograms would have added more layers to the complexity of knowledge creation, transfer, and storage.
I’ve no research to back all this but I’ll go further and suggest that all that memorizing of character might have a certain limitating effect on creativity and experimentation. I mean, if you are a musician, mathematician, or a coder, you’ll want a language that is basic enough that it doesn’t mess with the working of the other complex languages you are developing right?
I’m not saying cultures with alphabetic languages are automatically more creative. Just that it’ll have more possibility for it.
Another reason is that small changes in characters, or sound substitutions, could affect meaning more than say, s0me1 who taiPes Laike Dis?
Anyways, my Chinese is only limited to a primary school level so maybe I’m just venting.
Someone debate me on this?
Hi Hmmm,
Funny isn’t it? The thing about our generation is that most of us did receive primary school level Chinese education. Must be something to do with the fact that they had back then just allowed students who scored more than four As and above to skip remove class. During my year six, remove class was completely scraped.
I know typing chinese is a real bitch for me, but that doesn’t seem to apply to a few friends of mine who can whip out characters using a pretty sophisticated taiwanese style of typing, which doesn’t use pin yin. it’s a bitch to learn it though.
i guess memorisation does slow things down. i still think mandarin is one of the hardest language to learn and one probably wouldn’t succeed very far without a teacher that actually canes you everytime you make a spelling mistake (I learned it the hard way).
Alongside simplicity of the alphabet language, i guess, also comes flexibility. But you think alphabet facilitated modernity? Surely some of the more significant factors have to do with the political climate as well as the socio-cultural context of the East/West?
The Roman A-Z alphabets have dominated everybody today; it happened through colonisation or through intentions on popularising a language (like PinYin).
Even our keyboards are A-Z. And through this Roman set of alphabets, we type other “foreign” characters and glyphs. Technology too forced us to be accommodative. A-Z is already a standard for all learning, a mediator or a tool.
We can’t avoid this; Chinese to have PinYin, Malay ancient Indic script and Jawi to become Rumi (Latin). They are part of the developments in linguistic. But I guess what’s important now is to relook at what we have/had have – a kind of self-actualisation – hoping to root out possibilities beyond this Roman constriction.
On design, the complexity in Chinese characters is very inspiring as they evolved from pictures attached with a plethora of thoughts, customs and social values. About “…more difficult to develop to viable form for typography design?…” It’s only so when one has frequently exposed on Western typography design (the Roman constriction), hence limiting many probabilities, like in Plato’s cave where one not aware.
It happens to me as a student where History of Types is all about gothic blackletters, Carolingian, Johannes Gutenberg and Helvetica. Gosh, what about Sanskrit, ancient Malay script (Kawi etc) and Chinese calligraphy/calligraphers (of regular, cursive, clerical). Definitely the college can’t be holistic, but please do teach me something closer to my culture before putting me into foreign purview. Why must students succumbed to a pre-determined “international scene”? The only reason is the college needs to be practical and relevant? And in the end neglecting our legacy/documentations of our history and civilisation?
Due to that, I am trying to re-learn many things because I felt lost.
If Chinese has spent centuries writing with brush, it is simply one of many ways to communicate; brush is flexible and the stroke is controlled by strength, emotion, serenity and many aspects in real time. Perfection is impossible under this flexibility, add in the many Chinese characters, it simply makes Chinese interesting. There won’t be twin because the possibilities in communication is wider.
Instead of having typographers to be in charge of type design, speaking about balance, realist, humanist, organic, neutrality, could it be a better way for us to just write/craft/personalise in the end instead of creating font after font?
I am not disregarding their achievements, in fact do learn from their precision and look beyond the form of ABC. Shouldn’t we?
hey ! good job on doin the decoding :)
real nice! i live in Kajang, just nearby serdang
How did Serdang got its name?
M. Thanabalan,
The name Serdang comes from Pokok Serdang. I’ve never seen it until Anum showed the tree to me in Rimbun Dahan.
The name was later changed to Seri Kembangan probably due to political reasons; an attempt to erase the New Village history from the younger generation. The elders still call it Serdang (沙登).