The Hong Kong TreeWalk project : Banners for Banyans This project

The Hong Kong TreeWalk project : Banners for
Banyans
“ The urban environment in which we live has made it difficult to learn about
or appreciate how to just ‘be’ in the countryside, so taking positive steps to
care about it, may not seem obvious. Green environmental attitudes are not
automatic, positively experiencing small pockets of nature needs to come
first. We need to help young people connect with their surroundings and
then express their impressions through creative paths. “ John Caddy
This project is designed to get teachers and students
of secondary and primary level out and about and
actually noticing the nature in the city that they walk
past every single day!
We will help you to:
1 ) To explore the trees through sensory and
observational experience
2 ) To explore the function of trees through a study of
nature science,
3 ) To investigate the role of the Banyan Tree through
the lense of Chinese History, Culture and stories.
4 ) To respond creatively to all your discoveries
Every area in Hong Kong no matter where, has a tree and very
commonly a Banyan Tree too. Banyans have long been revered
here due to their healing properties and some Banyans like the
Tai PO ‘Wishing Tree’ have become very famous.
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Some trees grow in the country and have lots of room
Some
just cling on wherever they can by
their roots
To the Chinese, Banyans represent strength and longevity,
determination and tolerance; they are often used to represent a
deity who takes care of the fertility of the earth.
Trees are the lungs of our city. Human beings need lungs to
breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Without our
lungs, we couldn't survive. Trees on the other hand, act like the
lungs of the earth. Trees help the planet breathe by turning
carbon dioxide into clean, pure, oxygen.
The Tai Po Wishing Tree at Chinese New year
Project Outline
Through these YAF led teacher workshops, we will help
teachers learn to walk in their local area, to locate the nearest
Banyan in their neighbourhood, it may be most important and
beautiful big old tree or it may be like our in Repulse bay rather
a sad and lonely one !
Teachers will learn some techniques and methods for helping
their students learn the ways of this tree, the smells of the tree,
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the life of the tree, the cycles of the tree, the stories of the tree.
Teachers will learn ways to honour this special banyan tree, to
design and create a ‘shrine’ or “dressing” that will honour the
tree at it’s location.
Teachers might wish to hang something inside it for a while, or
build a small votive offering, to wrap it in something, to draw or
paint it and then hang those as offerings inside the tree itself.
These Tree Shrines can need to be photographed.
Also back at school with thoughts, ideas, impressions,
drawings, photos, students will then create a “ banner’ which
will represent some aspect of what this tree means to their
school or class community. The banner can be painted or sewn,
they can be decorated and embellished in any way that gives
personal expression to the celebration of the tree. The banners
and shrine photographs will be exhibited in the Pao Gallery as
the visual evidence of this project.
Banners will be hung in a tent style installation, see
photograph attached. The enlarged photos of the tree shrines
will be exhibited on foam board in the same area.
Suggestions for Banner hanging ( like the branches of a
tree )
How do I do this with my students ?
No matter what age or ability your students are, everybody
responds to a story and I have found that this story touches
small children as well as teenagers and adults. Read your class
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“ The Last Nut “ by Gavin Coates: Hong Kong author this book
is about a precious banyan tree which once grew in a space
and gradually became choked by the city.
This story stimulates a lot of discussion first before you actually
go out and about, I also notice with primary age children that
they become very emotionally engaged after this story. You
may decide to check out your school area first OR take your
students out to explore and find the Banyan you would like to
work with. Give your tree a name. The kids on Lamma call our
biggest banyan “ The Broccoli Tree”. Find the common name
and the scientific name if you wish to.
The Last Nut (ages 5 - 10) Gavin Coates
How easy it is to think that Nature is at our disposal - to be
controlled, used and abused for our convenience and
enrichment. But Nature has a life of her own and did very well
before you and I came along, thank you very much.
Now here is a story to remind us of our environmental standing
(with emphasis on the mental) and to ask how much longer
Nature will put up with us.
Sensory activities to get to know your tree;
Blindfold your students allow them to isolate their senses:
• Are trees silent ? Listen to the sounds of the
neighbourhood, then, listen very carefully to the sounds of
the tree itself, what can you hear, this may be very
challenging in urban areas. Can you hear who lives here ?
Many city Banyans are full of small sparrows late in the
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•
•
•
•
afternoon. Can you hear the sound of the wind in the
trees.
Feel the tree, it’s vines and it’s, bark and leaves, get to
know it’s textures.
Does it feel rough or smooth? If it has a pattern, does the
pattern run up
and down or from
side to side, or both? Is it plain or does it have a pattern?
You could do a blindfold drawing at this point.
Can you smell your tree ? What can you smell, do you
know your tree is breathing ?
Observational activities to get to know your tree :
• Using a large magnifier, find some places to look very very
carefully at your tree, what patterns can you see, do they
run up or down, where are the dark and light bits. Try
doing a series of close up drawings of your findings: bark,
branches, roots, leaves.
• Where do the roots meet the ground, are they trapped or
nourished? Try drawing these root patterns.
• What patterns do the branches make, using a mirror look
up inside the tree and see what shapes and pathways you
can see? Try drawing these.
• Use thin paper (not too thick) and crayons (unwrapped so
that the sides may be used). Make rubbings of bark
patterns by holding or taping the paper tightly against a
tree and rubbing with the side of the crayon.
• Try doing a faraway sketch to show the size and overall
shape of your tree.
• Try writing a poem to your tree: this is a simple metaphor
format used by some seven year olds in response to one
particular tree: (You can be more complex if you wish
Banyan Tree ( or name of your choice)
Looks like ………………..
Smells like…………………
Feels like…………………
Sounds like………………
Tastes like……………….
Home to………………….
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prompts.
I’d like to ……………….
Banyan Tree ……………………..
By …………………
Your poems can consist of the answers to these
• Wrap a tape measure around the tree and record it's
width. Measure the width of another tree that looks the
same as yours. Which one do you think is the oldest? the
youngest? How do you know?
• Use a magnifying glass to look more closely at your tree.
How does the tree and its leaves look different?
• Draw a line down the middle of a piece of paper. On the
left side, write at least four things you learned about your
tree by looking closely at it. Back at school, look in a tree
book to find out what kind of tree you have adopted. On
the right side, write four things you learned about the tree
after reading about it.
What makes your tree different from other plants? Record the
student's answers, use student responses to develop a poster
or bulletin board.
• Trees are woody. Trees have a trunk that is made up of
strong hard cells that are surrounded by bark.
• Trees have one main trunk (or stem) in comparison with
shrubs which may have many stems.
• Trees are usually more than 20 feet tall when they are full
grown. Trees are the largest plants on earth.
• Trees live for a long time. Trees live from 25-5,000 years.
Discussion Topics:
What Trees Do for You
Many people live in wooden houses. Many products in our
houses are made from wood. Every part of the tree can be used
to make something including paper, crayons, and medicine.
Trees provide jobs for people. Trees give us food. And trees
make our world more beautiful.
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• Have everyone to recall how wood and trees feature in our
day to day lives ?
Trees at Work Make A Better World.
Trees help cause rain. Trees clean the air we breathe. Tree
roots keep soil from washing away which makes streams and
lakes cleaner. Trees provide shade in the summer and block
cold winds in the winter.
• Having everyone talk about and understand the Water
Cycle and the carbon Cycle related to trees and
nourishment.
Clean Air, Clean Water - Thank the Trees.
The quality of the world around us, the air, soil and water,
depends on the roles trees play in our environment. Trees help
cause rain because they return moisture to the atmosphere:
their roots extract it from the soil and their leaves return it to
the air. Trees clean the air we breathe because they take in
carbon dioxide through their leaves and give off the oxygen we
need to breathe. If trees didn't breathe, neither could we. Tree
roots hold soil in place to prevent erosion which not only saves
soil, but also helps keep our streams and lakes cleaner. Water
is much cleaner when there are lots of trees around. Trees
provide shade in the summer to help keep our homes cool. They
block the wind in the winter which makes it easier to warm our
homes.
• When you have considered all these issues, you and your
students can decide what kind of shrine or dressing or
votive offering you would like to place in and around the
tree.
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Try hanging poems
Or gifting the
tree with your
collective wishes
• When this has been created and hung, you can
photograph the tree with it’s “dressing” as well as with
your students.
Lamma island banyan
the Deepwater Bay banyan
The “ Broccoli Tree”
Deities at
• Finally: it is time to make your banner, you can choose a
variety of different making methods for this. We will show
you several making methods today.
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These are some techniques you can try out in class
Mixed media texture collage of roots
collage
Pastel sketches assembled with torn prints.
apllique
Background notes :
Printmaking and
Sewing and
Bad Feng Shui?
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Feng shui is an ancient Chinese philosophy that guides human
beings in living harmoniously with their environments. Feng
Shui masters spend their entire lives studying universal
energies and their relationship to human beings and their
environments. Feng Shui flourishes in Hong Kong. Surveys
indicate that up to half of Hong Kong’s population has some
belief in the practice and in recent years Feng Shui has become
increasingly popular in the West.
“Lam Tsuen, a bustling village near the border of Hong Kong, is
home to a very old banyan tree that is considered sacred for its
use in Feng Shui rituals. People from across Hong Kong and
nearby mainland China, as well as tourists from around the
world, have long come to light incense and make wishes
beneath the spreading limbs of this huge banyan. The tree even
has its own expressway exit. However, the tree’s main limb
suddenly snapped during Chinese New Year festivities in
February, breaking the left leg of a 62-year-old man. The
incident has prompted considerable debate over what if
anything it portends for Hong Kong’s fortunes this year. Victor
Li, a prominent Feng Shui specialist in Singapore, said the
tree’s lost limb was not a bad omen for the entire year. Anja
Steinbauer points out that Feng Shui is mainly concerned with
the arrangement of objects in space, and has little to do with
time, so that it isn’t really intended as a guide to the future. “
Human ghosts are not the only spirits inhabiting the
supernatural Chinese landscape. Even rocks have spirits; some
are worshipped as Earth Gods, charged with looking after the
neighbourhood.
Tree spirits are also worshipped, the most popular being the
spirit residing in the long-lived Banyan, credited with the
power to heal the sick.
The prosperity of Cheung Chau, island home of fishing
community and commuters, is said to be mainly the effect of a
centrally located, elderly banyan; some people take this tree as
godfather of their children, hoping they will grow up smart and
strong.
A 500-year old banyan tree in HK is perhaps the world's
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costliest tree. It was threatened by construction of a shopping
and office complex, and the developer, Swires, was required to
preserve it. Doing so, according to Swire Pacific Limited
chairman D. Gledhill, `involved the building of the biggest
concrete flower pot in the world at a cost of some HK$24
million.'
Dr Martin Williams, Hong Kong Outdoors
Banyan roots in concrete, a very common sight here in
Hong Kong
Some tree poems by Hong Kong Poet
Madeleine Marie Slavick
The night is so windless
trees stand in themselves
like a thousand gods praying
One leaf,
one moment
Oversized banana leaves
have been cracking for
centuries
while the top of white orchid
trees
lush their hips and
just one petal can make the
night drunk
to sweet fanned frangipani
branches
tipped with twisted button
blossoms opening it all up.
But sorry palm trees huddle
fainted fins
hanging along an expanding
stomach
like a wardrobe of hoarded
skirts and
the willow stays the neurotic
sibling,
with a frazzled head, then
uncombed arms,
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swaying dead tails or maybe
just bad poetry.
Leaning mangrove go
anemic,
expose bony ankles over low
water.
Someone asks, which is
straighter:
eucalyptus telephone poles
or flame trees
with red falling hands that
thud.
Cypress, Miss Cypress,
you are the fine grace you
must want yourself to be,
the way you craft your shape
with care,
such proper care,
like the mirage of the
creosote bleeding
across a desert while thick
citrus leaves
shine waxy around fruit of
chosen color.
Still, a soft kind of pine
grows braids
of needles and a night wind
undresses through trees.
silhouettes of black rivers
and visible fingers;
make a large winter head full
of naked,
elegant thought
draw me,
draw me a winter tree,
with hundreds of muses,
branches, reaching for the
open tip altar,
knowing that below,
roots make a mirror of this
whole
Cut some green out
for a little fresh shirt
or frilly kitchen curtains
and you’ve orphaned a shrub
Green lives the need to
express
wraps hills with respect
makes grassland honest
seduces moss
affirms trees
and vines decide its maze
Madeleine Marie Slavick
winter tree
draw me a winter tree,
the infinite delicate,
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Katie’s Intro:
our power point !!
Fellow deep greenies
I would like to ask you :
Here is a project which hopefully answers the requirements of
How would you be able to adapt this in your
our final project and also is something that is useful to all of us.
What do you think this project teaches child
Although it is Hong Kong specific in one way, in others it’s not !
( 6 principles maybe ?)
It’s all about trees, which are of course everywhere!
How could I tweak it to extend it or make it m
powerful?
I created this project for a group of 30 teachers to take back to
How would you tackle this for different ages
school last year and have now padded it out and adapted it as I
yourself ?
will use with some more teachers this fall. The teachers were a
mix from secondary and elementary and also 2 special
Hope its useful
schools. I think this project would work with most age ranges
Cheers katie
and abilities.
The aims were / are:
To get Urban kids noticing that there is nature in the city.
To have kids / teachers actually start to look a their locality
with new eyes
To have some appreciation of interliving
To have some heart / mind / body involvement
I also taught the project myself in my own school to support the
grade 2 Habitat Unit, I will attach that as well in case it’s more
explicit. We had lots of parental involvement on our walks for
logistical reasons, this generated lots of interest in trees in our
area and other teachers began to send us banyan photos for
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