Eye Near Bow of the Free China

When I look at this photo I see that someone took care and pride in carving and painting the boat. I wonder what the people who made it were thinking when they decided to decorate it in this fashion. Was it for luck when fishing? Was it to protect them as they sailed from China to San Francisco in 1955? I also wonder who painted the boat. Did the sailors paint it, or their families? There seem to be many unanswerable questions about vessel and its early life in China. The colors are beautiful and the gold suggests that it was special, but perhaps it has received a fresh coat of paint throughout its working life. Was there a ceremony when it was first painted and sailed? The eye animates the boat, making it particularly sad to see it lying abandoned and weathered in a shipyard. Looking at the eye I feel almost guilty that the boat has been left there after making its long and dangerous journey across the Pacific Ocean.

You can view the original post here http://www.uri.edu/artsci/his/mua/in_the_field/junk.shtml.

Page Source: A Junk at Risk by Dione Chen. The image above is part of an upcoming image gallery about the Free China. Those images were made available to the artists to review for this project.


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