Unforgettable Stationery

Katy Lai

Macau is a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. It is also the perfect crossroad for the meeting of East and West cultures with ancient Portuguese, Roman and Chinese buildings in the city. Yet the Macanese culture still remains Chinese style. In the past 50 years, it was easy to find traditional Chinese products around Macau. In this article, various stationeries will be introduced as long as they are disappearing or no longer exist in common life nowadays.

The very good example is - Chinese Zhusuan. According to online information, Chinese Zhusuan is the knowledge and practice of mathematical calculation through moving beads on an abacus, a rectangular device of bamboo or wood with beads strung along thirteen to nineteen rods divided into two decks. Practitioners perform mathematical calculations including addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponential multiplication and higher equations. Zhusuan formulas have easy-to-learn rhymes that represent the specific calculation rules and summarize the calculation practices. Zhusuan is transmitted from generation to generation and yet is now not easy to be found in Macau. It was a compulsory subject to learn the technique of using Zhusuan of the students in the past 50 years. However, as we are stepping into a modern world, the cosmopolitism culture has excluded the Chinese Zhusuan, and people use electronic calculators for their mathematics works instead of Zhusuan. Students nowadays are not requested to learn how to do simple mathematics using an abacus in school. Few current stationary stores sell the Chinese Zhusuan, and it is hard for us to find people using Zhusuan nowadays. Local stationery store owner Mr. Leung claimed that fewer and fewer people consume the Chinese Zhusuan now, people use electronic calculators rather the traditional Zhusuan for their mathematics workout. Mr. Leung stopped selling Zhusuan in recent years and claimed people prefer convenient and modern equipments. Nevertheless, some Chinese medication and herbs pharmacies remain the practice of using Zhusuan instead of electronic calculators. We can find the atmospheres of the Chinese herbs pharmacies fulfilled with a sense of intangible Chinese culture.

More example of the disappearing traditional stationery is the Chinese calligraphy. The tools people used for the Chinese calligraphy are a brush pen, and ink. Chinese people originally used brush pens with ink for their handwriting, and this is also a compulsory subject for students in school. Before the 21sth century, most secondary and primary school requested the students to learn the practice of Chinese calligraphy. Some parties hold this calligraphy courses in order to maintain this traditional handwriting practice. However, the particular courses are decreasing in recent years.

In the 1970's to 1980's, the cute pencils caps with cartoon characters were popular among children at that period. Another disappearing stationary among the products that we used to use is – pencils. Pencils which came along with pencil sharpeners are used to be the necessities to students or even adults who used for clerical works. The appearing of mechanical pencils which contains lead, have been replacing the wood pencils. Students preferred the enhanced and simple mechanical pencils with a box of lead to replace the complicated wood pencils, as long as the remaining wood stuff after the wood pencils is being sharpened. Ms Chan, who was born in the 1970's said that when she was in primary school, pencils is the only stationery for her, and having a beautiful wood pencil with cartoon pencil caps had made her felt outstanding among her classmates. She said that children at that time were longing to have nice pencils caps but students nowadays use mechanical pencils instead. Stationary owner, Mr. Leung claimed that most wood pencils are not warm welcoming any longer, due to the reason, pencils caps are less popular and children preferred mechanical pencils with cute appearances. Besides, the ink pens (fountain pens) with a bottle of ink are basically the stationary which people are compelled to use. A fountain pen is a device used to apply ink to a surface, usually paper, for writing or drawing. The arrival ball pens have been a real challenge to ink pens, since the ball pens are plain and easy to be used. People found ink pens troublesome and easily get dirty when applying ink into the pens. Thus, we can find people using ball pens instead of tradition ink pens nowadays.

As we are developing into a modern world and people are used to live in an enhanced environment. However, we often ignored the disappearing of a number of traditional products which have been coming with us over generations. We may doubt the reason of remaining the old and unfashionable products. Nevertheless, imagine when we slow down from our sophisticated lives, we may find these traditional stationeries a worthy recall to be memorized, to be cherished.