The first Russian doll was created in 1890.
Russian dolls are famous world-wide for their ceaseless charm:
A smooth circular mini-person, broken apart to find another mini-person… almost identical to them but a little different, perhaps thicker eyebrows; and then broken apart again to find yet so many more mini-people, each time there features becoming smaller, clearer and more beautiful.
There's life to Russian dolls, like wrapping a present for a beloved one and then un-wrapping that present yourself, over and over again… and
somehow it never loses its bright color.
Coming from a Chinese family, it was always very strange for me as a child to see a Russian doll in a blue satin dress next to small marble statues of a young kung-fu boy practicing his chores.
They’d be frozen motions of him: carrying buckets of water, his round marble head bent over a pile of spidery characters, laughing with a brown sparrow, feeling the flow of chi through his flattened palms, arms held out against the wind in utter concentration. My favorite one is his face when he breaks apart a moist Chinese bun and finds an abundance of sweet, yellow custard.
And then there’d be a Russian girl. No wonder they sent me to an International school.
The Russian doll was very beautiful: wooden skin polished and perfect but her hard, bright smile set your teeth on edge. My gaze would avoid the glossy, lifeless eyes and thin arching eyebrows in a strange childish fear.
So I broke her apart. There were so many layers inside that glossiness. The wood smelling less of polish and paint and more and more like wood: the sweet, musky smell of wood. Her eyebrows lowered themselves and she gained a thoughtful expression the smaller she got and the less space her features could be drawn on. From being blown out of proportion, after 30 layers of being larger than life, she became tiny. No bigger than a grain of rice. The first time I held that tiny blue kernel in between my finger tips, I tried to break it apart, thinking they’d be more. But that was it. I had peeled away all the layers and this tiny thing was the only part of the Russian doll that was unbreakable.
My grandma was always terrified to see all the layers of the Russian dolls lying scattered and she’d scold me in Chinese “哎哟！ 你在做什么啊!” before putting the pieces back together.
I’d asked her “奶奶，你为什么呢么怕呢” “Grandma, why are you so scared?”
“我怕你会失去了他” “I’m scared you’ll lose her” and she picks up the tiny blue person.
Together we reassembled her, layering all their bottom parts first by size, and looking down at a series of circles, smallest in the center and growing wider as they spread out… like the ripples of water when a stone drops down. Then that tiny blue egg is placed carefully in the center of the smallest circle. Finally, the nest is covered with layers that grow thicker and wider.
The first Russian doll was created in 1980, but I’m not exactly sure when people first started to become ill with what I call the Russian doll syndrome. It’s a peculiar case where the syndrome actually came before its name sake.
Perhaps the Russian doll syndrome began when people began to treasure the Russian doll’s glazed, chemical-smelling face more than the sweet woody smell of things beneath the surface of that first skin.
Or when prejudices and stereotypes clouded our ability to believe in something more and crippled our fingers so we could no longer peel away masks and layers to find that something more.
Or perhaps it began when we started to desensitize, thickening our skin to protect us from the rest of the world until we could hardly feel all the old clichés of love, the rain and sunshine.
So I remember my grandmother’s words and make sure to never lose the Russian Doll’s tiny, unbreakable kernel of truth, keeping that blue pill swallowed somewhere inside my tummy (never to be digested).
May 23, 2011
May 23, 2011 at 6:22 AM UTC
The first Russian doll was created in 1890.
Russian dolls are famous world-wide for their ceaseless charm:
A smooth circular mini-person, broken apart to find another mini-person… almost identical to them but a little different, perhaps thicker eyebrows; and then broken apart again to find yet so many more mini-people, each time there features becoming smaller, clearer and more beautiful.
There's life to Russian dolls, like wrapping a present for a beloved one and then un-wrapping that present yourself, over and over again… and
somehow it never loses its bright color.
Coming from a Chinese family, it was always very strange for me as a child to see a Russian doll in a blue satin dress next to small marble statues of a young kung-fu boy practicing his chores.
They’d be frozen motions of him: carrying buckets of water, his round marble head bent over a pile of spidery characters, laughing with a brown sparrow, feeling the flow of chi through his flattened palms, arms held out against the wind in utter concentration. My favorite one is his face when he breaks apart a moist Chinese bun and finds an abundance of sweet, yellow custard.
And then there’d be a Russian girl. No wonder they sent me to an International school.
The Russian doll was very beautiful: wooden skin polished and perfect but her hard, bright smile set your teeth on edge. My gaze would avoid the glossy, lifeless eyes and thin arching eyebrows in a strange childish fear.
So I broke her apart. There were so many layers inside that glossiness. The wood smelling less of polish and paint and more and more like wood: the sweet, musky smell of wood. Her eyebrows lowered themselves and she gained a thoughtful expression the smaller she got and the less space her features could be drawn on. From being blown out of proportion, after 30 layers of being larger than life, she became tiny. No bigger than a grain of rice. The first time I held that tiny blue kernel in between my finger tips, I tried to break it apart, thinking they’d be more. But that was it. I had peeled away all the layers and this tiny thing was the only part of the Russian doll that was unbreakable.
My grandma was always terrified to see all the layers of the Russian dolls lying scattered and she’d scold me in Chinese “哎哟！ 你在做什么啊!” before putting the pieces back together.
I’d asked her “奶奶，你为什么呢么怕呢” “Grandma, why are you so scared?”
“我怕你会失去了他” “I’m scared you’ll lose her” and she picks up the tiny blue person.
Together we reassembled her, layering all their bottom parts first by size, and looking down at a series of circles, smallest in the center and growing wider as they spread out… like the ripples of water when a stone drops down. Then that tiny blue egg is placed carefully in the center of the smallest circle. Finally, the nest is covered with layers that grow thicker and wider.
The first Russian doll was created in 1980, but I’m not exactly sure when people first started to become ill with what I call the Russian doll syndrome. It’s a peculiar case where the syndrome actually came before its name sake.
Perhaps the Russian doll syndrome began when people began to treasure the Russian doll’s glazed, chemical-smelling face more than the sweet woody smell of things beneath the surface of that first skin.
Or when prejudices and stereotypes clouded our ability to believe in something more and crippled our fingers so we could no longer peel away masks and layers to find that something more.
Or perhaps it began when we started to desensitize, thickening our skin to protect us from the rest of the world until we could hardly feel all the old clichés of love, the rain and sunshine.
So I remember my grandmother’s words and make sure to never lose the Russian Doll’s tiny, unbreakable kernel of truth, keeping that blue pill swallowed somewhere inside my tummy (never to be digested).
