ATARNarchive

The ATARN Letters

Stephen Selby’s dispatches to the network, January 1999 – December 2004. New finds, festival reports, research notes and letters from members.

1999

Jan ATARN Letter, January 1999Dear Friends, A business trip to Europe has meant I couldn't get a letter out in January. I hope the two letters that went out in December made up for that. My most impor… 2 min Feb ATARN Letter, February 1999Dear All, This is the first day of the Lunar New Year of the Rabbit. So first, I wish you all a happy and propsperous New Year. I have decided to make this your letter by… 12 min Mar ATARN Letter, March 1999Dear All, I had an email the other day from Bede Dwyer drawing my attention to an interesting photograph of a Chinese bowyer stringing up a traditional bow using tepliks … 2 min Apr ATARN Letter, April 1999Dear All, Now is the time for all you good people to contribute something. I want to build up a bibliography of Asian traditional archery in the following format (the ord… 3 min May ATARN Letter, May 1999Dear All, Thank you for the feed-back on the draft bibliography. I have now filled it out a bit and incorporated the suggestions and you can read it here . Please keep pr… 3 min Jun ATARN Letter, June 1999Dear All, I am tapping out this news-letter between two trips. I have just been in Peking and Kunming (provincial capital of Yunnan Province of China) for one month. Chin… 4 min Aug ATARN Letter, August 1999Dear All, Plenty of travelling this year. But this time my visit was to Pennsylvania for a pilgrimage to the Easter Traditional Archery Rendezvous at Denton Hill. Finally… 2 min Oct ATARN Letter, October 1999Dear All, Woops! I missed September. Excuses, excuses. Actually, I went up to Peking for a meeting and met up with Liao Wanzhen ('Arrowhead Wang'). He has written an arti… 2 min Nov ATARN Letter, November 1999Dear All, A Publishing Triumph for ATARN We are about to take a step which will significantly enhance ATARN's importance as a resource for the serious study of Asian trad… 4 min Dec ATARN Letter, December 1999Dear All, ‘If you want to punch holes in a small yellow circle at a range of fifty metres, get a gun.’ That is what practitioners of Kyudo say about those to whom archery… 4 min

2000

Jan ATARN Letter, January 2000Dear All, As part of my re-vamp of our ATARN website, I installed some statistical software to track the use of the site starting from the first working day of the year, … 5 min Feb ATARN Letter, February 2000Dear All, Since the last letter, we have entered the year of the Dragon. A happy lunar new year to you all! Recently, I exchanged some email with Gwen Huskins, a writer o… 3 min Mar ATARN Letter, March 2000Dear All, Preliminary Announcement "The Archery Culture of China" A Two-day Symposium to be Held in Beijing China This event has been re-scheduled for 16/17 May 2001 The … 3 min Apr ATARN Letter, April 2000Dear All, ATARN has grown nicely since we came online in September 1998. Since moving to a new server and coming online on 3 January 2000, we have served 3 668 separate h… 3 min May ATARN Letter, May 2000Dear All, Well, I got back safely from my adventures in Chengdu and Peking. I succeeded in all my (quite modest) targets. I managed to get round the most important histor… 4 min Jun ATARN Letter, June 2000Dear All, This letter is a mixture of good and bad news. The bad news is that I have a whole lot more work to do (not connected with Asian archery – in which case it woul… 2 min Jul ATARN Letter, July 2000Dear All, Sorry! Late with my homework again. I've been on the move again, and I'm holding down two jobs here, so time is hard to find. Anyway, my schoolteachers never ac… 3 min Aug ATARN Letter, August 2000Dear All, I�m going to write about money, so please keep you finger off the ‘delete’ icon (for a few more paragraphs at least!) First though, apologies for ATARN having b… 3 min Sep ATARN Letter, September 2000Dear All, Letter from Fort Dodge Photographs and text © Stephen Selby, 2000. All rights reserved I've just got back from the International Horse Archery Festival and I kn… 5 min Oct ATARN Letter, October 2000Dear All, With a sinking feeling, I faced writing the newsletter once again with nothing to offer other than something about Chinese bows or archery. That's a problem I f… 4 min Nov ATARN Letter, November 2000Dear All, Last week I was in in Peking to negotiate the arrangements for the symposium "The Archery Culture of China" that ATARN will co-organize on 16-17 May 2001. I sha… 3 min Dec ATARN Letter, December 2000Dear All, As usual, I am at a loss for anything to write about anything other than Chinese material. But at least I'm not at a loss for Chinese material to write about. T… 6 min

2001

Jan ATARN Letter, January 2001Dear All, In China, it is the custom to celebrate the lunar new year (Wednesday 24 January is the first day of the Year of the Snake) by cleaning and decorating the house… 3 min Feb ATARN Letter, February 2001Dear All, First, my apologies yet again for the breakdown of the Discussion Forum. This application seems to get tired after it has accepted about 60 messages and just re… 3 min Mar ATARN Letter, March 2001Dear All, This month I am trying out the dangerous exercise of trying to shoot two birds with one pellet. The first 'bird' is to pass on some of my experiences of 'tradit… 6 min Apr ATARN Letter, April 2001Dear All, A Letter from Kyongju Members and guests of the Hu Rim Jung Archery Club My Easter holiday this year with my wife and children took my to Kyongju, South Korea, … 4 min May ATARN Letter, May 2001Dear All, The World Wide Web Consortium, the body which sets the policies and norms for the Web, held its tenth annual meeting, WWW10 , in Hong Kong from 1 - 5 May. I too… 3 min Jun ATARN Letter, June 2001Dear All, If you have visited the ATARN website during the last month, you will see that I have tried to implement some technical up-grades. Occasionally they work. Follo… 3 min Jul ATARN Letter, July 2001Dear All, Summer is upon us here in Hong Kong and I'm about to go off on holiday. (Holiday! Again?? This guy's always gallivanting off somewhere. How does he ever get any… 3 min Sep ATARN Letter, September 2001Dear All, You get your September letter a little early, because I'm off to Fort Dodge for the 2001 International Horse Archery Festival . Check out their web page by clic… 7 min Oct ATARN Letter, October 2001Dear All, I was at 40,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean on 11 September when four hijacked jetliners were used to attack the United States with such terrible effect. Our he… 10 min Nov ATARN Letter, November 2001Dear All, This month's main news is the birth of ATARNet . ATARNet is the name of our new discussion forum. The previous one was based on an in-built function of the Micr… 4 min Dec ATARN Letter, December 2001Dear All, 모든 분들께, ATARNet has been up and running for a month. It's certainly easier on the eyes that the previous Discussion Forum. I am still ironing out some bugs, but… 11 min Dec ATARN Letter, December 2001Dear All, ATARNet has been up and running for a month. It's certainly easier on the eyes that the previous Discussion Forum. I am still ironing out some bugs, but I think… 7 min

2002

Jan ATARN Letter, January 2002Dear All, It's rare for me to get side-tracked from ATARN by my real work (the stuff people pay me for); but in January I have been, so I owe you an apology (a) for faili… 6 min Mar ATARN Letter, March 2002Dear All, Hong Kong is a sub-tropical place, so my ten-year-old daughter has never seen snow. To cure that (with a vengeance), I took my whole family to the Arctic Circle… 3 min Apr ATARN Letter, April 2002Dear All, At heart, I know that ATARN Members love cables, camwheels, sights, shock-dampers and counter-balances. You just don't like having them on your bows - you want … 6 min May ATARN Letter, May 2002Dear All, ATARN is gearing up our out-reach in China. From 12 - 15 April, I went with a television crew to continue working on a documentary about Ju Yuan Hao. This was a… 9 min Jun ATARN Letter, June 2002Dear All, ATARN has just completed a mission to Qinghai and Xinjiang in the People's Republic of China. Led by the Vice-President of the Chinese Archery Association, Mr. … 12 min Jul ATARN Letter, July 2002Dear All, Surrounded by other competitors and on-lookers, Alice is under as much pressure as she has ever been as a sportswoman at a golfing event. She has to get her sho… 16 min Oct ATARN Letter, October 2002Dear All, Noted with appreciation the occasional withdrawal symptoms expressed by Members who couldn't find the August and September newsletters. I never wrote them. I ha… 9 min Nov ATARN Letter, November 2002Dear All, My apologies that the monthly newsletter seems to slip later and later each month. But it is worth waiting for! This month, we have an excellent article by Bede… 38 min Dec ATARN Letter, December 2002Dear All, The end of the year is rushing upon me. It’s time to write another newsletter! First, please accept my greetings for the season and the coming new year! Asia is… 10 min

2003

Jan ATARN Letter, January 2003Dear All, If you had dreams that I would make a new year's resolution to get ATARN newsletters out on time, well... dream on! Actually, I did resolve to make better excus… 7 min Apr ATARN Letter, April 2003Dear All, Since the first time I raised the possibility of a seminar on Asian archery, the event seems to have been jinxed. The event I had so confidently announced for 1… 11 min May ATARN Letter, May 2003Dear All, The Asian Archery Festival originally scheduled for May 2003 has been postponed to October 25 - 27 to allow the region to get clear of the Sars outbreak. Please… 6 min Jun ATARN Letter, June 2003Dear All, Horseback Archery at the Leeds Royal Armouries, UK 8th, 9th, 10th August 2003 Hilary Greenland, Secretary of the SPTA (The Society for the Promotion of Traditio… 3 min Aug ATARN Letter, August 2003Dear All, Here I am back in harness after spending a month in England. Apart from riding and doing some archery, I had the chance to visit the Simon Archery Collection in… 10 min Oct ATARN Letter, October 2003Dear All, ATARN's first international 'event' came to a successful end on Sunday, 26 October. That we could carry this off is due to the fantastic support and organizatio… 9 min Nov ATARN Letter, November 2003Dear All, This is one of those newsletters that is a particular pleasure to prepare, because most of the input comes from ATARN members and not from me. Born in 1955 in M… 4 min

2004

Jan ATARN Letter, January 2004Dear All, First, best wishes for the new year of 2004. Soon it will be the lunar new year of the Monkey, so have a happy one of those, too. In December I had the pleasure… 6 min Mar ATARN Letter, March 2004Dear All, Chapchal in Yili, Xinjiang, is home to several thousand of the Xibe nationality. The Xibe were a branch of the Manchus, and the present inhabitants of Chapchal … 4 min Apr ATARN Letter, April 2004Dear All, Bear with me for this month, because I haven't got a whole load of pretty pictures of hardware to show you this time around, and I do know how much you like the… 6 min Jun ATARN Letter, June 2004Dear All, I hope that you enjoy this newsletter. It's particularly enjoyable for me because I have received contributions from a few ATARN friends around the World, which… 8 min Jul ATARN Letter, July 2004Dear All, It's blowing a typhoon outside. So my office is closed. So I have come home. So I can write a letter. It's an ill wind which blows no-one any good. A couple of … 6 min Oct ATARN Letter, October 2004Dear All, It is total disgrace that there hasn't been a newsletter since July. I don't know who's running this joint, but he or she should be fired immediately, told to c… 6 min Dec ATARN Letter, December 2004Dear All, Wishing you all a happy and prosperous year 2005! In 2005, we plan to hold the second Asian Traditional Archery Festival, following the success of the one held … 5 min

Undated

·Follow-up discussion on the Khotan BowFollow-up Discussion of the 'Khotan Bow' What would be the mechanical advantage, if any, of non-lift off siyahs? Posted by: Dale Yessak 07/18/2002, 11:01:20 As I posted i…17 min·A letter to you29 November, 1998 Dear Friend, This is not exactly a regular newsletter I am getting into, but I like to keep in touch from time to time. Since the last time I wrote ( ‘A…4 min·Year-ender16 December, 1998 Letter from Peking (September 1998) Letter of November 1998 Dear Friend, What would amuse you at the end of the year? I can't be too seasonal because we…2 min·Year-enderDear Friends, Here is an image of a faithful copy of the decoration from a Chinese archery bow by Wu of Peking (c. 1880). You can transfer this image to a light-coloured …2 min·SVG Gone Mad — A Vector-Graphics Experiment1 min·内蒙古杂技团李师傅做弓情况仪德刚（中国科学技术大学科学史与科技考古系，合肥 230026； 德国马普科学史研究所－中国科学院自然科学史研究所伙伴小组，北京，100010） 骑马、射箭和摔跤是中国蒙古族的传统体育活动，是草原那达幕大会上必备的比赛或表演节目。射箭运动在蒙古族由来已久，而内蒙古杂技团（以下简称杂技团）的弓箭表演亦是杂技演员们受其启发，结合高难度的杂技动…1 min