Michael Flannigan - a life of invention

Feng Brat:
Michael Flannigan's Travels in China

Michael Flannigan's travels in China were a byproduct of his desire to scale the newly-discovered Peak XV (Mount Everest). (1) Though he did not know it at the time, his misadventures in China were to form the inspiration for several of his most famous ideas.

The trip to China began inauspiciously. Perhaps if he had already perfected the art of locationism before he left on the journey, he would have known that the HMS Bungwash was the wrong ship to transport Flannigan and his party to the mysterious East.

As it was, Flannigan had used his reputation as the inventor of the famous Introspection Wheel and more recently, the marvelous Phanerogam Rendering Tube, to win passage on the Bungwash. Captained by the remarkably perverted Harcourt Q. Fudgepudgy (2), the voyage was not an enjoyable one. The ship called into several disreputable ports, including Calcutta, where the HMS Bungwash took on a sizeable cargo for a Royal Navy vessel. At about the same time, Flannigan noticed that the expert climber in the expedition, Gunter Gruntz, ran out of schnapps. Instead of turning up to dinner in the Captain's mess roaring drunk, Gruntz did not turn up at all.

Watercolor of the Bungwash by Gunter Gruntz, circa. 1852

This mystery was solved when they finally arrived in Hong Kong, recently-acquired as one of the spoils of the Opium War (3). Gruntz soon disappeared, and a quick survey revealed that he was slumming with one of the known opium users in the crew. As the only member of the expedition with actual mountain-climbing experience, Gruntz was vital, so Flannigan further delayed his journey to Tibet to find the errant (and possibly opium-addicted) Tyrolean.

It was during this time that the prolific Irish inventor came up with the idea for the particulate breathing apparatus. As he scoured the town's opium dens, looking for the dissolute Gruntz, Flannigan became fascinated with the hookah, an oriental water-cooled pipe. He made is first sketches of the "party brat" -- as his invention was to be more famously known -- before he located Gruntz.

Eventually, the mountaineer was found in the cargo hold of the aptly-named junk, Ni'ahia'iah (literally, Vessel of 10,000 Joys of Heaven's Perfection).

Their journey resumed. Though Foreigners were not especially welcomed in Ch'ing-era mainland China, they managed to make it as far as Canton before serious troubles set in. In the city of Kwangtung -- a centre of diffusion of xenophobia in the land -- Gruntz made a significant blunder when he pulled on moustaches of a respected Confucian scholar and danced around him, singing: "lookee mee, lookee mee, I Chinee". (In his journal, Flannigan excused this behaviour by explaining that he had provided Gruntz with as much rice wine as he could drink, in an attempt to get him off the opium.) A riot ensued, which was one of the many incidents that inflamed the growing Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864).

The two were forced to flee Canton and headed west through Hunan province, avoiding local inhabitants as much as possible, which -- be fair -- is pretty hard in China. In the north of the province, the two were confronted with a physical barrier -- the Nan Mountains (4). Though predictable (at least, if they'd had a guide or a map of some kind it would have been predictable) the mountains were a godsend. Faced with a challenge that he could deal with, Gruntz shook off his opium habit (though he had become quite fond of a bit of a smoke each night with Flannigan's new invention).

It was in the Nan Mountains that the next real disaster struck the party. Flannigan was struck down with a particularly nasty case of ingrown toenail. In his journal Flannigan wrote:

They were rescued by a splinter sect of the Three Harmony School -- a group of Feng Shui masters. Feng Shui No Lo No, Feng Sui Master

is the ancient Chinese art of constructing residences, tomes, stores, offices, temples and palaces. The leader of the sect, the Ch'i Ling Posies, was the venerable No Lo No. The 'Graceful Posies' (as they were known) were famous for their impeccable taste and flair for controversial flower arrangements.

They were returning from Szechwan Province, where they had been attending a Feng Shui conference about a recently-imported barbarian art form: plaster (5). Finding Flannigan in such dire pedal straights, No Lo No, offered to take the two Europeans into their monastery, known locally as "graceland", uh huh.

The expedition was further delayed, while Flannigan returned to health and No Lo No outlined the basic concepts of Feng Shui to the Irishman. Flannigan was set afire by the ideas, particularly the notion that all aspects of life could be placed within the eight-sided Bagua (bag-wah).

Parting in great spirits, the seed of that great art of locationism planted, Flannigan and Gruntz made their way to Tibet with the help of several Posie monks. This journey was delayed somewhat when they stopped outside of Chengdu (Szechuan Province) to "do a nice bit of hedging" for a local magistrate.

1. Flannigan's disastrous attempt to scale Mount Everest is chronicled in the excellent monograph To Bardo and Back: The Ill-fated Flannigan Expedition to Peak XV. [back]

2. Fudgepudgy was known for coining two of the most reprehensible phrases in the Royal Navy: "come on up to the poop deck . . . and bring the soap," and of course the lamentable: "ever seen a one-eyed codfish?" [back]

3. Britain counter-balanced its unfavorable trade situation with China (the Brits were mad for "Chi" leaves, or tea) by importing Indian opium into China. Chinese authorities banned the importation of the drug, which set off the 1839-42 Opium War. After a severe butt-humping from the Brits, the Ch'ing rulers of China ceded Hong Kong to Britain in the Treaty of Nanking. [back]

4. This series our mountain ranges divides the Yangtze River basin in the north and the Hsi River valley to the south. The range also forms a sharp divide in climate, sheltering southern China from the harsh continental winds of the north. The Taoist poet, Lao Tsumuch once wrote of the Nan: "Beloved Nan, so tall and mighty,/ Worshipful mountains so afrighty,/ Keep us from the Mongolian blow,/ Huger than a big plateaux." [ed. note: this translation is still somewhat disputed, particularly in the light of the fact that the range is low and seldom taller than 1000 meters.] [back]

5. The generally opinion adopted at the plenary session was that the plaster was interruptive of ch'i and therefore, bad. [back]