As you can see from the date and location, I am back in the States. Wooohoooo!...(sort of). I had thought of keeping that part of this blog until the very end and making it a surprise but now I guess I won’t. Its 5:30 in the morning on my second day back and the battle over sleeping patterns has begun in earnest. The first night was easy. After traveling almost 25 hours to get from Beijing, my body was just plain exhausted. The flight from Beijing to Newark was incredibly comfortable thanks to the rare and total blessing of having all three of the seats in my row to myself! That meant priceless full vertical body prostration on an international flight and deep, deep sleep for almost all of the 12 hour flight, which in some ways was disappointing because that flight is probably one of the most beautiful available flying over Mongolia, far eastern Siberia, within 600 miles of the North Pole, across northern Canada then down through Quebec and Newfoundland into Newark, NJ. But considering I have already flown that route in May of 06 when Leigh and I came back to Atlanta for my sister’s wedding, I took the pills and slept about 9 ½ hours! Ironically, the trouble started after arriving in the States – delay in Newark. Started as 1 ½ hours and then as the snowball effect culminates, ended up being a 4 ½ hour delay putting us landing in Atlanta and the rooster crowing hours of 3 am! Ouch. So by the time I got back to my mom’s house, where I’ll be staying this summer, my body didn’t care that my mind was trying to tell it, “It’s only 3 in the afternoon, we shouldn’t be sleeping...” Instead, it was say hi to mom; lots of hugging, a beer, and then lights out see ya! Today has been a different story of sorts. The circadian cycles have not fully caught up and at 3 this afternoon I was downing some coffee to stay awake and at midnight I was drinking a beer to try to fall asleep! Does anyone have good jet lag remedies? If so, I’d love to hear them. I hate using the sleeping pills and the caffeine to try and force my body chemically back into rhythm. Any more natural and harmonious methods would be much more ideal.
Obviously I have mixed emotions about being back but all in all, I’m ready for it. The adventure of China wore thin after awhile and the language and daily logistical struggles kept me constantly fatigued. Anyplace you stay for more than a few months, where you try to make a living by finding or going to work, where you live day in and day out without much traveling or touring, where you know the short cuts and hidden alleys, where you have established favorite eateries and grocery stores, where you know the place better than some of the taxi drivers and you become the default guide to anyone who visits you, anyplace like this becomes your routine, your habits, your new ‘home’ and comfort zone and I think that no matter where that is, how exotic, it can become ordinary and therefore – I won’t say boring for that is just lack of imagination – less exciting. I think the hardest thing for me was not having steady work, not having something I needed to do everyday, something that helped me feel like I was ‘doing something’, moving forward, helped me feel like I was needed. The contemporary Tibet photo project that I’ve been working on the last year plus has had its incredible moments and it’s a project and a body of work I feel proud of and committed to. But there were times, especially towards the end there after I had been working on it for so long and was getting a little bored with it (or at least it wasn’t as interesting), where I just didn’t feel like shooting...at all. Wouldn’t even want to look at my camera, much less take it out and go work with it. I had become burnt basically on the self assignment and without having any other paid assignments or wanting to get into any new projects; I basically took too much time off during April and May and became really restless. It became a real professional challenge and something I feel I didn’t handle very well but learned a lot from.
Another part of my frustrations being there was not feeling like I had many people to spend time with other than my wife. Don’t get me wrong about this though. This adventure has done nothing but bring Leigh and I even closer. We literally spent 90% of our time together over there and I believe it was extremely beneficial and strengthening to our relationship. We were talking about last night. It’s baffling how I have been gone for over a year and a half and so far I’ve seen my mom, my two sisters, my dad & stepmom, my aunt and one of my best and oldest friends and none of them have made a significant or memorable attempt at asking how my time was there. Leigh and I think that nobody seems to either know how to start that conversation or that what we have just done is so beyond anyone’s daily lives that there is little real comprehension. And talking with other travelers in Lhasa and other ex-pats living and working in Beijing about this, their experiences are the exact same. They go home and nobody asks about their time. Maybe because they don’t know how to ask? Maybe because they don’t care? Maybe because they feel inadequate because they haven’t done anything different since you left? But it is just baffling to Leigh and me that nobody asks us, I mean really gets into a conversation, about the daily experiences, the details, the ups and downs, the funny stories, etc. We lived and worked in a foreign country for over a year, Tibet of all places…aren’t you interested, aren’t you curious? This is all to say that luckily Leigh and I don’t have to ask each other what happened. We don’t have to wait for the other to tell them their stories or have to ask for them ourselves. We don’t have to struggle to find the right words to explain our daily adventures, to try to remember the funny stories or incredible moments. We were both there all the time to experience together, to have those moments, those stories, all those days shared and sacred.
But back to finding people over there to spend time with…In general, we made some really incredible friends. People I hope to stay in contact with and visit the rest of my life. But I was definitely frustrated and felt quite lonely on many occasions, mostly because I wasn’t really able to talk to anyone. We take language for granted so much. We don’t think about how we can communicate with those around us here in the States, how we can read all the signs, all the menus, watch the TV. It’s so familiar and normal. But take that privilege or ability away and I felt immediately and profoundly lost and disconnected. I think the language barrier is one of the most difficult things to overcome and Lhasa just doesn’t have a good location to study Mandarin. There is one for studying Tibetan but it involved registering at the University for a summer session or the 2 year program. Besides with Leigh know Tibetan so well, why double up? It was frustrating to me not having a place to study intensely if I wanted. Lhasa is designed by the authorities as a temporary stop over on people’s tour, not a destination for habitation. Not only do they not have any good places to study Mandarin, but there are only a very few places for a foreigner to stay long term (and of course those places are incredibly expensive). Our place in the Gorkha Hotel was fantastic and very comfortable and we felt incredibly lucky to have found it and get it for such a good deal (we paid roughly 400 USD per month for the place – 1 large sunny bedroom, 1 usable living room with eating table and couches and TV and 1 kitchen/bath combo where the burners and toilet were almost within physical reach of each other…almost could scramble eggs and take a pee simultaneously!). But our situation was not the norm and there were other long term folks living there who were staying in one room hotel space with no bathroom (down the hall) and no cooking abilities. Personally, I don’t know how they managed.
I say this because Leigh and I made some incredible friends while we were living there and it could be a place we would live (at least for a couple more years) if there were 1) language schools so that I could study, 2) more available work for either one of us – the Chinese are very keen on keeping any employment in country for their own citizens, which is admirable and understandable but sometimes impractical…say in photography for example. This small community of friends we developed over the short time we were there became very evident when they honored us with a farewell picnic party a couple days before we were leaving for Beijing. Besides the physical landscape, it is the people I will miss most (as for the food…let’s just say Tibet doesn’t have a great culinary reputation…for good reason!). When I say picnic, most images generated are probably of sitting in the open fields on a blanket and sharing a small meal from a basket of bread, cheese, fruit and wine, right? Well, in Tibet, they take picnic to an entirely new level of sophistication and luxury.
We arrived at the Picnic Park around 11:30 in the morning and found our ‘tent’ – really a small cabin like house surrounded by willows and bamboo and other ‘tents’ for other groups. There were table and chairs, couches, blankets and even a ma jong table. For entertainment, we brought baseball gloves and bats and balls, a volleyball (but no net), regular playing cards and UNO cards. For food, everyone brought one or two dishes. I brought the infamous Lehman cobbler. For those of you fortunate enough to know Heather then you might have been blessed at some point with her divine cobbler. I can’t say enough about this dish other than it was created on the 6th day of Genesis, just before God took his rest because He wanted something to east while relaxing! Needless to say, besides my Grandma Martha’s green been recipe, it is my prized recipe. And of course it was a huge hit at the picnic where most folks had never heard of cobbler before, mainly because baking things and fresh fruit are both sort of novelties. There turned out to be about 30 people that were there or came by over the course of our 12 hour picnic. Yes, 12 hours! It wasn’t just one meal, but two. We covered lunch and dinner while hanging out together in the willows and the sun. There was ma jong, which Leigh and I finally figured out to play (only on our last day there of course!), there was cricket with a tennis ball, there was group wrestling (hilarious!), card playing, circle volleyball, singing and lots and lots of chang (local barley beer) drinking. It was such a beautiful day with so much fun it was no surprise that there were lots of tears as the farewell kata scarves were put around our necks at the end of the evening. It was the perfect farewell to Tibet. And sad I am to be away from it now, but with the place (and my new friends) holding such a strong place in my heart now, I know I will be back. It’s just a matter of when, not if.
The days and weeks leading up to our departure and good bye picnic party were actually really uneventful. The days were getting warmer and the streets more crowded with tourists, but Leigh and I continued our work – she with the artists, me with my camera – and the time kept flying by. Some days were spent shuttling boxes of our things to the post office for shipping to Georgia or Oregon; some were packing up the room and finding a place for Leigh to return to after our visit to Beijing. Sure there were big plans to go to this place and visit that place and do this and that ‘before we leave’, but most were filled with our respective projects and being with each other.
There were two interesting happenings I should tell you about. The first had to do with my middle finger. It got a pretty bad infection called Paraychia I think. I’m a nail biter as most of you know and have been for 30 + years now but this is the first time it has ever cause me this much pain. Apparently, I got an infection on my right middle ‘birdie’ finger and the tip of my finger swelled up real big and real red and it hurt real bad. I could feel the thump of my heart in my finger with each beat. I tried to soak it in alternating hot and ice; I tried Arnica gel and another anti-bacterial lotion. Nothing was working so we finally looked it up on the internet (you can find ANYTHING on the internet these days) and came to discover the name and treatment for my infection. Unfortunately, it wasn’t something I could treat myself and I would have to go to the hospital and have my finger cut open and drained! Not an encouraging thought there in Lhasa. There are many modern aspects of living in Tibet these days but I wouldn’t say their medical facilities or training are one of them yet. Anyway, with a friend acting as translator accompanying us to The People’s Hospital # 2 emergency department, we went to get my finger taken care of. One could tell immediately some of the differences in socialized and privatized health care. For one, there was absolutely no waiting besides the time it took us to pay our $.50 registration fee and find the doctor’s room. According to our friend, they were sending us to the bone specialist area. When we found the doctor, a young Han man, the doctor took one look at my finger and said we would need to remove the nail first thing. Whoa, no you won’t! Not only is that a form of voluntary torture, but we can fix this without taking my fingernail out, chief. So after explaining to him calmly that we wanted to try just cutting open the finger and draining the infection (who are we to tell a doctor how to treat a condition…but we read it on the internet so it must be true!). He said fine and that he would be happy to do it but that I should wait for a more ‘sterile’ room to become available and that wouldn’t be until the next day. Not wanting to wait (b/c it really hurt and I could already see large pockets of pus under my skin – I know, totally gross) but I was all for doing it right then and was about to say so when my ‘married gene’ kicked in and quietly reminded me to consult my wife about this. The look on her face told me not only was I an idiot for even considering such a thought as having my finger cut open in a dusty, dirty and unsanitary environment and how did you ever manage to survive this many years without my superior infallible logic but we were definitely going to wait until tomorrow when something more hygienically acceptable became available. It’s amazing, but all of that in one look. Chalk one up for the married gene. That afternoon we get a phone call from the doctor and he had found time and a room so we could come back and get it done today. Great! We hop back in a taxi and get there. The room he takes us to is worse than the first one! At this point though, Leigh’s level of expectations had taken a nose dive and her most important priority was to take care of my pain and problem. So she reluctantly agreed to let him go ahead with everything. Me, I was just thrilled to finally have a possible relief for my throbbing finger after 5 days of quietly suffering. When they started to bring out the scalpel and alcohol-ing my finger, I had to stop the nurse and doctor and ask them about anesthetics. The thought of getting my finger cut open with a very sharp knife was none too appealing in the first place and then to do it w/o anesthetics? My thoughts were racing - Don’t scream. Find something to bite down on. Be a man. This is how it was in the 18th century. The knife isn’t too rusty. Be brave, be brave, be brave. OH GOD IT’S GOING TO HURT! When my question to them was translated about anesthetics, they both just looked at me like I had a tree growing out of my head and said, “Of course we’re going to give you anesthetics for your finger. It was only during the wars when we didn’t have those to give.” In other words, you idiot, do you really think we are barbarians? But come on! They wanted to pull my fingernail out…I wasn’t about to take the chance! After the Novocain shots in my finger, they performed the minor surgery and then wrapped my finger up well and sent me on my way to come back a few days later for a bandage change. Over the course of a week, I went to the hospital 4 times and all 4 times I just walked around giving everybody the bird….and no one had a clue what I was doing. It was great. One of those ‘only funny to me’ cultural moments. Regardless of my jokes here, they really did treat me right, took very good care, were very tender and concerned for me and my finger now had totally healed with hardly a scar to show for it. And the total price for minor finger surgery in fairly medieval conditions by a doctor who really just wants to pull finger nails out (maybe leftover from KGB days or something), 2 shots of Novocain with a pray to God new needle, 4 hopefully new but at least pretty clean bandage changes over the course of a week, and all with no waiting in reception areas for hours at a time - $4.50 US. Not bad for socialized medicine, eh?
The second interesting thing we did before leaving Lhasa was to go on a day trip to a monastery called Tsurphu, the traditional home of the Karmpa (third highest in the Tibetan Buddhist hierarchy behind the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama). Of course, the Karmapa took off to India several years ago so he could be the teacher he needs to be and it is only there (or at least ‘outside’) that he can do that. I am happy to discuss the current state of Tibetan Buddhism in Tibet, religious freedom, human rights, etc in great detail with any of you personally, but I do not wish to put any of this in writing here. The monastery is a couple hours, which turned into 4 b/c of all the local hitchers getting on and off along the way, at the end of this beautiful agricultural valley to the west of Lhasa. It known as a great spiritual retreat center and many of the hermitage cottages located scattered up in the mountains near Tsurphu are habituated by monks doing the required and very impressive Sakya lineage (I think) silent retreat of 3 years, 3 months and 3 days. Yes, that’s roughly 1,188 days without talking! That’s incredible. I’ve done some 2-3 week stretches in my life of silent retreat but I eventually started talking to myself, or the animals I would see. I wonder if that’s acceptable. To talk to yourself sometimes during a silent retreat? You’re really only verbalizing the mental wanderings you have so it’s like thinking out loud. But then again, it is out loud, so I’m not sure. Interesting and amazing nonetheless. It seemed like a really long bus ride b/c of this one Israeli man sitting with his friend across the aisle from me who talked the entire time virtually w/o stopping! I’m sorry, I don’t care what language you’re speaking b/c it doesn’t matter…if you talk that much non stop, then there is no way you are really saying anything. “You talk a lot, but you’re not saying anything” – David Byrne. If anyone is a candidate for the 3-3-3 silent retreat, it was this guy! Leigh and I walked the out kora, which took us up the valley a ways past the monastery and then up onto the ridge directly behind the main temples where the majority of retreat house are located. It was a beautiful walk and a gorgeous day. Sun bright and strong, the wind gentle and cool and the sky a deep, deep clear mountain blue that only happens at high elevations. (I already miss that sky terribly). We saw a small herd of blue sheep, which are pretty rare these days. That was really special. It was one of those hikes which subtly reminded me of all the innate beauty that defines Tibet, the rare wonder that makes it a sacred place to so many and the undeniable awe I feel living in that stunning landscape. After the walk, we tarried on at the monastery restaurant and had some simple noodles and momos (which we have learned to make so invite us over to your house and be prepared for the dumpling parade!) and talked for awhile with some of the monks, who are always quite nice, curious and tender. For the last hike in Tibet (for who know how long), it was great.
Well, the sad day finally came, like we knew it would. Time seems to be inevitable in its movements and progressions. It was time to leave Lhasa. On Monday the 21st of May, we got on a plane bound for Beijing. We arrived in the late evening to be picked up by T of the Red Gate Gallery. He was the co-curator with Leigh of the Tibetan contemporary art show, New Works from Lhasa at their 798 gallery space (http://www.redgategallery.com and http://www.redgategallery.com/tanchu.html). A very kind, thoughtful and genuine man, I liked him immediately. He was extremely generous to Leigh and I and put us up in his San Li Tun apartment for our entire stay in Beijing. The apartment was simple, comfortable and very convenient. We loved staying there. After sharing a drink with us, Tony left us to our new ‘home’ – he was given a good friend’s diplomat house who would be out of town, a definite upgrade for the two weeks! After an extremely relaxed sleep, we awoke to our first day in Beijing to steady rain. That’s like showing up in Phoenix and having it rain the first day in town…it just doesn’t occur all that often and really was an unusual introduction to the city. And of course, we were unprepared for it. But having lived in very dry Tibet for a year and being a Georgia boy accustomed to more moisture than I was getting and realizing that rain for this city was a true blessing not to be cursed, I didn’t complain too loudly.
We had some very good sandwiches and coffee for breakfast – the food in Beijing was really good and we totally spoiled ourselves on it – we went out to the 798 art area to see the gallery and Leigh wanted to get to work immediately. She was taking this opportunity to exhibit the artists in this gallery very seriously and wanted the show to be outstanding (which it was but more on that in a sec). I went to print the photographs of Gade (one of the artists) and my collaboration on the ice Buddha installation in Lhasa. I think I might have mentioned in one of my previous blogs about this day back in December when I went out to the main river with a group of the artists to make some photographs of one of them putting an ice Buddha back in the river from which it came and photographing it melting. It was a fun day and there was about 10 of us all out there having a picnic and cheering on the melting process. One of the final products from that project was a series of 8 photographs showing the gradual melting of the Buddha back into the river. There were also 2 other photographs, individual stand alones, that showed a close up of the ice sculpture and another that put it in a very modern and industrialized context. Anyway, those 10 photographs were going to be in the show and they needed them printed. So there I was, minding my own business when BAM!!!, I’m exhibiting at the most famous and hottest gallery in all of China. Sometimes, life is just full of wonderful surprises and adventures! After dropping off the files for printing, I met the Lhasa guide book people we worked with in November (remember them?) for a delicious lunch of sushi. Riding the zing wave of post sushi delights, I caught a cab out to the 798 space to meet up with Leigh and Tony and see the gallery. Little did I know at the time just how much this place would become the center of our universe for the next 10 days. Following a nice afternoon in the gallery, we met up with more friends for a fabulous dinner at a delicious Jaca (pronounced haka, one of the 56 official minority peoples in China) and then out for a few post dinner, celebratory drinks at a couple different bars, one of which was called Bed, a small complex of private, intimate, quiet rooms, dimly lit interiors and cushions spread all over the floor and against the walls with low tables with really good jazz played at just the right volume for energy but not overwhelming the conversations. Very classy, very cool place. This is all to say that our first day in Beijing, a city that honestly I was not looking forward to visiting that much…or at least had very high expectations for, was completely indulgent to all the senses and my first impressions of this capital city were very favorable.
The next few days were spent in preparation for the upcoming and highly anticipated opening on Saturday. The show went through several different visual incarnations before finally being settled on, some of which I stood with T and helped talk him through the layout, moving pieces from one wall to another, continually tweaking things until it was just right. It was really a fun but sometimes frustrating process because it was very much like a puzzle, once you moved one piece all the others had to be adjusted. And to stand back and see how much time and consideration a gallery of this caliber spends on laying out the show was insightful.
During this time, Leigh and I had very little time together for relaxing. Most of it was spent (for her at least) at the gallery helping set up. I tried to make the most of my time there, seeing some sights, but I spent a lot of time editing my Tibet body of work and putting together a small collection of 25 to show T for professional feedback and to see if he could get me some exhibit space here in Beijing in the coming year or so. It was a long and tedious process going from something like 25,000 images that I shot this year to 25! Ouch. The first couple cuts were actually quite easy, but it was the last 80 or so down to 25 that was the real challenge…and I still feel like it’s not quite perfect but close. I’ve made a gallery of them on Picasa (http://picasaweb.google.com/jasonsangsterphoto/ContemporaryTibet) and so you can check them out, but keep in mind this is a work in progress and will change slightly in the coming months. But this will be the project that keeps me busy for some time. I want to make a book of these contemporary Tibet images, a nice 150 + page photo book showing what Tibet looks like today. I would welcome any and all critical comments you might have, so please have a look! T was very encouraging and thought of the 25, six or seven were ‘very beautiful’ (with the rest being interesting, unexpected and some even humorous) and encouraged me that I definitely have an exhibit here and in his opinion a really good show too. He immediately thought of two or three galleries in Beijing that I should talk to and even started talking about ones in Australia (where he’s from) that he knew would be interested in them. So, needless to say, it’s very, very exciting! I can see the potential of this project and I feel strongly that it could really happen. But I told him that I wanted to first secure a publisher for the book and then I would start thinking about lining up gallery shows for this work. I want them to go together, the book and the exhibits, so I’m trying to be strategic. I’ve never done this before, make a book or put on a solo exhibit on a scale like this, so I’ve got a lot to learn. It’s such a blessing, however, to have trusted friends and critics in your corner helping and advising you how to proceed. Such a blessing! But that’s really what it takes I think – someone or someones who believe in the project or believe in me as much as I believe in it (and me). It seems that this might be slowly happening. Fingers crossed…
I’ve also started work on another ‘side project’, a portrait project that is related but not the same style or content as my contemporary Tibet images. Check it out here – http://picasaweb.google.com/jasonsangsterphoto/PortraitsTibet2007.
Leigh and I did manage to make it to the Forbidden City one morning and that was a total zoo and honestly just a bit disappointing. However, it was hot, hazy and so crowded we felt we were swimming in Chinese tourists! There were moments of being there, quiet corners off the beaten track within the walls, which we really enjoyed but the timing was great as most of the buildings were being renovated for the upcoming Olympics. I can’t even begin to describe just how much construction and renovation is happening right now in Beijing. You think the ‘boom’ is bad in places like Atlanta or Denver? It seemed the whole city was being built or rebuilt while we were there. Cranes, scaffolding and orange protective wrap was the architectural style that I saw in Beijing. And that city has Olympic fever like you wouldn’t believe. There are signs everywhere with the countdown in days, hours, minutes. Paraphernalia litters the shops and streets. The official mascots, the Friendlies (one of which is supposed to be a Tibetan antelope), are everywhere. Olympic fever has gripped the nation, at least the eastern side of it. It’s amazing and underlining the general buzz of the city there’s a level of excitement and anticipation that’s half ‘let’s get this over with and get on with our lives’ and ‘we are about to show the world how superior we are'.
We also got to visit the Great Wall, or at least see parts of it from afar, when we went with all the artists on a Red Gate (they really took care of us and the artists…I mean first class treatment the whole time we were there) sponsored field trip to a place called The Commune. The place is a private plot of land that butts up against part of the Great Wall out a little past Badaling – still almost 2 hours out of town. The owners of the place, a fancy hotel chain, invited 20 or so architects from all over Asia to design a house using their own unique country and culture as inspiration. So for example, the Japanese architect used almost all bamboo and very clean, zen-like interiors when he/she designed ‘the Bamboo house’. And there are about 30 houses scattered in a beautiful branched valley. One can rent them for the night or a weekend or a week but you gotta have some big bucks b/c I think each house goes for about $1000 USD per night. It ain’t no Appalachian log cabin for $69.99 a night, but I can’t say I liked all of them. We didn’t see all of them, not enough time, but Leigh and I did get a lot of architectural design ideas for our ‘dream house’. It’s a very famous place and well regarded and even won a special design prize at the 2005 Venice Biennale (sp?). It was like taking an elvin enclave of shelters nestled in the nooks and crannies of the wooded mountains and adding a heavy dose of Frank Lloyd Wright and Four Seasons Hotel (http://www.kempinski.com/en/hotel/details.htm?id=175). We had a delicious lunch there and then walked around to check out some of the houses. Unfortunately, we thought it would be possible to take a short hike up through the woods to the Wall, which would be untouched and uncrowded as it was one of the very few privately owned sections, but the government had just passed an edict like the week before that no one was allowed on this part of the wall anymore. Talk about bad timing and disappointment! It would turn out that that would be the closest I would come to the Great Wall during my time in Beijing, so I wasn’t able to walk on it like I wished, but what I could see from the Commune and the drive to and from was stunning. Kind of like the Grand Canyon in the sense that there really is only one word to describe it: Great!
So the big day finally arrived: the Opening! Months of preparation, timeless hours on the essays, bios and picking the pieces…the day was finally here for the artists (and Leigh) to shine. And did they ever! The show was a HUGE success. Beyond everyone’s expectations. Truly a great show that created tons of buzz and has almost sold every piece! It was extremely well attended and there were some very, very important collectors and curators that came. The seems to be a lot of interest now from Hong Kong and Shanghai galleries, Australia museums and other places in Europe and the US. It was such a success that Red Gate would like to do another group show next year, in 2008. One of the artists was offered representation by Red Gate gallery (huge deal) and like I said, most of the pieces have sold (and there were like 35 pieces or so, some as high as $23,000 US…I even sold 2 edition sets of the 8 photograph series and 1 individual photo…and what a rush!), either at the opening or even before the event. And it seemed that everyone’s reaction was one of pleasant surprise. As in they walked in thinking, ‘Oh, Tibetan contemporary art…it’ll be quaint and maybe cute’ but as soon as they walked in you could see the look on their faces that said, ‘Wow! Real art!’ Afterwards we all went out for a huge 50 person dinner (again courtesy of Red Gate Gallery) that was incredible and then out to a couple parties before finally dragging home exhausted, elated and totally content around 3 am.
It was fantastic event and a total validation to the artists and also for Leigh. I am so proud of her. She really, really put her spot on the map with all this and lots of very important people were complimenting her and even asking her to help them increase their contemporary Tibetan art collections, etc. She was even offered a job at one point! So, so, so proud of her. All her hard work and all that energy to be so well received by a sometimes very unforgiving audience. Stunning work, Leigh. Be very happy with yourself because you really did something special. We had a great day, especially Leigh. And the artists were a little overwhelmed I think. I don’t think many of them were really prepared for the amount of attention they received. There was the opening, but there was also an Australian journalist who did a large article on them, there was an artists’ talk, there was another journalist who is doing another piece on them with individual portraits, one of China’s premier art critics came to the show and enjoyed it so much that he invited them to his house for a dialogue with contemporary Chinese artists. I mean this was a big deal and I’m so happy it was such a success. I think this only bodes well for the future of the artists and Leigh as well.
Everything after that this was completely anticlimactic and actually still a bit hectic and centered on 798. But we managed to walk around the galleries a bit, do a little shopping and continue to enjoy the delectable Beijing cuisine. Finally, on June 1st it was time for us to leave…and sadly to separate temporarily. I, back to the States. She, to journey back by train with some of the artists and a couple gallery owner/friends to Lhasa for another 2 months of trying up loose research ends and an incredible month long field trip with an academic group from Princeton. So here I am, struggling with jet lag at 5:30 am, back in the States and trying to find my center, feeling ‘in between’ right now – not really there, not really here. And she is now back in Lhasa about to kick some more ass and enjoy some more blue, blue skies (which I miss dearly already…there is no sky like a Tibetan sky). So, 479 days after coming to Asia (42 days in Nepal and 437 days in Tibet), I am now just another American, living in America, speaking English and blending in…now longer the exotic ‘living in Tibet’ prestige to go with my introductions but another anonymous and unremarkable Westerner trying to find his way. It’s not that bad, believe me, but there is a significant let down after living so high, literally and figuratively, for so long. It’s going to take some time to make my adjustments, as I’ve always felt that reverse culture shock is the worse. But I’m very excited about reconnecting with my family, my dear friends and enjoying again the wonders and pleasures that the US has to offer with new perspective, fresh eyes and a humble heart.
So give me a call (just got a new cell phone – 404 354 0536) or just come over for happy hour (noon – midnight everyday)! I look forward to seeing you or talking with you soon to catching up and reconnect!
As you can see from the date and location, I am back in the States. Wooohoooo!...(sort of). I had thought of keeping that part of this blog until the very end and making it a surprise but now I guess I won’t. Its 
