day: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 epilogue

23 May 2007

to Tibet - Day Five: Animal Xining

Today we got to hang out with some Sala folks, look at their mosques, hang out in their homes and eat their food. Many a photo-op with marauding gangs of dirty children afoot. Baffled babies propped up by mothers and grandmothers. There was a lady selling cats on the sidewalk. The kind of cats for sale by the dozen in a cat coop. Across the street organ vendors ambivalently displayed pregnant bowls of stuffed intestines and monstrous livers. The water of the river bed was replaced by technicolour garbage trails, offering a standard septic odour.

Next stop, the 10th Bunta (i'll check the spelling later) Lama's birthplace turned Buddhist shrine. It felt totally intrusive so i ducked out early. However the next bunch of monks made themselves far more jovial. We were welcomed by a larger than life monk dressed in red robes and a big smile. An middle aged man with a wild laugh that seemed nothing like a used car salesman, maybe more like an uncle. I would later see Uncle atop a shrine with his gang of homies flashing their colours and making faces for the camera to the tune of comical hissing noises. What an unexpected vibe. Artists i'm told. Painters. A young monk walking by in white high tops jumping out beneath his crimson robe as a group of them carted wood about the recently rain damped red soil walkways. Let it me known that these monks roll in Buicks and SUVs. Something was definitely up.

Many beautifully carved statues and immensely intricate paintings. Artwork spared in the cultural revolution by inscribing praises to Mao on the reverse so as to deceive the red guard when they came a knocking. Survivors. Doulata led us from the shrine where we were hanging out, interupted only by the ringing inside of his robes from his cellphone, and we were brought to see the current meaning of survival for these artists. Stationed in a room beside a dayglow near laser light show shrine to living buddhas and lamas, Uncle wheeled and dealed his true salesman colours haggling over the paintings of the Wutun Xiasi Region Art Centre of Huagnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. On the way out i saw a goat loitering. He struck a pose, pissed on the ground, drank it up and made a chuckling laughy face while licking his lips. Somehow i thought it all connected.

Doulata left me his business card. If you're ever in the Qinghai province and need his number, i've got it.

joel

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