The Chinese Government & Google Blogs

For my own travels I think I can get away with using Google Blog and the alternate Travelblog site for China, but for the HAR and the SRG sites I will have to change the blog provider. There are too many people in China using the two sites to have them hobbled by international politics. The HAR team has already had some ideas for changing the blog. One suggestion was to move to a Coldfusion blog application, completely stable and free. The only problem is we have to implement it. It is not exactly right out of the box. This blog accessibility problem will be a priority for the next few weeks.

Beijing Airport Lounge, Friday the 30th

Sitting in the business class lounge at the Beijing airport. They let me through security. Things have sure changed here. Everything gets easier in China. The only thing that doesn't change is the bad food. You can find it everywhere. I have had some great food here but primarily vegetarian. You know me, I'm not into all that ground up mystery meat or unidentified body parts. I also don't like whole chicken heads floating in my chicken soup. Call me boring, call me unsophisticated but that's the way it is. I knew it was going to be a bumpy ride two weeks ago when I was served an entire plate of duck hearts. All I could think of was how many ducks were present on my plate.

See the alternate travel blog for those days when I was unable to access Google Blogs.

I have had no sleep since 7:00 yesterday morning. The drive back from Wutaishan was great because it was daylight. We left at 11:00 in the morning and arrived in Beijing after 7:00 P.M. The last of the three cars in our group broke down with radiator problems. My bag was in that car. So were my apartment keys. The car and driver were later abandoned in a small backwater Chinese village and the passengers rented a taxi to bring them to Beijing. The bag arrived at my hotel at 12:00 midnight delivered by my friend Wayne who was at the Vancouver 2000 Lamdre. He recalled the not so harrowing experience of the car over heating as they approached the pass above the valley of the Wutaishan stupa.

Wayne, Wei Wei and I adjourned to my room where we stayed up talking and sharing stories all night long. The hot water kettle never cooled down. We looked at two actual paintings and also looked at art on the internet and images on our own computers. Both of them are regular users of the HAR website and had many suggestions about improvements and changes. Wayne also checks the SRG site regularly and offered to translate parts into Chinese because of the growing need for Chinese language content.

I plan on sleeping through to Hong Kong, relaxing again in the lounge, and then sleep all the way to New York with a few movies on the way.

Friday Morning, October 23rd - Beijing

It is either foggy or cloudy this morning. I can't tell. This is the last day of the conference seminar. There will be several papers this morning and then after lunch we get back into the buses and travel up to the China Tibetology Research Center for a lecture by Xiong Winbin. He and I were in Tibet together two years ago for the Princeton graduate studies site seminar trip. His Research Center is in the process of building a museum of Tibetan art and artifacts. They already have a large room in the Institute set up as a gallery but they are in the process of constructing a separate building. I have images of their objects but have not yet had time to upload them to the HAR site.

Palace Doors

Lines, colours and angles of the palace doors of the 'Forbidden City.'

Thursday Night and the Makye Ami Restaurant

Here is one image of the restaurant from tonight and the the very comfortable hotel suite. It is just like a two bedroom apartment with a large living room and dining area combined. It has a separate kitchen and two bedrooms. The largest bedroom has a separate bathroom.

The morning was taken up by lectures in the conference space and the afternoon was an outing to the Palace Museum and a lecture by Luo Wen Wa, curator of the Palace Museum. We again visited the painting and sculpture collections that are on exhibit. Where we were, and what we were looking at, is not open to the general public - only to scholars and researchers. I took a lot more photos and will post them when I have the opportunity.

After the Palace we went directly to the Makye Ami Restaurant and had a sumptuous feast of hearty Tibetan food, meat, meat, and more meat, along with song and dance performances.

Thursday Morning, October 22nd

Yesterday was a very full day with the opening ceremonies for the conference (which they are also referring to as a seminar) 'Buddhist Aesthetics/October Seminar.' The idea is for the event to become an annual conference seminar. The well known Tibetan Lama, Gossok Rinpoche, gave the first paper in the morning. The presentation was on mandalas and their meaning. The second paper was given by Ulrich Von Schroeder on Indo-Tibetan bronzes (although mostly made of brass).

We had a boxed lunch which was really delicious and ate it in the presentation room. After that we adjourned to the Capital Museum lecture hall for a paper on Densathil sculpture from the leading curator/researcher on the subject. The hall was very impressive. Although I had been to the museum many times I had never been in the hall which is at the base of the giant ding forming the main architectural element of the building. I tried to find a good link for the Capitol Museum but wasn't able to find anything with images. It was an excellent paper/lecture and after we went upstairs to actually see their Densathil collection which is one of the finest in the world. The Rubin Museum of Art also has a good Densathil collection, not so many pieces but good quality. I remember buying the first piece from Christies and then several more through the years.

(See the Densathil Sculpture on the HAR website).

Thursday morning will follow the same format as the previous day. A Tibetan speaker will go first and talk about ritual objects and hand attributes found in the hands of the figures in painting and sculpture. After that Jane Casey (formerly Jane Casey Singer) will give a paper and then we will break for lunch following which there will be a paper at the Palace Museum in the Tibetology Institute which opened last week.

The image above is a detail from an arhat painting in the Palace Museum. All of the images I took in the museum will be uploaded to HAR site when I return to New York.

Wednesday Morning, October 21st

My paper was very controversial and made some people mad while other people were very happy with it. Generally people either believed the way I was presenting the information or they didn't. It has become well established in established in China that there are three forms of late Tibetan painting: Menri, Khyenri and Karma Gardri. They can't tell you what the definition is for each nor can they account for any styles that don't fall within the three.

The next few days until late Saturday will be very busy with the 2nd conference. There are several field trips and as you know it can be difficult moving around Beijing because of the traffic and number of cars especially at rush hour which is between 8:30 in the morning to 8:30 at night.

On Saturday I will likely have to find another hotel as I won't be able to afford this place I am in now. On Monday night I am scheduled to give a lecture at the Minzu University (Nationalities University, I think formerly called the Minorities). This is being organized by an old friend of mine, the only Bon scholar that teaches in Beijing. He is now the dean of his school, or sub-school/department within the university. He has 124 PhD candidates under his supervision as Dean. Hey! Maybe I should get an honorary Phd from him?

I already feel that there is not enough time to do all of the other things I want to do. I haven't even been to a bookstore yet (except in the Capital Museum) or a Tibetan restaurant. But during this conference one of the banquets will be at the Makye Ami Tibetan Restaurant. All three of the nights of this conference will be banquet nights at three different locations and with three different styles of food: Chinese, Tibetan and Sino-Mongolian.

The first night, tonight, is a banquet at the Beijing Dadong Roast Duck Restaurant. The 2nd banquet tomorrow night will be at the Makye Ame and the day after that will be Shuan Yang Rou, sliced mutton in a hot pot, by the world famous chef of the same family name and this will be at the same location where the conference is taking place. This sliced mutton is supposed to be some special famous thing. Generally in the West mutton implies an old sheep or lamb past its prime. There will also be Mongolian performers.

It sounds more like a holiday rather than a conference doesn't it? Well its not. It has been a whirlwind of activity and meetings and talking to people and trying to get images for the HAR website. So far I have a number of promises and one proposal of collaboration on a project involving over 300 Tibetan paintings from a Chinese Provincial museum attached to an important university.

The Blackberry cell phone has been working amazingly well here in Beijing, e-mail, text messages, everything.

I will post images for this Blog later today - that is if I'm not to busy feasting, or mentally drained and already asleep.

Posts from Beijing, October 16th to 19th, 2009

From the 16th to the 19th of October I had to find a different Blog provider. In China it is often very difficult to connect to Google Blog because it is blocked by the government. The reason is likely because of some dispute with Google, probably over accessibility. I normally use Google Blogger. At my new location in Beijing, at the Marriott Hotel, I once again have access to Google, therefore have now moved back to posting on my original travel blog.

To see the Beijing conference posts from October 16th to 19th go to the Travelblog site that I used as a temporary service.

Morning Trip to the Capital Museum

Again this morning we were up early and out front at 8:00 to go on a field trip to the Capital Museum. Only a dozen or more of the conference participants chose to go. Many had flights back to Europe or the US. There were several new exhibitions at the museum. However, the excellent display of Himalayan and Tibetan sculpture is a permanent exhibit which I photographed on a previous trip to Beijing some years ago. (See the Capital Museum sculpture on the HAR site).

While wandering through the museum I did see some objects that I had not seen before. I photographed them and will add them to the other images on the HAR site. One sculpture that was impressive and already on the HAR site was a Manjushri-like sculpture, the form having three faces and six hands. It was a large format sculpture and very well done with beautiful proportions. The ornate base is unusual for the extant of Nepalese scroll work decoration not typically found on the base of sculpture.

Beijing: Marriott Hotel Excutive Apartments

I changed hotels from the Ziyu Hotel to the Marriott Executive Apartments where tomorrows conference will be held. The 'Executive Apartments' is a building complex of high rise towers with some designed for hotel style rented rooms and others as monthly rentals and then other buildings as upscale apartments.

At the first conference accommodations and food was all provided for by the conference hosts of which there were three: the Palace Museum, the Capital University and the China Tibetolgy Institute. At the 2nd conference, so far, the host is providing very nice accommodations. I am in a two bedroom suite with a full kitchen and living area. Breakfast is provided in the morning on the ground floor. I don't yet know about lunch and dinner. It should be mentioned that I am sharing the suite with a friend who is also participating in the conference tomorrow.

As I am writing this the sun is setting out the window next to me. There is a large orange ball, low on the horizon, disappearing behind a Beijing cityscape. After several attempts to photograph the sunset and post it here I gave up realizing that the tinting on the window is preventing any kind of clear image. I posted it anyway.

At the Marriott there is internet access to the Google Blog site which is why I am again posting here rather than the Travelblog site that I have been using for the last few days. Marriott must have their own agreement for internet connection with the Chinese Government since the hotel primarily deals with a foreign clientele rather than local Chinese citizens.

Hong Kong

Due to heavy winds we arrived late in Hong Kong and I missed my connecting flight to Beijing. Flights leave all the time so it was easy to get on another scheduled for an hour and a half later. The brie and cucumber sandwiches in the Business Class lounge are the best. It is sunny and warm here. It would be nice to go into Hong Kong and spend some time, but alas no. I have the thick clouds of pollution and dust to look forward to in Beijing.

JFK to Hong Kong - then Beijing

Well, here I am again at JFK at 7:00 in the morning. I have been very fortunate today, they have upgraded me to business class for the JFK through to Hong Kong portion of the trip. Several people have already heard that I will be at the conference and are trying to set up meetings. For me a highlight of the trip will be the opening of the new Tibetology Institute at the Palace Museum. On Friday morning (New York Thursday night) a bus has been arranged to pick some of us up at the hotel and take us to the ceremonies. Ed thinks it will be boring, but he has lived in Beijing for many years and been to many official openings and tediously long functions. For me it will be a chance to see old friends and colleagues, and make arrangements to get together over the weekend and following week.

One thing that I like to do while in Beijing is reconnect with the Bon scholars and lamas teaching and studying at Beijing universities. Generally they are from the Amdo region of Eastern Tibet.

I have a long list of things that I would like to try and accomplish while I am there. Finding the original Panjarnata Mahakala temple allegedly built at the time of Chogyal Pagpa and Aniko is high on the list. See the SRG Website Blog for more information on this (left side menu selection).

I will be Traveling to China Soon

I will be Traveling to China on Wednesday, God willing, and wanted to share a new discovery with you. The discovery is a new Blackberry Tour 9630 cell phone. Previously I have had only one cell phone, simple, reliable and only for telephone calls. I have resisted cell phones believing them to be fundamentally evil, the death of privacy, a new era of interruption, etc., etc., etc. None of this has changed, it is all so very true.

However, I have a new Blackberry phone and since Thursday I have already become more productive in all areas of text and e-mail communication. I now have all of my various e-mail accounts for the different web sites forwarded to one device which I carry with me almost all the time. With this, time is being saved by not having to access so many different accounts on different desk top or lap top computers - at the office or apartment.

A full keyboard on a cell phone is a necessity when it comes to sending text and returning e-mails. Texting, as with a number keypad on most older phone models is Byzantine at best. A keyboard, no matter how small, is a requirement. With all the accounts routed to one unit and a full keyboard (although minuscule by big finger standards) it is easy to deal with communications as they come in, determine their importance, and respond immediately as necessary. Due to these improvements in communications technology and in effect having a computer in the palm of my hand, I am now a believer!

Back to New York - Again & Again & Again!!!!!

Well it has been a very relaxing stay in Vancouver for the past two weeks. I managed to get away up to the cabin for two nights. That was a great trip. The trail is really over-grown. No wild animals to be seen, but the bears got into my equipment again. They didn't damage very much because they already did that last November. It is making me re-think how I hide necessary equipment - not from the bears - but from people. Nobody had been in the cabin, from what I could tell, since the last visit which wasn't that long ago.

When I say relaxing what I really mean is having the opportunity to get a lot of work done without distraction.