Photo: Grasses and flowers of Amdo's rolling steppe (August, 2010).
Photo: Necklaces and prayer beads of a Henan Mongol Autonomous County shop (August, 2010).
Photo: Bundles of prayer flags in a Henan Mongol Autonomous County shop (August, 2010).
Photo: Bells for sheep and goats in a market stall (August, 2010).However, photographing the people can be another matter altogether. This blog entry is about a process of, an exercise in, building relationships with others:
In an effort to come to grips with our own experience in the landscape and culture we find ourselves, Sander and I have been writing about, filming, and photographing the land and people around us. This has been, in part, our way of documenting the land that has shaped the people; the people, the land. Both have certainly been shaping us. I'm not sure what or whom we have been shaping. But both sides usually come away with something. Sander and I are trying to come away from this experience with as much as possible.
But one cannot just go around filming and photographing people here. Don't try this on the Hui. The Tibetan women, weighted down in colors, silver belts, and jewelry, will not allow it. And I wouldn't again risk it on a Tibetan man wearing a short sword or long knife. (I found out the hard way a couple decades ago when, after pressing the shutter button, a Tibetan pulled out a long knife and lunged after me). So Sander and I ask before we shoot and have meanwhile been trying to break down barriers. Create a sense of trust. Exposing ourselves to show that we're not bad people and hoping that maybe some will allow us to photograph them. There is so much to photograph and film here and we feel we have done so little.
Photo: Peace sign ... usually always displayed backwards (August, 2010).Our latest attempt to endear ourselves was to sit out in a public space and draw people and things within our line of sight. In China, anything that happens in the street is fair game to watch. It is public theater. It might be an argument, a fight, a stabbing, an accident, or an actual performance...say, with a monkey. I've seen all these things. But over the past couple of days, Sander and I performed. We staged our own theater.
We sat ourselves down on a set of concrete steps outside a store on Tumotenanlu Street in Henan, and drew. We knew what would happen. It did. Within minutes we had a crowd around us so thick that not only were we unable to see each other but the motocycles we were drawing. Tibetan herdsmen love their motocycles, which they call moto. We quickly had a crowd of Tibetans, many were herdsmen.
The men who ride these motocyles dress them up colorfully and elaborately with sheepskins, saddleblankets, saddlebags, and other things. The are, in effect, modern horses. The men, meanwhile, wear chubas (the traditional Tibetan tunic) with sleeves tied in front, or in the back when it's warm above the sash, and sometimes a sword. But in the mornings and evenings their arms are in their sleeves because it gets cold quickly on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau when the sun isn't up.
As we drew, they were also facinated with the hair on our legs. I'd read once that the Chinese look at such characteristics as ones that place certain people closer to apes on the evolutionary scale of things. I don't know what the Tibetans surrounding us felt. But they did appreciate our efforts at drawing and loved watching. One man pretended like he was going to pull the hair from my legs. I pretended like I was going to pull the hair from his chin. He flinched, then laughed.
It was fun drawing even if Sander had to draw the moto from memory because of the crowd and I had to keep shooing people away. Some shooed still others away for me. They loved the diversion and were wonderfully encouraging to both of us.
A little girl nearby laughed at my toes in my sandles. When I wiggled my toes, she laughed. I kept wiggling. She kept laughing. Sander and I tried to draw her too but she kept moving. Finally, I took a photo of her and when she ran off I drew her from the image on my camera. The Tibetans loved that! When I got up to try to capture all the people crowded around Sander most ran off. I took a shot at those who remained.
A couple of the young, virile, males permitted me, finally, to take their photos. The one on his moto invited us to his home. He said his home was south of town out in the steppe. Because I have concerns as a father with Sander riding on a moto behind a young virile male who might have a tendency to show off, to say of the other dangers, I pretended to not understand. He told me in Chinese that he would be back for me and took off with his friend on the back of his moto. The scenario I saw playing out was: both of them soon returning each on his own bike looking to give Sander and I rides out to their homes. I told Sander. Wanting to save our Tibetan friends a sense of face (by not having to turn down their public invitations directly) and uphold my fatherly sense of responsibility, we packed it up and headed for a restaurant on another street. We saw our Tibetan friends roar by a couple times on their motos looking for us. We heard them roaring through the streets many times through the night.
But during the day we were able to form the relationships needed to photograph the portraits of many. One thing we discovered during our time in Henan was how the young males can be described as men with swords and the older ones as men with beads.
The following is a series of photos of community elders, many with prayer beads:
Photo: A prayer wheel held and spun by one of the community elders (August, 2010).:
Photo: Furniture builder (August, 2010).
Photo: Furniture carver (August, 2010).
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