4 August 2006 * Beijing Capital Airport
As we prepare for take-off from Beijing, I sit in a lucid and relaxed state of mind. Our trip is nearly finished and our travel tasks done. We’ve successfully survived packing, taxi, check-in, the flight from Chengdu to Beijing, transfer, export customs, and umpteen security checks and bag scans. My mind replays several lazy fleeting images of dry yellow terraced hills, grey factory-smog-industry cities, and bustling busy clatter polished marble airport duty-free. The aircraft gives a heave to reverse. Seatbelt clicks scatter across the hushed space. “Life vest, oxygen mask, emergency exits, exit illumination”…the syllables of safety plitter forth in singsong Chinglish. It’s time to go home!
But…while the flight attendants roam the aisles, let me return to Dege, an altogether different sort of home.
An important and pleasant portion of our time in Dege was spent in company with Drs. Patrick Dowdey and Clifton Meador, whom we met at the Mouth by Mouth Watering Snack restaurant one sunny noon.
Patrick is the curator of the Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies Museum at Wesleyan University and Cliff is a printer, artist, and faculty member at Columbia College of Chicago's Center for Book & Paper Arts. These two, dapper in their matching straw toppers, had come to learn about the Dege Printing Academy and all the amazing activities that transpire there.
We joined a couple of their interview sessions, visiting some of the skilled xylograph carvers who work for the printing academy, or “Parkhang.” Kutse Valley has a lengthy relationship with the Academy; carvers from Kutse have served the Parkhang for many generations. As it turned out, several of Tara’s cousins were working there.
One of them, Dawa Tsering, consented to a video interview with Patrick and Cliff. Dawa Tsering (above right) is a tall and handsome man with strong features, long black hair, and a thin moustache. He bears the air of a warrior, though he works as a humble xylograph carver. We visited his small shared studio, where he sat on a carpet cushion next to a window cutting sacred words out of raw wood.
He showed us how they work from hand-written copy, tracing beautiful backward script onto the block, then carefully carving away all of the empty surrounding wood. First, they carve away the big spaces around the words.
Then they carve away smaller and smaller bits until only the words remain.
The interview, which is part of an exhibition Patrick and Cliff are cooking up, explored Dawa Tsering’s background, attitudes, and inner experience. We bought several of Dawa Tsering’s small print blocks for “sale to visitors,” and Patrick and Cliff purchased an actual ink-blackened xylograph containing words from the Yonten Dzodrel.
We also visited the room where another of Tara’s cousins works, alongside half a dozen others, as a xylograph editor. This high-level position requires many years of skill and experience.
The editors fix mistakes that have been identified by scholars and client monasteries. To fix a mistake, it must first be cut off. Then, a hole is carved and new wood pounded in and wedged in place. This wood is then shaved flat to match the surrounding text, and the replacement text carved anew. The revised blocks are then re-printed and the proofs are sent to the monastic scholars who check for errors. This whole amazing process is something quite else from hitting the delete key!!
The Dege Parkhang is a wonderful and special institution, a national treasure, and the work they do there is really incredible. I’ve got nothing but respect for that place, and that’s why I was happy to circle it again and again, visualizing it as a treasure storehouse topped by the brilliant and radiant White Vajrasattva sending out good vibrations in all directions, filling the vast expanse of time and space.
* * *
But…while the flight attendants roam the aisles, let me return to Dege, an altogether different sort of home.
An important and pleasant portion of our time in Dege was spent in company with Drs. Patrick Dowdey and Clifton Meador, whom we met at the Mouth by Mouth Watering Snack restaurant one sunny noon.
Patrick is the curator of the Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies Museum at Wesleyan University and Cliff is a printer, artist, and faculty member at Columbia College of Chicago's Center for Book & Paper Arts. These two, dapper in their matching straw toppers, had come to learn about the Dege Printing Academy and all the amazing activities that transpire there.
We joined a couple of their interview sessions, visiting some of the skilled xylograph carvers who work for the printing academy, or “Parkhang.” Kutse Valley has a lengthy relationship with the Academy; carvers from Kutse have served the Parkhang for many generations. As it turned out, several of Tara’s cousins were working there.
One of them, Dawa Tsering, consented to a video interview with Patrick and Cliff. Dawa Tsering (above right) is a tall and handsome man with strong features, long black hair, and a thin moustache. He bears the air of a warrior, though he works as a humble xylograph carver. We visited his small shared studio, where he sat on a carpet cushion next to a window cutting sacred words out of raw wood.
He showed us how they work from hand-written copy, tracing beautiful backward script onto the block, then carefully carving away all of the empty surrounding wood. First, they carve away the big spaces around the words.
Then they carve away smaller and smaller bits until only the words remain.
The interview, which is part of an exhibition Patrick and Cliff are cooking up, explored Dawa Tsering’s background, attitudes, and inner experience. We bought several of Dawa Tsering’s small print blocks for “sale to visitors,” and Patrick and Cliff purchased an actual ink-blackened xylograph containing words from the Yonten Dzodrel.
We also visited the room where another of Tara’s cousins works, alongside half a dozen others, as a xylograph editor. This high-level position requires many years of skill and experience.
The editors fix mistakes that have been identified by scholars and client monasteries. To fix a mistake, it must first be cut off. Then, a hole is carved and new wood pounded in and wedged in place. This wood is then shaved flat to match the surrounding text, and the replacement text carved anew. The revised blocks are then re-printed and the proofs are sent to the monastic scholars who check for errors. This whole amazing process is something quite else from hitting the delete key!!
The Dege Parkhang is a wonderful and special institution, a national treasure, and the work they do there is really incredible. I’ve got nothing but respect for that place, and that’s why I was happy to circle it again and again, visualizing it as a treasure storehouse topped by the brilliant and radiant White Vajrasattva sending out good vibrations in all directions, filling the vast expanse of time and space.
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