Absurdity, Allegory and China

Again this year we brought sixteen folks from Qinghai to Tianjin where the 12 students and 4 teachers spent the week at the International School of Tianjin (IST), attending classes and introducing Tibetan culture to the students as well as the teachers at IST. To use a well-worn but accurate cliché, a great time was had by all. The Tibetans left Tianjin early Saturday morning, February 23rd, and traveled by bus to Shan Hai Guan in Hebei province where the Great Wall meets the sea. It was the first time any of them had seen the sea, and they were ecstatic. They arrived in Beijing on Saturday evening, and hit it again first thing on Sunday morning, hopping on the subway and going to Yonghegong (aka the Lamasery), an important Tibetan Buddhist temple with a 26 meter (85 feet) high Maitreya Buddha carved from a single piece of white sandalwood, the tallest wooden Buddha in the world. This, of course, was also a big hit.

Then it was off for a walk to Nanluo Guxiang where Dominic Johnson-Hill from Plastered T-shirts gave everyone in the group a tee shirt and a tour of the hutong, then treated them all to a great lunch at a Hakka restaurant in Houhai. Tian’anmen and the Forbidden City were next, and then it was back to their hotel. They took the train back to Qinghai on Monday afternoon, and I received a phone call yesterday (Wednesday) that they had all made it home safely. (Trying to score 16 train tickets was a bit of a trick, but Camille Yang took it in stride and was able to get them all hard sleepers, which they were very pleased with, since they could finally get some well-needed sleep.) So, our cultural exchange with folks from the Plateau went off again without a hitch thanks to much help from more people than I can possibly mention. Good stuff all around.