Qinghai Sound Report

From Qinghai Lake to Tongren, Xi’an and Beijing, Sounds of China In August, 2010, I received my invitation to the 3rd Qinghai Lake International Poetry Festival and a year later arrived in China with my wife Meredith on August 6, 2011. We spent a night in Beijing and arrived the next day in Xining, where we stayed at the Qinghai Hotel and met Jidi Majia, the Head of the Information Department for Qinghai Province and the man who envisioned and organized the festival. I carried a small Sony .mp3 recorder and recorded many of the sounds we encountered during our visit, which included interactions with festival poets from around the world (54 nations were represented), as well as a tour of Tibetan cultural attractions in Qinghai, a visit to Xi’an which included a featured reading at the Chang’an Poetry Festival, the terra cotta warriors and a visit to the Poetry Department at Capital Normal University in Beijing. Poets are treated with a great deal more respect in China than in the United States and the Chinese people we met really respected Americans. One cab driver said that the world does not know the history of China and he’s quite right. I learned matcha tea originated in China and that the original cut-ups using lines from failed poems were not done by surrealists, but by the late T’ang-era poet Li He. From our first night in Beijing, we were amused by what our guide (& my translator) Denis Mair called Chinglish. Essentially it’s a poor or mistranslation of English into Chinese. 8.7.11 – Sign in Beijing’s Guigo Hotel bathroom warns: “Be careful of landslide.” The paper I presented at the festival was Pacific Rim Poetics, noting how (among other things) North American West Coast poetry owes more to Asian and Native American cultures than to Europe. Denis Mair, peN present Pacific Rim Poetics There was some confusion as to how I would make my presentation, but what eventually happened was that I read from a short version of the paper and showed most of the powerpoint and Denis Mair translated on the fly. Here’s the sound of our talk: http://www.globalvoicesradio.org/audio/8.8.11_Pacific_Rim_Poetics_PN_&_D.Mair.mp3 Denis told me that he had received some help from native Chinese speakers regarding the translation of my Elegies for Slaughter into Chinese. About the poems, Denis’ friend Shu Chi said “He has a way of creating structure that gives abundant detail.” The Chinese version of Elegies for Slaughter is here. Jidi Majia is the head of the Qinghai Dept of Information. The visionary behind the conference, he gave a copy of his book, in English and Chinese, to all festival participants and autographed my copy. (We had our copy shipped home and I plan on posting on his work upon its arrival.) This sound is Denis explaining what Jidi Majia wrote and the 2nd part is a poet from Nepal, Manjul, learning how to pronounce Meredith’s nickname, Almondina. http://www.globalvoicesradio.org/audio/8.8.11_Denis_Explains_Jidis_Inscription_&_Junmal_on_Almondina.mp3 Mer, Javier Bello, peN On the first day I also recorded the presentations of Javier Bello of Chile and Mai Mang(Li Bin) of China, who is now teaching at Connecticut College, among other people. Mai Mang’s talk was entitled: In Search of the Absolutely Blind Encounter. Our guide for the road trips we took to Qinghai Lake and Guide County went by the name Coco, because she loves coconuts. Here are a couple of examples of her bright announcements to the gathered poets on the poetry bus. 1. Coco Bus Announcement. 2. Coco Bus Roll Call. Chinese government officials LOVE to have official dinners and once the barley liquor starts flowing, you never know what some of them will do, including singing opera. This is some of the Tibetan Buddhist chanting I recorded at a Qinghai shrine. Here is Coco’s introduction to the Temple of the Jade Emperor. Javier Bello read a poem (en espanol) at the bar, which was very smoky thanks, in large part, to Javier himself. Much time was spent on buses during the festival, eight hours in two days is our estimate, so there was much time to interact with other poets. Mehmet Yashin is one of them. A native of Cyprus, living in the U.K. and representing Turkey, here he explains about a certain fruit he bought near the Temple of the Jade Emperor. Qinghai Guide National Geological Park My opportunity to read at the Festival came at a place with the most amazing scenery, at the Qinghai-Guide National Geological Park. The mountains here are like Red Rocks, but with different shades of color, including a deep red. I was chosen to end the reading, which was in an outdoor setting with temperatures in the 90’s. Denis Mair was kind enough to translate Elegies for Slaughter into Mandarin, and I chose to read the last one. I was grateful to have Sun Xiaoya, an Associate Professor at Capital Normal University read the poem in Mandarin. She works at The Research Center for Chinese Poetry and toured that before our visit ended. The entire reading from that day is archived here. Paul Nelson reads Elegy X at the Qinghai Lake International Poetry Festival We had the opportunity to tour one of the most important Tibetan Buddhist Monasteries in China, the Kumbum Monastery (Ta’er) outside of Xining. It was built in 1583 and the Wikipedia entry says it is only second in importance in Tibetan Buddhist to the monastery in Lhasa. My reading of the introduction is here and the sound of the ticket counter is here. I found that sound quite hypnotic and interesting. This is the sound of some chanting and drumming by monks there. Sounds of our tour, led by the very sweet Coco, are here. Denis had a very interesting experience there, which he explains here. Kumbum Monastery Monks The festival ended and we had a day to relax before we were escorted by two of Jidi Majia’s men and a driver to Tongren, the heart of Qinghai’s Tibetan population and home to some remarkable Tibetan Buddhist Thangka painting. These are devotional paintings. We toured a Thangka Museum and there are several segments of the tour that I recorded: Segment one, segment two, and Thangka thoughts from Denis Mair. Thangka   We were also treated to a remarkable Tibetan meal at a small restaurant. It was the best meal we had in China and, ironically, the one we feared the most. Meredith had me drag along about 25 protein bars and I ate about three of them and hauled them back home. There was Tsampa (made from barley, je (female yak) ghee, je cheese), shan n yu (pea gelatin), the freshest corn I have ever had, dried pot potatoes (gan guo Yang Yu), bbq lamb, bracket fungus harvested from local trees, green tea with wild Qinghai rose petals, a slice of peach and chrysanthemum and tea made from a solar heater that directed several small mirrors at a point where the kettle was placed. Soup and Je yogurt finished it off because in China they say “soup scrapes the oil.” Tibetan Green Tea           Preparing for Tsampa Tibetan Meal So these are three stories from that experience with our guide who is an expert in Tibetan culture, Dr. Hua. Tea in the Tibetan restaurant. I saw two hornet’s nests up near the roof of the outside dining area, where we were. Rather than try to take them down, or spray Guaranteed Kill insecticide, the local see hornet’s nests as good luck omens and believe hornets are good for removing spiders. This is my summation of a story prompted by the hornet’s nests. Denis tells the story of the restaurant, the altar and the photo on the altar which is the Dalai Lama. We were surprised to see this, but it was not the only occasion. By evening we were introduced to a Thangka master, Master Douga. There are two segments recorded at our meal and one recording where he offered us one of two different small Thangka paintings, one of which, the Medicine Buddha, is now on our altar. This is the sound of part of a thunderstorm in Tongren. This is sound from a tourof the Longwu Tibetan Buddhist Monastery, where they have a huge sculpture of Manjushri. He is the bodhisattva associated with transcendent wisdom, which he enables by cutting away ignorance with his sword. The monastery is where I bought a Manjushri pendant for my altar. Our tour guide left academia for a position at the monastery and says she is interested in female Tibetan Buddhist deities, Quan Yin among them. Master Douga Painting I was having some issues dealing with the altitude, heat and with dehydration. I asked to visit a Tibetan doctor and he took my pulse and asked if I had a weak heart or a history of heart trouble! Not that I know of, but being sick and jet-lagged and nearly suffering heat stroke did not help, but here’s a recording of that encounter, most of which was viewed by three interested Tibetans in the doorway of the small clinic. The reason we were in Tongren was because I asked Denis to see if he could coordinate a visit where we could investigate Tibetan Bön culture. I had studied what was billed as a variant of this ancient wisdom culture for a few years, but going to a region that is dominated by people of Tibetan ethnicity, I wanted to go to the source. Bon Gya Monastery We drove for two hours along very poor roads (some of the worst roads in a country with mostly good ones) and then to a valley. The Bon Gya Monastery was up on the hill in an incredible setting. We got a tour from Monk Soten, who is studying English and is developing the monastery’s website. (He would LOVE a Tibetan-English, English-Tibetan dictionary!) Monk Soten, peN He was carrying a cellphone on him and later Monk’s came by headed for lunch, lugging a case of Pepsi. Several young monks wanted into the photos that we took with Bongya Gelek Lundrub Gyatso, the Bon Gya Lama Rinpoche. A dinner one evening in Tongren featured the very tasty Huang Guo Jiu (yellow fruit wine, a local treat),...