National Museums Liverpool Blog - Emma

Offerings for the health of the 14th Dalai Lama at a local gompa

For anyone spending time with the Tibetan community here in Boudhanath it is impossible to ignore the ‘Tibet Question’. Around the stupa storeowners sell t-shirts emblazoned with the Tibetan flag (which is banned in China) and the slogans ‘Save Tibet’ or ‘Free Tibet’. Although Tibetans regularly protest against the Olympic Games and Chinese rule in Tibet, freedom of speech here is not unconditional. The Nepal government has banned performances of Tibetan dance and opera and institutes, monasteries and schools have been warned against participating in protests or speaking out against the Chinese government, as this could result in the closing or removal of the organisations.

So with this in mind, I will just make a few observations regarding the Tibetan community’s efforts in the run up to, and during, the Olympics. The first thing to note is that the majority of protests, here in Kathmandu, go unreported, even in the Nepalese press. For the past week, protest, vigils or silent gatherings have been happening every day. The routine is the same, protestors arrive at the Chinese Embassy, in Kathmandu, protests are made, the police control the protestors, sometimes with beatings and nearly always with arrests, protestors (on average between 100 and 300 a day) are arrested, put in jail for the night, released, and then wait for the next day’s rendezvous point to be arranged.

The second thing to note is that the protestors come from every part of the Tibetan community. The protestors aren’t just nuns, monks and students, but young mothers, housewives and shopkeepers. Everyone wants to play a part in keeping Tibet in the World’s thoughts.

On August 8^th major protests took place across Kathmandu with over 1,400 arrests being made. Tibetan shopkeepers closed their stores in protest against the Olympics, some for several days. This is not an empty gesture, with food and fuel shortages in Nepal affecting everyone; this is a major sacrifice and will have a big effect on the incomes of many Tibetan families, especially in Boudhanath.

On my last full day in Nepal - the 14th August - there was another major protest and again young and old gathered in their thousands to remind everyone of the Tibetan cause. Tibetan shops here is Boudhanath closed as people made their way to the Chinese Embassy.

Monks lining up to give khata and receive blessings from the Rinpoche

This week has been a particular special one for the Tibetans living here in Boudhanath.The weekend saw two very good days for gaining extra merit. It had been calculated that on Friday and Sunday just one good deed on these days would be worth 10 thousand, or on Sunday, 10 million good deeds! To take just one round of the stupa, give money to the needy or to just be nice to the people you know would be a very auspicious or fortunate thing to do.

Then on Monday, Chökyi Nyima, the head Rinpoche or teacher of the Ka-Nying Shedrub Ling Monastery, known locally as the White Gompa, (this is the monastery I go to school in) came home. The monks lined the path to the monastery and offered Rinpoche 'khata', the white silk scarf that is such an important part of Tibetan culture. Rinpoche blessed each scarf then placed them over the monks' shoulders. It took him some time to bless each khata offered, but finally he made it to his room - we knew this because his pet dogs barked happily a few moments after he climbed the stairs.

The following day the Rinpoche's first puja since his return took place. This puja also coincided with the date that the Buddha of this era descended from Tushita Heaven to live as the human Siddhartha Gautama. Pujas were held all across Boudhanath, and trumpets, conch shells and chanting could be heard throughout the night.

Of course, the Tibetan community here in Boudhanath is being kept busy with other non Buddhist matters this week. Today the Olympic Games opens in China and this week has seen an increase in the protests and vigils happening across the city.

The view from the bungee bridge

Last weekend marked the half way point of my time here in Kathmandu, Nepal. Not only was it my birthday, but it was also the school's mid-term break.

A group of us took a trip to a resort 12km from the Tibetan border, to blow away a few cobwebs and try to forget about Tibetan verbs for a few days. The drive was arduous, taking over 5 hours along roads that only just clung to the mountainsides. As we got closer to the border there were more and more landslides, many of which would have been completely blocking the road only a few hours before we arrived. We gave our driver several rounds of applause as he got us over yet another slide.

But once there we realised it was well worth it. The resort was made up of several tents covered with thatched roofs to protect us from the monsoon rains, and a fantastic view of a swollen river, perfect for white water rafting. While I'd just come to while away a few days reading and sighing at the incredible green mountains that surrounded us, others in the group walked the 12kms to catch a glimpse of the Tibet border. Alas security was pretty tight and the 'Friendship Bridge' between Nepal and Tibet was off limits.

Monday was our last day at the resort and a number of brave souls from my class decided to throw themselves off a bridge 160m above a monsoon-flooded river to try out Asia's highest bungee jump. Not for me I was content just to take the pictures!

So, after a few very relaxing days, I'm now back to school. I seem to have forgotten everything I learnt before the holiday, so working hard to memorize what seems to be an endless list of verbs and nouns.

Prayer flags

On Sunday I went with my host Mother, Kalsang, to Swayambhunath, an important Buddhist site to the south of Kathmandu. Unlike Boudhanath, Swayambhunath sits on a hill overlooking the city, so for the first time in a few weeks I got to look up from my text books and have a really good look at the cityscape. Swayambhunath is affectionately known as the Monkey Temple, due to the many monkeys who live in and around the stupa. I’d been warned that these monkeys could be pretty mean and vicious, but the monsoon rains seemed to have dampened their spirits as they just watched as we climbed the steps to the smaller hill that sits to the west of the main stupa. This site holds a smaller shrine to Saraswati, the Goddess of Learning, and while Kalsang had her reasons for visiting the shrine I also had high hopes that Saraswati would give me a little helping hand with my Tibetan studies.

We were there for a very particular reason: Kalsang had read the Tibetan calendar and consulted her Lama, and Sunday the 13th was a very good day for dedicating a series of prayer flags that she had bought. As the rain started to pour, Kalsang wrote her family's names (including mine) on a series of white silk scarves called Khatas. The khata is an important part of Tibetan culture, given as offerings in the gompas and stupas and also as gifts between people. Once all the names were written, each scarf had a small prayer said when it was placed on the forehead and then each was tied to a series of prayer flags.

Once the prayer flags were ready, the boys and men working at the stupa nimbley climbed the many trees to find a good place to attach the flags, so that their prayers could be sent out into the world. Kalsang gave offerings of juniper twigs to the stupa fire and recited a small mantra, to ensure the prayer flags' success. Finally, handfuls of tsampa (roasted and ground barley flour) were offered and thrown into the air.

Athough, the rain poured down, and it was unusually cold, Kalsang was happy with the day and was sure the prayer flags had been successful. I think she was right as my reading has really improved this week.

My route to school with the stupa in the background

So, tomorrow I'll start my third week at the Rangjung Yeshe Institute, where I'm studying the Tibetan language. Classes are really hard work, but although progress is slow, I was actually able to understand a little bit of a conversation I heard on the street today so something is sticking!

Here's a little insight into my day.

I get up at 4.30am every day (weekends included) and go with my host Mother, Kalsang, to do Kora, which means to circumambulate (go clock-wise) around the large stupa at Boudhanath, which I showed you last week. I go for the exercise rather than to build up merit, but there is a good mix of people jogging, walking and prostrating at this time in the morning. After a hour taking the circuit, we meet up with Kalsang's friends and go to a local tea shop for sweet tea or jhar and to catch up on the local gossip. The women talk quickly but I'm slowly picking up the odd words.

We're back home for 7am, I have breakfast, do a little bit of study and then off I go to school for 8am. Classes are very intense. In the first week I had to learn the alphabet and the many changes that happen to the sounds of words once another letter is put in front or behind it. I'm still getting to grips with this and I hope that the extra classes I'll be fitting in from next week will help me get this straight in my mind! The unique thing about the school is that for two hours a day we get to practice our Tibetan language skills, one-on-one with Tibetans. This is an amazing experience which allows you to pick up pronunciations and changes in tones much easier.

This image shows part of my route to school. You can see the stupa in the background.

Classes finish at 1.30pm, but that's not the end of the school day. We have homework everyday and there is plenty to go over from the day's lessons.

On several days during the week, there are 'load-sheddings' across Kathmandu, which basically means that the electric power goes out across Boudhanath for a couple of hours. This is done for all sorts of reasons, to stop the system over-loading, but it means that study is pretty impossible after 7pm, so it's often an early night ready for my 4.30am start the next morning.

I am loving every minute of it, but without a doubt this is the hardest thing I have ever done!

More later in the week, homework permitting!

Boudha stupa

Hello or Tashi Delek!

As some of you may know from the World Museum displays and the website pages, National Museums Liverpool has one of the great collections of Tibetan objects.

I'm here in Boudhanath, an area just outside Kathmandu, Nepal, which is home to a large Tibetan community. I'll be living here in Boudhanath for the next two months with a Tibetan family, as I begin to learn the Tibetan language.

Over the next couple of months I be blogging about my classes at Rangjung Yeshe Institute, my (slow) progress with the language classes and about life here in Boudhanath.

So as a quick introduction. The first thing you see as you come into Boudhanath is the stupa. This massive stupa is the centre of Buddhist life here in Boudhanath, with Tibetans, both laypeople and monks, Nepalis and Western Tourists all walking around the base of the stupa throughout the day, turning the prayer wheels found within the walls, visiting the gombas (monastery/place of learning) or giving offerings, particularly for the health of the 14th Dalai Lama. I've added an image of the stupa here.

I'm hoping to do a couple of blogs a week on things that I've learnt, or about events happening within the Tibetan community.

Before I sign of here's your first word of the day: 'Key'. Key means Dog.

Here's one for all you philatelists (that's stamp collectors to you and me) out there.

Bhutan, a beautiful Himalayan kingdom, is this year celebrating 100 years of monarchy. To celebrate Bhutan has just launched the first CD-Rom postage stamp.

2nd King and Queen of Bhutan

You might be wondering how NML fits in to all this? Well, it just so happens that we have a really important collection of objects and photographs from Bhutan acquired by early 20th century Brtitish explorers and Political Officers based in the area. In this collection we have a rare photograph of the 2nd King of Bhutan, Jigme Wangchuk and his wife that you can see here.

The Bhutanese Government asked if they could use the image in their new stamp collection and we were more than happy to see an item from the NML collections virtually returning to Bhutan.

Over the past six months staff and volunteers in the Ethnology department have been unpacking, re-storing, documenting and photographing NML's little known Islamic collection.

This fascinating collection ranges from 12th century painted dishes from Iran, to 15th centruy pottery sherds from Fostat, an important trading centre in Egypt, to modern day tourist souvenirs. To whet your appetite here's an image of a wonderful dish from 12th - 13th century Iran showing a huntsman riding his sturdy horse.

12th - 13th century dish from Iran, showing a hunting scene.

Having unpacked the collection it was clear that it needed more attention and research. With the help of the Museum Partnerships department we have secured a grant from the Museums Association's Effective Collections scheme. This grant will pay for an Islamic specialist to come and review the collection and make recomendations as to how we can best use the collection, which might include new displays at NML, loans to other organisations or possibly more research into the collection's history.

I'll keep you posted on how the review goes and what we plan to do next.

For the next two weeks, Rina, a Japanese student studying English will be working in the Ethnology department at World Museum. We're really pleased to have her here and we thought it would be nice for her to do a blog about what she is doing.

Rina with the tree in the museum foyer

Hello!

My name is Rina. I am from Tokyo, Japan. I am working in this Museum as a work placement for a month. I usually do computer work and store objects, but my main purpose is to improve my English skills through my work.

I study British and American literature in my university in Japan, and this work placement is a part of my language course studies. Before I came here, I studied English in university of Manchester for two month, and I moved to Liverpool two weeks ago. This work placement is a good experience for me and helps me to know the English work environment and improve my English skills.

I am interested in the exhibition “The Beat Goes On” because I am interested in U.K. rock music very much. However, it will open after I go back to Japan, so I’d like to come back here to see the exhibition!

The home of Maashri

Today we travelled the 80km from Orissa's state capital Bhubaneshwara to the coastal town of Puri, a major centre for Hindu pilgrimage and the home of one of the most distinctive Hindu Gods, Lord Jaganatha; a manifestation of Krishna.

Along the way we stopped at several rural villages, many known to me through the work of a friend Stephen Huyler, a cultural anthropologist who has worked in Orissa with Babu Mohapatra for over 30 years. It was a privilege to see the work of the potters who effortlessly create beautiful water pots and vessels for the Jaganatha temple in Puri. Having dabbled in potting myself I know just how difficult it is to create the pieces that they shape in a matter of seconds.

We then moved on through several villages to the home of Maashri (pronounced Mousey), a 76 year-old woman who is a renowned alpana (floor painting) and wall painter. We were a little too earlier to see her work, as each home in the village had just been freshly covered in a mud/dung mixture ready for the painting that will take place in 10 days time to celebrate the end of an important month of fasting for women. While we didn't get to see Maashri's wall paintings she created a beautiful little Ganesha (the Hindu Elephant God, who is the Lord of New Beginnings), using a rice flour that she trickled into fine lines through her fingers. This practice of wall painting is slowly changing as many homes in the village are now pukka (cement) rather than the traditional chakka (mud/dung), which women are reluctant to decorate as the walls are not able to be renewed with mud/dung plaster once the painting needs renewing. We sat and drank tea and the family asked me many questions about my life, they were particularly interested in my decision to have a career rather than a family. They were also distinctly unimpressed with my style choices as one of Maashri's grand-daughters quickly ran for nail polish and bindis (a small dot that is placed between the eyebrows) to beautify me!

Reluctantly, we moved on to our final stop, which included several stone carving workshops. Here I made my first purchase for the Weston Discovery Centre. I was particularly taken by the work of one workshop, which used the local sandstone used in the creation of the magnificent sun temple at Konarak (more on that later in the week). I picked out a beautiful piece depicting Lord Krishna with the gopis (female cow herders), which is a very popular Hindu story. The work and detail on the piece is exquisite and we discovered that many of the pieces currently in production would be going to temples in the area. I've included a picture of the stone carving workshop, which is a chakka building. 

Tomorrow I will be visiting the bazaars around the great Jaganatha temple, but tonight I will be relaxing by walking along the wide sandy beach, sorry to rub it in as I know it is snowing and bitterly cold in the UK.

A rice-eating porcupine

As you might have guessed we didn't see any tigers in Similipal National Park. However it was a beautiful place to be for a couple of days. We stayed in what was once the Maharaja's hunting lodge (believe me it was not as glamorous as it sounds), which looked out over a clearing and a salt-lick in the otherwise dense forest. At dusk, a herd of spotted deer appeared where they settled for the night and while we didn't see a tiger the deer obviously did, as with night falling anxious barks from the deer on watch alerted the herd to danger. In the absolute pitch black the barks rang out across the clearing, which sent shivers down my spine, and had me heading for the safety of the villa!

Being in the middle of a nature reserve that has no electric light, apart from one solar-powered bulb in the room, when night closed in it really was pitch-black; you literally couldn't see your hand in front of your face. This made for excellent star-gazing. With a pair of good binoculars we could see thousands and thousands of stars and even a planet, but as none of the group are astronomers we couldn't work out which it was. Still it's one of the best night skies I have ever seen.

Apart from the deer we had another visitor, a rice-eating porcupine! Apparently he was a regular visitor to the lodge and the cook there often gave the porcupine left-over rice. On this particular night the porcupine must have been hungry, as he snuck back into the kitchen, pulled the pot of cold rice off a shelf and ran under our jeep to eat it. It meant that we had a small lunch the next day, but hey I wasn't going to argue with those quills. Here's a picture of our rice-stealing friend on his first visit.

So tomorrow we'll be heading to Puri, a major temple town on the Bay of Bengal. On the way we will be stopping at several villages known for their terracottas, wall paintings and stone carving. I hope to find a piece for the Weston Discovery Centre along the way.

Montu Chitrakar and his paintings

Namaste!
I have finally got round to writing up my first few days in India. Minhazz and I gave our keynote speech to the International Folk Art conference in Chandigarh last Thursday, which went well, despite a few technical hitches. We had a good response from the 50 curators and artists attending the conference, but what made the conference even more worthwhile was that several of the artists Minhazz and I are working with on the Collecting Contemporary India project for NML came to the conference to show their work. In the image you can see Montu Chitrakar, a well-known Bengali scroll painter singing the story relating to his communal violence (this is religious violence often between Hindu and Muslim extremistis) in India scroll.

Diwali the festival of Light took place on Friday and as we travelled from Chandigarh to Delhi the whole landscape looked magical as every home was dotted with electric lights and the little clay lamps called deepas that are placed outside the home to welcome Lakshmi the Goddess of Wealth and Prosperity. As we came into Delhi station the noise was deafening as what sounded like hundreds if not thousands of fireworks and fire crackers were going off all over the city. The drive to the hotel was a hazy, smokey one, only interupted by the bright lights of the temples carrying out the pujas (blessings) for the festival.

I was laid low for a couple of days with a strange virus (nothing to do with the food), but I'm back on my feet again now and enjoying Orissa. For the last couple of days we've been sight-seeing, guided by a friend of ours Babu Mohapatra, who runs a tour guide business in Orissa called Inner India Tours. He's extremely knowledgeable about his home state and in the past few days we have seen many beautiful 7th-9th century Hindu temples that have strong Buddhist influences in their carvings. Tomorrow we travel to the very North of the state to Similipal National Park, a beautiful reserve home to the elusive tiger. Don't hold you're breath for a photo on the next blog though!

As I’m going to India at the end of the week I thought this would be a good time to write my first blog. Technology permitting I’m hoping to send in a few blogs while I’m away. As a quick introduction my name is Emma Martin and I’m Head of Ethnology and Curator of Asia collections based at World Museum. My trip is part-holiday, but also part-work as I’ll be presenting a paper on a contemporary collecting project I’m working on with colleagues in India and I’ll also be collecting new objects for the Weston Discovery Centre at World Museum.

The plaza at Nek Chand's garden

I’m flying out to Delhi on Saturday and although the shopping and restaurants are fantastic I’ll only be there for a few days before I head off to Chandigarh. Chandigarh is a relatively new city designed by Le Corbusier the famous modernist architect. I’m not going for the modernist architecture though, but for the incredible Nek Chand garden. This fantastic garden was started by one man, Nek Chand, using reclaimed land he built, in secret, amazing structures, including waterfalls, bridges and plazas and covered them with mosaic designs populating the place with mosaic-covered people and animals. It’s hard to imagine so I’ve added a picture so you can get a better idea. The place is now so big that I’ve been told it is the second most visited tourist attraction in India after the Taj Mahal! This is where I’m giving my paper. I’m presenting with Minhazz Majumdar, the co-director of The Earth and Grass Workshop. Together we’re working on a commissioning project for NML, asking a number of well-known Indian artists to create new works for NML’s collection, it’s a really exciting project and we’re both really pleased with how it’s going so this seemed like a great opportunity for us to speak about it together. I’ll write more about the collecting project as it develops and as the new works start to arrive in Liverpool.

After the conference I’ll be heading to Orissa a beautiful state on the east coast, which is famous for its temples and crafts. While I’ll be spending time relaxing, catching up with friends and hopefully doing a bit of tiger-spotting (!), I’ll also be visiting a number of villages known for a whole variety of crafts and I hope to pick up a few things while I’m there for the Weston Discovery Centre.

So fingers crossed I’ll be posting from India next week, giving you a sneak preview of some of the new objects you’ll be able to find in the Weston Discovery Centre early next year.