"The Cool Mountains are so backwards." You will likely hear this in China from almost everybody after mentioning "Liangshan". But mostly from those, who doesn't live there, never been there and/or never plan to go there. They will never comprehend how beautiful this piece of land is. The will never think this way. The analog photography is also obsolete and "backwards" - from the point of view of modern technologie. For sure! But from different angle, it is completely exceptional and irreplacible. All other analogies, not only between this kind of photography and Cool mountains, can anybody draw for himself... For those, but also for others, I publish here this slightly chaotic, B/W-colourful album.
Most of the pictures were taken by Lenore Liu.
After the rain surprised us, we had found a shelter in one little shrine of The Great Temple of Litang, among the squeking prayer wheels and circulating believers. To our surprise, portraits of Dalai Lama were hanging all around the place.
One out of many Hxabbu's musical improvisation during the hot and lazy day at The Old Teahouse, a place at the banks of Qionghai lake.
Good mood was in abudance in this extraordinary little teahouse.
The last part wasn't the easiest, as it may seem at first sight. Hxabbu kept it slow, and when I was waiting for him at the top, an extraordinary sight rose in front of my eyes. The vapors with fog rising from the chasm under the cliff were pouring over the sharp edge of this world and sprang on the inclined grassland full of various blooming flowers, where it was slowing down and created different levitating patterns above it. After forty minutes, we were already very close to the summit. Bimo found a suitable place for a small ritual of sacrificing to the mountain – jishan. Here we were, drowning in the mist, which in irregular, ever surprising moments teared up and let us peer into the petrifying maw of the gulf gaping only a few meters from the place, where Hxabbu was sitting. The mist kept revealing various parts of the sharp rock. It seemed like a shadow play during the bright day. Hxabbu took out all his bimo tools. After a short chant, partially reciting by heart and partially from his scroll books, bimo reached for the bottle of the "corrupted officials' booze” and splashed it into four directions. Before this, it was almost full. So that's why he kept carrying it all way along. Not because he wanted to sip it, but for symbolically paying tribute to the mountain, where according to the legends similar rituals were conducted by his ancestors from the Jjike clan.
