Chapter 8 Chapter 7 Oil Paintings in Tibet

It was a strange painting. At the end of 2010, after returning from Nepal, I entered Tibet and passed through Karren Peak to rest for a week. I didn't immediately start looking for clues to the Ma family. After all, the journey along the way was too tiring. Under the advice of my buddy, I planned to deal with the various burdens gained from this trip to Nepal first. I brought back a large number of antique ornaments with the characteristics of Tibetan Buddhism from Nepal, and I wanted to use them as samples for display and to find the true source of those ornaments in the Zhangjia Ancient Building.In that place called Medog, I organized all the accessories into three large packages and mailed them to three different addresses in Hangzhou to reduce the burden of the journey.

There are two kinds of "post offices" in Medog, because Medog is a very special place.It is closed to the mountain all the year round, and it is difficult to get in and out. At the earliest, the formal post office here could only receive letters, but could not send letters. It was not until recent years that there was a path for postal mail, but the postal car was only limited to once a week. Therefore, there is also a non-governmental postal service in the local area. In fact, it is to find someone to take the mail package along the way.Among the people who go in and out of Medog, it is very common to carry mail packages for others. Some people will make some money as middlemen. The so-called "post office" I found was opened by such people. Although it is not particularly safe, it is still there. At least one timeliness can be guaranteed.As long as someone goes out of Medog, they can probably know when they can go to the post office outside, and it will be safer to forward it later.

There are car roads, caravans and porters in the way of leaving Medog. The car roads are not open to traffic all year round. When I came, it happened to be a season when traffic was not open. Caravans are almost extinct, so we are looking for so-called donkey friends or porters. All the mail must be carried out of the mountain by the "postman" bit by bit, so the weight of the mail should not be too heavy. It took me nearly three hours to average the weight of three large packages. That's when I saw the painting, and it hung on the wall behind the "post office counter"—actually, a desk with a piece of tempered glass on it.

The wall was painted with light green paint, on which hung the following things: a pair of ink calligraphy and paintings of "Pengcheng Wanli", with an eagle and four big characters; Complimentary words such as "safety and insurance"; in addition, there is an oil painting. Oil painting is not the kind of work that can be seen as the work of a professional painter. It is a very ordinary painting, even a bit clumsy. Been here for a long time. The subject of the painting is a stuffy oil bottle.I don't know much about Western painting, but the so-called principles of painting are the same to a certain extent.Although this is a poorly drawn painting, it has a distinctive vigor.

I don't know where this feeling came from. The person in the painting is wearing a lama's clothes on his upper body and a Tibetan robe on his lower body. Standing in the mountains, he can see the peak of Karrenci Snow Mountain behind him.I don't know whether it's the setting sun or the brilliance of the beginning of the day, which changed the tone of the whole oil painting from white to grayish yellow. This is an excellent example of clumsy painting, but the use of color is quite bold and directly brings out the artistic conception. Of course, even so, it does not mean that the painting is of considerable value. The reason why I am surprised is because I know the person in the painting.

Yes, I have absolutely no doubts about this man's features and his expression. it's him. I am completely baffled that he should appear here, because there is really no reason for this person to appear in Medog, in a poor oil painting of Medog. This is a portrait of Poker Bottle. I tried my best to deny it at first, because this matter is too strange, so the possibility of misreading is very high. After all, it is words, not photos.Many details in the painting are relatively blurred, so it is possible to cause this similarity. However, I found myself unable to move my eyes.All the details of the person in the painting tell me it's a bit too similar.Especially the eyes, I have never seen a person with the same eyes as my little brother until now.The fat man said that those eyes had nothing to do with anything.Few people in the world can live without contact with the world.

However, the people in this painting have such eyes. I watched it for a long time, and subconsciously felt that the person in the painting was definitely him. Just five years ago, he disappeared from our view.Of course, I know the truth about his disappearance, and there are many more things I can say about him, but that is not the main point of this story.What he did before is not important here. My first thought when I saw this painting was: Is Medog a part of his investigation?He appeared here, does it mean that what he was investigating at that time was related to this place? At that time, I asked the operator of the post office. I remembered that it was an old man with a typical face of Tibetan people. I asked him who painted this painting.The old man pointed to me opposite the "post office" and told me in blunt Chinese that the artist of this painting was called Chen Xuehan.

I cast my gaze over there, and saw a middle-aged man collecting boiling water in a boiler room by the side of the road.He should be the janitor in charge of the boiler room. There is boiling water in it for the nearby residents to use, and a pot costs 30 cents.Compared with the heavy snow outside, the boiler room is so warm that it makes people sweat, so many people gather around the boiler to keep warm. These people wear similar clothes, so this group of people looks similar when they are together. The old Tibetan was very enthusiastic. Seeing that I couldn't tell the difference, he yelled at the boiler room: "Chen Xuehan!"

The sound was so loud that the snow on the roof of the post office was shaken off a few inches. The person named Chen Xuehan heard the shout of the old Tibetan, raised his head in the crowd, and looked towards us with some doubts. . I walked over immediately, and the man had a particularly dark face with rough skin, and he looked younger than he looked from a distance. I said in Chinese: "Hi, may I ask if you painted the oil painting in the post office?" Chen Xuehan glanced at me, then nodded.I found his eyes dull, the look of a man who leads a particularly peaceful life.Because there is too much peace, he doesn't need to think about a lot of problems, and he enters a very step-by-step state.

I handed him a cigarette and asked him about the details of the oil painting.Chen Xuehan acted a little surprised, sized me up, closed the gate of the boiling water boiler, and asked me, "Why are you asking this? Do you know him?" His voice was extremely hoarse, but his enunciation was very clear.I told the general situation, the general background of this person and my relationship with him. Chen Xuehan showed a slightly surprised expression, took off the gloves made of white towels, and walked out of the boiler room, "You misunderstood the person, this oil painting was painted 20 years ago, how old were you then?"

I was a little surprised, I didn't expect the painting to be so old, although the painting did not look fresh.I don't know how to answer his question, because it really can't be explained clearly in one or two sentences. Fortunately, he doesn't seem to really want to know anything, so he continued: "This person has nothing to do with me." He pointed to a direction outside the door, where there was a snow-white mountain in the distance, "I saw that painting there, if you want to know more, you can ask the lama there. " I looked in the direction he pointed, and saw a building hidden in silver in the heavy snow there. "What's that place?" I asked. "That's the Lama Temple." Chen Xuehan said, "I copied this painting in that Lama Temple." "Did anything strange happen at that time? Or, what's so special about that Lama Temple?" I asked. Usually, wherever he appeared, strange phenomena would always occur.Or, this Lama Temple itself should have many unusual things. Chen Xuehan shook his head, thought for a while and said: "There is nothing strange, the only strange thing is that the lama insisted that I copy that painting." "why?" "The lama can see the cause and effect. He asked me to paint, and I painted. There is no reason. He can see everything after this painting, but I can't see it." Chen Xuehan told me that the stuffy oil bottle in the painting should be the honored guest of the Lama Temple. The original version of the oil painting was painted by the great lama three days before this person left Medog, and he copied it later.He lived in the monastery for a long time that winter, and happened to see the oil painting in the room of the big lama, and the big lama insisted that he paint, so he tried to copy the painting. Only then did I understand why the use of color in this painting is so bold and expressive, but the painting technique seems clumsy. Many lamas in Tibet have very high aesthetic quality and professional knowledge, and many great lamas have multiple degrees from many famous foreign universities. I attribute these to the concentration behind the life of asceticism and asceticism. Thinking about this level, thinking about what might have happened to him on the snow mountain at that time, I was a little distracted. "Are you going? I'll take you there for three hundred yuan." He said, "Non-locals can't enter that Lama Temple." Perhaps the cause and effect that the great lama saw was the three hundred dollars.