Exploring Life's Origins
Chang Fee Ming's Tibetan series of paintings

Professor Guo Jing
Yunnan Social Science Academy Research Fellow

In July 2006, Chang Fee Ming left Malaysia on a trip to the origins of the Mekong River, to China's Qinghai province, Tibet and the Tibetan region of Yunnan province. The Mekong River, called the Langcang in Chinese, is 4,900 kilometres long and has its origins in the Tangula Mountains of the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, flowing north to south through Qinghai, Tibet and Yunnan into Burma, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, finally entering the sea near Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City.

One year later, Chang Fee Ming had completed a series of watercolour paintings, expressing everything he had seen and experienced on the trip. I had the good fortune to meet him in Qinghai and I was moved by his paintings of the sea. Now that I have also seen his mountain paintings, I am struck by many associations.

Mountains as the background
Looking at the artist's works, my line of vision is first drawn to the people and things in the foreground and only afterwards do I look at the background. However, when the paintings are no longer in front of my eyes, it's like the mark water makes when it seeps onto paper, appearing gradually in my mind, faintly at first and then becoming sharper, the background images of the paintings are what I see. The background can be described in just one word – mountains. Of the sixteen finished works, eight have mountains as the background

A horse stands atop a mountain. When you look up, the blue sky and floating clouds unfold before you. In the painting's lower right corner is a steep slope where the last patches of snow and the white clouds echo each other. In front of a cloud-white tent, a shepherd, dressed in black, walks into the foreground. The white horse's eyes seem to reflect the glint of the snow and the clouds. This light is the painting's focal point, the mountains and clouds are scattered all around the edges, extending into the vastness of the universe. This painting is called BREAK AT THE TOP.

An old man with greying hair stands upright. Looking up at him, he seems just like a mountain. The dark blue mountain behind him is also standing upright, forming a triangle, the mountain is nature, the mountain is man. On the lower part of the mountain are two villages, you can just make out green trees and fields. The green is faint in the mountain's shadow, setting off the desolation of the rest of the mountain. But the man is smiling, comfortable, at ease, despite the fact that his coat is rough like a rock. His dark red hat and Tibetan robe give some warmth to the iron-like mountain. He's just a man, just a HIGHLANDER who cannot compare with the vast mountain range and yet now he has become a part of that highland.

An old man goes to a tent to pray, he places his yak-butter lamp on the table with countless others. He removes his hat and prostrates himself, head bowed, eyes raised in prayer, facing out of the painting. We can imagine the Buddha statue or the living Buddha in front of him. Through the curtains, the snowy mountain towers like a giant, a glistening river weaving through its gorge. The mountain we can see and the Buddha that we cannot see together form the very soul of this mountain village home. HOMAGE, after all, depends on the word home.

Near the snow, three people are crouched down searching for something in the ground. Is it July or August? There is still some snow piled up in the gorges on the dark side of the mountain. A small hoe, a Buddhist rosary and some freshly dug up cordyceps fungus. This plant, made by winter insects living on summer grass, is a great health supplement and brings in money for the local farmers. It's the source of wealth, of new houses, of everyday purchases, of children's school fees. It forms an unbreakable link between the Tibetan people and the mountains. I GOT ONE! I got my life!

Looking from left to right, this person's pose mirrors the mountain's pose, hand tightly clutching a prayer wheel; all the wishes condensed inside. Not just personal wishes but prayers for all the people, animals, trees and spirits in the world. Prayers to whom? To the mountain god, to Guru Rinpoche, (the Lotus-Born) who subdued the mountain spirits? In the first light of dawn, we see the braid of grey hair, dyed red, the brown robe and the snow on the mountain top.

A herd of yak moves off to another pasture, a cradle swaying on one yak's back. ON THE MOVE. A cloth screen has been hung to keep out the cold, next to it, a gun, to drive off wolves. After travelling all day along the mountain gorge, the swaddled child is lost in thought; will the flowers be in bloom at the foot of the mountain? Will there be snow falling on the top? The vaulted arch over the child's head, is it a rope made of light hung between the sky and the mountains? There is a Tibetan story that the Tibetan kings used to come down to earth from heaven using a rope made of light.

Summer days on the plateau are short, ending soon after they’ve begun. For a 3-day horse racing festival, people have come from near and far, on horseback, by motorbike, climbing over countless mountains, crossing rivers, to gather together here on the grassland in between the mountains. At this time all around is green and everyone is dressed in colourful clothes. A woman with her head weighed down by hair ornaments, a monk in purple robes, yak butter tea for guests, incense and prayer flags for the mountain god (a prayer flag is a colourful cloth with sacred verses written on it). This happy time also comes to an end, FAREWELL, the woman will return to her tent, to her husband and her children, her herd of yak and the silent grasslands. Does her gaze rest on the other side of the mountain or this side?

Palms joined together, behind him on the mountainside, a church built by foreigners. Missionaries came from low-lying lands by the sea, along the Mekong, climbing up to the barren mountains and in the surroundings of the dark red temple they measured out of a piece of land using string made of yak hair. (The Tibetans of Yunnan province tell a tale about a missionary who asked the local people to give him a piece of land as big as a yak skin, on which to build his church. They agreed, little realising that he would cut the skin into a long thin rope and measure out a large piece of land with it. ) Apart from five yellow trees inside the monastery walls, everything from the valley to the mountaintop is desolate. The Tibetan plateau is too high; Buddhist dharma is the only thing which can grow there. PEACEFUL OPPOSITES.

In the next painting, the mountain has come into the foreground. On the left is an old man holding a prayer wheel, on the right is a carved stone wall. Carved into each stone are the six characters from the Bodhisattva Guan Yin's mantra OM MANI PADME HUM. This time the mountain has become the subject of the painting and the person turning the prayer wheel has become the background. This kind of stone carving is an earth art form or mountain art form created by the Tibetan people. Ordinary road signs marking directions are turned into symbols of gods, into spirit mantras. When the mantras are repeated wordlessly, the mountain outside enters deep into the heart. The people and the mountains become one as the chant spreads out to fill the universe.

Details
The mountains are the origin of the Mekong. The artist has made the mountains into the imagery of his new series, just like he used the sea as his subject in the past. These two subjects are interdependent in nature, but to link them through watercolour paintings is quite unusual. In his earlier works, the mountains were still distant, not like the sea under his brush, painted in infinite detail. The artist set off for the Tibetan plateau on a slow path, like a prayer circle. As the road stretched out further, his vision became sharper day by day. The changing of the seasons, the cycle of life, all became clearer and more abundant under his brush. There are four works which express this information. One is A MOMENT IN RED, the background of a monk's dark red robes, the back view of a monk in red. When I look at this painting, a famous folk song from Deqin prefecture springs instantly to mind

My favourite colour
Is white on white
Like a pure white baby eagle perched atop a white cliff
My favourite colour
Is green on green
Like a flock of green parrots flying into a walnut grove

Maybe Malaysian fishermen have many words to describe the colour blue, just like Tibetans can see many different colours interwoven in white snow? How can the artist's brush be as sharp as their eyesight?

The first painting shows details; the third painting also details, ON MY BACK, IN MY HEART. Two simple views of someone shown from behind, a Tibetan wearing their favourite silk gown, with rich and delicate embroidery, a deep red sweater, the subtle changes of the yellow and red hues, which serve to set off the red thread, used to hang a Buddha image, both a living Buddha portrait and an amulet. This detail doesn’t just appear outside the clothes but is also buried deep within the heart.

The fourth painting depicts a shadow on the ground, SHADOW TALE, a story told in light and shadow. It must be the shadow of a woman, as we can see a skirt. She hasn’t bothered to slip the stirrups of her leggings over her feet, so they hang outside her army shoes. On her back she carries cow dung or rolled up leaves, no need, then, to dress up. Tibetan women do most of the household work and also most of the farm work. We don’t need to see the sweat glistening on her face or back to know this; it is enough to see her shadow.

Images and impressions
The artist rarely paints people's facial expressions from the front, so the woman in the foreground of the painting THE WATCHER has her eyes closed. She has closed the windows to her soul and her eyes no longer communicate her feelings to us. On the other hand, the god painted on the wall behind her is THE WATCHER, his eyes wide open as if he understands everything about the old woman. The old woman's eyes are shut; she is deep in thought, silently reciting prayers and sutras. It is at this moment that her inner soul begins to show through. She has turned away from the images of the outside world, in order to see clearly into the inner world of darkness and light. So her face is a mask, her vision turned inwards. She has all the dignity of a Buddha statue.

Does the artist use these kinds of images to describe his own experience? From the outside, his use of the sea as the subject for his gorgeous watercolours, with the light reflected off the water and the colours of the flowers, draws our attention. But he likes to use certain parts of the body, leaving out the most expressive parts like the eyes and the face, preferring to paint people from the waist down, like the feet, not usually very expressive. This Mekong River series continues the artist's technique, but because the scenery is so colourful, he replaces it with a sort of melody of light and shadow, like the colour red and how this echoes the Tibetan religion. The artist has moved away from just using gorgeous colour to depict and has gone deeper into the painting, deep into the hearts of his subjects. By looking at the outside we can see into the layers of the inner world. The paintings have exquisite detail but in their realistic depiction there is also a philosophical flavour. When you look deeply at the images they change to impressions. Looking at the people and seeing deeply into their inner thoughts are interwoven. This gives more depth to the artist's work; it makes us stop and linger over their glorious colour and deep images and makes us forget our hurry on life's journey.

In the artist's mind, the sea background has become a mountain background; cold is substituting for hot, dense substituting for soft, the peace of solid rock substituting for flowing movement. The upper and lower reaches of the Mekong are as different as these extremes, the kind of plants, animals, colours, clothing, skies and beliefs all change along with the changes in altitude.

This great river which passes from the Tibetan plateau to Southeast Asia is the birthplace of tens of thousands of people and countless species of animal and plant life. There is huge diversity of life and culture there, which adds colour and ideas to our own lives and art.

The artist's wish was to travel along this river and paint in watercolour everything he saw and experienced. This became a pilgrimage of homage to the birthplace of life. At one end of the journey is the sea, at the other the mountains. Mountain people who have never seen the sea before use the word sea to describe many of their lakes, Erhai Lake, Napa Lake, Bitahai Lake and Yangzong Lake, all have the Chinese character for sea in their names.

“Jiang Cuo” (sea) is one of the Tibetan people's most imaginative words and most used names. I wonder what words the people of the lower reaches of the Mekong use to describe the lands irrigated by this great river.

I hope one day that through Chang Fee Ming's paintings, the people of the upper and the lower reaches can see each other's outer and inner images and will understand each other.