The other city

My notebook’s screen went wrong. In the beginning, when opened to a gap, I still could see on it what the notebook was doing, and when inserting my hand in the gap, like in the mouth of the crocodile, I even could manipulate it. But then the gap was darkened as well, and from then on the machine lived its own inaccessible life. I muffled it and started to go around in Sarajevo to find a place whether it would be plugged to an external screen, so I could save the horribly important data of the past few weeks. The first place was recommended by the hotel, he was an old TV technician, but extremely intelligent, like most Bosnians, and very well versed in the business. He plugged the HDMI output of the notebook to a HDMI screen, but it did not show anything. In fact, this notebook only displays the image on the external screen when instructed to do so; and to instruct it, you should see the screen of the laptop. A vicious circle. The old man offered me to take out the HD and copy my data, but with the opening of the machine I would have also lost the warranty. So I check on the Google map the notebook services in Sarajevo, and begin to roam about the city.


Strange nooks, never-seen neighborhoods, back corridors of department stores open before me. I will arrange the next adventure tour not on horseback and speedy rivers, but I will compile it from such tasks: you will have to take a car radio to repair in St. Petersburg, or buy an external CD drive in Addis Ababa. Labyrinthic shops, unknown machines and spare parts in stalls, strange, coll figures. Elsewhere, on the door of a closed shop, a nicely printed paper: “We are on vacation, look back from time to time.” But the mouth of the notebook remains closed.


I give it up, and start back to the old man to open the notebook. And as it usually happens, only after the last place I discover the great billboard at the corner: Win Com, notebook sale and repair. Hrasno quarter, this is the place of the advertisement: https://goo.gl/maps/1y9wfvP4Xh92. I thought: what could I lose? A well-furnished shop at the bottom of a socialist-style ten-floor building. A cheerful young man is talking on the phone at the table, he nods when I ask him whether he speaks English. I take out the patient, I explain the problem. You can clearly see how his brain is rolling. He also tries some cables, he also arrives where the others had arrived. Then he continues thinking, and the wheel in his mind suddenly goes beyond the deadlock. He does something that no one thought of: links the HDMI outlet of the modern notebook to an old VGA screen. This screen does not offer any option, it does not expect any instruction, it automatically sucks the signal from the machine. The content appears on the screen. I can start the long process of data transfer.


The man orders coffee from the neighboring bar, we talk. I notice the accidental German conjunction words, I ask him. He happily turns the speech to German. During the war of 1992-1995, he lived with his family in Berlin. Where? In Alt-Tegel. And I live in Charlottenburg, I tell him, just six stops from there. We are neighbors. He went to high school in Berlin, then he graduated in Belgrade. Was it not awkward to study in Serbia? Yes, it was, but he had no other choice. Since then, Sarajevo has also recovered, it was worth to come back. This shop is completely his own, he proudly shows around. A new man arrives, a good friend. Sead introduces me, we shake hands. We order another coffee. The newcomer speaks only Bosnian, I reply in Czech, we mutually praise the beauty of the girls in Budapest and Sarajevo.


The data transfer ends in the meantime. I ask for some used cardboard to pack my machine for DHL. Then I go to the next point. I want to buy a cheap second-hand notebook for a month, until Amazon sends me the replacement machine to Berlin. On the shelves there are some types which had been veterans already years ago, but Sead’s eyes brighten up. “There is one, I have not yet put it out. It is the best one, they would have taken it in one day.” An Asus M70S, which recalls to me the flat-sized computers once carried around with a truck. It is a robust device completely filling a standard-size hand luggage, it looks like a German tank. I only measure it in the hotel, it weights four and a half kilos. For a month from now, my companion in the valley of the Neretva and on the ridges of the Caucasus, in bus, in boat and on horseback. It comes with Windows 7 and every necessary program, in Bosnian. A hundred and thirty euros. A deal. In the meantime, another man comes in, with excellent German. He lived in Reinickendorf, halfway between two of us. Sead also invites his brother, and calls on Skype his Bosnian friend in New York, who had lived in Hönow, endlessly far from us, in the far side of Berlin. The closing time is long gone, the five Berlin expats are happily sipping coffee in the small notebook shop in Sarajevo’s outskirts, and recalling the magnificent city.

Noruz with kings

Nou Ruz, New Light, the spring equinox, the twenty-first of March, or the first day of the month of Farvardin archangel, New Year’s Day in the Persian calendar. For weeks before it, three kings, singers dressed as Zoroastrian priests or painted as black men go about the bazaars, and wish good luck with New Year’s songs to the merchants and to everyone who rewards it with a few coins. They also brought good luck to me, because although the camera was not set to autofocus, nevertheless the gloom does not destroy the video, but rather makes it mystical. Near the middle, when they get closer, the picture will be sharper, and as they move away, the view gets gradually blurred, as if they were absorbed in the vibrant lights of the bazaar.


Two thousand five hundred years ago on this morning, King Darius and his descendants, surrounded by their nobility and priests, stood in the eastern gate of the Apadana, the royal reception hall of Persepolis, to greet the first ray of the rising sun, and then receive the envoys of the twenty-one provinces. The envoys are still lined up, carved in stone, on the eastern stairway, where they walked up, and on the northern stairway, where they left the royal hall. We go up to the palace at the best time, at five in the afternoon, to see, how the sunset paints them, how it calls them to life for an hour, every day, since two thousand five hundred years.

The gift-bearing of Persepolis became so emblematic in Persian culture, that even Marcell Mauss’ classical anthropological work, The Gift is illustrated by a Persepolis envoy in the Persian translation.


Just like the visit paid to the king on this day. There is no king in Persepolis now, since Alexander the Great and his chief commanders set fire to Xerxes’ palace on that drunken night. On this day, the people of Iran proceeds to the tomb of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the country. A colorful crowd is waving around the simple and majestic tomb that emerges alone in the plain of Pasargade. Medes from Hamadan, Kurds and Bakhtiari nomads from the Zagros mountains, Azeris and Khuzestanis, Armenians and Baludzhis, taking photos of each other and with each other, marveling at each other and at the greatness of the Persian empire. They also receive with self-evidence and joy the envoys of Europe, the heirs of Athens, who, after so many centuries, have finally come to a better understanding, and came to pay their tribute to the great king of Persia.

Adventure tour in Georgia

In recent years, we have gone through Georgia many times. We were in thousand-year-old mountain villages and monasteries, on the highest passes and in the deepest river valleys of the Caucasus. To date, however, we mainly admired from the safety of the bus and the jeep the breathtaking landscapes of one of the world’s most beautiful countries.

This year, however, after last year’s test, when we made a day’s riding trip at the end of all roads, in Tusheti, at the Chechen border, we invite our bravest readers to a whole week’s adventure tour. Between 2 and 10 July, we wander about the two valleys of Svaneti, the most beautiful and most romantic part of Georgia: Upper Svaneti on horseback, and Lower Svaneti by rafting, along the Rioni river.


We have been many times in the valley of Upper Svaneti, going up by bus from Kutaisi to Mestia, next to the Russian border, and from there continuing by off-road to the top of Europe, the thousand-year-old residential towers of Ushguli. Meanwhile, we have often talked about how good it would be to walk or ride up in the green side valleys of the mountain range, to the small villages and plateaus, from where you can see the entire landscape, to the ridge of the Caucasus and the peak of Elbrus. Now this dream comes true. In the organization of the local horse farm, we ride on a twenty-kilometer-long road to the plateau of Ushba, the holy mountain of the Svans, where we dine and sleep next to campfire, and in the next morning we return to the valley of the Inguri river. Then we go by bus to Lower Svaneti, in the valley of Rioni, Georgia’s second largest river, where we descend by rafting from the town of Ambrolauri to Kutaisi.


This tour was specifically designed for beginners. Last year, in Tusheti, we covered thirty kilometers on steep paths in a day, with everyone sitting for the first time on horseback, and it was a great experience. In addition, this time both riding and rafting will be preceded by instruction: the latter on the site, and the former, on request, a week earlier in a Hungarian horse farm in Badacsony.

The map of our adventure tour. The blue line marks the early morning bus route from Kutaisi to Upper Svaneti. From Mestia, we go by off-road vehicle to Ushguli, and then on the red riding route to the Ushba. In Lower Svaneti, we will do rafting on the thirty-kilometer-long red track of Rioni river between Ambrolauri and Mekvena (S-F). Click for a full map.

The program in a nutshell:

• Departure on 2 July, five minutes before midnight, with the cheap Wizzair flight from Budapest. Arrival on the 3rd in the dawn to Kutaisi. There, we are waited for by the rented bus which takes us up in the early morning twilight to the highest ridges of the Caucasus, the town of Mestia lying at the Russian border. On the way, after daybreak, we take breakfast in the middle of the mountains, in a small local inn next to the Inguri reservoir, the second deepest water reservoir in the world. We arrive at Mestia in the early afternoon, and we immediately continue by off-road vehicle, on impassable mountain roads, over ravine valleys, to Ushguli, the top of Europe, the land of thousand-year-old residential towers, beause this should not be missing from any Svanetian or even any Georgian program. We stay overnight in a guest house, then the next day, on the 4th, we take a long walk through the four parts of the village and in the mountains near the Russian border. In the afternoon, the off-road vehicle comes to take us back to Mestia.

• On the 5th and 6th, we make a two-day horseback ride to Ushba, the holy mountain of the Svans. We go with the gentle, experienced horses and horse-drivers of a local horse farm, who take care of us. In any case, after the (optional) training in the previous weekend, we can feel sure of ourselves, because this trip is especially designed for beginners. On the plateau, we have dinner at campfire, we sleep in tents that are set up for us beforehand, and the next day we descend to Mestia.


• On the 7th we go by bus through Kutaisi to Ambrolauri in Lower Svaneti (officially Racha-Lechumi province), and on the 8th we descend by rafting on the Rioni, the second largest river of Georgia. We begin with training in the morning, and then we paddle thirty kilometers in two installments. At noon we stop for lunch, and then continue rowing. At about five o’clock in the afternoon we arrive in the lower camp, where they are waiting for us with a generous dinner. We sleep in Kutaisi.

• On the 9th we have two options. The first is to go by bus to the beautiful Martvili Canyon, and to have a walk there. The second, if we lost all our forces, to rest in Kutaisi, make a sightseeing tour, wander about the huge market, and visit Gelati Monastery (World Heritage) next to the town. In the evening, a special farewell party, and the next day, on the 10th in early morning, we leave for Budapest.


No special equipment is required: whatever we will need, we will get in the site. No special training and experience is required, either. The participation fee is 700 euros per person, which practically includes everything: the accommodation (half of a two-bed room; single room supplement 100 euro) with breakfast and (abundant) dinner, the rented bus and off-road vehicle, the cost of the tents, horses, horse-drivers, rafting and training, and of course, guiding. Register before 11 February, Sunday evening, at the usual wang@studiolum.com.


“This tour seems quite a daring enterprise”, wrote someone, a little daunted. And that’s the point of it: to dare to experience that we are capable of it. When on the other top of Georgia, in Tusheti, after a thirty-kilometer riding on stunningly steep mountain paths – everyone was a beginner – we returned to the guest house, everyone had pain in their muscles, but everybody was happy to have lived it, and they said, they would repeat it the next day. On other tours of us, we live through other experiences, that of history hidden in the cities, or the unexpected beauty of nature. Here, we experience that we can do something that we would not have imagined ourselves to be capable of.

Magpies on plum tree

The rich Chinese houses are usually encircled by simple white-painted, gray-tiled high walls. Their only glory is the huge gate, which is especially decorated. It is a two-storey building, with slightly curved tile roofs on the top and on the two gateposts, decorated with frescos and calligraphs on every surface, which reflect the rank, richness and well-being of the house. At every lunar new year, this permanent decoration is also complemented by a changing décor, which remains there all year round: wise sayings vertically on the gateposts, the sign of happiness above the gate, and the images of the two giant gatekeepers (門神 ménshén), Shenshu 神荼 and Yulei 鬱壘, who originally stood in the Strait of the Western Hills, on the Path of the Dead, and every time a ghoulish spirit wants to get up out of the underworld, they grab it and throw it before the tigers. Because of this, they are also often portrayed tiger-headed, or rather charmingly cat-headed, on the apotropaic pictures attached to the gates, also becuase the cat, by keeping off the rats, is another apotropaic animal, and its portrait is also a common element of the permanent decoration of the gate.



The two inner sides of the gate are generally decorated with two lovely genre pictures in the light-handed, sketchy style – 文人畫 wénrénhuà – of the erudite calligraphers, including the name-giver of our blog, Wang Wei. One of them mostly depicts a beautiful mountain landscape, with twisted old pine trees, and with a hermitage between the mountains, where the weary soul can find relief, just like in this house. In the other, we often see birds, standing on floral branches, or landing on them, chatting with or standing close to each other. The birds are magpies, and the flowers are branches of plum trees.

Xu Beihong: Magpies on blossoming plum tree

The “bird-on-flower” genre, one of the most important topoi of Chinese painting, was developed in the 10th century, during the Five Dinasties (907-960). Its greatest master was Huang Quan (黃筌, 903-965) from Sichuan, and it is in his famous “catalog painting” that we find the first Chinese mapgie.

Huang Quan: Birds, insects and turtles after life (寫生珍禽圖). Beijing, Palace Museum

Of the many winged creatures, the magpie excels not only with its long tail, but also with its name, 喜鹊 xĭquè, meaning “happiness bird”. In fact, its first syllable is identical with 喜 xĭ, “happiness”, attached to the door of every house at the Chinese new year. This is what we see in the opening picture of this post, on the gate of one of Shaxi’s richest houses the Ouyang merchant house (about which we will write more later). The same syllable is part of 喜欢 xĭhuān, “love”, of which thus it becomes an intermediary and a messenger. For example, acording to a popular legend, two famous separated lovers could meet again at certain times through a gate formed by magpies. Therefore, the name of a magpie couple, 双喜 shuāngxĭ, also means “double happiness”, displayed in the sign of a double 囍 xĭ on the red flags of Chinese restaurants decorated for wedding.

Xu Beihong: Double happiness. Observe the similarity of the two figures to the 囍 sign

Happiness is a big word. Double happiness is unspeakably big. How can you further enhance it? By planting the two magpies on the top of a blossoming plum tree. In fact, the plum tree is called 梅 méi, which is homonymous to the word 眉 méi, “eyebrow”. Thus, 喜上梅 xĭshàngméi, “magpie on plum tree” is homonymous to the good wish  喜上眉梢 xĭshàngméi(shāo), “happiness to the top of your eyerows!” That’s why we see a magpie couple flirting on a plum tree as a pendant of a landscape in the gate of most old city palaces. For example, in this ancient merchant house in Shaxi, which, in spite of the unhappy times past since 1949 – the term is paraphrasing the famous film by Zhang Yimou – still resist to the temptation of depression.


Guo Gan: Himalaya. Erhu solo

Fiddler on the Silk Road

To Gyuri, for his birthday

To Shaxi, one of the most beautiful and most archaic caravanseray town along the tea-horse-road, the millennary caravan road enters through the northern gate, together with the stream running along it, and leaves it through the southern gate, to soon reach Heisu river at the bridge once crossed by Marco Polo. Between the two gates it is flanked by tea houses, and narrow pedestrian alleys branch off it. Some of the wealthy trading houses standing in these alleys have already been converted into guest house, for the wanderers of the modern-age Silk Road. Others are still inhabited by old people, who also cling to the coattail of tourism by renting a room or selling souvenirs on the tables in the front of their houses.

“Today we have room for rent: both standard and with king size bed!”

The door of the house offering room for rent is open, waiting for the guests. Music is heard from inside. We look in. In the middle of the big hall, right opposite the door, an old man with beautiful, lined face is sitting on a chair, and playing erhu, two-string Chinese violin.“May we come in?” “Of course, qing zuo, qing zuo, sit down, please!” We are offered place at the big table, just in front of the old man. The family members are sitting around. To the right, a historical film is running on the large TV screen, but the sound was taken off. The old man plays with closed eyes, looks inwardly, as if he were transmitting to us the music from within, precisely, clearly, with an impressive lightness. Like the fiddler of Okudzhava.

After about half an hour of continuous playing, the old man takes a break. He does not look at us, he jokes with the family. The European public is unusual for him, but he likes the situation. We call him to listen to the recording. He puts on the earpiece, and listens inwardly with the same devotion as before, as if he were comparing the two sounds inside.

He starts asking questions, but his strong dialectal accent almost cannot be understood. He takes out a medicine box from his pocket, rips it up, and writes his questions in Chinese characters: where we came from, what we are doing here. We talk in writing for a while. Then he sits back, plays again. The head of the family stands up from his place at the TV, and photographs him so, that we also could be in the picture.




Some fifteen minutes more, and then he shows with his hand, that he is dry, and wants to drink. He puts the instrument in the corner, and he is poured a glass. We also see timely to say farewell. We thank to the old man and the family, we bend. The head of the family accompanies us to the door.


On our first day in Yunnan, in Dali, we were invited by my friend Shi Tanding, one of the most successful Chinese folk music collectors. Since 2006, she has released more than two hundred CDs from the music of Western Chinese ethnic groups. In her lecture finished well after midnight, she demonstrated with several recordings, how vivid hist musical culture is still today, how much it penetrates the life of towns and villages, and what excellent performers still can be traced. This bautiful encounter has now illustrated it.

Photos by Gábor Illés, Dani Kálmán and Tamás Sajó, videos by Dani Kálmán

A village in the valley

When traveling from Dali, the northern center of Yunnan, to the west, the Burmese-Tibetan frontier, some ten miles ahead of Nuodeng, the thousand-year-old royal salt mine town, the road makes a sharp bend. Turning to the right, a beautiful small river valley opens up gradually. First the lines of the nicely cultivated terraces are laid before us, like a fascinating nomadic carpet, and then unfolds itself the village lying in the valley. Seen from the road carved in the hillside, the overlapping mosaic of the whitewashed or adobe brown façades, curved tile roofs, carved gates and irregular windows of the hundred-year-old houses is lined up on the other hillside like the houses of Český Krumlov on a picture by Schiele.

Egon Schiele: Krumau an der Moldau, 1914

Many times I went along this road, and passing by the village I always wanted to stop the bus, so that I could go down to the valley, enter the Schiele picture, ramble through the streets, admire the carved gates, and cross their threshold. Now the time has come.

Heping village, 和平村 Hépíngcŭn is so small, that it is not on most maps. The driver of the minibus hired for our minitour does not even believe that it exists, and he stops instead in the village of Guanping, fifteen kilometers earlier. “What do you want to see in this one?” he points over the dusty main street. “In this one, nothing. But go a little further”, I show him the pin inserted in Maps.me. He nods. It is not the first time that I can show something new in Yunnan to him, accustomed to the demands of Chinese tourists. We set off.


Three-wheeled tuc-tucs are parking in front of the river’s bridge, the rides of the most well-to-do villagers, who go with these to the city of Yunlong, ten kilometers away, and bring goods from there. Old stone lions watch them with a hard gaze from the balustrade of the bridge. There is no motorway beyond the bridge. We set off on foot to the village.



The lower main street is lined by elegant, classic Chinese houses, with high façades and magnificent carved gates. These are the houses whose whitewashed, two and three-story back façades look to the river and the road. Most gates are locked, and most façades are losing not even their plaster, but even their adobe bricks. The bourgeoisie has left the building.





As we move forward, eight Europeans with huge telephoto lenses, the doors of the houses in the sidewalks gradually open up, curious women climb up the stairs to the main streets. Even some men, as if they were just passing by. They watch us as if a filming were going on, as if a parallel reality were coming across the village. I address them in Chinese, they give a start, reply with a laugh, they also enter the picture.





We climb up to the upper street. Here is waiting for us the house which, seen from the highway, stands in the middle of the Chinese Schiele picture with its ornate gate as if it were a temple, the house of a big farmer, a keeper of historical secrets. The village is built around it in the picture. I have often imagined how a chariot stands in front of it, goods are carried in, they illuminate it, a dinner or a wedding is held in it. It has something about the inviting atmosphere of the old Transylvanian houses. Here we stand now. Above the beautiful gate, a marble plaque with a green inscription – sometimes obviously painted with gold-colored copper –, as it is usual in large manor houses.




Two meek men invite us in the porch of the house. Their grand-grandfather was still a servant, and after the bourgeoise, they remained in the house, which is only a shadow of its former self. The former painted wooden panels are covered with decades-old newspapers, but they are also coming down, there is no energy to renew it, let alone the house. The central atrium is conquered by grass, hens are creaking in it, a rusty maize mill stands in it for the late pigs.  One man calls me out to the backyard, he points to the back wall of the house. Ohe wall, drawings and inscriptions from imperial times, which were sheltered from destruction by the roofs of the stalls.






But the village is not dead. After the decades of decay, desolation and misery, it seems that some of the benefits of China’s economic boom starts to drift down here. Although the village, as shown in the social security tax register pasted up on the wall of the main street, has only a hundred and fifty-two residents, they recently started to repair a number of houses. They invite us to a courtyard. The adobe walls were replaced by concrete bricks, and the wooden panels with cheap tiles. The former stone pavement of the yard was poured over with flat concrete. Whatever survived Mao’s system, is now falling prey to the new world. Probably these are the last years, that the traditional villages hitherto surviving in the Yunnan mountains can be seen in their original form.




The lions of the bridge tighten their eyebrows even more, when Csaba turns on the drone. Someone might have made a phone call, because soon a police car comes down from the highway to the bridge. They do not even get out, they turn around and go back, leaving the foreigner to take aerial photos of the strictly secretive village. This is already the new world. The drone flies over the village. Under the shields of the gray roofs, the main street is a thin ditch, dark rectangles the enclosed courtyards. From bird’s eye, you cannot see the details.