THE RAILWAY FROM LHASA TO KATHMANDU
 
 
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The Railway from Lhasa to Kathmandu / Thangka - 1

An Indian man by the name of NainSingh is being trained at a British intelligence school in the Himalayas . Captain T.G. Montgomerie is sitting on an elephant, holding a compass, a telescope and a terrestrial globe in his hands. The captain is instructing Nain Singh's march. Nain Singh was specially trained to be able to control each of his steps at precisely thirty three inches apart. Queen Victoria is the patron saint flying in mid-air. A group of spectators gather in an act of transcending time, including Nehru who is behind the camera, Gandhi, Tagore, Darwin, etc.

The Railway from Lhasa to Kathmandu / Thangka - 2

This is a portrait of Nain Singh in full gear. He carries with him instruments to secretly survey topography in Tibet . There is a thermometer on the walking stick used to test the boiling point of water. Inside his prayer wheel, instead of normal Buddhist scriptures are his own survey data. His tea cup is modified to contain mercury, used to allocate the horizon line. His prayer beads are different from the normal one-hundred and eight beads, there are only one hundred beads used to help him measure his steps. He is standing on top of a yak and Tibetan Mastiff.

The Railway from Lhasa to Kathmandu / Thangka-3

In 1865, Nain Singh disguises himself as a Hindu pilgrim traveling to Tibet . He rejects the kind offer of a camel from the merchants, and insists on walking on foot to the holy city of Tibet , Lhasa , according to his belief in cultivation. At night, while others were asleep, Nain Singh makes hot water for the group. He actually secretly measures water's boiling point to calculate altitude. After a long journey Nain Singh arrives at Lhasa .

The Railway from Lhasa to Kathmandu / Thangka-4

During his time in Lhasa , Nain Singh records the position of the sun twenty times a day. At night he collects data on sixteen groups of star location. His "act of cultivation" draws the attention of a local monastery and an audience is arranged to meet with the Dalai Lama. He escapes to India , trekking along the Brahmaputra River .

The Railway from Lhasa to Kathmandu / Thangka-5

Nain Singh returns to the British intelligence training school, he is warmly received by British officers and is awarded. He draws a map based on his calculation from his steps from Nepal to Lhasa , for he is the first person to demarcate Lhasa by map. The Paris Geography Society awards Nain Singh a golden watch. He is praised as a "man who has added a greater amount of positive knowledge to the map of Asia than any individual of our time". Nain Singh becomes a teacher at Dehra Dun intelligence training center, cultivating a new generation of intelligence agents. In 1904 Sir Francis Younghusband leads the British Empire's army and invades Tibet .

The Railway from Lhasa to Katmandu /Thangka-6

Tibet today, opening of the Qinghai- Tibet railway.

       
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The Railway from Lhasa to Kathmandu

Installation

Thangka, map, chains, rail, video, photograph

800 x 350 x 1600 cm

2007

1. I walked from Lhasa to the capital of Nepal , Kathmandu, in the opposite direction of Nain Singh's walk to Tibet in 1865. I shackled myself with special pair of 33-inch leg irons, which controlled my stride to make it match that of Nain Singh. I walked through Tibet from October to November in 2006, and sojourned in Nyalam County due to bad weather. In the early summer of 2007, I finally finished the walk from Nyalam County to Kathmandu .

2. During my journey through Tibet , I collected all kinds of metal objects used by the locals, including religious instruments and quotidian objects made of metal, ranging from gold, silver, bronze, iron, tin and aluminum. My method of collecting these included exchanges, purchases, receiving gifts and gathering found objects.

3. All these metal objects were melted down and molded into a 33-inch iron rail.

4. The exhibition consists of a set of six thangkas, a map, the shackles, the iron rail, video and still images of my walk and exchanges, videos and images of molding the railway, and a list of the metal objects I collected during the journey. The first part of the Railway from Lhasa to Kathmandu project is based on the rethinking of historical facts regarding the Indian Nain Singh. I invited Tibetan thangka artists to draw the historical stories of Nain Singh in a Tibetan style.

These six unique thangkas belong to the style of historical stories in the Tibetan thangka tradition.

(Qiu Zhijie)