One final note on last night. I got back to the room and was in bed and almost asleep. There was a knock at the door. I stumbled over to the door, checked the peep hole and opened the door. Liu, one of our trusty guides was there with a Chinese Photographer, Lang Li Xing with a signed, copy of Lang’s photo book, “Ice and Snow.” We exchanged business cards at the Erdos Wedding Feast and toasted the New Year together. From that I received a wonderful gift.
One of my fellow photographers also received a knock on his door, closer to 1:30 AM. He described the person on the other side of the door as a very beautiful Chinese woman. He could not speak Chinese, she could speak no English. He resolved the situation with thrift and good humor.
The conference officially started this morning with a two hour extravaganza of ceremonies. The Chinese love a spectacle and do them very well. If you remember the last Beijing Olympics you know how well they do pageantry. The official opening was held in the theater inside the Arts Palace. It is a dome inside the Arts Palace Dome. The big wigs sat in nice chairs and the proletariat was consigned to sand stools. These are sections of pipe about 20” in diameter filled with sand and a fabric cover. Being honored photographers, we occupied some of the better sand stools.
The process seemed to be that we would have some speeches, then we would have some entertainment, then we would have some awards and back to the speeches. It was kept moving by our charming masters of ceremony. The theatre was not heated. It was like going to a football game in January. If it was warmer than 40F in the theater I would be surprised. But she was there in that evening gown for the whole event.
(And she never shivered once)
The entertainment was surreal. We had a women photographers chorus, we had a synchronized ladies’ tripod dance and other dancers that wore matching red photographer’s vests. We had some incredibly talented Chinese singers and Mongol dances of all sorts. We had a Mongolian string band.
I did not photograph the awards because there were so many of them and I had no idea what they were, but the lady in charge of matching the awards with the honorees is this young woman.
She and a coterie of richly attired young women (all wearing the traditional Mongolian 4 inch spike heels?) escorted the honorees around the stage and presented them with bouquets of flowers and honorary plaques. She towered over the honorees, 4 inch heels or not.
Finally my time in the spotlight happened. All the “honored photographers” were called to the stage to be viewed by the participants in the audience. Here’s what it looked like from our end.
U2 can be a Rock Star
Once we were recognized, we became fair game for the other photographers.
The evening bonfire event has been cancelled because the festival sponsors felt that it would be too cold tonight to have everyone outside for an hour or so. What with the temperature tonight forecast for a balmy 1F, they decided the better part of valor would be to cancel that event. Our intrepid group of honored American Photographers spent the rest of the day getting warm in our hotel. We head out tomorrow for some more presentations.
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