Lindai and his wife Jinghua, a bank employee, have two daughters, 16 and 11. The eldest, Xiurong, had only one week of summer holidays before her last year of high school, which is decisive for her admission into university. As of this writing, she favored the sciences. The little one, Surguk, was more attracted by the arts: singing, dancing, reciting poems, drawing, and painting under her beloved father's aegis. Both girls studied in a bilingual school (Mongolian and Chinese) and have learned English from grade one. By contrast, their father learned Chinese by himself and speaks with a very strong accent. Their mother also attended a unilingual school. When she started to work, she registered for a Chinese course and on her own learned enough of the Kazak and Uyghur languages to perform her job. "Oral Uyghur has only 24 consonants and eight vowels, and 27 modified Arabic letters and five Persian in the written; Mongolian, 32 letters; and Kazak, 15 vowels and 25 consonants. These languages are easy to learn!" Jinghua encouraged me. Lindai teaches art to students ranging in age from 10 to 36. In 2007, the family bought a 140 sq m first floor apartment in a new building. Each girl had her own bedroom, the living room was immense, and another room held oil paintings, calligraphies, and ink drawings. I noticed a black and white photo of Lindai's father framed with a ribbon of mourning; the man had died only two months earlier. On the table, an oil portrait of his father had just been completed.
The artist had his workshop in the basement and I walked through as though entering a sacred place. Lindai unrolled the charcoal sketches for me of his "Return to the East" on which he had been working for 14 years. "The greatest difficulty is in the clothing. No illustrated documents exist, so I must use my brain to imagine them in conformity with historical reality." In 1995, Lindai, his father, and his uncle went to the Republic of Kalmukia where they collected clues for three months. "There are some documents but no costumes." Back in China, Lindai worked one more year to achieve his panorama. Among the trips that Lindai had made, that one impressed him deeply. He also visited Inner Mongolia, Chengde City, Kazakhstan, Qinghai Province, and Russia, all places that could possibly reveal secrets relevant to his research.
Another immense painting, 17 m × 2.3 m, covered a whole wall, its left and right extremities rolled up. The artist had been working on it for two years and needed at least another year to complete it. Its theme, as ever: Return to the East. Lindai complained that he lacked time. Every day after coming home from the office, he paints for four hours. "The costume problem remains the most difficult to solve. And, I must imagine the lives of these peoples during their eight months of trekking, all of their daily acts. Over here, you see, is a love story while they travelled," he indicated to me.
In his free time, Lindai likes to paint and cook. The day I visited, he asked a colleague to help out because his wife and his older daughter were coming back only for lunch, and he had reserved his time for my interview. We had boiled mutton meat with potatoes and carrots, a dish that the Mongols call "meat to be eaten with the hands." The shoulder blade meat must be eaten totally. Lindai used one of the two big knives on the table to divide, separate, and free the meat from the bone for each guest to have a piece. Exquisite! It is really the most tender part.
Unfortunately, I missed being able to take part in a joyous family gathering, when the Mongols all meet on the grassland, set up a tent, sing and dance, play games, such as lassoing a horse or riding a skittish horse or even a billy goat, and roast a skewered mutton. When they tear the meat apart, they hang a leg in a joist of the tent – higher than their heads – for good luck. This is what I saw in the video Lindai showed to me, as I could not see the real thing and, as I watched and took notes, the artist was busily drawing me in his sketchbook.
It happens that Lindai designs sculptures such as the tall white statue of his father and his elder uncle that can be seen on the grassland, 200 km from Hejing. It represents the "returnees" to the motherland. Lindai also fills painting orders for businesses or private collectors.
Mongols practice mainly Tibetan Buddhism or Lamaism, but Lindai's family is not religious. This seems to be the case of most Hejing's Mongols, as the great Baluntai Temple (Huang Miao) is 60 km from the city.
The five hours I spent in Lindai's company gave me a chance to "soften" him. Being extremely serious at the beginning of the interview, he grew relaxed and smiling by the end. He is not very talkative, but his youngest daughter Surguk, on the other hand, would make an excellent TV anchor. And this is what she aims to be. Why not?
(Source: Foreign Languages Press)
