Harvey is viewing a Thangka painting work

The Thangka art exhibition by famous intangible cultural heritage inheritor Niangben has concluded on November 21 in Beijing. Over 200 guests have visited the exhibition and some of them even ordered some Thangka works on the show.

We recently interviewed an American friend Harvey, who currently works in China, writing a column for newspaper and also making some film between Turkey and Spanish.

Harvey is very interested in the paintings in Mokao Grotto at Dunhuang. It is his dream to go there someday and see those extraordinary works by himself. What this Thangka painting inspired him is the teacher of Niangben, who used to learn painting in Dunhuang, merged the painting style into Thangka painting. So this two kinds of paintings have something in common. Harvey highly appraised the Thangka painting which is perfect. It's also very time consuming, and cannot make any mistakes when painting. The colours in Thangka are all very warm and make people feel comfortable.

When talking about Tibet, Harvey's first impression about Tibet came from his hearing and seeing when he was young. He saw some of Tibetan cultural art works in local art museum in America, and also from his professor's friends when he studied in Harvard University Law School. In the talk, he mentioned the word "spiritual" many times, and also other words like magical, profound.

He also appreciated the great history of Tibet, and he learnt Tibet from many ways such as TV, newspaper, websites. There are many aspects of Tibet discussed in the western countries, but what draws his interest most is cultural aspect.

Mentioning of Tibet's current development and trend of Tibet's future, Harvey agreed on environment protection in Tibet, Tibet is facing the same challenge like many other places in the world. He thinks Tibet should not overtake population beyond its capability due to its special geographic conditions and environment.

He thinks keeping balance is of the most importance. Tibet should preserve religious activities, cultural relics sites while developing modern convenience for people to enjoy.

Under the huge support of Chinese central government and other provinces, the life of Tibetan people is getting better and better. Today Tibetan people do more and more things that traditional Tibetan people have never done before. There're more ways of increasing income. But Harvey doesn't think money is the creator of happiness, happiness has nothing to do with money.

And many people in Tibet go to China's inland and go abroad for better personal development and they also should keep learning their own language and religious systems.

And last, he was asked if he would go to Tibet, he said yes, it's another dream. But he would not make any film or documentary about Tibet. He said there are many sides about Tibet in western world, and just because of this, people should go to Tibet by themselves and find out the truth.