As part of our ongoing filming with the Horniman on their CPS project we attended a Tibetan New Year (Losar) celebration in South London a few weekends back.
We bent our heads under strings of Tibetan Prayer flags and descended through a damp doorway and along a murky side path. There was a group of men smoking lit by the faint glow coming from the entrance at the far end of the alley way. The entrance was covered with a thin fabric hanging and as we ducked underneath it we were greeted by a small boy with a beaming round face who waved and declared, “Thanks for coming! Have a wonderful evening!” The adults were perhaps not as effusive in their greetings but we were certainly made to feel welcome.
The hall was full of activity and I could immediately smell, and almost taste, the food that was being prepared. The large hall was fringed with tables around a large dance floor. At each table were groups and families playing bingo, playing cards and chatting. In a corner of the hall children were playing football with an empty crushed plastic water bottle. There was a stand selling t-shirts with contemporary Tibetan slogans on them which contrasted with the array of traditional clothing that was also on display, though many people were also dressed casually.
We wanted to use the theme of food and feasting to lead our filming so we headed straight for the kitchen where we did our best not to get in the way in a cramped space while all the different kinds of foods were pointed out to us. The food wasn’t served until much later in the evening but it was being produced on a fairly industrial scale to feed the large numbers of people who were attending.
Very shortly after that we began chatting to a few people on camera. We began with a very friendly gentleman who was the first Tibetan person to move to the Woolwich area and is a sort of founder of the Tibetan community there. He told us of childhood in Tibet and moving to India where, although it is much warmer, when he had to take off all of his Tibetan clothes to wear jeans and a t-shirt to go to school he felt cold for the first time in his life.
We spoke to a woman who told us about the special drink that you drink first thing in the morning, while still in bed, on Losar.
We spoke to her daughter who runs a blog called High Peaks, Pure Earth that translates blogs in Tibetan and Chinese in to English to share them more widely, these can include essays, opinions and poetry. She talked to us about the difference between Tibetan Butter Tea and Indian Sweet Tea and how Tibetans now look to India because it is where many exiles leave for and is the home of the Dalai Lama.
We spoke to a very charming young man of about 10 whose mother works in a Tibetan restaurant. He was very interesting as he grew up in Nepal until he was eight before moving to London. Although he may not have been able to express it fully yet he clearly felt the difference between living in the East and West.
As we were speaking to a man who had escaped Tibet many years before and just as he was showing us his traditional outfit people began running down the alleyway, where we had been filming, clapping their hands. We had to move. Fast. A Lama had arrived. This Lama had some to give a talk and answer questions at the Losar celebration. He had been a very high level Lama within Tibet and been picked out by the Chinese government before he had gone into exile.
He spoke for a while and answered many questions but all in Tibetan so it was difficult to know what was going on. We spoke to a lovely man who explained more about the Lama and his work; how he now lives in America but travels the world to speak to Tibetan and Buddhist communities. The man explaining was very interesting himself having gone into exile, become a monk, left the monastery again and moved to Poland before finally coming to the UK. He was a very peaceful person and talked about accepting positivity and rejecting negative influences in his life.
We were also introduced to a young theology student who talked us through the symbolism of the altar, which I shan’t go into but to let you know that the long bit of dry bread in the top left of the picture below have a name that literally translates as Donkey’s Ears!
You may also notice some familiar sweets which is a development from the Tibetan diaspora because the tower of food is symbolic of favourite and best foods. The food is very important. And long lines formed when the food was finally brought out from the kitchen and after getting some images of the food, which you have already seen above, we had to run to catch our train. Within moments being back on a train station in London felt quite surreal and we felt like we had been immersed in Tibetan culture for much longer than a few hours and were struck by how generous, open and kind everyone had been to us while we were there.
The footage from this day will be combined in a video with footage from a workshop that the Horniman hosted inviting Tibetan people and other interested parties to come and look at some of the Tibetan Food and Feasting objects from their main collection.
acapmedia 