伍Gifts of the Valley礼
Some you make with your own hands; some you can take home. All of it comes from the valley and the craftspeople nearby, and there is never much of it.
Spend an afternoon making something with a local craftsperson. What you make is yours to keep.
Learn black pottery from a Nixi potter: red earth and white clay, shaped by hand, fired over wood and smoked black. Nixi black-pottery firing was listed as national intangible cultural heritage in 2008.
In the July and August rains, follow a villager into the forest after matsutake. Someone who knows the ground leads, and shows you how to look, how to dig, and how to cover the earth again.
Learn from a Tibetan master: blend cypress powder and herbs to the recipe, knead it into a paste, roll it into sticks, and let them dry slowly.
A thangka is a scroll painting on cloth. With a painter, prepare the ground, sketch, and lay in a small patch of colour: a taste of a craft that takes a very long time.
In a Tibetan neighbour’s home, learn to make butter tea: brew the tea, add butter and salt, churn it again and again in the wooden churn, then drink a bowl by the hearth.
Things we use and love ourselves. If one speaks to you, call or message us with its name.
Handmade
Illustrative photo · Dimitri Fedorov · CC BY 2.0
Cypress and herbs. Light one and the room smells of the mountains.
Illustration · kevincure · CC BY 2.0
Hand-knotted rugs, the patterns and colours as they have always been.
Thangka painted stroke by stroke. Some of those hanging in the rooms can go home with you.
Illustration · shankar s. · CC BY 2.0
A blanket woven from yak wool: light, and very warm.
Illustrative photo · Goldfish Love Fibers · CC BY-SA 2.0
Mountain mornings and evenings are cold; one of these is all you need.
Illustrative photo · penelope waits · CC BY 2.0
Sewn stitch by stitch; no two are the same.
From the mountains
Pu’er from Yunnan’s high mountains, pressed into a cake that only improves with keeping.
Mushrooms from the mountains in the rains, kept in jars; good with rice or noodles.
Wild wildflower honey from the plateau. There is only a little each year.
How to buy
Nothing is sold online. For a piece or a workshop, call or message us on WeChat and we will tell you what is left, when, and how it can travel to you.
Phone 156 8729 6661 / 197 1087 9078