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My Journey of Auspicious Coincidences
By Ashi Kesang Choden Wangchuk Thimphu, Bhutan
CERS and my own office, the Buddhist Art & Cultural Conservation Centre, have one thing in common - a commitment to ensuring the preservation and continuity of cultures and the arts of the Himalayan region.
First Decades of Exploration Highlights
By Wong How Man
I have just turned 70, and my exploration has reached five decades. It seems proper to say I began my real exploration in 1969, when I left home for America and college.
Curiosity notwithstanding, throughout my upbringing for the first two decades of my life, I could only explore around my immediate vicinity of Hong Kong. It was when I left home that I could physically explore beyond the place of my childhood. And that, I did.
Looking back on fifty years, I reminisce some of the highlights, both in years, months and days. The rainbow of colors and memories are too rich to recount in detail. Through pictures however, I felt such recall could be captured to a degree of time past, and be shared with a few friends.
A token of my friendship and gratitude for your 70th birthday
By Katia Buffetrill Zhongdian, Yunnan
I first heard the name of Wong How Man through a common friend, Stéphane Gros, himself a researcher, colleague and friend at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. Knowing that my research on pilgrimages around sacred mountains was going to lead me to make the pilgrimage around Kawakarpo Mountain in 2003, he put me in contact with How Man. In fact, that year was a water-sheep year, considered to be the most auspicious one for the Kawakarpo pilgrimage, since it is said to be the mountain god’s birth year and the sixtieth year in the Tibetan sexagenary calendrical system. I thus met How Man, a man of immense generosity and faithful in friendship at a very auspicious time. Not only did he open to me the doors of the CERS Center beside Napa Lake, close to the city of Gyalthang, but he also invited me to participate in the program he had conceived for the pilgrims journeying to Kawakarpo mountain in that very special year. CERS first took care in repairing the wooden bridge across the Mekong, and built a tea house and a clinic next to the bridge, a compulsory passage for all pilgrims. With the help of a team of young Tibetans and Chinese, we were in a perfect situation not only to offer tea and first aid to the pilgrims but also to count the pilgrims (daily from 6AM to 8PM) and to ask a series of questions that had been chosen by How Man and the team.