Forbidden Tibet
CHINA | Sunday, 17 February 2008 | Views [760] | Comments [3]
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Day
21: Yak Meat and a Man Named Popo
Looking out my bedroom window to
investigate the noises keeping me awake, I observe the unloading of a truck,
piled high with the red sinewy bodies of skinned yak, onto the road in front of
the butcher shop across the alley. Whole yak minus only the head are piled 3
deep onto the pavement. I go back to bed as the old pick-up truck rumbles off,
leaving two butchers to lug the bodies inside; one on each end. During a
morning stroll I marvel at the huge slabs of yak meat that decorate the city’s
streets. Hanging from open shop windows, lying on plastic sheets on the
footpath, sticking out the back of the trays of modified 3 wheel motorbikes;
it’s a vegetarian’s nightmare. The cold climate of Tibet, a country with a
yearly average temperature of just 7°C,
means it has little need for refrigeration. Passing pedestrians would point at
a yak lying unappetizingly on the pavement and its owner, holding a large
butchers knife, would grab a leg and hack it off with a few solid swings, then
hang it from a set of scales held aloft in his other hand. The customer would
pay his price per kilo, and toddle off with a leg under his arm. For a
Westerner, this is an appalling disregard for hygiene, easily enough to make
the most hardened meat lover turn vegetarian. Oddly, I was unconcerned, and in
fact yak meat was to become my favorite choice of steak.
The Jokhang
Temple, built in 547, is Lhasa's holiest temple, situated bang in the middle of
the city in the Barkhor Market district; as the heart and soul of the city, this
area bursts with atmosphere and contradictions. On the one hand, it is one
of the holiest areas of Tibet, awash with pilgrims, monks, nuns and temples. On
the other, the streets around here are the hub of Lhasa's commercial zone.
Street traders, hawkers and market sellers fill the pavements around the
Barkhor area pushing numerous weird and wonderful things including souvenirs,
ornaments, Tibetan knives, Tibetan robes and hats, tapestries, religious
musical instruments, gold and silver ware, sniffing tobacco and prayer wheels. Jokhang
Monastery became the worshiping centre when the Tang China princess, Wen Chen,
brought to the temple the statue of Sakyamuni in 700 A.D. The statue is
believed to be modeled according to the appearance of Sakyamuni (as the boy who
would become the supreme Buddha is known) when he was 12, and was consecrated
by Sakyamuni himself. It is Jokhang's oldest and most precious object, adorned
with many jewels, in an elaborate setting. Pilgrims have prostrated themselves
in front of this statue for centuries.
I watched in fascination the continuous
flow of pilgrims circling clockwise around the temple, spinning their prayer
wheels, also clockwise, and twirling rosemary beads as they went. Hundreds of
people of all ages shuffled past me, dressed in dirty but colorful rags and
chanting mantras that filled the air. I began to realize that I had
unintentionally arrived in Lhasa in the midst of the annual Buddhist
pilgrimage. I remember watching a program about it years ago on TV. I’d been
enthralled by the vivid beauty of the sacrosanct city and the spectacular and
massive Potola Palace, stunned by the devotion and sacrifice of the pilgrims;
But I never imagined that I would actually see it with my own eyes. Now, here I
am, arriving at the same time as thousands of Tibetans from all over their
country came to Lhasa to pray and suffer in front of important religious sites.
They may do this all day long, for days, or weeks. Many beggars position
themselves along these routes, taking advantage of the Buddhist belief that
giving to the poor increases your good karma.
A short, balding
man with the tanned, leathery skin, characteristic of the Tibetan people,
approaches me and says, “It’s a Chinese temple you know” following my direction
of sight.
“What do you
mean?” I ask.
“It was destroyed
and rebuilt by the Chinese, so they can claim it as their own work. All the
famous ones were. They even stole the religious treasures inside and replaced
them with cheap imitations; Made in China. It is a reproduction, a fake. This
is not Tibet”. I knew he was referring to the Chinese invasion during the
1950’s and 60’s when the Chinese Government, in a demonstration of their
superiority over God and the Tibetan people, systematically destroyed important
religious structures and the many artifacts contained within. “Were you here
when they did it?” I ask.
“Yes,” he pauses a
moment then continues, “I watched them burn our books of prayer, smash our
statues, pilfer our possessions and imprison our priest’s”. He suddenly
stiffens and changes the subject. “I am an artist” he says. I notice a
suspicious character that’d sidled within ear shot and realize he must be
Chinese secret police. I had previously heard stories of the secret police in
Tibet who listen in on the conversations of Tibetans talking with tourists and
if they hear any anti-Chinese discussions the offending Tibetan is immediately
arrested and thrown in jail. “What kind of artwork do you do?” I ask, going
with the new topic.
“Religious art,
for the temples mostly. I paint wall murals, make Buddhist deity statues, carve
incense boxes and ceremonial masks, thangka paintings… many things”. Our
eavesdropper, deciding our conversation was harmless, moves on. “You see the video
cameras around the square?” he asks without gesturing. For the first time I
noticed the cameras, perched on high building tops, pointing down at us. “They
are watching us”.
“Big Brother” I
would have said; if I thought we would have understood.
“Do you want to
see real Tibet?” he enquires sincerely.
I think about it a
moment and then reply “Sure”.
His name, he says
is Popo, and he seems unimpressed when I tell him he has the same name as my
girlfriends dog. He takes me to a little temple full of character, hidden away
in the backstreets just off the busy and noisy market square. It has dirty, whitewashed
walls ringed by small, golden metal drums that are spun by the pilgrims as they
circumambulate the building. Inside the entranceway is another drum-shaped
wheel, this one as big as the room, which rotates in slow resolute revolutions,
powered by the elderly pilgrims who walk unhurriedly around in circles with it.
We squeeze past them into a dark back room where a priest, chanting in a low
hypnotic voice, busily throws holy water over a group of people bowed in front
of him. A large bronze Buddha statue reaches to the rafters, its face in the
shadows; flickering light from the yak butter candles at its feet dance across
its golden belly and lick at its lips that are curled into an almost
imperceptible smug grin. Popo and the priest exchange a nod as he lead me up a narrow
wooden staircase with a ‘no entry’ sign hanging across it. He pushes open the
door above our heads and I’m momentarily blinded by the dazzling daylight. The
sun’s rays, unhindered by air pollution and with less atmosphere to pass
through, is bright and strong in Tibet. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust
and focus on the white walls and red roofs of the buildings around us. When my
eyes do adjust I feel like I could jump from rooftop to rooftop all the way to
the incredible Potola Palace perched majestically on the far side of the city.
In the next temple
that Popo takes me to, rows of robed monks sit quietly eating their daily rice
rations. Popo points to a painting of the Dali Lama, hanging high above their
shaved heads on a side wall, almost completely invisible in the shadows. “That
is the only painting of the Dali Lama in a temple in Tibet” he whispers
conspiratorially. I know that it’s illegal to display a picture of the Dali
Lama, even in the privacy of one’s home, so I imagine that this last remaining
painting, unnoticed by the Chinese officers, is highly revered. With pride he
declares “This temple is two and a half thousand years old”. Pointing to intricate
designs freshly painted on the temple walls Popo tells me that he himself
painted them and in fact he is solely responsible for the restoration of many
of the old temples in Lhasa. Statues too, and carvings, wooden masks and a
variety of religious artifacts are all Popo’s work. I find it a little hard to
believe but humor him anyway. He explains that he has 5 shops, each concerned
with a different specialty. One shop makes Buddhist Thanka paintings, another
ceremony drums using stretched Yak skin, another shop casts bronze Buddha
statues, another wooden carvings, and the last, wooden incense burners. He
takes me to each one of these shops in turn. Young Tibetan boys busily paint and
sand and saw and file and polish. They are all homeless children, he tells me, many
of them orphaned during the Chinese invasion, that he has taken in and given
work. I know he hopes I will buy something but I don’t mind because he isn’t
pressuring me and I’m enjoying his company and his off-the-beaten-track tour of
the city. So when he offers to take me to see a small village outside of town I
accept and arrange to meet him again in the morning out the front of my guest
house.
Day
22: White Man has come
The next morning finds
me shivering in a cobblestone courtyard while I wait for the lady who lives in
the boiler room to turn on the hot water. She has such an indent between her
eyes that she looks like she’s been hit with a nail punch and she grumbles irritably
as she bangs the pipes to get the water flowing. The hot water doesn’t go on
till 9.30 because the sun doesn’t come up much before that and is off again at
4.30. I like to make the most of my days when I travel so yesterday I had left
the guesthouse before 9.30 and got back well after 4.30 so I was unable to have
a shower. That was my third day without one because there were no showers on
the train, so I didn’t want to miss out today. While waiting for the hot water,
two others come down to stand on the cold rock floor with me. I learn from the
girl that they are going to book a 4WD today that will take them over the
Himalayas and down to Nepal. I’ve been looking to join up with a group to do
this trip so I ask her if they might have a spare seat. She says they’ve
already promised the last seat to a guy they met on the train, but they might
be able to fit another person in if nobody minds sitting in the boot. I said I
didn’t and fortunately nobody else did either, as everyone was eager to cut
costs. I didn’t know it then but I was about to hook up with 3 people that were
to be the perfect travelling companions. We would spend the next 4 weeks
travelling together, sharing our experiences and becoming close. It turned out
that Andrea, and Jerry, the guy that was with her, and their friend Lisa, where
staying in the room next to mine. I organized to meet them later then stood
under a trickle of warm water before going to meet Popo.
The village Popo
takes me to could have come straight out of a National Geographic documentary.
Dusty dirt paths separate high white stone walls covered in drying yak pats.
They stick them there to dry in the sun then peel them off and use them in
their clay ovens for heating and cooking. A bleached yak skull with horns
adorns a door. Three shaggy yaks lie lazily in the dirt and suspiciously eye us
as we go by. Two young boys, wrapped in rags, put down their sticks and stare.
One absently picks at the dirty snot that’s smeared across his face. An old
lady cloaked in a tattered but thick traditional Tibetan coat, spun from yak
hairs and dyed in reds and yellows, a plat down each side of her head tied off
with a colorful rag, hobbles toward us. She rasps something to Popo as she
passes. “What did she say?” I ask Popo.
He answers, “White
Man has come”.
In the centre of
the village stands a beautifully restored yellow brick temple, “This,” Popo
tells me, “Is the first Buddhist temple of Tibet”. To the side of the temple is
a small mud hut and its into here that Popo leads me. It’s dark and smoky, lit
only by the light that sneaks through the door behind us. As my eyes adjust I
see two monks cloaked in red robes, sitting on a wooden bench and sipping from
a steaming cup while an elderly lady stokes a fire and adds another yak patty.
One of them motions me over and offers me a cup from the thermos. I sit and
drink, enjoying the warmth that oozes down my throat. It’s hot yak butter I
realize. Not a drink I could usually drink a lot of, but it warms me so nicely
that I accept another cup. After warming up we go into the temple and look
around. Popo shows me a wall mural he’s been working on. Buddhist deities
wearing brightly colored robes and holding weapons or instruments sit atop
white fluffy clouds while dragons and tigers swarm around them. The wall on one
side is original and the other repainted. I like it like this. I’m able to
appreciate what it would have looked like as well as its age. Inside, the
temple has a sacred ambience, dimly lit and silent; we’re the only ones here.
Each room holds precious treasures; ancient prayer books, grim-faced guardian
statues, a line of golden deities. Again Popo leads me to the roof and I’m awed
by this humble village ringed by large brown mountains against impossibly blue
skies. The Chinese built highway that links Tibet to China cut this little
village in half and now we cross the road to see one of Popo’s friends who runs
a very modest restaurant in the other half of the village. As we enter her
courtyard I see a small girl pumping water from a well, standing on tippy toes
for the upswing. A kettle on a metal rod is suspended in front of a shiny
board, it reflects the sun’s rays back onto the kettle and the kettle starts to
steam. A deeply tanned lady with deep creases across her face and plats in her
tangled grey hair comes out of a little wooden hut to retrieve the kettle. She
smiles at us and speaks warmly to Popo while wiping her hands on a colorful
apron that’s wrapped around her thick cloak. With a chunky gnarled hand she motions
for us to enter her cabin where she pours us some hot Tibetan red tea with yak
milk. This is delicious; and good for altitude sickness so Popo tells me. While
sipping our tea I tell Popo I’d like to take him to dinner to thank him for
showing me around.
I ask Popo to take
me to a place where he often goes to eat and so after leading me through a maze
of dirty, dark backstreets we come to a little shop squashed between two other
little shops that look exactly the same. A warm glow comes from within. The
family, whose house they converted into a restaurant, shows us to a table. We
drink more red tea with yak milk while waiting for dinner and the mother talks
intently with Popo. She has a beautiful smile but sad eyes. She learns through
Popo that I’m on my way to India, overland, and she swoons. Speaking directly
to me with those sad eyes and deep yearning in her voice she tells me, through
Popo’s translation, how badly she wants to go to India to visit the Dalia Lama,
but alas, it is impossible for her to leave Tibet; China would never grant her
the visa. Such longing in her voice and tears in her eyes, I wish I could take
her with me. We are served a very simple meal, a few small pieces of yak meat
on rice. I promise Popo that I will come to see him at his workshop tomorrow
and buy one of his paintings, the mother clasps my hands warmly and says
goodbye.
Day
23: Potola Palace’s Praying Pilgrims, the Wheel of Life and a Yak Sizzler
I’m up before the
sun and regretting it because nothing is open. I wanted to hire a bicycle and
ride out to the mountains surrounding the city and from the top watch the
sunrise over Lhasa. But I can’t hire a bike even though it’s actually 8.00, so
I walk across town to the Potola Palace and wait outside until it opens. While
I wait a line of pilgrims in front of the palace prostrate themselves on the
sidewalk. Up and down, up and down, some with sandals or blocks of wood on
their hands, others with cardboard or rags. They’ll do it all day long, from
morning to night with a pious, religious fervor. A man and his 2 young boys,
filthy faces, filthier clothes, lay themselves outstretched on the ground,
slide their hands forward above their heads, stand up again and step forward to
the point their outstretched hands had reached, and repeat the process over and
over, painfully slowly circling the huge palace grounds. Elderly Tibetan's
clothed in the traditional colorful dress woven from yak wool, with faces
tanned dark and leathery from lives lived under a strong sun, shuffle
determinedly in a slow gait around the circumference of the palace, spinning
each of the hundreds of prayer wheels that run along the walls, or spinning in
their hand, their own personal wheel, in slow hypnotic circles while quietly
chanting ancient Buddhist hymns. Resourceful beggars, capitalizing on the
Buddhist philosophy of giving to the poor in order to improve your position in
the afterlife, have positioned themselves around the temple, and hold out a tin
plate to the passing pilgrims; some of them, both pilgrims and beggars, have
traveled days to be here. For more than a thousand years millions of pilgrims
have trod these sacred paths with devotion in their hearts. I was intensely
aware of being amongst an extremely religious ceremony.
The Potala Palace
rises 117 meters on top of a hill, making it 300metres in all, and is the
greatest monumental structure in Tibet. It was built during the 5th
Dalai Lama’s reign in 1645. This has been the residence of each Dalai Lama
since, ending with the 14th Dalai Lama's flight into exile in 1959.
It was also the seat of Tibetan government where all ceremonies of state where
held and housed the school for religious training of monks. Today, the palace
has been converted into a museum by the Chinese. Inside the palace the grandeur
is breathtaking. It is 13 stories high, containing over 1,000 rooms, 10,000
shrines and about 200,000 statues. Almost all of the 100,000 plus volumes of
scriptures, historical documents and works of art were either removed, damaged
or destroyed, but fortunately the palace remained relatively unscathed during
the Chinese invasion and unsuccessful Tibetan uprising; for the most part being
spared the ransacking by the Red Guards that befell most other buildings of
worth. Room after room of the most magnificent religious opulence; in one room
I come across the tomb of the 5th dalai lama, covered in gold and precious
stones including pearl from an elephant’s brain, standing 13m high and almost
as wide. Exiting from the back of the palace I stop to take a photo of the view
from up above the city and a young man stops beside me, to admire the view
also, or so I assume. I walk down a little way and stop again to get a shot
from another angle and the young man again stops beside me. I give him a smile
and continue down and he walks along with me. Side by side we walk, in silence.
He suddenly speaks excitedly in Tibetan. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand” I say
and he looks a little forlornly back at his feet. “What’s your name?” I ask
him. He smiles uncomprehendingly at me and we continue to walk in silence.
After a silence that stretches well into uncomfortable he suddenly turns to me
“Hello!” he bursts out with. I laugh, realizing he must have been wracking his
brain to remember this English greeting and the awkwardness of the situation is
relieved. He makes eating motions, I nod and we duck into a cheap noodle shop
on the side of the road where to my surprise he pays for my bowl of noodles and
cup of tea. I try to make small talk with him but it’s impossible so I pull out
my map of Tibet and, figuring he was on a pilgrimage, ask him to show me where
his home town is. He looks a little confusedly at the map, turns it around and
upside down; I begin to get the feeling it’s the first time he’s looked at one.
Eventually he circles uncertainly around a particularly remote area of the map
and gives a little shrug. I flip the sheet over to Lhasa city and show him
where I want to go next. It’s another temple outside of town called Drepung,
located at the foot of Mount Grephel.
Drepung is a monk training academy and is the largest of all Tibetan monasteries,
at its peak it was the largest monastery of any religion in the world. Due to a
population capping by the Chinese Government there are only a few hundred
monks, considerably less than the 10,000 at the time of its foundation in 1416.
The 2nd Dalai Lama built his palace here and this was used by
successive Dalai lamas up until the 5th. We spend the rest of the
day walking in silent communication around this complex. At the foot of each
deity ‘the boy with no name’ puts a small bill into the offering box, I follow
suit. Outside the temple I stop intermittently to take a photo, he looks over my
shoulder at the viewfinder, “yes”, he says in appreciable agreement. He’s
learnt an English word and now uses it with the enthusiasm of a boy with a new
toy. Walking back down the hill to the main road we cut through the trees and I
stop to take a photo of a small frozen stream winding through a carpet of
fallen red leaves to the belly of an old yak resting on the forest floor. “Yes”
he says earnestly with a nod, “yes”.
There’s just
enough time before sunset to go see Popo at his workshop. I’d been impressed
with the detail in the Mandala he painted and liked the idea of having a unique
souvenir. A genuine hand-painted Mandala by a true Tibetan artist is not the
kind of souvenir that most tourists return home with. I know that it is almost
impossible to buy genuine Tibetan Thangka art; all art sold in tourist shops is
done by the Nepalese and the trinkets are cheap Chinese imitations even though
all the shops claim it’s ‘real Tibetan’. Thangka is a Buddhist painting on
canvas overflowing with symbolism and allusion, which is hung in a monastery or
a family altar and occasionally carried by monks in ceremonial processions.
Because the art is explicitly religious all symbols and allusions must be in
accordance with strict guidelines laid out in Buddhist scripture. Thangka
perform several different functions. They are used as teaching tools when
depicting the life of the Buddha or retelling myths associated with other
deities. Devotional images act as the centerpiece during a ritual or ceremony
through which one can offer prayers or make requests. Most importantly,
religious art is used as a meditation tool to help bring one further down the
path to enlightenment.
A particularly
popular style of thangka is the Mandala, usually a circle that represents
completeness of the cosmos. Mandalas are used as an aid to meditation and
trance induction, intended to assist the meditator to experience oneness with
the cosmos. A particularly popular style of Mandala is the ‘Samsāra’,
the Wheel of Life, which is a visual representation of the continuous cycle of
birth, life and death from which can only be escaped through enlightenment.
According to the Buddha, like finding the beginning point of a circle, the
beginning point of Samsāra
is not evident. All beings have been suffering in Samsāra for an
unimaginable period, and they continue to do so until attaining Nirvana. Buddha
was the first person to grasp the truth of Samsāra and in doing so
break the cycle.
Popo proudly
describes in depth the symbolism behind his intricately sketched work of art. “The
Wheel of Life” he explains, “illustrates the essence of the Buddhist teachings,
the Four Truths; the existence of earthly suffering, its origin and cause, the
ending of misery and the path to liberation from suffering. The Wheel of Life
describes the cause of evil and its effects, according to Karma, causes and
effects are the fruits of one’s own deeds. The circular composition of the
wheel of life leads us though the twelve interwoven causes and their
consequences to rebirth in one of the six worlds that fill the inner sphere of
the Wheel. But the meaning of the Wheel is to show the way out of these worlds
of suffering into the sphere beyond. The monster of impermanence appears above
the rim of the wheel, a ferocious face with three fiercely glaring eyes and a
crown of skulls. Holding the Wheel of Life in his claws, he is a symbol of the
transitory nature of this earthly phenomenon. On his left shoulder is the
Bodhisattava - the Lord who looks down in compassion and weeps as he beholds
the suffering of all beings in the six realms and three spheres of existence.
On his right shoulder is the Buddha celebrating the possibility of all creatures
attaining salvation and rising to Nirvana. At the hub of the wheel are the
cock, the snake and the pig, each with the tail of the one in front gripped in
its mouth, locking themselves into an eternal driving force. The cock
represents lust and greed, the snake envy and hatred, and the black pig
ignorance; the three poisons out of which grow all life’s evils. The ring
around one side of the hub is the dark path; those who give in to these basic
evils follow this path to bad rebirths and hells. The corresponding white path
leads to better rebirths and ultimate bliss. The six worlds surround the ring
in slices, each slice a symbol of transitory existence. The first, at the top
of the wheel, is the abode of the Gods; a paradise achieved by good deeds, yet
these Gods are not yet freed from sorrow; they too, after thousands of human
years, are subject to old age and death. Their special suffering is the
illusion of the eternity of their paradisal state. The last world, at the
bottom of the Wheel, is the hells – places of torment for all those who have
committed evil deeds. But even here the Buddha appears, bearing a flame to
bring light and hope to even the darkest region; a message that after atoning
for sins, rebirth into a better world is possible”.
“Between these two
worlds” Popo continues, “are the worlds of greedy ghosts, suffering from a
hunger and thirst that can neither be appeased nor quenched, the worlds of
animals, cursed as beasts of burden and oppression by other beings, the worlds
of humans, driven by egoism and ignorance, their suffering is a repeated cycle
of birth, sickness and death, and the worlds of Titans, driven by insatiable
envy into constant fighting with the Gods for the fulfillment of their desires. Around the six worlds is the outer rim of the
Wheel, the twelve interdependent causes and their effects. In the first of the
twelve pictures an old sightless man, unable to find his way, symbolizes
spiritual ignorance. The second picture shows a potter molding his own karma.
In the third picture a monkey swinging from branch to branch symbolizes
people’s inability to control their own consciousness. The fourth shows a boat
with two people, spiritual and physical energy, floating inseparably on the
stream of life. The fifth, a house with five windows and a door symbolizes the
five senses and thinking, through which we perceive the outer world. A man and
woman embracing demonstrate the consequence of sensual perceptions in the six.
The emotions to which one is stuck, like an arrow in the eye, is portrayed in
the seventh. A woman offering a man a drink illustrates the thirst for life in
the eighth. The ninth picture illustrates the longing to keep that which is
desired, represented by a man plucking fruit from a tree. A bride in the tenth symbolizes
procreation of a new life and the eleventh demonstrates the consequence of
procreation, a woman giving birth to a child. The twelfth and final picture
shows old age and death, the inevitable end of all earthly existence,
illustrated by bearers of a coffin, the corpse in the fetal position ready for
the next rebirth and further misery in one of the six worlds”.
With my canvas
wrapped in newspaper I pick my way through the grimy backstreets, passing by a
man peeing openly into one of the roadside troughs that are found around the
city streets, until locating my 20 Yuan a night ($3.50) guesthouse at which I
find Jerry, Andrea and Lisa getting ready to go out for dinner to an up-market
restaurant (for Tibet) that apparently serves the best yak sizzler in town. I
go along with them and as we walk across town we pick up some new friends of theirs
who have friends of their own and those friends have invited people they’ve
met. We enter the restaurant as a group of thirteen and talking loudly enough
to be heard over the sizzles of the yak steak served on a hot plate we learn
that sitting at this one table, ten different nationalities are represented.
We’re all pretty impressed by this and I say “only through travel could we sit
at a table where so many nationalities have come together as friends”. The restaurant lives up to its claim as
serving the best yak steak in Lhasa. It’s juicy and delicious, in-fact it’s the
best steak I’ve ever eaten, better even then beef, and I vow it won’t be my
last. Sitting next to me at the table is Nader, the 5th and final
passenger on our journey over the Himalayan Mountains that leaves first thing
tomorrow morning. I find that we share similar thoughts on life and philosophy
and I can see we’re going to get along well. After dinner we all go to a small
pub for some Lhasa beer, but me and my four travelling companions to be, call
it quits after one and head back to the guesthouse to get some sleep before our
early departure.
Tags: tibet, adventures
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