Description

Don Torgersen traveled from the Nine Dragon Wall in Chicago’s Chinatown to the White Stone Bridge at the Summer Palace in Beijing. Inspired by the Asian goddess of poetry, music, art and knowledge, he composed a work engaging the mind and heart of China and Tibet; a series of cantos, like acts in a Chinese Opera, to transmit affairs with Lao Tzu, Confucius, Milarepa, Li Bai, Tu Fu, Bai Juyi, emperors Qin Shi Huang, Kubilai Khan, Zianlong, Empress Cixi, Mao Zedong and Nixon, Bruce Lee and Teresa Teng. Narratives, tales, paintings, and photos depict contemporary and traditional expressions of Chinese life. The author writes with respect, humor and affection to the lives of ancient and modern poets, painters, performers and philosophers as well as concubines, peasants, yak cowboys, the Dalai Lama and Tibetan poets in exile.