1. Introduction

Having lived in St. Louis for the last 12 years, I've managed to cultivate good friends and through employment stints here, including the past 5 years of freelance graphic design and web development I've established my self with clients as reliable and stable.

It is for these reasons that all my friends and clients were stunned at my seemingly sudden decision to travel to and study in Beijing, China.

While it may have seemed a sudden decision, actually I've wanted the opportunity to do exactly this for most of my life.

Born as an Army brat to an American father and a German mother I had the great fortune to traveling extensively as a child. My father's military tours took us over much of continental Europe and the US. 

This early exposure to various cultures and customs were to whet my appetite for travel and learning.

Early on stays in Italy and Germany nourished my interest in the arts and history. While in Italy, I lived in a small coastal town called Livorno. Livorno was only a 15-minute train ride to Pisa, the home of the famed leaning Tower of Pisa. I remember climbing the internal marble staircase of the tower all the way to the top. Having already studied the works of Copernicus and Leonardo Da Vinci I reveled in the moment I stood at the tower's upper most rim and looked over to see the same roof tops and grounds which those two great thinkers saw as they conducted their respective revolutionary experiments. Copernicus with his gravitational theories and Da Vinci with his myriad machinations seemed to be next to me there on the tower. So close in history, I could almost hear them breathing.

It was this 'breathing' of the spirits of the ages that grew deep within my own imaginings. Everywhere I went in Europe, the spirits of ages spoke to the aesthetic in me. The spirits seeped into my fiber like deep, rich sweet wine.

Interestingly, the more I studied the Renaissance masters of Europe, the more I realized how much they had been influenced by other distant cultures. At first, I began to see Byzantium and Islamic influences in both art and philosophy. Then, when I studied the Byzantine Empire and Islam I began finding even older influences further east. 

You guessed it, China presented itself as the originator of most of the 'high tech' developments of the day. Tempered with revered philosophies, the Chinese were the 'mysterious' source of silk, gunpowder along with a great many other developments, which the cultures to their west were hungry for.

Now you begin to see the beginning interest I had in China - The Ancient.

At my father's beaconing I came to the US to go to college where I studied publication and graphic design. Throughout my subsequent career, I chose all the art history I had studied as inspiration for much of my work. Sometimes the influence was obvious, sometimes commercialism kept the master's influence at a minimum.

As I grew from assignment to assignment, company to company I felt a kind hollowing taking place within me. I was usually too busy to think about this 'emptying', but it was growing as time went by.

I ignored the effects of this feeling for many years. Then one day, at the height of my business, I realized that I hadn't been breathing the spirits of the ages since I had arrived in the US. While the US certainly is an inspirational environment for business and 'freedom', I suddenly realized that the intellect and aesthetic spirits of Europe, the stone towers and cobble streets, which spoke of the masters and their influences, were completely absent in the U.S. Only a wide open 'emptiness' of the temporary and suburban sprawl lay there as inspiration. We tend to regard this emptiness as freedoms and open opportunities, which they indeed are; however, they remain 'emptiness' all the same, especially where the aesthetic is concerned.

And so, at the height of my success in business I hit a wall of 'emptiness', inspirationally.

Just by coincidence, I had a friend who was teaching in Dalian, China. We exchanged emails in which he described China. Though he held the Chinese in high regard, his over all view of China seemed somewhat tainted by some bad experiences. Nonetheless, my curiosity was piqued. I began to explore the possibility of visiting China. As fate would have it, I found myself in Beijing for the 2002 Chinese New Years celebration. I spent three weeks in Beijing, China - The Modern.

It was then I decided to learn more, but not from books. I wanted to immerse myself in the nation of original influence. I committed to learning the language so I may better understand everything I encounter.

Thus, I'm enrolled in the Beijing Language and Culture University. As well, I've embarked in the adventure of a lifetime.

In the next weeks I will be describing, in detail, the processes of traveling to and within China. I will report all these processes as I undertake them myself for my own trip to China. 

In addition to the technicalities of travel in China I will attempt to relay the 'spirit' of China - The Modern.

Frank Lutz at Beijing (06/16/2002)

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