Bullet Trains to Yaks

Join writer Stan Biderman and photographer Kathryn Minette as they cross China and Tibet in search of treasure, finding thousand-year-old Buddhas, lutes, and celestial burial sites. The author reveals a China that hosts such advanced technology as bullet trains juxtaposed against centuries-old mainstays like yaks and camels. Enhanced by Minette's thirty-two page full-color insert and her seventy black-and-white photos interspersed throughout each chapter, this husband-and-wife team document disappearing cultures amid the conflict of a nation attempting to modernize under a totalitarian regime. As the child of Holocaust survivors, Stan is a student of history and a critic of oppressive regimes. In China he experienced firsthand the often brutal military presence in western China and Tibet, and the severe curtailment of speech throughout the country. With the uprisings in the Middle East, he cannot help but wonder-is China next? And if not, how brutal will its regime become in silencing its people?

Stan Biderman served as Whole Foods' first lawyer; managed Book People, the largest independent bookstore in Texas; and pioneered the redevelopment of the South Congress area in Austin, winning numerous awards for preservation. He visited the Soviet Union in 1984 and has traveled throughout the United States, Western Europe, Morocco, Israel, Canada, New Zealand, the Caribbean, Central America, Mexico, and China. Also the author of Everything Changes: A Spiritual Journey (Plain View Press, 2006), he resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife and collaborator, Kathryn Minette. Kathryn Minette taught art in New Mexico's public schools for fifteen years before becoming director of the Art in Public Places program, expanding the state's collection by more than two thousand artworks over twelve years. As director, she also implemented many innovative programs that raised the caliber of public art across the state and generated national attention. An artist as well, Kathryn works in a variety of media.