Allure of Peaceful Ellison Bay Prompts Travelers to Take Root
After over ten years in Asia, Brian and Jeanee Linden opened
Linden's of Ellison Bay in 1996 in Northern Door County. The enchanting 6,000 square foot gallery, situated in a Prairie-style Lutheran Church- an Ellison Bay landmark since 1955, Ýis dedicated to rotating art exhibits and Asian objets d'art. Linden's is considered to be one the Midwest's top destinations for Asian art and is open from May through October.
In 2001, the Linden's also opened a year-round store on Madison's booming west side and currently have another branch at the Fairfield Museum in Sturgeon Bay. ÝEvery year, the Lindens travel across Asia and bring back over 100 tons of treasures. ÝPhotos from their most recent trip can be found under this web siteís Travel Articles menu item.
Rudyard Kipling's little couplet about East never meeting West may have been true in his day, but that truism no longer holds water. Chicago-born-and-bred Brian Linden not only met the twain back in 1984, he helps tie the knot.
Now splitting time between their stores in Ellison Bay and Madison with his wife, Jeanee, 8-year-old son Shane, and 5-year-old son Bryce, Linden's galleries are showcases for the exquisite furnishings, paintings, ceramics, jewelry, carpets and other objects d'art he has acquired on his travels to 60 countries.
The road that led the Lindens from Kipling's exotic East to tranquil Ellison Bay was marked with precipitous turns. Brian's Indiana Jones-type travels include a backpacking camel trip in India, an unsuccessful trek to find Genghis Khan's tomb in Inner Mongolia, a traffic accident in the Gobi Desert and treks into every Chinese province by almost every known means of travel.
When Linden says "few people have traveled Asia the way I have," one is inclined to agree. " Here I was, this Mandarin speaking foreigner, standing out like a sore thumb among the Chinese people," says the 6-foot-plus Linden, who first laid eyes on the land of Confucius at age 22. " In 1984, Americans able to speak the language were few and far between. Those of us who could were treated royally."
Unable to speak Chinese (expect for the obligatory, "Where's the toilet?") when he first arrived, the young American learned Mandarin riding the Trans-Siberian Express from Poland, where he was doing research, to Beijing. It was, he says, a very long trip. Even if his linguistic skills were nil, Lindens personality and outgoing nature likely could have made a pen pal of Genghis Khan.
"I met people from the Chinese Embassy and took advantage of their offer to study at Beijing University," he says. ìCBS had just opened a news bureau in Beijing, so I hooked up with them. They made me an assistant producer in charge of researching and editing stories -- pretty heavy stuff for a 22-year-old just out of college."
Pretty heavy, indeed. Linden's CBS connections enabled him to lunch with U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig, dine with President George Bush and get close to Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, twice named "Man of the Year" by TIME Magazine.
During his initial three years in China, Brian was placed under house arrest 11 times, and Jeanee, whom he met in Nanking studying Chinese, had the misfortune of being included on one occasion. That arrest, the result of the Gobi desert collision (a truck came around a sand dune too fast and hit the truck they had hitched a ride on), was Jeanee's only incarceration.
Brian says the Communist officials who picked them up after the crash (hitchhiking again) took such a dim view of the incident that their arrest, while short-lived, was inevitable. Ý"Certain areas were off-limits to foreigners and I was prone to be in these areas with my camera," Brian confesses. "One time when I was three hours from Beijing, officials confiscated my tapes, put me in a room all day, and then threw a big party for me at night. The strong grain alcohol I had to toast them with made the drive back rather harrowing."
While studying at Beijing University, Linden taught English at the Capital Medical Hospital - a task he greatly enjoyed and for which he was paid $3 an hour. After returning home and leaving CBS, he was offered a scholarship by the University of Illinois to continue his Asian studies.
"First at John Hopkins, then on to Stanford and then back to China to bone up on Chinese economics," Linden says. ÝFor the past 14 years, the well-traveled, erudite Linden has had the title "international education specialist," which involves helping companies and universities set up programs abroad.
While Linden's gallery is his main love, he also dedicates some time to working on the phone with entrepreneurs in need of his help. His educational clients are either already doing business or are planning to do business in China, Japan, Taiwan, and other parts of Asia. ÝProjects include the establishment of schools in certain areas, distance learning programs, and marketing strategies for US-based schools.
He is a popular figure. The Swedish firm Aspect thought so highly of his teaching and marketing abilities it hired him away from his Stanford graduate program to go around the world marketing U.S. education. ÝLinden also helped set up schools in Prague, Japan, Taiwan and China during the early 1990s. It was a position he enjoyed for almost five years, but the lure of Door County ultimately outweighed his love of the road.
"My father and mother had an antique shop in the Chicago suburbs and I was raised with auctions, flea markets, and shows. ÝOur gallery is a natural progression, combining our love for travel and finely crafted items. ÝJeanee and I could have moved anywhere in the world, but we chose to settle here," he says. "I hope this doesn't sound corny, but I've never met such wonderful, supportive people."
