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 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, is 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. Every year, the Lindens travel across
Asia and bring back over 100 tons of treasures. Photos from their
most recent trip can be found under this web site’s 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. “CBS 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. "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. For 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. Projects 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. Linden 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. Our
gallery is a natural progression, combining our love for travel
and finely crafted items. Jeanee 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."
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