Notes on the pickles one finds oneself in when, having completed a semester in Shanghai and having mastered at least eleven Chinese words, one decides to go to Tibet.
So there I was, trying to get out of Tibet.
First, I thought I would fly out, since the only other way is some crazy bus... But my judgement was unusually over-optimistic after my best night of sleep ever in Tibet. Altitude sickness is generally worse at night, resulting in long periods of blackness, breathlessness, and the unexpectedly psychedelic Tibetan design on the ceiling of my rented room doing unexpected things. Did I mention that you can't sleep? So I decide to buy a bus ticket.
Sleeper bus from Lhasa, Tibet to Golmud, in the Qinghai province of China, whose only claim to fame is that it is where you get the bus to Tibet. A sleeper bus, for anyone fortunate enough not to know, is kind of a misnomer to begin with, but I guess the idea is good. You have three rows of beds, two high, in the bus. I was on top, in the middle row, and at the front of the bus. The bed is wide enough for me to lie down on and hang my arms down both sides, not wide enough in plain words. And long enough for me lie flat in if I skipped my head and neck, which is to say, not long enough. What holds you on (since I was in the top bunk) is two little steel bar loops that stick up beside my knees. Which might work if my knees were flat on the bed, which they aren't because I have a head and a neck that take precedence over my knees. So hanging on is a bit like snowboarding blindfolded - all work and no fun.
Anyway, this bus was kind of amusing for a couple hours. I practiced my Chinese a little with the few Mandarin speakers on the bus. Then we stop at a fairly scenic spot for lunch. Lunch over, the bus doesn't start. So they play with it, spraying starter fluid in the engine which is right in front of my ‘bed.’ Crowds of curious and helpful people stand around watching them spray starter fluid (flammable) and smoking cigarettes (great idea!) So the bus smells not only like cigarettes, but like gasoline and starter fluid as well.
The bus still doesn't start, and we are towed by a little overgrown pickup truck and try to kick-start it. Yes really. That doesn't work either, so this guy tows the bus 20 miles or something to the next town where there is a garage. The pit crew tears a carburetor (I think it was a carburetor, but I'm not sure - it was too cold for me to tell) off an old truck sitting beside the road, and installs it in our bus. It still doesn't start. So somebody has to come out from Lhasa with more bus parts, which takes awhile.
In the absence of anything better to do, we all go to sleep in this bus that smells like various unpalatable highly flammable fluids and cigarette smoke. This was January. In Tibet. January in Tibet. I had on three pairs of socks, two pairs of pants, a shirt, a sweatshirt, a fleece, my North Face coat, and my hat, plus a nice big blanket that came with the bus. I was not too cold, except for my feet, which I kept waking up without. The scarf that I was breathing through had ice on it when I woke up and my water bottle was frozen. Eventually the bus was fixed, and at three AM after about twelve hours of no motion, we began to move again.
The worst part about the bus trip was not the altitude, although we were up to almost 17000 feet. It's not as if there was anything to do except lie there, so I could concentrate on maintaining the oxygen level in my brain. The worst part was the smoke. How ironic that in this barren and beautiful part of the world where they probably have some of the best air quality on earth, I was stuck for 36 hours in a bus full of people endlessly smoking cigarettes. When I opened the windows for some fresh air, things didn’t go so well.
"It's too cold!"
"Yes, but can I open it a little when it is smoky in here?"
"No, smoking is good, open windows are bad." (That, by the way, is a direct translation from some Chinese that I knew.)
"Actually, open windows are bad, and smoking is bad too..."
Well, I left it at that, and usually left the windows closed and tried to breathe through something to filter out the chunks of nicotine floating around.
Probably half the road, or at least half our time on the road, was in "construction," which just means there is no road. It would have been amusing in a jeep, but hanging on to my perch while four-wheeling was a bit of a challenge, never mind trying to sleep. Some of the scenery was truly amazing, but most of it was overshadowed by my green face and wire-brushed throat.
After 36 hours of that we get to Golmud. At about midnight I find myself in a motel with a nice flat bed, but no shower. It's Golmud, what did I expect? The next day at the train station, still feeling decidedly green inside and a bit like a burnt piece of popcorn, I buy a hard sleeper ticket to Lanzhou – not a place where I want to be, but where I have to go to get the train to Turpan. After waiting in the station a couple hours, I get on the train and discover why my ticket was even cheaper than usual. It is actually a hard seat ticket, not the hard sleeper ticket I wanted. Yes, I suppose the lady at the ticket counter told me that but she didn't do a very good job of making it clear. I am told I can probably upgrade my ticket after the train leaves Golmud, so against my better judgement, I stay on the train. After waiting by the conductor’s office for an hour or two, I give up and slither back to my hard seat.
Chinese trains are always interesting. There was one guy who, at random intervals, would shout "HELLO" in my direction, apparently just to make sure his one word of English worked. At first I reply ‘Hello’ then, 'hi, wa’s up’ and ‘hows it hangin’ etc etc. Eventually I respond by saying something like, “In 15 years half of China will be dying of lung cancer while jabbering incessantly on cell phones and still won’t be able to vote, and you want me to keep parroting ‘hello’ to you?!” That's when I realized that I needed something like a real bed, a hot meal, or just a couple seconds with nobody staring at me.
Seventeen hours, overnight, on that train. No sleep. The seats are actually hard, but the problem is really that they are not like seats; they are like the two unfriendly sides of a right triangle. I amused myself playing with the little kid next to me, who was fun although he did take up more room than the spot on his mother's lap allotted for him. Anyway, this morning I got here to Lanzhou, which I never heard of before yesterday. Had a shower, a lovely hot lunch of some nameless variety of tofu and fried stuff, and lots of good Chinese tea, and I get an actual night of sleep tonight before leaving on a REAL hard sleeper (I double checked this one) to Turpan.
That's all of six days from Lhasa to Turpan. Well, it was definitely cheap! And I have a new appreciation for wool socks, and the hot water they give you in restaurants here, and Tibetan mechanics, and little kids whose fascination with oranges is a refreshing break from my own foul humour, and Chinese farmers who DON'T spit all over the train floor (most of them do) and people who open the window now and then to let in a rare breathe of real (albeit frigid and oxygen-deprived) air, and the lady in the train station here who actually made sure that I understood her when I was buying tomorrow's ticket in spite of the 47 people pushing behind me, and the guy at the restaurant who, when I asked where an internet café was, got so happy that I could say “internet café” in Chinese that he just took off from his job and walked me like four blocks away to the cheapest one around... People are the same everywhere, they are all different!
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
Wednesday, January 08, 2003
Tibet Archives
Lhasa
Drepung Monestary
Jokhang Temple in Lhasa
Drepung Monestary
Jokhang Temple in Lhasa
Looking over Barkhor Square from the roof of Jokhang
The Potala
On the road from Lhasa to Golmud, Qinhai Province
The Potala
On the road from Lhasa to Golmud, Qinhai Province
Monday, January 06, 2003
Bonjour from Lhasa
I've been here for four days now and I still can't remember how to say hello in Tibetan - I guess my language learner is on vacation too! After flying here, I spent the first afternoon gasping on a chair explaining who I was to the tour place, then lying in bed wondering how long it takes to get used to this kind of altitude. After awhile I felt a bit better and went out to eat, talked to a very interesting Tibetan guy who was born and raised in Nepal, and just recently moved 'back' to Tibet due to the instability in Nepal - he spoke pretty good English (with a distinctly Indian accent) and Tibetan, but not Chinese.
My first day with the tour guide we went through the Norbulinka (I am not responsible for the spelling of that) where the summer palaces of the Dalai Lamas are - they built several of them. Also to the Sera Monastery which was interesting, we saw a big group of monks 'debating' in a way unique to Tibetan Buddhism, naturally, not understanding them kind of limited my appreciation for their logic, but fun anyway. The next day we (this day it was just the guide and I, so much for the "you must have a group tour to go to Tibet" policy...) went to the Potala Palace, which was amazing. The stupas there contain the remains of the past Dalai Lamas. These things were really huge - the biggest one, for the 5th Dalai Lama, had like 3000 something kg of gold and who knows how much other valuable stuff in/on it. And the city is full of beggars... Well, I guess as an outsider I hardly qualify to make any comment on that but there it is.
Also went through the Jokhang Temple in the middle of Lhasa, which is really the center of it all, and kind of the main focus of all the pilgrims that come here to walk around (circumbobulate – there has to be a perfect sentence somewhere to use that word in) holy sites and stand in front of them all day prostrating themselves over and over. I have a movie about the current Dalai Lama called 'Kundun' at home in a box - I saw a lot of stuff that was in (or actually, well reproduced) in the movie, like the cars that the 13th Dalai Lama got from India, a couple old radios, the main hall in Sera Monestary where the monks would gather, and lots of stuff in the Potala. Anyway, so that was that for the tour guide part of Tibet.
Today I met a friend and went to visit a family here, which was really interesting. They were Amdo, from northeastern Tibet and part of what is now Qinghai Province. We had yak butter tea and tsampa (barley flour, yak butter, sugar and something else I don't remember, maybe salt?) which was OK, just kind of dough... And they got all dressed up in their fancy outfits for New Year’s (Tibetan New Years is in March I think) and I got some pictures of me in funny clothes... amusing I am sure!
I don't know how long I'll be here. To do a trip to Shigatse/Gyantse on my own would be like $400 US which is ridiculous, I might still consider it if I meet some other people who want to do the same thing, but that's not likely. The whole altitude adjustment process is getting better, but still I feel like a fish out of water when I go up too many stairs. Yes, look at a picture of the Potala, I climbed all the way up that, and it took me like four hours to get rid of the headache and to catch my breathe after that!
It is really cold here (you notice a shocking difference going from the sun to the shade), but I guess I came well enough prepared for that because it has been the lack of oxygen, not the cold, that has bothered me most! Apparently they sell oxygen at my hotel. I haven't figured out if you get your own pressurized tank of it or how it comes, I've not gotten quite that desperate yet, but I thought it was amusing to see the sign 'stamps, hot & cold drinks, snack food and oxygen available at the front desk'. Maybe they have an oxygen plant somewhere in this town, I don't know!
Breathe for me!
My first day with the tour guide we went through the Norbulinka (I am not responsible for the spelling of that) where the summer palaces of the Dalai Lamas are - they built several of them. Also to the Sera Monastery which was interesting, we saw a big group of monks 'debating' in a way unique to Tibetan Buddhism, naturally, not understanding them kind of limited my appreciation for their logic, but fun anyway. The next day we (this day it was just the guide and I, so much for the "you must have a group tour to go to Tibet" policy...) went to the Potala Palace, which was amazing. The stupas there contain the remains of the past Dalai Lamas. These things were really huge - the biggest one, for the 5th Dalai Lama, had like 3000 something kg of gold and who knows how much other valuable stuff in/on it. And the city is full of beggars... Well, I guess as an outsider I hardly qualify to make any comment on that but there it is.
Also went through the Jokhang Temple in the middle of Lhasa, which is really the center of it all, and kind of the main focus of all the pilgrims that come here to walk around (circumbobulate – there has to be a perfect sentence somewhere to use that word in) holy sites and stand in front of them all day prostrating themselves over and over. I have a movie about the current Dalai Lama called 'Kundun' at home in a box - I saw a lot of stuff that was in (or actually, well reproduced) in the movie, like the cars that the 13th Dalai Lama got from India, a couple old radios, the main hall in Sera Monestary where the monks would gather, and lots of stuff in the Potala. Anyway, so that was that for the tour guide part of Tibet.
Today I met a friend and went to visit a family here, which was really interesting. They were Amdo, from northeastern Tibet and part of what is now Qinghai Province. We had yak butter tea and tsampa (barley flour, yak butter, sugar and something else I don't remember, maybe salt?) which was OK, just kind of dough... And they got all dressed up in their fancy outfits for New Year’s (Tibetan New Years is in March I think) and I got some pictures of me in funny clothes... amusing I am sure!
I don't know how long I'll be here. To do a trip to Shigatse/Gyantse on my own would be like $400 US which is ridiculous, I might still consider it if I meet some other people who want to do the same thing, but that's not likely. The whole altitude adjustment process is getting better, but still I feel like a fish out of water when I go up too many stairs. Yes, look at a picture of the Potala, I climbed all the way up that, and it took me like four hours to get rid of the headache and to catch my breathe after that!
It is really cold here (you notice a shocking difference going from the sun to the shade), but I guess I came well enough prepared for that because it has been the lack of oxygen, not the cold, that has bothered me most! Apparently they sell oxygen at my hotel. I haven't figured out if you get your own pressurized tank of it or how it comes, I've not gotten quite that desperate yet, but I thought it was amusing to see the sign 'stamps, hot & cold drinks, snack food and oxygen available at the front desk'. Maybe they have an oxygen plant somewhere in this town, I don't know!
Breathe for me!
Friday, January 03, 2003
Going West
Xian - Terracotta Warriors
and this funny horse...
Chengdu - home of daxiongmao (I don't know why I remember that in Chinese, and it's probably wrong, but there it is)
Also home of Sichuan Opera
and this funny horse...
Chengdu - home of daxiongmao (I don't know why I remember that in Chinese, and it's probably wrong, but there it is)
Also home of Sichuan Opera
Thursday, January 02, 2003
Chengdu Hotpot
I still have a bit of a cough left over from Shanghai, but it is slowly going away. Tonight, I am switching from the 'dorm' room in the motel ($3.20 - shower down the hall without heat, sometimes without hot water, always kind of dirty, and there is no showerhead, just a pipe - but I met some really cool people) to a single room across the hall with my own shower and heater, where I will stay really warm tonight and take a long hot shower and read a book (for $15 - after a long process of impressing the hotel staff with my Chinese language ability and calling some other actual (expensive) hotels near the airport, the price for this room came down from 220 RMB to 120 RMB… hmm I think there are no tourists here now).
They are actually building a rail line into Tibet, through Qinghai province which is to the northeast of Tibet, north of where I am now, but it won't be done ‘til I think 2007. You can take a bus out of Tibet that direction, but it is like two days or something of miserable roads and cold and I don't know if I'm up for that - maybe if I'm feeling really healthy I'll try it, but probably not. I'm not as cheap as I used to be!! The trains here are really not bad - I usually take 'hard sleeper' which is like six people to a 'room' (although they aren't really rooms, it is all open which is nicer) and they are hard but I can sleep fine and I get to practice my Chinese with people :)
Let me tell you the story of my day yesterday. I spent the morning sleeping late and talking to my roommates - a Japanese-American guy from LA who was, as a child, in an 'internment camp' in California during WWII, and is retired now, has travelled a lot - like the trans-Siberian railway, etc. Another roommate is a lady from New Zealand who is in charge of an adult literacy program there and has lots of contacts in China through her work and is here visiting those people. Fun people!
Then I go for a walk to find a post office, and get waylaid by a businessman (Chinese) who works for an American company promoting development in western China through contact between Chinese and American businesses, and he wanted me to proofread (to make sure it was "American English") a couple letters, one of which was an invitation to a Chinese Company to visit a chemical company in York PA of all places, so I talked to him awhile about that and about development in western China which was part of what I wrote my economics paper on in Shanghai.
Then, (the post office is closed by this time) I keep on walking, meet this other guy who, when I ask him where I can find a tea shop, offers to take me to one. So we walk awhile and go to this tiny little place on a back alley - not a nice foreigner sort of teashop but a real Chinese neighborhood sort of place, and we talked a lot (in Chinese and English - his English was much better than my Chinese) and the daughter of the shop's owner is a freshman in high school and came out for awhile to practice her English, that was fun. Then he invites me to dinner, and we go to another tiny little place that I probably normally wouldn't go to, but it was cool. Sichuan province, Chengdu in particular is known for its 'hotpot' which is when you have this burner in the middle of the table with a wok full of some seriously spicy oil stuff with peppers floating all over the place, and you buy little kebab sticks with bits of meat and veggies stuck on them, and you just stick them in the pot, then you get them out one at a time and roll them around in a kind of sesame oil/garlic/salt/pepper sauce, then when they have that on them you can drop them in another bowl of peppers and dry sesame (I think, or was it peanut maybe?) then you eat! It doesn't really take as long to eat as it does to explain it, but let's just say that it is really hot and lots of fun. So we eat there, and he starts telling me about his life here in Chengdu.
This is what he told me, and after having talked to him for like five hours straight, I think he was telling the truth. His grandfather lived here in this town and owned a factory or something. After the 1949 revolution he was killed because that is what they did with rich people, basically (not quite that simple of course, but still sort of true). His father was for obvious reasons not happy with the system, and eventually he got into trouble with the government and was put into prison (I think this was the 're-education through labor' thing) where he was for the first 12 years of this guys life - so he meets his father for the first time when he is like 13 years old. After things start opening up, this guy gets into college and becomes an English teacher, marries and has a son. Then 1989, Tiananmen Square protests happen. There were protests all over China then, not just in Beijing, and this guy offers to translate for some of the protesting students when they talked to foreign journalists about what they were protesting. And after the crackdown, he gets into trouble for this and is in jail for seven months or so, after that he can't get an official job because of his political record. He can't make any money and his wife divorces him, later on he remarries. So now he tutors English to students, but still apparently can't get an actual steady job. And his house was just foreclosed on by the bank because he couldn't keep up the 'rent' (you can't own property here so you pay a pretty cheap 'rent' based on a lease sort of thing that is usually like 50 yrs or something) so he and his wife and son now live in a room someplace, his wife is sick, his son is hungry.
And can I loan him some money?
Well, so I thought about that for the night and this morning, and decided that no, I couldn't, based, I guess, on some kind of idealistic idea that loaning people money does not actually help them in the long run. (Don't take that literally, Dad!) So I called him back and told him that. Idealism is so harsh sometimes! I gave him the 30 quai in my wallet last night, more from appreciation for all the fun and intelligent conversation than as a loan or gift or whatever. And he said he still wanted to meet me again when I come back to Chengdu after Tibet (assuming that I do come back to Chengdu). I believe the guy and wish there was something I could do to help him get a job or something, which I'm not so sure that money would do. Anyway, that was my day - sometimes being able to speak a little Chinese makes life really complicated!
All part of the invigorating and sometimes frustrating experience of being a "rich" American in a politically controlled and economically divided country I guess.
They are actually building a rail line into Tibet, through Qinghai province which is to the northeast of Tibet, north of where I am now, but it won't be done ‘til I think 2007. You can take a bus out of Tibet that direction, but it is like two days or something of miserable roads and cold and I don't know if I'm up for that - maybe if I'm feeling really healthy I'll try it, but probably not. I'm not as cheap as I used to be!! The trains here are really not bad - I usually take 'hard sleeper' which is like six people to a 'room' (although they aren't really rooms, it is all open which is nicer) and they are hard but I can sleep fine and I get to practice my Chinese with people :)
Let me tell you the story of my day yesterday. I spent the morning sleeping late and talking to my roommates - a Japanese-American guy from LA who was, as a child, in an 'internment camp' in California during WWII, and is retired now, has travelled a lot - like the trans-Siberian railway, etc. Another roommate is a lady from New Zealand who is in charge of an adult literacy program there and has lots of contacts in China through her work and is here visiting those people. Fun people!
Then I go for a walk to find a post office, and get waylaid by a businessman (Chinese) who works for an American company promoting development in western China through contact between Chinese and American businesses, and he wanted me to proofread (to make sure it was "American English") a couple letters, one of which was an invitation to a Chinese Company to visit a chemical company in York PA of all places, so I talked to him awhile about that and about development in western China which was part of what I wrote my economics paper on in Shanghai.
Then, (the post office is closed by this time) I keep on walking, meet this other guy who, when I ask him where I can find a tea shop, offers to take me to one. So we walk awhile and go to this tiny little place on a back alley - not a nice foreigner sort of teashop but a real Chinese neighborhood sort of place, and we talked a lot (in Chinese and English - his English was much better than my Chinese) and the daughter of the shop's owner is a freshman in high school and came out for awhile to practice her English, that was fun. Then he invites me to dinner, and we go to another tiny little place that I probably normally wouldn't go to, but it was cool. Sichuan province, Chengdu in particular is known for its 'hotpot' which is when you have this burner in the middle of the table with a wok full of some seriously spicy oil stuff with peppers floating all over the place, and you buy little kebab sticks with bits of meat and veggies stuck on them, and you just stick them in the pot, then you get them out one at a time and roll them around in a kind of sesame oil/garlic/salt/pepper sauce, then when they have that on them you can drop them in another bowl of peppers and dry sesame (I think, or was it peanut maybe?) then you eat! It doesn't really take as long to eat as it does to explain it, but let's just say that it is really hot and lots of fun. So we eat there, and he starts telling me about his life here in Chengdu.
This is what he told me, and after having talked to him for like five hours straight, I think he was telling the truth. His grandfather lived here in this town and owned a factory or something. After the 1949 revolution he was killed because that is what they did with rich people, basically (not quite that simple of course, but still sort of true). His father was for obvious reasons not happy with the system, and eventually he got into trouble with the government and was put into prison (I think this was the 're-education through labor' thing) where he was for the first 12 years of this guys life - so he meets his father for the first time when he is like 13 years old. After things start opening up, this guy gets into college and becomes an English teacher, marries and has a son. Then 1989, Tiananmen Square protests happen. There were protests all over China then, not just in Beijing, and this guy offers to translate for some of the protesting students when they talked to foreign journalists about what they were protesting. And after the crackdown, he gets into trouble for this and is in jail for seven months or so, after that he can't get an official job because of his political record. He can't make any money and his wife divorces him, later on he remarries. So now he tutors English to students, but still apparently can't get an actual steady job. And his house was just foreclosed on by the bank because he couldn't keep up the 'rent' (you can't own property here so you pay a pretty cheap 'rent' based on a lease sort of thing that is usually like 50 yrs or something) so he and his wife and son now live in a room someplace, his wife is sick, his son is hungry.
And can I loan him some money?
Well, so I thought about that for the night and this morning, and decided that no, I couldn't, based, I guess, on some kind of idealistic idea that loaning people money does not actually help them in the long run. (Don't take that literally, Dad!) So I called him back and told him that. Idealism is so harsh sometimes! I gave him the 30 quai in my wallet last night, more from appreciation for all the fun and intelligent conversation than as a loan or gift or whatever. And he said he still wanted to meet me again when I come back to Chengdu after Tibet (assuming that I do come back to Chengdu). I believe the guy and wish there was something I could do to help him get a job or something, which I'm not so sure that money would do. Anyway, that was my day - sometimes being able to speak a little Chinese makes life really complicated!
All part of the invigorating and sometimes frustrating experience of being a "rich" American in a politically controlled and economically divided country I guess.
Friday, December 20, 2002
Sunday, November 10, 2002
Tuesday, October 15, 2002
Thursday, October 10, 2002
Friday, August 10, 2001
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