Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2000 04:30:13 -0700 (PDT)
From: Josh D'Aluisio-Guerrieri | Block address
Subject: Chapter 7: Journey to the West (part I-III)
To: XXXXXX
[
chapter map]
Pre-chapter notes:
1. All mountain heights are provided as elevation in meters. Town elevations are also provided.
2. Because maps in the US are more likely to have Tibetan place names, for those I know they are provided in brackets after the Chinese name. Note that at some point in the past, many Tibetan names changed; in such a case, both are given.
3. Though the Chinese name for Tibet's capital is written Lasa, I will be using the Tibetan name, spelled Lhasa. (It's only right that I do this!)
4. Bracketed names of religious items are in Chinese only.
5. Unable to include some of the more detailed sketches and floorplans in my notes, I do my best to describe them with words.
6. Chapter 7 may seem a bit slow and detailed at first, but this is to give a better description of the environment and what it's like to travel there, as well as explain many things foreign to us which I will refer to often throughout the chapter.
7. Due to length, I have arbitrarily split the chapter in three.
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Chapter 7: Journey to the West, 0.06 Years in Tibet
Part I.
No, I'm not out to search for the scriptures like Xuan Zang, but do head west and religion certainly plays a major role everywhere I go. Culturally I've left China; politically I'm still very much in it. (Linguistically I'm straddling the border.) Those points will become obvious by the end of the chapter.
The official way to get to Tibet: There are a total of six ways into Tibet. By far the easiest is to fly from Chengdu or Beijing. Much more difficult and time-consuming are the 5 land routes. Though called "highways," this word is appropriate only because they are all high and dangerous, and not because they are fast or wide. In fact, all but one are one-lane dirt roads undeserving of the designation "highway."
Foreigners heading for Lhasa, Tibet's capital, are restricted to flying, the road from Nepal (SW of Tibet), or the road from Qinghai (NE of Tibet). All foreigners using these methods are charged exorbitant fees that don't fit into my budget. The other three roads come from the east, two from Sichuan and one from Yunnan, but again, foreigners are not allowed to take these routes. Why? Though not under martial law, Tibet is occupied by a good portion of China's military which is involved in modernizing the region, the first step being infrastructure. But Tibet is still extremely primitive, and the Chinese government doesn't want foreigners snooping around in places that either haven't changed for centuries (because they're afraid it will hurt their reputation as a modernizing country), or Chinese propaganda has not yet been able to reach (making the locals more likely to accept foreign ideas). Little do they realize what they are doing to Tibet (such as forcing new crops on the locals and relocating Han people from Sichuan and Gansu) is far worse for their reputation than what can be found out there. But the government fears repeats of an incident years ago when a foreign doctor visited remote parts of Tibet and published the pictures he took. (Note that many other less-developed parts of China are also off-limits to foreigners!)
How I got into Tibet: Read the chapter and you'll know.
Preparation. I'm not going to travel along the roof of the world without first buying a few necessities. I had been preparing since Zhongdian, buying things appropriate for high elevations and low temperatures since even if I didn't make it to Tibet, I was going to head up into western Sichuan which isn't any different.
In order to keep warm and fit in a bit more with the locals, I bought a PLA (People's Liberation Army, the euphemization that is the name for China's military) overcoat and hat. Meng Fanwu (from Chapter 6) joked that I should tell anyone who tried to stop me that I was a foreign advisor to the PLA. That probably wouldn't work considering that no matter how many towns I had searched, none had army shoes my size, so I ended up wearing my trusty sandals to and through Tibet. I did manage to find some thin socks that would pull onto my feet, but within days my toes were sticking out the ends (bringing me yet one step closer to the appearance of a local).
My standard food provisions were a bag of powdered milk and army rationed compressed blocks of sugar, fat, and grain, perfect for a winter expedition, convenient to carry, and found all across Tibet almost as a staple (but you get really sick of eating them after a while). I also carried two bottles of water in my pockets and one by hand, but the hand-held one didn't stay with me for long, because I'd prefer to have my hand in my pocket rather than gripping a snow-covered frozen bottle of water!
Before arriving in Tibet, I was advised by several people to purchase a blade with which to defend myself from the occasional unhappy local or, more likely to encounter, the wolves that roam the wilds of the Tibetan plateau and dogs that protect homes. To this effect, I searched all of Zhongdian before finding the only store that sold relatively sharp blades (officially they aren't allowed to sell sharp ones in town). It was a dimly lit store, but I could see what I was buying: a short sword. Tibet isn't like the rest of China I came from, and you don't feel strange at all carrying a sword there because everyone else has one, too. But since I'm a foreigner I still wouldn't want the police in any town I passed through to see me with it, so instead of attaching it to a belt like most people, I rigged a strap for it to hang below my shoulder under my overcoat.
I also purchased an umbrella to keep off the snow, and Meng Fanwu suggested it could double as an alternative to pulling out my sword if in town, where you don't want to get a Tibetan mad by killing his dog!
All set for Tibet.
Day 1: Leaving Deqin [Deqen].
By the morning of April 10th the weather in Deqin had softened to occasional light flurries of snow. Waving goodbye to Meng Fanwu (who was originally going to Tibet but decided to turn around and spend some time in Xishuangbanna first) I walked out of Deqin, the last town in Yunnan. Thus began the first day of many during which I rarely knew where I'd be come nightfall.
At the edge of town I met a Tibetan who was walking home after making a pilgrimage to visit the Lamas of Deqin. (Note: A Lama is a higher ranking monk of Buddhist Lamaism, like the Dalai Lama.) His home is just across the Tibetan border a little more than 100 km up the road. We began walking together.
Soon after a little blue truck came bouncing by and allowed us to hop in its snow-filled bed for a free 10 km uphill ride to Feilai Temple. Getting off at the temple, we began to walk again, but my Tibetan partner-for-the-day couldn't walk past the temple without first doing a little praying and then spinning all the prayer wheels embedded in the outer wall. (Prayer wheels [Zhuanjingtong]: gold-colored cylinders set vertically on a shaft in either a wall or a frame. Tibetans walk by and spin them, usually by way of wooden bars protruding from the base, but sometimes by the "wheel" itself. Each "wheel" is set up by a richer family for a deceased family member, the inside containing long scrolls of Buddhist scripture [zhouyu]. The more people who spin them, the better the deceased person's next life will be. The 8th and 15th of the month are especially good days when more people than usual will turn out to spin the wheels.) As my travel partner made peoples' next lives better, I noticed a wooden table-platform on which were placed fir tree branches that would later be burned for some religious reason. (I wanted to ask, but the Tibetan could only communicate in simple Chinese.)
Within the temple grounds are several 10 to 15-ft tall stupas which I would see all across eastern Tibet. They contain religious artifacts, such as hats and clothes, left behind by previous Lamas. Tibetans walk circles around these white structures, but when I ask them why, I'm told "it's just a habit." (Perhaps I'm asking the wrong people...)
Right on time, another small, blue truck came by. Into the back we hopped with several other passengers. That ride was my first glimpse into the reason why roads in eastern Tibet are considered among the most dangerous in the world: landslides. The mountains there consist mostly of shales and other stratified rocks which fall apart easily, especially after they've been weakened by the blasting of a road. Every time it rains or snows there are bound to be at least mini-landslides. In many places the rock-strewn "highway" was either half-missing (fell away) or half-buried under piles of rock. A few times we even came up against boulders so huge they'd flatten our truck had we driven by at the wrong time. I was suddenly reminded of the jeep I saw that morning in Deqin which had its front windshield smashed and hood crushed by an untimely run in with some falling rocks...
Our little truck came up to a place where the rocks formed a giant pile blocking the path. We all got off the back and the driver raced right over the pile at a dangerous angle, but landed safely on the other side. Everybody ran after him, and not to save time either; they were afraid of falling rocks. I ran after them and jumped back onto the truck.
All too often I could look over the bed of the truck to see our tire inches from the cliffside, the drop almost 1000 ft straight down... Not a good feeling, but I justified rides like this by telling myself that the driver didn't want to die either, and would most likely drive accordingly. Most likely.
We eventually drove up to a pile of rocks the truck was NOT going to jump (since it was much larger than the truck itself). At this point my Tibetan partner and I climbed over the barrier and walked. We walked to a little village where he bought me instant noodles for lunch after which we continued walking, this time with two more guys headed our way. Every Tibetan I saw from there out was carrying a knife and/or a home-made hunting rifle. It's a good thing the Tibetans are a friendly people...
As for Tibetans, I should probably mention a few points about their appearance before continuing. Generally the first thing one notices is they are dirty, especially the kids, who don't bother to do anything about the dry snot stuck under their nose. I don't blame them, as taking showers in a land that's covered in snow half the year certainly wouldn't be fun. The men can be pretty big, and all carry Tibetan daggers or swords (black handles with silver sheath) in their belts. They wear lots of [generally darker colored] clothes which, when it gets hot, they take off and tie around their waist in rediculously large bundles. Men's hair is as a rule unruly, a black mass which does whatever it wants to. Both men and women often have a length of red or black tassles wrapped once around their head or braided into their hair.
Now that you sort of know what I mean when I say "Tibetan," back to the story... We walked to a place where some workers were fixing up the road and waited for them to finish before getting on the back of their big work truck with them. That was a unique ride because every time we met up with some obstacle in the road, the workers would jump off and take care of it.
Late afternoon saw the four of us arriving in Foshan, a village not much more than half way to the border. We expected to stay there for the night, but soon discovered there was a "vehicle" willing to take passengers further up the road. I arrived at the scene where the hunk of metal was being repaired, and the driver immediately smiled and asked me: "Isn't my car beautiful?" It didn't look like it was going anywhere, but they managed to get it started and by evening we were off. Not a few minutes later the [ENTIRE] muffler fell off. It was unceremoniously thrown in the back with us, and we kept going despite the now-unmuffled, loud popping noise. It was a lot like a roller coaster ride. The similarities should be obvious, but the differences...: there was a muffler bouncing around my feet and the 2 guys from the village where we ate lunch were laughing, smoking, and drinking rice wine from Sprite bottles!
Towering above us as we folled the river were the purple-red-blue-green mountains, almost completely barren of vegetation except when passing villages where there are a few trees and some green on the slope. The multi-colored rocks blanketing the landscape contribute to its other-worldly appearance.
We arrived at the driver's destination, a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, and the four of us started walking again. By then it was getting dark. Within a few kilometers we arrived at the home of my original Tibetan partner, who never imagined he would arrive within one day. He crossed a bridge over the river to his village in Tibet, and the three of us remaining kept walking into the night on the Yunnan side.
Another 4 kilometers brought us to the last tiny village in Yunnan where the other two guys lived, one of whom owns the village's small inn where I stayed for the night. The small area at that tip of Yunnan is called Bamei. It is at 2200m, down from Deqin's 3000m and the lowest point I would be at for a while, as all of [where I I went in] Tibet is higher than that.
Before sleeping however, my host took me to his house for dinner after stopping by the local store to refil his Sprite bottle with wine. I had a bit of trouble communicating with him because he doesn't really speak or understand much Chinese, and instead preferred to tell me things in Tibetan, which did me no good. Getting information out of him was even harder because he can't write Chinese either, and could only read a little. But I did manage to learn some things during my stay.
His house contains the village TV; a good portion of the villagers were crammed into his house's main room watching it when we arrived. He gave a piece of candy to each of the kids present. More and more people kept coming in to watch TV, all of whom were first greeted by a little girl who had to make sure the newcomers knew that there was a foreigner sitting at the table in the corner.
I noticed that the main room we were in was identical in design to the house I visited near Deqin! All-wood interior with most surfaces colorfully painted with designs, plants, or animals. The ~20ft square room serves as a kitchen, living and dining room, and even has a shrine-like area where the religious implements are kept. The table will either have a coil-type hot plate or a small pot for burning wood to keep the Tibetan tea warm. (I'll describe the tea later.)
I then discovered I'd happened upon ANOTHER Naxi-turned-Tibetan family!
Layout of a Naxi-turned-Eastern Tibetan Family Room:
(I can't say Tibetan, because according to them,
they aren't.)
|------------------------------------------|
| cabinets-> | religious area |
| | /-----------| |-------------------|
| V | | | |TV| |
| | |stove| \--/ W
| | | | W <--w
| | |stove| W i
|----| |-----| | n
| |BBBB-bench-BBBB| d
| \BBBBBBBBBBBBBBB| o
| /---------------W w
| | table W <--s
| \---------------W
| /BBBBBBBBBBBBBBB|
|-door-|-------------------|BBBB-bench-BBBB|
Dimensions: approx. 25ft x 20ft
Note: The TV was only in Bamei.
I was the only one who ate dinner, as my host said drinking plenty of wine was a good enough substitute. (A lot of guys I meet in China tell me that.) Being in the barren mountains, they don't eat much in the way of vegetables, a fact reflected in my dinner of eggs and rice meal. The rice meal was pressed into a circle five inches in diameter and one inch thick.
Day 2: Enter Tibet.
The next morning I was up before 8:00, met by a bright, but cloudy sky. More eggs for breakfast, but this time accompanied by baba bread. I watched my host's wife wife roll the dough into a 1-cm thick, 6-in diamater pancake, then cover it up in a big wok for a short cook. Fresh and tasty.
After serving me, he and his wife sat down to eat: rice meal baba, Tibetan tea, pig fat (which they offered me, but I wasn't in the mood), and a green plant that was boiled with the pig fat. The green plant grows naturally on the mountains there, and his wife went out to get one for me; it looks like a dirty bush one would never think to eat, but it didn't taste all that bad. According to my host, it's good for your throat.
After breakfast I followed the rushing Lancang [Mekong] River towards Tibet. The lack of vegetation was emphasized by the emaciated yaks I passed while leaving the village. They were chewing on sticks. On a religious note, also just outside the village is a lone wooden pole rising a few feet out of a base of stacked stones about 2-ft square and 3-ft high. Against the pole lean small broken slabs of shale on which are written the Six True Words [LiuZiZhenYan] mantra "OM MANI PADME HUM" in Tibetan, which is a phrase said to express sympathy for the poor people of the world. These structures I would see all across eastern Tibet, sometimes in rows or groups. (They gradually disappear as one travels to central Tibet.)
At 10:32 AM, 4/11/00, I left Yunnan.
Just inside Tibet is the town of Yanjing, which is best described as an overgrown Tibetan village. Though the main road is occupied by a few stores and restaurants whose owners are Sichuanese in origin (as a part of the government relocation program), off the main road on the hills and mountains are countless Tibetan houses: white, square-ish constructions with decorated, square windows.
I had arrived at noon, and ate an expensive, small lunch at one of the Sichuanese restaurants before heading NNW for Mangkang ~113 km away.
I walked for almost 6 hours, the entire way uphill, pulling away from the Lancang River as I rose from Yanjing at 2200m+ towards Mangkang's 4100m. For a few minutes during that afternoon I rode on the back of a giant truck for the first time, but was happy to get back on my own two feet again because though the truck barely fit on the road, with speed racer at the wheel we were flying up the slope, skimming the edge of the cliff despite the thousand-foot drop below. I then understood why the outside of the cabins of all those big, blue trucks in Tibet are laden with good luck charms, symbols, characters, signs, etc...: they sure need 'em.
The afternoon's walk was lonely, the villages far below by the riverside. I only passed one guy and his fire by a mountain stream. Later the sky became partially clear and for the first time I was able to look up and see what I had been walking past those two days: snow-capped mountain peaks as far as one could see. A picture doesn't come close to describing the experience; one needs the full 3-D effect (as well as the feeling of accomplishment in having walked up there).
Evening brought a jeep which picked me up for the ride through the snow to Mangkang. On our way up, vegetation switched from barren to evergreens; along with the appearance of plant life was the occasional mountain village. At one cottage the driver bought a rabbit for dinner.
Several mountain ridges later, we arrived on a massive plateau where everything is red. The barren earth there is red, and so is everything else because it is either made of earth (such as walls and houses), or because it has been stained by flying red dust. At that elevation the winds are naturally high, which made the snowstorm that blew in even worse. Almost nothing was visible outside the jeep window, but I could tell that the area was home to a higher concentration of people than where I'd previously been since entering Tibet.
Shortly before dark we pulled into head town of Tibet's easternmost county, Mangkang [Markam/Markham]. As Mangkang is where the southern Sichuan-Tibet "highway" meets the "highway" from Yunnan, it is generally considered one of the most strict areas in terms of police cracking down on foreigners sneaking into Tibet. For this reason I was planning on getting off the jeep a few kilometers before town and either hiking around it or heading through it after dark. The unexpected snowstorm froze that plan, and I decided to get off in town, but I still couldn't shake from my mind the stories I'd heard when investigating how to best sneak in to Tibet. (As I travelled through NW Yunnan I looked for foreigners who'd tried it before as well as asked any local I figured I could trust, and most with stories to tell spoke of angry police, large fines, and a kick out of the region.) We stopped almost directly in front of the police station, great.
I got out of the jeep and headed up the street for Mangkang's primary hotel, holding my umbrella down over my head as I walked on the side of the street opposite the police station. I ignored the policeman who called out to me with a "hey," and kept walking, counting on the fact that I don't look all that much like a foreigner due to my clothes and because I don't carry the huge bag the police associate with foreigners. He didn't follow me after all, and the people at the hotel didn't seem to care who I was [so long as I payed for a room], registering me as a Chinese. Safe.
Basically, the only people in Tibet who care if there are foreigners sneaking in are a small portion of the police force: those whose job it is to care. The Chinese migrants don't care, the army doesn't care, off-duty police with something better to do don't care, and the Tibetans couldn't be happier, because they hate the Chinese government and love to see people from other countries in Tibet (as they know the general stance of the West on China's actions in Tibet).
Day 3: Leaving Mangkang.
Although Mangkang is an interesting, Tibetan town, I wasn't about to risk a run in with the police and was out the next morning. (In fact, Mangkang with its cross street or two is the largest Tibetan town I would see on my journey west in terms of primarily Tibetan architecture and people, those further west either smaller or mostly of Chinese construction.)
It was overcast and puddles in the street were frozen, but at least it wasn't snowing. I finished a bowl of noodles and went out to join the surge of kids going to school. Their school is close to the edge of town I was headed for, so they tagged along with me. One of the little freaks stole my watch, a rather easy task considering the strap was broken and it often fell off by itself. It was old and the alarm didn't work, but it still kept good time! I didn't want to spend half the day hanging around in a town I wasn't supposed to be in just to get my old watch back, and walked out of Mangkang with one less item in my posession. Since then I wake up, tell time, and go to bed all with the sun, but I rarely know what day of the week or month it is anymore.
Outside Mangkang, everything was blanketed with snow except the road, which was a red, muddy mess. Up, up, up to the high point of the day, Lawu Mountain at 4338m, from where I saw a phenomenon I'd never heard of before: I looked up towards the sun around which was a giant rainbow ring! I thought it had something to do with the elevation, but even at higher points on my travels after that I never saw it again...
That strange sun did a good job of melting all the snow and ice on the road, and I was usually carrying a good several pounds of it on each of my sandaled feet. The good thing about sandals though is they don't stay wet long, and the mud was taken care of during my several snow treks on the way down from Lawu Mtn. You see, going west from Mangkang is much different from crossing the border into Tibet because there is no river to follow, so the road makes a rediculous number of switchbacks. But there's no problem with climbing straight up and down on foot! Going up was never any fun, but since my feet are like skiis, sliding down a mountainside was rather fast and efficient, and I almost didn't miss Spring skiing with my family!
I eventually skied my way down to a greenish-brown valley, arriving among the Tibetan villages with clean sandals. An afternoon of walking brought me to a village where all the women were sitting around talking while all the men were singing as they built a house. I went over to check out the construction site: there was a wooden frame set up into which they would pack dirt using long, square-ended poles in order to make the rammed earth walls of the house-to-be. The man who seemed to be in charge of the project proudly took a picture of it for me with my camera, after which I returned to the road.
Just as a light snowstorm was blowing over a mountain ridge, I came to a T-intersection with another valley through the middle of which a river had cut a gorge. There I was picked up by a huge, blue truck carrying rice from Chengdu (in Sichuan) to Zuogong, the next town up the road (158 km from Mangkang). It wasn't far, just past the 100-truck PLA convoy (for which we pulled off the road so they could pass), before we stopped for the evening at a truck stop. The problem: the highest point on the southern Chengdu-Lhasa highway was just ahead: Dongda Mountain at something over 5000m. Drivers were saying that the especially narrow, dangerous road was blocked by several trucks stuck in the snow. I was told that quite often drivers get stuck up there in the middle of nowhere for days due to snowstorms, landslides, breakdowns, etc., and we would therefore have to bring food just in case.
The driver, his friend and I ate dinner at a little restaurant as a donkey outside the door ate a cardboard box. I then spent some time talking with the other drivers, all of them Tibetan, and all of them waiting until the right time to head over the pass.
It's a typical truck stop right next to a PLA outpost just before the road pulls up from the river and heads over the mountains. The parked freight trucks painted their signatory blue (only sometimes light green); bumpers displaying how many tens of thousands of kilometers they've "safely driven;" thorns tied all over the back to keep people off and out. The truck stop's place to stay is the usual long row of concrete rooms painted white on the outside. Nearby are a few small restuarants and shops. (Note about "shops:" The most common place to buy things out in Tibet is a booth where you stand outside, and the person selling is inside with the goods lining shelves on the wall behind them. Walk-in stores are found only in towns.)
That night after writing my notes by candlelight, I was told by a drunk truck driver (not mine) there is a superstition according to which you should sleep with your head facing the road. To keep him happy I turned my bedding around and did just that, but he didn't!
Part II. (Chapter 7: Journey to the West, 0.06 Years in Tibet)
Day 4: To and Through Zuogong [Zogong].
The next morning at some time before 5:00 AM, the driver rushed in yelling, "the road is open! Let's go, let's go!" Apparently it was time to go. All of the other trucks were already gone, having left even earlier.
Along the road up to Dongda Mtn., the rocks were different: more solid; not the brittle shale I encountered while coming from Yunnan. This means the possibility of rockslides is much reduced, but also means that the road is narrower because it doesn't need to be wide, as it's less likely to fall apart (and is harder to widen anyway)! But leaving as early as we did, we only rarely crossed paths with other drivers, and more often passed trucks containing sleeping drivers who had found places to pull off the road.
We spent the early morning hours driving up and up into the snowy mountains as the sun rose over the peaks, and as the driver kept hitting his friend to keep him awake. Topping 5000 meters, there's definitely nothing growing; just snow, lots and lots of snow. We stopped to put chains on the tires before continuing up the ice-bound road to Dongda Mtn., which isn't really much of a mountain, but more an area of small mountains, all elevated above 5000m on a giant plateau. The landscape up there looks more like a moonscape, only blinding white, and is made even more eerie by the long-abandoned ruins of a truck stop. Someone must have once thought drivers would want to sleep at over 5000 meters in the cold...
Though no one would want to sleep there, some people didn't mind walking there; we passed a group of Tibetans taking some horses over the pass. From Dongda it was all downhill to Zuogong. Once we got back down to a reasonable elevation where there were villages (under 5000m), at each of them the driver tried to sell some of the rice he was transporting. He's responsible for selling the rice before he can go home to Mangkang, but only managed to sell a bag or two before we made it to Zuogong at high noon, 3000m+.
Zuogong isn't much of a town: a barely 1-km long street of shops and houses, it exists because of the nearby military outpost. After Zuogong, the road follows the Weiqu River [local name: Yuqu River] northwest until Tiantuo, where I was headed next.
It's a good thing the weather was nice, as the constant 20 mph wind and 50 mph gusts that rip through the desert-like valley would be brutal if carrying precipitation. Instead there were massive clouds of dust flying everywhere; I often had to turn my back and wait for them to blow by. The effect of this weather pattern on local development is obvious, with the valley floor used for grazing only, and the villages all built into tiny side-valleys out of the way of fierce winds.
The afternoon's walk brought me past goats fighting for roots in the ground, another PLA convoy (this one smaller with only 30+ trucks), and a significant number of construction projects. Road improvement is high on the list in eastern Tibet, and I frequently passed groups of locals working on or nearby the road at the direction of a Chinese soldier. Because the area is much less prone to landslides, most of the road from Zuogong to Tiantuo is paved. Dam construction was also a common sight, as Tibet's mountainous terrain suits hydroelectric power. For that reason, rushing streams that pass through villages are often lined with small wooden structures housing hydroelectric generators.
Around 5:00 PM that day I hopped on a tractor-pulled trailer. It was just like a hay ride when you were a kid (or is that only if you're from Texas?), except there was no hay, the trailer instead full of dry beef, grain, fruit, farm equipment, and monks. Off we putted down the road... On the non-paved sections of road it could get quite bumpy, and at one point there was a loud "chink" sound, and a part bounced out from under the trailer. It was thrown in the back and we putted along all the same.
The monks in the back who could speak very limited Chinese asked if I had a picture of the Dalai Lama. I said no, after which they hid in their robes from the cold wind we were riding into.
The tractor made several stops to unload goods at various villages along the way, the driver once accepting snuff from a friend. At one stop, a village where most of the grain was unloaded, everyone had to come out and see me. The only thing that could distract their attention was the approach of another tractor, which would be met by all the kids in the village who ran over to see if they could latch on and stop it from moving. (I once saw Tibetan road-workers do that near Yanjing.)
We eventually made it to Wuya, the driver's destination. As we approached the village, the monks pointed out the monastery on a hill above it and told me how they had built it not too many years before. I asked around in Wuya if there was a place to stay. It didn't seem like there was one, but before I left a kid monk named Gonggalangjia offered to let me live with him up in the monastery! He was a great help since, unlike most everyone else I met in Wuya, he could speak Chinese. (Gonggalangjia became a monk because he didn't like writing and doing schoolwork, but at least he went to school for a short time.)
As it grew dark we climbed the steep hill and went to his room in one of the houses outside the main monastery building. The monk houses have two floors, the first of which is mostly empty except for a small storage area and all the trash dropped from the second floor into the courtyard below. The second floor is reached by walking up a Tibetan ladder, a log with notches cut into it. Aside from 3-4 small rooms, the second floor also contains the "toilet," a human-sized box hanging off the outside of the house and over the cliff below.
We entered a room dimly lit by a light bulb and sat down on the beds lining the walls and surrounding a wood stove. The room is adorned with Buddhist paintings and pictures of the Dalai Lama.
Gonggalangjia's Room:
---------------------------|
door | shelves | |
- |---------| |
|wash <-------here the barley,
|basin | rice, and meat
| /---\ | are stored in sacks
|-----| |wood |-----|
| b | stove | b |
| e | \---/ | e |
| d | | d |
|-----| | |
| b |---------|----------|
| e | bed | bed |
| d | | |
|--------------------------|
Dimensions: approx. 15ft x 10ft
Monks from the house's few other rooms came in to see the new guest and talk a bit. It turned out that the two monks on the trailer with me were two of Gonggalangjia's five roommates. While talking we drank Tibetan tea, the name for which is suyou tea; the monks call it sulian tea. It's made from yak butter, a yellow substance like cheese, which is placed in a tall wooden cylinder with boiling water and then mixed by plunging with a wooden pole. I've tasted suyou tea of varying strengths, and the stuff we drank was a bit lighter than usual, but still retained the tea's strangely sweet and bitter taste.
Dinner was a very unique experience: Take a wooden bowl and fill it about 3/4 full with ground barley [qingke]. Then add suyou tea. Mix it up with your hands and make a mess, adding more tea as necessary until the barley powder forms a dark brown, gooey blob in the bowl. Eat it (with your hands) while drinking more tea. Supply permitting, pass around a dried cow rib cage and a sword so everyone can cut a few pieces of beef for themselves. That was dinner with the monks.
As per their daily regimen, we went to bed before 10 PM. Lying on a blanket on the floor, I fell asleep to the peaceful sound of monks in neighboring rooms chanting scriptures.
Day 5: Wuya village/Zuogong Monastery.
I awoke the next morning to the same tune, monks chanting away, and decided that staying an extra day would be interesting and give me some time to rest from four days of non-stop travel. At 8:00 AM, everyone donned their "over-robes" (they sleep in their "under-robes") and headed for the main building to the slow beat of a drum. Every day the monks read scriptures from 8:15 AM to 1:15 PM.
Before they went to do their reading, however, they took me to the "monastery headquarters," a room attached to the main building. In that there are low beds lining the walls, it's basically a larger version of the room I slept in; but there is a collection of giant pots as well. Cauldrons may be the more appropriate word. Several of them, large and small, rest on the huge wood stove in the center of the room, belching steam that half-conceals the big monk who stands over them with his ladel. Other ladels and smaller pots hang from cords attached to the ceiling. The walls of the room are covered with religious implements and scriptures. Two monks mix dough in a large tub as two others roll it out and dice it. Yet two more monks sit next to me copying scriptures. Their black cat walks in crying for food. Definitely a midieval feel about it...
Breakfast was more brown bowl barley, but this time I got a monk to mash it for me, as my mashing technique isn't quite up to standard. Everyone else who wouldn't be participating in the chanting that morning, mostly senior monks, ate barley and drank tea. I was a bit disturbed when one of them offered me snuff.
Done eating, I climbed half way up a mountain overlooking the village where I wrote my notes as two ladies from the village watched me from below. Curiosity got the best of them and they climbed up to see what I was doing. They asked if I wanted barley or tea. I didn't. They asked if I had a picture of the Dalai Lama. I didn't. (By the way, it's not that they don't have pictures of the Dalai Lama; they collect them.) They left after talking about me for a while in Tibetan.
I went back to the monastery by noon and hung around the entrance to the main hall looking at all the red shoes with upturned toes that the monks had taken off before going in. After chasing away the numerous dogs that were barking at me, a monk told me I could go in as long as I took my hat off first. I walked under the large black banners hanging over the top of the stairs and passed through the cloth-covered doorway to the hall.
I had assumed I couldn't go in, but not only are all the monks there friendly and accommodating, they also didn't seem to be taking the whole chanting scriptures thing very seriously anyway. Maybe I showed up during a "less official" session. When it was time to chant, signalled by the chant leader using a bell and/or cymbals, only a random portion of the monks would join in. Non-chanting activities included things like picking one's nose or teeth, talking with a friend for a split second (extended conversations are probably prohibited), and looking/smiling at me. I suppose I was a bit of a distraction; even the chant leader would smile as I walked past.
When I entered, a monk was going up and down the rows of monks handing out a 10 RMB bill to each of them. After that, some of the lesser monks (such as Gonggalangjia) went to bring buckets of suyou tea from the kitchen/HQ. Each monk had brought his bowl to drink from. Close to ending time, a horn was blown and everyone donned their tassled, yellow hats for a short while and continued to chant.
Zuogong Monastery, Main Hall:
|----------------|--main--|----------------|
| \--altar-/ |
| |
| MM MM MM DE MM MM |
| MM MM MM SK MM MM |
5 |--| CO CO CL CO CO CO |--| |
0 |GG| MM MM CL MM MM MM |GG| |
f |GG| MM MM MM MM |GG| |
t |--| MM MM MM MM |--| |
| CO CO CO CO CO CO |
| MM MM MM MM |
| MM MM MM MM |
| DD |
| DESK DD DD DD|
-60ft->----------|clothdoor|----------------
1 |
0 shoe shoe |
f removal removal |
t area area |
------------| CCCCCCC CCCCCCC |------------
| | | | | | | | | |
\-----------| | | | | | | |-----------/
| | | \------/ | | |
| | \----------/ | |
| \--------------/ |
\------------------/
Key:
MM Monks sitting back to back. (numbers inaccurate)
GG Table of tiny golden goblets containing burning
holy water
CO Column supporting the roof. Painted red.
DD Large vertical drums.
CL Chant Leader's desk.
CC Black cloth hanging above the main entrance.
Notes:
1. Main altar consists of paintings of Buddha and
pictures of Dalai Lama.
2. Wooden surfaces are painted red.
3. Holy Water: Instead of incense, Tibetans usually
burn holy water. Large golden cups of it can
usually be found in Tibetan houses in sets of 7,
but in monasteries the holy water is burnt in
small goblets numbering in the thousands. The
very first thing a Tibetan should do when waking
up in the morning is to light the holy water. The
fire is extinguished as soon as the sun goes down.
At 1:15 the monks jumped up and raced out of the hall to put on their shoes before lining up on the stairs for a picture. The rest of the afternoon was spent reading scriptures or fooling around. (I never thought I'd see a monk sway a ladder while another monk was climbing up it.)
That evening two monks who could speak Chinese returned from a trip to Zuogong [town], and with them the conversation turned to all sorts of illegal topics. They told me how much they hate the Chinese government, and one of them talked of his plan to sneak out of the country to India where he has some relatives. Periods of silence during the conversation allowed me to hear the monks chanting new words like: Communist Party, Nationalist Party, Taiwan, America, ... (From this one can see why the Chinese don't want foreigners roaming eastern Tibet!)
The nightly inspection by senior monks with flashlights was followed by dinner. (They check all the rooms to make sure nobody went out after dark to watch TV.) Potatoes fried in tea with rice. A change from the barley, but still all staple foods. Such is their diet.
Day 6: 80 km Northwest.
The next morning while getting up, some monks were chanting, others were repeating my Chinese name. Though asked to stay another day I still had a long way ahead of me, and after a breakfast of rice and barley in the kitchen/HQ I started walking, following the road northwest.
By early afternoon I had arrived at Tiantuo [Temtog], a large Tibetan village next to Tuka Monastery. The monks offered me barley as I walked by, but I wasn't hungry and took their picture for them before heading on my way. At Tiantuo there was a bar lowered across the road at what I thought was another lumber checkpoint, used to prevent the illegal chopping of wood in many parts of China. Little did I think to look at the barren mountains around me to realize otherwise. It turned out that there was a lone policeman working there, and he called out to me after I had already walked around his barrier. He looked at my old passport, didn't understand a bit of it, and handed it back. (I always "accidentally" hand unimportant people my old passport first.) I told him about how my [non-existent] friends at the county police station said I could head west as long as ... (I made up a few fake conditions.) All he could really do was tell me to walk back anyway, in which case I would just hike around the town. But he didn't, and sent me on my way.
I spent the rest of the day walking, amusing myself on the way by immitating sheep "ba-ah"s which seriously confuses them. Some don't know whether to follow me or the group, and others come up and sniff me.
By dark I was in the middle of nowhere when a lone truck driver (surprising, because most drive with at least one friend) from Henan Province picked me up for the ride to the next town on the map, Bangda [Bamda]. He was transporting telephone poles. We did a lot of talking, during which he mentioned he's only 23, and bought the truck years ago so he could get away from his parents! We arrived in Bangda after dark.
From a size point of view, Bangda doesn't deserve to be on any map, as the entire place consists of a small military outpost, police station, a handful of restaurants and shops, and an inn. You can walk from one end to the other in under a minute. It's important transportation-wise though: from Bangda there is a road which connects the northern and southern Sichuan-Tibet highways, and along that road a few kilometers north in a wide valley surrounded by low mountains is Tibet's second airport.
Day 7.
I think the water I drank the day before wasn't boiled well enough, as for most of Day 7 my stomach didn't feel right. But after getting up late and eating my very small meal for a very high price, it was time to leave Bangda anyway.
From Bangda to Basu (the next town) the terrain forces the road to go almost directly south, then cut west shortly before crossing the Nu River about halfway. Walking would take about two days according to the locals, unless you climbed over the mountains to the southwest, in which case it would only take one. My stomach wasn't up to the challenge, and I instead followed the road (but ended up climbing anyway because the switchbacks were extremely inconvenient).
The road sloped upwards as it took me to the peak of Yela Mountain at 4839m. Your ears pop when walking up that one. As usual, at the top of the mountain were "scripture banners" [jingfan], Buddhist scriptures written on squares of colored cloth that are strung together and suspended between the ground and a wooden structure or two. Most are tattered beyong recognition because they are never taken down. The banners waving represents long life, and can therefore be found in any windy place: mountaintops, hung across rivers, etc... Somebody's going to live forever, as the snow-carrying wind never stopped blasting across the top of Yela Mtn.
(Note: Poles with long, vertical banners are also common. This other kind of jingfan is more often found standing in groups in or near mountain villages.) From Yela Mountain it's all downhill to the Nu River, but I didn't make it quite that far, instead stopping on the way down after passing several villages and small military camps. That night I slept in a mountainside crevice not far from the road.
Day 8: Food.
I hadn't eaten since my small meal the morning of Day 7. I wasn't short on rations, but had grown sick of eating them and wanted REAL food. I made it to the Nu River, which I followed all morning to the sound of dynamite echoing through the canyon. At lunch time I arrived at the Nu River Bridge Military Guardpost, where I stopped to refill my water bottles before meeting the Sichuanese commander. The 20+ soldiers stationed there are to "protect the bridge," although they couldn't be specific about what they were protecting it from. I had arrived at the right place at the right time, as the commander allowed me to eat lunch with the troops. Despite the cost of food way out there, they sure eat pretty well!
Naturally, having gone so long without food then suddenly eating way more than my fill, I didn't walk one kilometer before I couldn't take another step and fell asleep at the roadside. Some time later a huge truck rattled by and woke me up, followed by a jeep that agreed to give me a ride to Basu [Paksho]. It was a slow, broken jeep on its way to get fixed, but it was better than walking another 40 km! Especially since that 40 km is nothing more than a mountainous desert, hot and dusty with few people and less vegetation.
That evening was a welcome rest in a hotel in the largest town I'd come to yet, 2-3 kilometers long.
Day 9: Back to the Snow.
From Basu I walked towards the next place on my map, Zhaxize, and made it about half way (12 km) before getting on the back of a truck also headed there. On the way we stopped at a village where we filled some gasoline cans from a barrel in the back of our truck. Though pouring it might have been the better option, the locals preferred to syphon it with their mouths...
The tiny village of Zhaxize doesn't deserve to be on my map. Luckily a truck came by, and I jumped in back along with all the other Lhasa-bound passengers. In the open back of the blue freight truck I sat with 30 Tibetan pilgrims who never stopped singing the "pilgrimage to Lhasa" song. Every time the truck passed Tibetans working in the fields, the pilgrims would call out to them. But the number of Tibetans we saw quickly decreased due to the sudden arrival of a snowstorm. We were surrounded by block-everything-in-sight snow during almost the entire 65 km ride along the dangerous mountain road to Ranwu. 20-ft long icicles; frozen waterfalls; it was rather cold! By the time we arrived, I was covered by a layer of snow 1 cm thick.
If you ever travel from Zhaxize to Ranwu, you'll know you're almost there when you see a quote by Chairman Mao etched in stone: "not only are we good at destroying the old world, but we are good at creating a new world as well." He must've said that during the Cultural Disaster. Oops, I meant Cultural Revolution.
Ranwu [Rawu/Raog] is primarily a PLA outpost at just under 4000m where it had been snowing for a week. There the pilgrims kicked me off and left after putting a cover over the back of the truck. They were afraid of the fines for carrying a foreigner.
Day 10.
By Day 10 I felt it was taking me way too long to move through Tibet, and if I continued at the rate I was going along the path I had chosen, there would have been several more weeks of insanity to go. I therefore resolved to ride vehicles the rest of the way, and spent all morning and a good part of the afternoon in Ranwu searching for a way out.
My base of operations was one of the few restaurants along the little road-of-a-town. As I sat talking with Ranwu soldiers in the restaurant, waiting for trucks or jeeps to approach, a Tibetan came by to sell a pheasant to the restaurant owner for a few RMB. From inside I also watched pilgrims heading for Lhasa on foot with carts of their belongings. The most traditional of them still slowly walk the distance, camping on the way.
Just when it was looking like I'd be in Ranwu another day, a group of 3 jeeps from Chayu [Zayu] (in southeastern Tibet) stopped for lunch. They told me they were the first jeeps to get out of that isolated area for weeks, as it had been cut off by snowstorms. It didn't seem like I'd be getting a ride from them, as EIGHT passengers were packed into each of the 5-seater jeeps! But one of the jeeps had an open-back storage area for luggage, and they agreed to let me sit there for the ride to Bomi (after which I'd have to get off since that's illegal). So with me sitting comfortably on bags of clothes next to a basketed chicken in back, and eight more people crammed inside the tiny jeep, we bounced off down the road.
Leaving as late as mid-afternoon turned out to have its advantages, as it gave the sky time to switch from overcast to sunny. The sun helped cancel the cold effect of racing through the wind on the back of a jeep. In addition to the perfect temperature, I had a perfect outdoor seat for one of the most scenic rides in Tibet: below snowy alpine mountains, along unpolluted blue-green rivers, and past beautiful waterfalls. The Tibetan houses along the way change from rammed earth to pinewood, looking little different from your average cabin, except made of planks and not entire logs. Near the homes are many vertical-type jingfan flapping in the breeze.
Bomi [Pome/Bowo] was a Tibetan town not long ago, but has since been assimilated by the Chinese who have paved a few streets and lined them with buildings to create Tibet's largest county-level city. When I showed up at the only hotel that would accept foreigners, as law-abiding hotel workers they immediately called the police. I was instant friends with the policeman who showed up, and he told me the following before going on his way: 1) Bomi is a CLOSED town (as if I didn't know...); 2) Therefore, DON'T take any pictures (as if there was anything worth taking pictures of in a Tibetan-turned-Chinese town); 3) When I make it to the next town I had better go to the district police station to get a permit, otherwise I'd be fined. His last warning I had heard before, since it and similar lines are often used by police to scare foreigners into either spending more money once they've already made it into Tibet, or to discourage them from attempting to enter Tibet illegally in the first place.
Bomi is at a low 2800m, but to the south is the even lower Motuo which, according to statistics, was China's only county without a road until 1993. Those familiar with the area, however, tell me that though a road was built, nature destroys it every year and buries it in snow. Thus the isolated Motuo rarely sees visitors despite it's uniqueness. Motuo is Tibet's tropical oasis, home to countless animal and plant species. I originally intended to go there, but due to time and equipment restraints (hiking there through 80 km of snow isn't a piece of cake) I had to forgo that part of the trip.
Day 11.
Now that I was nearing Lhasa (in terms of slightly better roads, not distance), I no longer needed to hitch-hike, and the next day I was up at dawn to meet the pack of jeep drivers who congregate in the center of town. Our jeep was the first one to fill up and head off, seating 7 people in 5 spaces. A tight fit, but better than 8. (I couldn't see how eight was possible unless somebody was attached to the ceiling.) Some people said from Bomi to Bayi is the most dangerous stretch of highway in Tibet, but they obviously hadn't been where I came from. Though the road did ocassionally run along some very unsafe cliffs, most of it was pretty tame, lined by dense forest.
Closer to Bayi over the final mountain pass was an awesome sight: the view across the alpine valley below was obscured by a hailstorm unleashed by a single cloud. (There seems to be a phenomenon in Tibet where single tiny clouds can precipitate.) Behind the myriad balls of ice sparkling in the sun were the evergreens that climb up to the snowy mountaintops all along the distant ridges. No opportunity to take pictures though, as our jeep seemed absent of shocks (not a good thing on the bumpy road), and on the way we had dropped off two smaller Chinese guys and replaced them with two big, fat Tibetans, so I probably wouldn't be able to get my hand into my pocked to take out my camera anyway...
The Tibetans were on their way to Lhasa, and spent a good part of the way praying, no doubt because of the unsafe driving conditions.
Bayi is a brand new, 100% Chinese-style mini-city. (It doesn't even have a Tibetan name.) Wide concrete boulevards provide access to endless rows of karaoke bars. Neon must be the "official gas of the city." Entering Bayi, the only signs indicating I hadn't left Tibet were the ocassional Tibetan store name and the unusually large number of roaming police and marching soldiers. The Tibetan city of Rikaze [Shigatse] used to be Tibet's second largest urban center (behind Lhasa) until the invention of Bayi.
Day 12: Arrival.
At 4:30 AM I was waiting in the center of town for one of the buses to Lhasa, but ended up waiting until about 5:30 before getting on a large van instead. Most of my fellow passengers were soldiers for the 400 kilometer ride to Lhasa, 300 km of which has been paved. The quick change in scenery on the way reminded me of the beginning of my trek through Tibet. Pine forests die off and give way to barren land scattered with desert bushes; beautiful snowy peaks melt into dull brown mountains. Yet unlike the places I'd been before, houses are made of earthen bricks, and outside villages are triangular stacks of bricks baking in the dry air and sunlight.
For the first time in Tibet, near Lhasa I saw cows, which must be of Chinese introduction. Other than that, approaching the city from the eastern highway along the valley floor there are only two indications that anything lies ahead: 1) the Budala [Potala] Palace, a massive red-and-white construction that used to be the Dalai Lama's Winter home before he had to flee the advancing Chinese, and 2) the pilgrims and monks headed for the city who prostrate themselves every step of the way.
I'd made it to Lhasa.
Part III. (Chapter 7: Journey to the West, 0.06 Years in Tibet)
Lhasa.
Lhasa can be divided into two halves, the western Chinese half and the eastern Tibetan half, with the Potala Palace just above the center overlooking the city. By religious law, no building in Lhasa can reach higher than the Palace, and for now Lhasa is rather short and small, but with the Chinese in control who knows how long the city's skyline will remain so low.
My time in Lhasa has been spent mostly typing and organizing pictures, but I've managed to experience and see a few things...
The first day here I took advantage of the good weather to visit the holiest of Tibetan temples, Dazhao [Jokhang] Temple. Before entering I followed the Bajiaojie/Bakuo [Barkhor] pilgrim circuit around the temple in a clockwise direction while watching the pilgrims spin their prayer wheels and buy all sorts of Tibetan products from the endless stalls . (Prayer Wheels (Hand-held Version): Just like the prayer wheels in temples, the hand-held version contains rolled-up scriptures. This kind of prayer wheel is held by a stick coming out the end; the spinning momentum is maintained by a ball attached to the main part of the wheel with a string.)
Not far from the temple entrance is an area where more than 50 pilgrims at a time face it and prostrate themselves. I contemplated the power of religion as I stood behind them, listening to the unique sound of prostrating pilgrims: stand straight and put your hands together over your head, then bring them to in front of your face, then before your chest. Keeping hands together, kneel down at the end of your body-sized mat. Next, place your hands on the pads beside the mat and slide them forward along the ground as you lay down on your stomach. Do that again and again until you just can't take it anymore. (The sound comes from the sliding of pads along the ground.)
Inside the temple, where everything is either red wood, golden bronze, or white-washed earth, you pass through a short corridor from the first courtyard to the main one, around which are the goblets of burning holy water and a chanting group of old monks . From there I followed clockwise the circuit of prayer wheels (that never stop rotating) which goes around the outside of the main hall. Those spinning the wheels walk on the outside (left side), while everyone else walks on the inside where the walls are painted with Buddhist themes. Along the circuit are young boys who repeatedly go around prostrating, and old women who sit with hand-held prayer wheels, both of whom are given money (usually 0.1 RMB) by circuit-walkers.
Completing the circuit, I made it back to the main hall's entrance and went in. A long corridor leads to the hall's main room which, like that of Zuogong Monastery, has rows of slightly raised platforms where the monks sit. At that time, however, in the monks' places were their ceremonial, red capes. The monks were busy maintaining the temple for the steady stream of pilgrims. The hall was, of course, much more decorative than the Zuogong Temple, with multicolored banners hanging from the ceiling and large statues of Buddha.
Clockwise around the hall I followed the line of pilgrims, some of them carrying goblets of holy water while others spun their prayer wheels. Attached to the hall are many small rooms containing statues of Buddhist figures to the base of which pilgrims touch their heads. Also while walking around the edge of the room, pilgrims take the wax-like yak butter [suyou] from plastic bags they carry and add it to large cups in which many candles are burning.
Passing a couple monks making large wooden vats of suyou, I came to the half-way point and walked to the head of a long line of people who were waiting to enter the temple's most important room. Outside the door, some pilgrims prostrated themselves as others entered. I couldn't exactly tell what they were doing in there, and I wasn't about to go in without a good religious reason, but I could see a few monks pouring melted suyou from large cups into a bucket. Most people would ring a bell upon leaving the small room.
I then left and made my way onto the roof, noticing that before exiting the hall, pilgrims with goblets would pour some of the contents into cups located in the small side-rooms I mentioned earlier. From atop the Dazhao Temple there are good views of the Tibetan part of town it's centered in, over which are visible lots of colored banners. Of course, It's also easy to see the Potala Palace a few kilometers away. Besides the view, of interest are the long horns used to summon monks.
Lhasa's weather these days has been quite unique. The sky seems to be split into two independent halves, one of which always carries rain, the other nothing but clear blue and the odd puffy, white cloud. Neither side wins until evening, when on most days it's rained. Several days ago I was standing outside when the main streets of Lhasa were blocked off and a large portion of the police force came driving slowly down the road, sirens blaring. Behind them were two military trucks, backs full of soldiers holding big guns, and five more trucks with altogether 30 Tibetan prisoners cuffed and forced to bend over the side, held in that position by two soldiers each. That followed by more police cars and motorcycles. A bit extreme? Yes, but it is true that the Chinese are rather hard on criminals in general. Either way, no wonder the Tibetans hate the Chinese.
I wasn't exactly sure what the Tibetans did, because no one else knew and when I went to look for a newspaper, I found that searching for a newspaper in Lhasa is almost a lost cause. It's not like the usual Chinese city where you can buy a paper every 10 ft, instead you have to walk several kilometers for the nearest vendor! But a few days after the "parade" I met someone who did know; they told me the crimes were not related: some had trafficked drugs, others committed "unspecifiable crimes against the [Chinese] government," and yet others drove without a license. Punishments would be either life in prison, or a shooting execution which could be watched by the public, and would be televised.
Since arriving in Lhasa, I've eaten most of my meals at a convenient, newly-opened restaurant across the street from my hotel. The people are friendly and I can watch movies there while eating. Anyway, I typed them an English-Chinese menu and gave them some business advice on dealing with foreign customers for which they treated me to several big meals, a relief to my wallet since the price of food in Lhasa is higher than average. (Oh wait, I don't have a wallet anymore, it was stolen in Kunming!)
Plans.
It's too bad I won't be able to explore the fascinating areas around Lhasa, but I have a lot to do and possibly not enough time left to do it all before my VISA expires. From Lhasa I will take a bus NNE to Ge'ermu [Golmud] in China's Qinghai Province. I originally planned to head west from there and explore all of Xinjiang Province, but it turns out that would take much more time than I have, and will instead travel east to Gansu Province, then south to the center of Sichuan Province and east to Chongqing, from where I'll take a boat along the Changjiang [Yangtze], check out the three gorges, and get off at Jiujiang on the northern edge of Jiangxi Province. I'll head south from there to see some friends who live in central Jiangxi, after which travel to Fujian Province, finally making it back to Hong Kong sometime in early June (?).
If enough worth writing about happens between now and then, Chapter 8 will come from Chengdu in Sichuan.
