Seven Days in Tibet

Ah, Tibet (from where we continue to post via e-mail: sorry if the links don't work).



After a week in the very sizable cities of Beijing and Xian, our arrival in the quiet eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau has been a welcome change of pace. We took another overnight train from Xian to Lanzhou, which was lovely as usual. I slept like a baby -- a snoring baby that woke the other travelers in our tour group. Always nice to make friends. After the train ride, we bussed another six hours before arriving in Xiahe, home of the famous Labrang Monastery.



The 130,000 people of Xiahe have Tibetan, Muslim, and Han Chinese backgrounds, making the town quite a little melting pot of culture and cuisine. The facial features are quite different between the ethnic groups, as are the dress and traditions. My favorite garment so far is the warm long-sleeved (past the knee) coats worn by many Tibetans. They seem to drape the sleeves (which seem to provide some extra warmth) wherever they have room, either over the shoulders, around the waist, or tucked into the coat itself.



Another huge part of the population is the Buddhist monks and nuns, who number over 2000. We've seen them all over town, draped in their burgundy and fuschia robes, doing anything from driving SUVs to talking on cell phones (of course, there are plenty of monks who are more orthodox about their teachings!). The monastery was amazing -- from the hills surrounding the city, it's obvious that it takes up a huge part of the city's real estate. Unfortunately, as we're not well versed in Buddhism and its beliefs, the subtle differences between monasteries are usually lost upon us. Still, they look nice, and the best part of Labrang was the string of prayer wheels encircling the compound. Quite a nice walk, although after spinning hundreds of wheels, you get to be a little dizzy. (The prayer wheels are full of religious mantras, and spinning the wheels invokes the blessings of the gods. The mechanical engineers in the crowd would appreciate the technological innovations seen in the water-driven prayer wheels we encountered yesterday.)







Did the prayer wheels work? Well, the blessing didn't seem to extend to the restaurants we've visited lately. While the food has been good (though not great), the service has been slow and slower. The first restaurant we were in served 13 people one at a time, as did the second and the third. Do these places only have one stove? My magic 8-ball says, "Signs point to yes," which is why any dinner seems to take at least 3 hours.



The people here have been friendly and charming. Children and adults alike seem eager to practice their English, with shouts of "Hello!" beckoning us from every doorstep. A visit to the birthplace of the Bon religion, a precursor to Buddhism, turned up a group of monks who were eager to show us around their monastery. As with so many religious structures, the monastery was destroyed by the Chinese government during the Cultural Revolution, but the monks are busy rebuilding it to its previous glory. It's neat to see the intricate woodwork decorating the temples before they're painted -- what a difference!







The best part of the visit to the Bon monastery was taking on the monks in a traditional Tibetan contest of sport: basketball. I'm happy to say that I did the US proud with a series of terrific blocks, but Marita and I alone were not enough to carry the international team. The almost 10,000 feet of elevation and my otherwise pathetic basketball skills helped give the monks the edge, and they took us 10-6 in the first half, and 12-11 in the second. Looks like their prayer wheels have paid off. We also had a chance to teach a few people the joy of frisbee, and the ultimate frisbee contingent tuning in will be happy to know that our scouting efforts are progressing nicely. Expect to see Doh Ultimate take on an international flavor in 2005.



Today we find ourselves in Langmusi, another Tibetan town much smaller in population and higher in elevation. While we haven't yet had a chance to explore the area (because we're busy getting back to all y'all), the ride here provided an interesting demonstration of the difference between the rural Chinese and American ways of life.







About one hour into a six-hour bus ride, we came to a dead stop on the only two-lane road through a mountainous section of the region. Ahead, the road was covered with dirt and rocks from a land slide that occurred less than half an hour before we arrived. A large shipping truck had tried to pass the debris by driving around it in a muddy ditch, but had found itself stuck when the ground proved too wet to pass. What to do but wait until the road crew showed up? Aha! The mindset among the locals was quite different. With things as remote and inefficient as they are, people are doin' it for themselves!



Within 10 minutes of our arrival, another large truck had hitched a cable to the stuck vehicle, and pulled it loose to the cheers of the nearly one hundred bystanders. Immediately thereafter, people started grabbing loose rocks off the roadside and throwing them into the muddy ditch, and half and hour later, the teamwork and enthusiasm filled it to almost the same level of the road. A brave tour bus attempted to pass the landslide on the newly filled ditch, and although it failed, we were able to push it out and continue to pile the rocks in the mud. Finally, only an hour after we first arrived, the bus made its way through the mud, assisted by an army of pushers, and -- in an eruption of applause -- we made our way on to Langmusi.



I was tremendously impressed with that go-getter spirit of the locals. Sure, they might act differently if they had heated leather seats, lattes, and a highway department that could fix the problem quickly, but they didn't, and they had solved their problem faster than a road full of pampered westerners. Who needs a Hummer?