Tuesday, August 7, 2001
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Since China began allowing foreigners to travel in Tibet, they've restricted movement in TAR quite extensively. In recent years they've loosened up in many areas, but even today you must buy an expensive permit and join a tour group in order to buy a flight or bus ticket into TAR.
In eastern Tibet, however, travel is largely unrestricted, as the Chinese authorities consider the Tibetan provinces of Amdo and Kham merely as portions of Chinese provinces with minority populations. Most of China, in fact, has large minority populations, due to China's tendency to grow into its neighbor countries and welcome the conquered people to call themselves Chinese minorities. Tibet is perhaps the most recent and well-known of these territorial conquests, but it wasn't so long ago that the Mongolians in the north and the Uygers in the west were brought into the fold.
After Juliette and I had snuck into western Tibet via the backdoor to pay a visit to Lake Manosarovar and Mount Kailash, then bounced and bumped across to Lhasa in central Tibet, it only made sense that our next stop would be eastern Tibet.
I arrived in Xiahe, a small Tibetan town in northern Amdo, after spending a week in and out of trains and buses to pick up a bag we'd stored half-way across China.
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I fished out my rainjacket from my backpack, and walked outside with the handful of other travelers who were too cheap to pay for a tuk-tuk (in Xiahe, tuk-tuks were little tractors pulling little trailers). The road, like everywhere in Tibet, was under construction. In this case, that meant the entire roadway including the sidewalks had been turned to rubble and mud, with open trenches and giant puddles everywhere. With each step, I was surprised that my ankles managed to stay above ground. Until the bulldozer, that is.
My traveler's advice, speaking from experience, is if you're carrying a heavy backpack through a muddy construction zone and you see a shortcut across the path of a moving bulldozer, don't try to outrun the machine. It seems like common sense, in retrospect -- don't race with a bulldozer -- but common sense, as they say, isn't so common. I could have made it, if only the ground were as solid as it appeared. As the big orange scoop lumbered towards me, my feet began getting mired in the deepening mud. My backpack didn't want to slow down, so I was forced to take another step, sinking deeper. After a few more steps my momentum overcame my stuck feet and I found myself on my hands and knees in the mud -- another few kilos on my back and I would have been eating mud pies. Somehow the bulldozer didn't run me over, so I admitted defeat and went to rinse my hands in a puddle.
Two kilometers later I arrived a the Tibetan Overseas guest house -- the China travelers' network is a tight one, so everyone and their brother had been headed there in spite of the outdated Lonely Planet recommendation for the other guest house in town.
"We have no rooms," the receptionist told me.
"That's okay, I'm just looking for a message."
"Oh, message for you!" He reached under the counter and handed me a slip of paper.
"Ult,Great -- off I went, to the restaurant.
I'm at the restaurant across the bridge.
Juliette"
"There's a note for you," the Tibetan guy at the restaurant said. All I'd had to do was take off the hood of my rainjacket; dreadlocks are unusual among travelers in China, so it's easy for Juliette and me to track each other down just by pointing to our hair and saying "pengyou" -- friend.
This note gave directions to another guest house. I began to wonder how many notes I'd have to follow before being able to put down my backpack, but this one led me to the author herself.
Our reunion was a happy one. We'd both enjoyed our time alone, but it was nice to be together again, catching up over green tea and countless Tibetan momos while the sky poured down outside.
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Why not, we said; we'd been hiking for a few hours up a river valley and this was the beginning of the steep part of the hike -- a good time for a break.
The monk, we discovered as we climbed the path up to the cottage, was actually a nun. She gave us a cushion to sit on, and brought some hot sugar water and bread. Her packed-mud patio was surrounded by colorful flowers, and overlooked the rolling hills and grassland of eastern Tibet. Between reminders to eat and drink, she told us stories about how birds would come eat from her lap, and which of her flowers smelled nice and which didn't, and how she brought water from the sacred spring on the cliff above, and how nice it was to meditate in the cave.
She didn't use English to tell these stories, nor Tibetan, nor Chinese. In fact, she used no words at all; she had taken a vow of silence, we gathered, as part of her mountain retreat. Accustomed to using no words to communicate, she was able to express herself beautifully -- we had a better conversation in silence than we'd ever had trying to speak with strangers in Chinese or Tibetan, and even in English most of the time.
In these few minutes of silent conversation, we developed a profound respect and love for this gentle nun. Ani-la, as we called her -- all Tibetan nuns are called Ani-la, actually -- was living a simple life. An extreme life by our standards, completely focused on peace and inner development. With so much of the world caught up in the perpetual madness of chasing after temporary happiness that comes from outside, it was inspiring to see someone living for peace so purely. We knew that in return for her kindness she expected nothing -- there was nothing we could give her to make her happier than she already was.
After a few lazy days in Xiahe, we took a bus to Langmusi, a touristy little Tibetan village surrounded by monasteries. There's not so much to do there, but walking around the grassy hills and neighboring villages was a way to peek at the beauty and simplicity of the people's lives; shepherds with their sheep, old women spinning yarn, and a girl weaving with a simple loom made of sticks.
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"Hey! Chen!" called out a middle-aged monk angrily as we walked past his office. We looked back and saw signs about the monastery -- he wanted us to buy an entrance ticket.
"Womin bu yow gompa," we explained -- we didn't want to see his dumb monastery, we were headed to the hill above the village. He refused to let us pass, even though the "entrance" was actually a main road through town. He proved, in fact, to be the meanest monk I'd ever come across; he grabbed Juliette's backpack when she tried to walk past, and he thumped a little boy on the head for playing too close by. We gave up trying to convince him how silly he was being not to let us walk out of town, so we walked back and snuck around him on a small side path. I guess it was just a small reminder that monks are people too.
Imagine you're at a funeral. It's not just any funeral, like for your mother-in-law or your stock broker, it's someone you were really close to. You feel the emptiness from the absence of this person like a cold stone in your heart. Over and over, images cycle through your mind -- images of the moments when this person's smile enveloped your entire world, or when her magic opened doors for you that would otherwise have remained closed forever. You might believe that whatever inner core of your close friend lives on after her body ceases is in a better place, or that her memory is so strong in your mind that she still lives within you, but this belief doesn't stop you from wanting to hear her voice, to listen to her laugh, to play miniature golf with her, or whatever it was that made you so close.
The ceremony is just ending now, and as you turn to leave you're shocked to see a crowd of foreign tourists shuffle across the grass. They all have expensive-looking cameras hanging from their necks, which they frequently aim at your friend's dead body, firing off a few shots from different angles. The burial commences, and they chat amongst themselves as they watch each clod of dirt scatter over the casket, shooting pictures of the men with shovels, of the priest, and even of you. They comment about how barbaric and disgusting your burial procedures are, and they analyze the ecological and social impact of this practice. They never ask a single question about the life your friend led -- indeed, except for a few snapshots they ignore you entirely. Finally, the casket completely covered, they begin to trickle out of the cemetery, discussing breakfast plans.
Okay, you can stop imagining now. It's kind of weird, isn't it, to think about a bunch of tourists barging in on a funeral. What kind of tourist would have the gall, much less the desire, to invade such a sensitive and personal ceremony for entertainment? Strangely enough, there are quite a lot of them. In Varanasi in India, for example, the cremation sites along the river are some of the most common tourist attractions. And now, in Langmusi, Tibet, I found myself being one of the camera-toting tourists described above, shooting rolls of film at a funeral ceremony they call a sky burial.
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When Juliette and I arrived at the burial ground, the body had just been dropped off -- we'd seen the horses ahead of us on the path. This was only the second time I'd seen a dead body in my life, so it was a very strong moment when I realized what I was looking at. The body was a naked woman, crumpled awkwardly in the middle of a circle of rocks.
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The term burial is perhaps a little misleading; the reason it's called a sky burial is because the body is offered to the sky, in the form of being fed to vultures. To me, this makes a lot of sense -- unlike cremation, it puts humans back into the life-cycle from which we try so hard to escape. That's what the intellect says, anyway -- actually watching it in action feels quite different.
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"I like them," Juliette commented later. "They look like what they are."
One of the Tibetan men approached the body with a long red sash, which he tied around the dead woman's neck. Her whole body jerked when he yanked the red cloth to tie the other end down. There was no stiffness in the body; she had died recently. Now she was lying face down in the middle of the stone circle, and the vultures began to arrive. The first arrivals wasted no time with formalities; their powerful beaks tore at the flesh like so many knives and forks. More followed close behind, each swooping down with wings spread, dropping noisily into the middle of the feeding frenzy. The body could no longer be seen, except when the vultures suddenly made a clearing as they fought over a strip of flesh. Their heads, when they raised them for a moment, were red with blood. The whole circle was a boiling cauldron of vultures, the ones in the middle being ejected by the hungry ones on the outside, and newcomers always landing for their piece of the action. It dawned on me that the reason for the sash was to keep the body from being dragged too far away -- as it was, the beaks and claws sometimes moved the whole body a few feet at a time. What I thought was a thick piece of burlap cloth turned out to be the woman's skin. The birds had eaten the flesh from inside, and now they were working on the tough rubbery epidermis hanging off the bones.
"That's disgusting," an Israeli girl observed. I suppose she's right, I thought to myself, but she'd known what she was coming to see when she walked up the hill.
In the first few minutes I'd felt like I should leave -- I had no business being here, I didn't need to see this woman be eaten by vultures like a duck in a Chinese restaurant, and the presence of so many tourists didn't allow me to forget what I was myself. But for better or worse, I have a tendency to stick it out through unpleasant situations rather than follow the urge to escape, so I just stood there and watched.
A few of the foreigners were talking amongst themselves about something or other, and I overheard a woman complain to her partner, "Only a real tourist could chat at a time like this." I knew what she meant -- I'd also been pretty critical about their apparent lack of respect for this rare part of Tibetan culture they were fortunate enough to be able to witness. The woman's comment made me think about this judgement a little more, and I realized that their chatting wasn't out of disrespect, it was just their way of dealing with an unusual situation -- they were checking in with each other that everything was okay, because watching a human be eaten by birds can be a little uncomfortable the first time.
One of the Tibetans walked into the circle, waving his arms to shoo the birds away. It would be a little unnerving to walk into a crowd of birds who eat people, I thought, but I guess he was used to it.
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By this time I'd abandoned my insecurity about being a tourist. It didn't seem like anyone was being hurt by my presence, and it was turning out to be a really interesting observation of how I relate to my body. Like all the other tourists, I was taking pictures, trying to get the most striking and gruesome shots possible.
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The sign that a body had been in the stone circle became fewer and fewer -- finally even the skull was crushed into bite-sized pieces and consumed with gusto. The vultures trickled away, some satisfied with their breakfast and others looking still hungry. We tourists headed down the hill for our own breakfast, long forgotten the shock and repulsion of such a short time before.
"So what was that story you were going to tell us?" she asked the gray-haired man from L.A. I don't remember who she was, just one of the tourists seated around the single table at Lesha's Cafe. Lesha herself, a Muslim woman with a Pakistani pa and a Hui Chinese ma, was frying up somebody's breakfast a few yards away.
The L.A. man, we'll call him Paul for no particular reason except I don't remember his real name, cocked a half-smile and sighed, "I guess it's time to tell the story, eh?" I'd met him the night before at the same cafe (Juliette and I tend to become regulars at the first place we like, it takes the edge off moving so quickly from place to place), and it was clear he liked a little drama; he'd been in the film industry in L.A., as I suppose most everybody is down there just like everybody's in the computer industry in San Francisco.
"Well," he began, "you know how the buses stop for bathroom breaks?" We nodded yes -- I've mentioned Chinese toilets before, but it's difficult to overstate the unpleasant nature of these abominations of hygeine. The real kicker is that the buses stop at public toilets where they charge you to use them -- imagine paying money to hang out in a dim room filled with the stench of urine and where you find human waste in the most unexpected places.
"So at this one stop," he continued, "the men's room was full, and I really had to go." I think professional drivers must develop superhuman bladder control, because by the time they stop everyone on the bus has been doing the special sitting dance for hours.
"I didn't want to wait, so I walked over towards this rectangle of cement to pee over the other side. The problem was, when I stepped onto the cement, it wasn't cement -- it was shit!"
None of us could really understand how he could mistake an open cesspool for a block of cement, but we were more curious what came next. "Shit?" someone asked, slack-jawed.
"Human feces," he confirmed. "I was literally up to my ears in shit, it was this deep," he showed us his ears. Juliette blanched at hearing how deep this pool was -- his ears were a foot above the top of her head. "Thank god I didn't swallow any. Let me tell you, it wasn't five seconds before I was in the river, stripped naked."
"How did you get out?" someone else wondered. Good question, one should know these things when traveling in China.
"I have no idea -- it happened so fast that my socks didn't even get wet." He told us how many times he'd washed his clothes since then; he says letting them dry in the sun helps a lot.
What a story -- though he certainly seemed to have a sense of humor about it. We made sure we knew where the offending toilet was, in case we stopped there sometime, then we said goodbye to Lesha, Paul, and Philip (the German guy we see everywhere), and set off for less peaceful surrounds.
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A few hours' rest in Songpan, and we were off again to Chengdu. Leaving Langmusi, as you'll soon see, marks the beginning of a long stretch of superfast traveling. Normally I move at a turtle's pace if I move at all. Since traveling with Juliette, I shifted gears to yak speed; grazing for a while then lumbering off across a mountain, or occasionally sprinting halfway across China. Now we had the pedal to the metal and turbo was about to kick in.
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Always on the lookout for peanut butter, we paid a visit to a supermarket. How to explain what it's like to enter a supermarket when you've come from the land of tsampa? It's a different world...there are so many rows of different kinds and different brands of different products, none of which you need. This was just like a giant grocery store from home, complete with a bakery, a butcher shop, a juice bar, and a prepared foods section. There was an entire aisle devoted to ice cream. And one with just bulk foods (they had their eye on us when Juliette started tasting). There was a whole freezer full of frozen rice balls (why she thought those would taste good is beyond me -- I think they would have booted us out of the store at this point if they hadn't been so confused about the little foreign girl with crazy hair trying to eat frozen rice balls straight from the freezer). After wandering the aisles in awe for some time, we managed to escape with our peanut butter and only a single impulse purchase -- a little deli pizza for two kwai. How strange to be from a rich western country and overwhelmed by modern civilization in China of all places -- you should have seen us trying to get off the escalators!