One World Insight Blog | Douglas "Las" Wengell

Memories of aTibetan Plateau

The recent earthquake in the Western region of China, Qinghai Province, between Xining and Lhasa, in the Tibetan Plateau, is heart breaking. At least 1,700, mostly poor and rural Tibetan’s are dead.

 

One of my most memorable experiences was taking the train from Beijing to Lhasa. The final part of the journey passed through the barren landscape of the Plateau, between Golmud and Lhasa, not far from the quake epicenter. As I have noted, it’s a deprived region economically, made of more Tibetans than Han Chinese. Beijing has responded with more immediacy than the devastating 2008 Sichuan quake – but the CCP is still not going to let the Dali Llama visit.

Fellow Travelers and a Superwoman Solo Biker

Moving on the tourist circuit, it’s inevitable you encounter fellow travelers. I have more conversations than I can recount. Here's a few of recent.

A young Finish woman studying biology and ecology, pondering whether to become a nun.

Or a German woman traveling solo for six months, complaining that “people back home are cold and it’s hard to meet people like when you’re on the road.”

Or a young Polish couple, who cannot find suitable employment in Poland, despite his graduate degree in engineering and her specialization in tourist. They worked in a UK factory to save money to make this trip possible. They are resigned. “We love our country but there’s nothing there for us. Maybe, one day, our kids but not us.”

Or two Hong Kong Chinese biking there way through Indochina. “China has made life harder in Hong Kong. Too many emigrants. You can’t afford to live there. There are no good jobs for people like us.”

Then you come across the truly amazing. Like New Zealander Kylie, who I met in Laos and is biking, solo, a woman, across Europe and Asia, from London to Auckland, taking boats where necessary. Her stories biking through Pakistan and Iran defy belief. Go girl!www.bugbitten.com/kyles

Tibet-Beijing Train Video

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Mind Meanders Down the Tibetan Plateau

8:30 a.m. Capital Express, T28, heading back to the capital 3,000 km down the 12,500 foot mountain, through Xi’an, along the Silk Road, then Eastward, to the industrial and populated coast, landing in Beijing, forty-eight hours from now. Tibet has been an adventure.

I’m glad to have the time to look out the window. It inspires free flowing poetics. The sun is rising over the sand-swept mountains, leaving behind China’s most isolated province. Lhasa is now a distant spoke connected to heart of the center, Beijing. Before long, vast, spacious valley’s emerge, miles wide, surrounded by snow-draped mountains.  

Small villages cling to the side of the mountains, red drenched Chinese flags float in the air. Small oases of life, a small farm shack, dot the landscape.   Rivers and icy tributaries cross the rails from high. The animal are married to the wind swept golden brush, the white and brown march, the soft permafrost. Sheep marked red huddle. Horses don yellow and orange, their mains flapping in the wind. The graceful, cornered antlers of yak pray upward. A man walks. He is nowhere and everywhere. A truck chugs up a distant road. A black-cloaked woman in a red fur hat tills. The Han man across from me yawns and checks his phone for text messages.

Others play cards, more interested in me than what’s out the window. Another insists I accept a cup of rice vodka. I do.  A river runs through. Does the mountain make the valley, or the valley the mountain. They are inseparable, defined in relationship to one another.

If I were a God, this is where I would live. Where emptiness is wide enough to hold the world, where time is measured in ions and the marriage of heaven and earth is quietly consummated. The Tibetans and Chinese share in life’s struggle, even as one dominates the other. Despotism is a feeble attempt to mimic the imperial grandeur of the cosmos for which we are pawns. 

“We are here just a while. It will pass in time. You might as well smile” Alison Kraus, on queue.

The train’s wheels are like prayer bells, clicking and clacking against the cold steel beneath. The rhythmic motion of the heart and breath, a reminder that opposites hold the world together. It’s no wonder that Tibetans and their form of Buddhism celebrate this truth.

Life and death are inseparable, just as are the white-tripped yak and the marshy grass, the pebbles in the streams. The highest train in the world. It’s a journey between a beginning and an end, pre-determined but only discoverable along the way. It is the journey of one day and one voyage; and it’s the journey of a lifetime. Somewhere along its line, our destiny with death awaits. This much is certain.

We just don’t know where that crossing will be.

8:30 p.m. glide into Xi’an, where I began my voyage to Tibet. Many Chinese travelers debark. In my t-shirt and slippers and tea cup – standard fair among the Chinese – I jump on to the platform with a few other Chinese men who yoke cigarettes. Stretch. Chinese beer is 60 cents. The cold is upon Northern China, much more than Lhasa.

I’m exhilarated and refreshed after 36 hours of transformative motions down the mountain and back to the intersection of the ancient Silk Road that carried goods from Shanghai, north and south, to president day India, Afghanistan, Eastern and Central Europe. The platform bell rings and new passages scurry onboard with their boxes and. A young man from my carriage ushers me from the window, with a great deal of urgency, to get back on the train.

We begin to inch forward, on toward an overnight arrival in Beijing at 7:30 a.m., Monday, when President Obama meets with President Hu Jintao. I’ll be heading back to the pleasant Sanlitun Hostel, a few miles from the American Embassy and where Obama and his entourage will be greeting officials. 

Tibet Video & Audio

Tibet monks in a debate-style learning session: 

Download 10_2009_tibet monks

The Potala Palace, Lhasa, Tibet

It stirs the imagination. The tallest structure in Lhasa, a beacon between heaven and earth, surrounded by valleys, high above the world. Beginning at dawn, I meander around as the faithful walk around the palace, clockwise, murmuring prayers, counting beads, spinning wheels. Everything sacred moves in a circle, so it seems.

It’s visceral, a transformative journey, a beginning and ending in one. The Japanese trek around their sacred mountains, just as the Nepalese and Tibetans do, too. It’s a beautiful site.

Tibet Trekking with the Boys

Three other guys, a Swede, Chilean and Dane, and I are paraded around the region for a few days. It’s a budget tour, but at least the guide, driver and accommodation owners are Tibetan.

I am stunned to learn that monks must renounce the Dali Lama and not wear their traditional garment. A lot of what we are seeing is being put on. Religion is practiced in private. Lamas must be approved by Beijing. Photos of the Dali Lama are banned and the next in line, a youngster, is under house arrest.

Every town we visit has a square with a Chinese monument. I suppose it’s to remind you who’s in charge. The valleys are glorious, torques blue lakes, high mountain passes, Mt Kangtdang glacier at nearly 15,000 feet.

When I look into the eyes of an Indian, a Nepalese, a Chinese and now a Tibetan, there is an unmistakable common humanity: work and family, greed and generosity, love and hate, hope and fear. This is true across the world. What makes the image in my mind crystallize is that, in the aggregate, these society’s live closer to the bone.

The eyes I pass, unspoken mutual affection and curiosity, tell a story of visceral struggle I cannot pretend to understand. Temples are filled with a million manifestations of deities, and intricate thankas, cloth paintings. Pious Tibetans circle temples, spinning prayer wheels, the earth turning on a heavenly axis.

Modern Tibetian Art

This show is in Beijing, coinciding with National Day. Its “approved” by Beijing, so you’ll note that there’s no political controversy. But the Tibet culture is in full oil-in-canvas display!

Lhasa, Tibet

Lhasa is different. The air is clean and the sky blue. The Jokjang Temple in the center town is the most holy. Pilgrims make there rounds clockwise, whispering prayers, and others prostrate on mats, up and down. Candles burn. It is Tibet far more than it is China.

However the tension between the two is beneath the surface. It was last March, Lhasa erupted in violence as they commemorated the 1959 uprising. Getting here required a special permit and visitors are not allowed to travel without a guide. The border closes without notice.

 

Chinese military police stand guard at intersections, guns drawn. They don’t look friendly and we’re told to never take pictures of them.

One day, in front of the Potala Palace, where the Chinese have erected a mini Tiananmen square with Chinese flags, an obvious affront to the locals, military police walk rank and file. The setting sun stirs the imagination. In the park I encounter two Tibetans. We get talking, sort of. They ask to see my pictures. When he sees the Chinese flag, he curses and points his finger in disgust.

 

I greet a restaurant worker in the Nepalese hello, tashedalay. She yacks to her coworkers. Of course, she’s Han. I say hello in Mandarin and she smiles.

Meanwhile, traditional Tibet life goes on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lhasa just 8 months ago

It was last March, Lhasa erupted in violence as they commemorated the 1959 uprising. It's happen many times before. China's rule is tight.

Capital Express Train to Roof of the World, Day 2

I befriend two Han who work in Tibet as animal scientists. As we talk about China’s past and future, they remind me that China moves slowly but that they believe it will continue to liberalize, that the young generation is more hopeful about the future than their parents (in contrast to America).

“With one hundred nationalists, so many languages, and people and cultural traditions, how else can the central government keep things together but with a strong hand?”  

Capital Express Train to Roof of the World, Day 1

We’re heading toward Louznou, the capital of the province,  East of Xi’an, then onto Xining, before veering south-west, past Golmud and up the Tibet Plateau and finally into Lhasa, the capital of what is euphuistically called the Tibetan Autonomous Region.

If you were to keep going east, toward the border with Afghanistan and Kazakhstan, you would pass the vast Gobi desert and enter Xinjiang, now a booming trade and natural resource center with the Middle East and Europe. The Tibetan plateau averages 4,500 meters above sea level and is surrounded by mountain ranges on all sides: the Himalayas to the south, the Karakoram to the west, and the Kunlun to the north.

It is one of the most isolated parts of the world. This is the highest train line in the world, 4,000 km from Lhasa to Beijing.

The stats behind its architecture exemplify China’s ambitions. Four billion in the making (more than Beijing spent on hospitals and schools the last fifty years), 160 km of bridges, 160 km of bridges, most track above 10,000 feet and laid on permafrost. 11,000 migrant workers (90 percent of whom were not Tibetan).

Completed ahead of schedule. Who does this?

The line is flooding Lhasa with Han Chinese. Its also designed to encourage foreign investment, as the region is rich in copper and iron. Two Tibetan monks look out the window. What about them?

In 1949, Mao declare he would “liberate the oppressed and exploited Tibetans and reunite them with the great motherland.” In other words, “we’re coming.” In 1950 they did. Tibetans were helpless, having little defense against a history of invaders who came and went. At the time, Beijing offered goodwill and economic assistance. Tibet’s religious leaders were skeptical and feared losing culture of their orthodox culture.

The 1959 Lhasa uprising forced the Dali Lama and the ruling elites to flee for Dharamsala, a sanctuary provided by India. Nearly 100,000 Tibetans were said to have been killed; temples and monasteries were destroyed. No more nice guy. Beijing held the territory with an iron fist. The 1960s Cultural Revolution did not preserve Tibetan Buddhism any more than other culture legacies. In 1959, there were 2,700 monasteries and temples in Tibet; by 1978, there were just eight.

Even today, political unrest ferments and any sign of dissent is ruthless quashed. Tibetan Buddhism is allowed but it’s said that spies are everywhere. Google anything controversial about the region and you’ll get a blank. E-mails out of the region are carefully monitored by Beijing censors. Don’t be fooled by “Free Tibet” movie stars, however. This was no utopia. The pre-Chinese Tibetan government were xenophobic feudal warlords. Slavery was tolerated. Today, Beijing provides huge subsides, infrastructure, education and healthcare.

Cynics suggest that this is merely a soft strategy to assimilate and defeat. Han Chinese settlers, encouraged by economic incentives, threatens to dilute the Tibetan culture and economy. Beijing argues that it’s providing much needed development to a poor and underserved part of the world.

Either way, the life of Tibetans is harsh. A quarter cannot feed or clothe themselves, one third of children do not go to school and the literacy rate is about thirty percent, the lowest in China. Oppressor and oppressed.  

Prep for Tibet, with a Warning...

<< Hostel room, Beijing. About $7.50/night. Heading to a Green Tech expo in China, the Canton Trade Fair in Guangzhou, Xi’an and then Lhasa Tibet. I’m reading this from the Lonely Planet website.

Travel Alert: Travelers using the border crossing with Nepal at Zhangmu have reported trouble with officials regarding Lonely Planet guidebooks. Some travelers have experienced similar problems at Lhasa Airport. This is due to sensitivity regarding maps of China that do not include Taiwan and references to the Dalai Lama in both the China and Tibet books. Travelers should consider putting a cover on the book to make it less recognizable and just to be safe, copy down any crucial details you might need while in the country.

The Tibet Culture DNA resides in Dharamsala, India

After a few days in Dharamsala, what the Dali Lama has put together is impressive. It’s literally an active library of culture, full of all the seeds to build a nation if it ever finds a permanent home in Tibet.  

Academies of music, art, dance, philosophy, history.  Advocacy and media and educational NGOs to serve its people. The reality is that all this depends on the financial support of outsiders and foreign governments.

The Tibetans have a great deal of pride and integrity and it shows in everything: discipline to religion and practice, tradition, living with self-reliance, schooling, the leadership of the Dali Lama to appeal to the world for his people and befriend influential leaders in government, media and entertainment.

The museum at the Dali Lama’s temple and residence is sobering. The devote Tibetans are pawns at the hands of a humiliating Chinese, who themselves were shamed by the Japanese and nineteenth century colonists. Oppressive and oppressed. It all depends on what side of the fence you’re on.

The situation appears intractable.

Home of the Displaced Tibetian People

McLeod Ganj, Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh

 

At the bottom of the mountain is McLeod Ganj, the main city. Up the hill is Dharamsala, a refuge for some 100,000 Tibetans, ground zero for Tibetan Buddhist culture, tradition and scholarship, and home to the Dali Lama.

It’s a lovely and visitor friendly hill town nestled on a ridge, full of monks and intellectuals, an oasis of all things Tibet.  India provided the refugee in 1959, when the Dali Lama fled, and this year the town is thanking India for its fifty years of hospitality. Behind the veneer of orange robes and humble smiles is sorrow and hardship.

We are parked next to one of several NGOs in town devoted to those who fled Tibet-China, leaving family and their homeland behind, without the hope of returning.  The Center shows documentary films at night, in the hope of encouraging Westerns to exert political pressure on their government. Unfortunately, with China on the rise and American impotent, President Obama will not visit with the Dali Lama in Washington, lest he offend Beijing, where he will visit in November.

The politics and social strive are real and current, and present a prelude to my upcoming Tibet visit. I’m told to bring pictures of the Dali Lama to Tibet, because the images are prohibited by the Chinese government, but to be discreet and hide them from Chinese immigration (who are known to inspect bags and rip pages out of travel guides that display Tibet as separate from China.)

I volunteer for one its conversationalist English classes. One female monk has been in McLeod for years, the other lived in Nepal for years after leaving her family in Tibet. They are somber and defeated. “Me very sad,” she says.