Roof of the World - Lhasa, Tibet

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Llasa, Tibet
Llasa

You join me on a plane from Chengdu to Llasa. Almost all the passengers are Han Chinese, showing who wears the trousers in modern Tibet. The first group of Tibetans I saw were unloading the luggage from the plane.

The 'roof of the world' is only an hour away. From the plane window, the scenery looks 'moon-like'. I know this adjective is often overused, but in Tibet's case, the description is valid. The mountain tops are occasionally snow covered, but mainly brown and barren. I'd expected mountains like the Alps, with craggy snow covered peaks separated by fertile green valleys and lakes, but I couldn't see anything green from the plane - just an endless series of brown lumps. This must be what all of the earth looked like before life evolved. As the plane descended into Gongkar airport, I noticed that some of the valleys did manage to support some kind of meager agricultural production, but even these crops looked brown and almost petrified.

We got into Llasa, but very quickly felt dizzy and giddy. The feeling you get from the sudden lack of oxygen at 4,000 metres is a little like being drunk - you laugh for no reason and your co-ordination is shot. When we got into our room, Sandra lay on the bad and didn't get out of it for two days. We've both got altitude sickness, but she's got it worse.

The symptoms are not pleasant; a screaming headache, fever, disorientation, nausea, and in Sandra's case, vomiting and diarrhea too, to add to the fun! The strangest effect though, is the permanent shortage of breath. Your instinct is to counter it with long deep breaths, but this only makes things worse. What you need to do is take lots of short, shallow breaths, like a panting dog. The slightest exertion, like getting out of bed to take a pee, leaves you wheezing and your heart pumping.

Even sleeping becomes a skill you have to relearn. When we sleep, our breathing instinctively slows and becomes deeper. This is not a problem at normal altitudes, but at 4,000 metres, there isn't enough oxygen getting from your lungs into your brain, and your heart beats faster and faster to try and make up the deficit. Soon, you wake up with a start to find your heart is racing, and you've got to breathe like you never breathed before. This happened to me last night every twenty to thirty minutes, so my sleeping was fitful at best. At about 2:30, I woke up for the last time, and spent the rest of the night staring at the ceiling and listening to my heart pound. It wasn't very interesting - pretty repetitive actually. Even when lying in bed, my heartbeat was over a hundred beats per minute, and a slow walk, with frequent stops to drink water, as the dry mountain air robs your body of moisture, brought it to well over 120.

Our room was nice enough, but freezing. Well, not freezing really - I suppose it was about 15 degrees during the day and 10 degrees at night, but after Bangkok's 30 degrees at night, it felt freezing. There was no heater, and the hotel staff said there wasn't one to give me. I didn't really believe them, so I tried begging and then bribery, but I guess they were telling the truth. Moreover, none of the other backpackers I met had heaters in their rooms either. This is very odd, when you think about it. Even now, in April, the temperature can fall to zero at night, and in the depths of winter, it can plummet to minus 20. How can these people survive, I asked myself, without heating? How many layers of clothes can you wear? How tough could they be?

I felt sure there had to be heaters somewhere, so tiring of lying under my four blankets, I decided I would need to purchase a small one here in Llasa, or my memories of the place would mostly be hiding under the blankets trying to keep warm and worrying about hyperthermia. I set off into the heart of Llasa to find one. With the naivety that comes from growing up in the shopper's paradise of Western Europe, I thought it would only take five minutes, but hour after hour went by without success. Night was beginning to fall, and I knew out room was only going to get colder and colder, and I also knew from previous experience in China that restaurants and bars here never have heating, so I trundled on and on, determined not spend the evening eating my dinner, through chattering teeth, in my coat in a freezing restaurant with nothing to look forward to but returning to an even colder room. It took on the feeling of a holy quest - the Search for the Holy Heater. It would have been easier to find the Holy Grail in a meeting of the Central Committee. I was all over the beautiful old town of Tibet, and then I ventured into the ugly Chinese new town, but heaters were not to be found. I looked in more shops in four hours than I've looked in in my whole life, but without success. There are no heaters in Tibet! This may not count as spiritual enlightenment, but it sure shocked the Hell out of me. Tibetans have no heaters! They cannot be bought for love, nor money, nor yak's milk.

Old Llasa was like something out of a medieval museum. The people dress in colourful traditional costumes, layer upon layer, and spin prayer wheels clockwise with upturned wrists, chanting softly but melodically. Many of the young men from outside Llasa carried daggers. The thinness of the Ozone layer and the blue skies leaves their skin deeply tanned and tough. Indeed, tough is the best word to describe them. I can barely survive here in a comfy hotel with all the creature comforts money can buy, except a heater, of course. These guys from outside Llasa eek a living from the most barren and inhospitable land I've ever seen.

Before Buddhism gained a hold here, the Tibetans were regarded by their neighbours much as the Huns were regarded by Europeans - fierce savage warrior creatures, intent on pillage, rape and general destruction. And, to be honest, they still give me the willies. If I were some kind of Hemmingway figure, I'd strike up a friendship with some of them over hot Yak milk and whiskey, and head back into the mountains with them to see how real men live, and experience life at its toughest. Of course, I'd probably be dead in a week. Even the Han Chinese, a pretty sturdy bunch themselves, tend to stay within towns, and leave the herding in the Wastelands to the Tibetans.

Even the monks, who I had expected to display a glowing serenity, are a little on the scary side. One of them approached me yesterday, smiled with a touch of menace, and showed me a scabby piece of paper requesting money to rebuild some monastery or other. I took some crumbled notes out of my pocket and went to give him a five yuan one. He grabbed the other notes out of my paw too, and took off smiling, spinning his prayer wheel as he went. "What a naughty monk," I thought to myself.

This happened several times in Llasa, so that pretty quickly, I learned not to make eye-contact with any red-robed fellow, and to ignore their many "hellos" and commands to parley. They were insatiably greedy - an avarice even the Catholic church would balk at.

Ignoring them wasn't always enough though. A few days later, after staggering down from the Potala palace, and falling into the nearest restaurant, hopelessly out of breath and desperately in need of something cold, liquid and sweet, I looked aghast as my just opened can of coke was lifted from my table by the claws of a middle-aged monk. He gave me a quick nod and scampered off with my coke, the sod. The owner of the restaurant (a Han Chinese) shrugged his shoulders sympathetically, and I was left to wonder how his helping himself to my can of coke was going to bring either of us one step closer to enlightenment.

In the dizzy and disorientated state of my first day, as I walked around the Barkhor temple, Llasa's holiest shrine, I was accosted by uncountable numbers of beggars, and enthusiastic stall owners who enjoined me to purchase large quantities of prayer wheels, yak's butter, prayer mats, prayer flags and hand-woven carpets. Everything proffered was accompanied by the mantra "luck-ee luck-ee" and "cheap-ee cheap-ee." Nobody offered to sell me what my heart desired - a heater. The sounds and smells of the crowded market street were overpowering. As I crawled along, zombie-like in short shuffle steps, I was struck by how alien the place was compared to everything I had seen in my life before. I was also struck by how close to fainting I was, and worried by my inability to remember how to get back to my hotel. Eventually, I found my way back to the freezing hotel room, checked that Sandra had not frozen to death in my absence, and began the roller coaster ride of sleep and heart palpitations.

Slowly the worst effects of altitude sickness subsided, but the racing heart beat and the shortness of breath continued. I also managed to pick up a cold and a TB-like cough. I almost thought about giving up smoking, but luckily sanity prevailed. I'd already given up alcohol, and you shouldn't overdo it. After morbidly dwelling on the nature of mortality between coughing fits and Chinese cigarettes that went under the ludicrously inappropriate brand name 'Lights', I paid a second visit to the clinic. I'd gone on my first day in Llasa for some altitude sickness potions and industrial strength disprin, and to check I wasn't about to keel over. My earnest attempts to locate a heater dispensary were unsuccessful.

This time the 'doctor', if indeed she was a doctor and not a witch doctor, or just a witch, took my heartbeat, but I was worried by the amount of time it took her to find my pulse with her rusty stethoscope. She was a woman of indeterminate age, but certainly over a hundred and eighty, and her long frizzy grey hair gave the impression that it had only had a passing acquaintance with water, and had yet to be introduced to shampoo. Her 'medical' apron had once been white, but also showed evidence of having a dim view of cleaning. In fact, everything in the clinic was dirty, and the whole place was in dire need of a good bleaching. I was tempted to do it myself, but I feared this would not fall within acceptable bounds of behaviour, even for 'big nose' foreigners, so I tried to forget that if this had even been a café in the west, it would have been closed down by the health inspector on hygiene grounds.

The 'doctor', who was beginning to look more and more like one of the three witches from Macbeth, right down to the cackling laughter, had breathing problems as bad as my own, or even worse, and her swaying made me wonder how stable she was on her feet. She had about 50 faintly recognisable words of English, and an unwillingness to speak Mandarin with foreigners, a trait common to every Tibetan I tried to speak to. To make up for these linguistic deficiencies, she affixed 'ee' and 'upa' to the end of Tibetan words, hoping this would made things clearer. It didn't. The witchdoctor stuck a thermometer under my armpit, and was then called away by another client at the counter, or maybe she had to add some frog's legs to her cauldron - I don't know. I think she forgot about me, as I'm sure a thermometer, whatever its age, doesn't require 20 minutes to get a reading.

In her absence, we chatted to a young woman from Chengdu, who lay fully clothed, even to the extent of having her chunky coat done up, in the bed beside where we were sitting. There was an enormous rusting oxygen bottle beside her that looked like Captain Nemo had used it on an disastrous underwater dive when trying to find the lost city of Atlantis. Pulled over her, the girl had some blankets that looked like they had last been used to infect the American Indians with TB. The clinic, like everywhere else, had no heating.

She said she was suffering from a cold and had come in to have a drip put in her arm. No, come to think of it, the she said the drip had been placed in her bum. Apparently, that's where they stick it in these parts. Don't ask me why. The Chinese often go to a hospital to have a drip inserted when they have nothing more than a cold to worry about. In view of the highly questionably hygiene standards of the establishment, I refused the doctor's later offer of a drip for me. Indeed, as long as I could maintain consciousness, I was determined not to let the wheezing, grey-haired old doctor insert a needle into any part of my anatomy.

By the time the doctor returned, the thermometer had fallen form my armpit and was resting on my hip, but she said it didn't matter. She diagnosed a cold, and gave me the same prescription as yesterday, dispirin and altitude sickness potions. I got the impression she sold these to everyone who visited her clinic, regardless of their complaint. You could walk in with your arm in shreds and hanging off the shoulder after a savage attack from a flock of marauding vultures, blood-crazed after a traditional Tibetan funeral service, and you'd probably leave with nothing more than a few past their sell-by-date dispirin . She also advised me not to climb any tall mountains in the next day or two. Ha! I had problems enough climbing the single flight of stairs to my hotel room. Everest was definitely not on my agenda.

After some frantic phone calls from deep under the covers in my hotel room, I managed to find a hotel that promised to provide me with a heater. It cost triple what I was paying for the other hotel, but it was still only 35 Euro a night. This is a fortune in Llasa, and I'm sure I would have been expelled from the Backpacker Republic of Scrimping for paying it, but I couldn't face the thought of another day shivering under three blankets, a t-shirt, a fleece and a winter coat.

Moreover, the new hotel's location was nothing short of spectacular. It was right opposite the Barkhor, Tibet's holiest shrine I mentioned earlier, and smack in the middle of the old town. The Barkhor temple itself, as a building, does not compete with the Potala palace (former home of the Dali Lama - the enormous white and red tower everyone thinks of when you mention Tibet), but the atmosphere of the Barkhor is incredible. Crouched over my beloved electric heater, trying not to burn my fingers by hugging it too much, I could see though the window the pilgrims perambulate over and over in a clockwise direction around the temple (doing koras), spinning ornate prayer wheels and dressed in elaborate regional costumes. The PSB kept a close eye on everything, but the Pilgrims didn't see to see them, or if they did, they paid them no heed. Even 50 years of Han domination, or what the Dali Lama has labeled 'cultural genocide' does not seem to have destroyed their culture, or even dampened their spirit. In spite of the oppression and hardships, they laugh and smile a lot more than the Han, or westerners, for that matter.

I'd like to think this will continue forever, but Beijing is thinking long term, and is not prepared to give this place back to what it considers a bunch of savage primitives, too backward to even appreciate their 'liberation from feudal servitude', and all the roads and airports the Chinese have built, the schools they've set up, and jobs they've provided. There are significant untapped mineral resources here, and Greater Tibet (Tibet itself, Qinghai, and parts of Sichwan and Yunnan) is an enormous area, the size of Western Europe, and it's grossly underpopulated and ripe for Han expansion. Beijing offers great financial incentives for Han Chinese to resettle here, and as there are only about 5 million Tibetans in Greater Tibet, and there are 1,300 million Han, crowded into Eastern China's lowlands and costal areas, the Tibetans will soon find themselves a minority in their own 'autonomous region'. The same is true for other ethnic minorities in China, who make up only 7 per cent of the population, but occupy nearly 40 per cent of the land.

Apart from repopulation, the Han fights the Tibetan campaign on a second from, a cultural front. The pilgrims I mention come from remote mountainous regions. In the urban centres, the young Tibetans seem a great deal less devout. They listen to hip-hop, wear western clothes and watch VCD's. Western culture, insidious and all-conquering, may achieve what communist propaganda has failed to achieve in 50 years - it may make the Tibetans forget who they are.

Being brought up in the sham, pretense and general irrelevance of the Catholic Church, I was completely unprepared for what awaited me in the inside of the Jokhar temple. (I was also unprepared for the 10-dollar entrance fee a crafty monk made me pay for what is supposed to be free to all. Those guys never miss a trick!) Even in St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome, the epicenter of the Catholic world, camera-toting tourists outnumber the faithful three to one. Every Christian church I've ever visited feels like a museum; of historical and architectural interest only. In Macao, I remember a pair of young Chinese girls smiling for photos under the more picturesque station of the cross, searching in vain, I presume, for a smiling Christ.

The Jokhar, on the other hand, is most definitely a place of pilgrimage and worship. At the entrance, pilgrims first kneel and then hold their hands in front of their chest as if praying in a Christian way. They then place their hands on the ground and use them to support their body weight as they gently allow their body to touch the ground, touch the sacred ground with their forehead as an act of worship, and slide their hands (covered in some kind of mat) forward in front of their head so that it's pointing at the temple. They chant something special for each part of the procedure. They do this over and over again. It looked very strenuous, like doing a push up, but the tough Tibetans continued on and on, oblivious to all discomfort, as always. I suppose the more times they can perform this ritual, the more credit is won with the Lord Buddha, like some kind of athletic rosary penance.

As you enter and try to navigate its dark labyrinthine corridors, the smell of incense and yak butter candles mixes with the smell of the unwashed pilgrims and their dirty clothes. The chanting devotees move hurriedly and purposefully past the fading paintings of the Brahayama (one of Buddhism's most sacred books), spinning enormous silver drum-like prayer wheels as they go, making brief stops at tiny alcoves, each containing a different Buddha statue. I didn't see any other foreigners in there, but nobody stared at us, as they were all far too busy seeking salvation to bother with a pair of wheezing 'big noses'. Red-robed monks are everywhere, and in the central room, a gigantic gold Buddha smiles down, secure in the knowledge that life and existence are nothing but illusions. He's also probably relieved that the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution have left, as they destroyed about 40 per cent of the temple the last time they paid a visit.

On the roof of the building, the Potala palace, 2 kilometers away, appears even more wondrous and stately, and Llasa itself, surrounded on all sides by freshly snow covered mountains, seems truly locked away from the world at large, and above Earthly concerns.

We had deliberately left the Potala Palace until our last day in Llasa, daunted by its many steep steps. Finally, armed with a large breakfast, and an increasingly powerful set of lungs, a set of lungs a 60-year-old would be proud of, we felt ready for the climb up to the Potala.

We still took it slowly, stopping frequently to take in the views of Llasa. However, they were a little disappointing. It's only from the height of the Potala that you realize how much 50 years of Beijing rule have changed the face of the city. While the Jokhar and what remains of the old town around it are still very much Tibetan, the rest of the city is completely new. Of whatever there was before, nothing remains. It's all been rebuilt in accordance with modern urban planning - all straight lines, wide roads and uniformity. At least they have kept it low rise, and the Potala does not have to compete with skyline with some shimmering steel and glass Bank of China building, but modern Llasa is about as interesting as a small mid-west American town. It's only the backdrop of snowy mountains that remind you that you're not just smack bang in the middle of Normalsville, Idaho.

When we had climbed about one third of the way up to the entrance, somebody shouted at us to hurry up, as the Potala would be closing soon. Not for the first time, I cursed my guidebook for trying so hard to be witty and not paying enough attention to essential details, like opening and closing hours. If I'd want to read something witty, I'd have bought a Bill Bryson book, and if I want to know what time the Potala Palace closes, I expect my guide book to know about it. As to the name of my illustrious guide book, let's just say it has 'Planet' in the title, and I wouldn't shed a tear if the authors were exiled to a different one, preferably a cold one where possession of a heater carries the death penalty!

Determined not to enter the Guinness Book of Records as the only sad prats who had managed to come to Llasa and not managed to see the Potala Palace, we sped up. After climbing 20 steps, my heartbeat reached 140; after another 10 steps, everything was zipping in and out of focus in an alarming fashion; after another 10, there was an odd buzzing sound in my ears, like helicopter blades from a Vietnam war movie. We simply had to stop again and catch our breath - perhaps hyperventilate is a more accurate description. Once the worst of the dizziness and nausea subsided, we clambered up more steps and through a feat of super-human exertion I never thought myself capable of, we made it to the ticket office.

I tried to explain our late arrival, but couldn't stop gasping long enough to badmouth the guidebook. In fact, I couldn't emit any comprehensible sounds at all. The assistant did not summon the nearest doctor or monk to administer whatever the Buddhist equivalent of 'last rights' is, as I would have done in her place when confronted by two swaying wrecks who looked as if they were about to "shuffle off this mortal coil," but just punched 100 Yuan into a talking calculator and said, "you must hurry!" I tried to think of a witty retort, but at this stage of oxygen deprivation words were not even forming in my brain, let alone coming out of mouth.

We fell into the Potala only to be confronted by more steps. There are thirteen floors in the place. While geriatric monks seemed to have no problems whatsoever bounding up the tree-like steps, we certainly did, but there was always a monk or caretaker nearby to helpfully ask us to hurry up. One should look on the bright side - the lack of oxygen in my dying brain and the mild visual auditory hallucinations they caused did make the experience more mystical. Also, we had the place to ourselves, and didn't have to suffer another tour group or guide, praise be to Buddha.

The Potala has 1,300 rooms, but of course, only a few of these are on view. Most of those seem to be under urgent repair. The Potala was built and is still supported using wooden beams, and they are far from eternal. The endless rooms contain Buddha upon Buddha, thousands and thousands of them; some big, some small; some silver, some gold; some with him sitting, some with him lying down. Each one is probably a collector's piece and I'm sure many are priceless. It's a wonder they're still here, as the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution were all set to come in to destroy the 'Four Olds', but thankfully Deng Zhou Ping stuck his neck out and sent a contingent of loyal Red Army troops to protect the place.

The walls and roof of each room are painted to depict scenes from the Brahayama, with its freaky assortment of goblins and monsters. Centuries of yak oil candles have darkened and blackened everything, and there's very little natural light in most of the rooms, but this only heightens the feeling of peace and isolation. Other rooms contain holy scrolls, browned by age and musty beyond belief. Some of them, I was told, had been brought from India by my old friend Tributaka, of 'Monkey' fame.

We also passed through tall cavernous rooms, containing hefty golden, jewel-encrusted tombs of the previous Dali Lamas. Near the top of the Palace, we were briefly allowed to see the Dali Lama's living quarters - where he ate, slept, and looked out on a world that was about to disappear; and the throne room, where he held court. It must have been a very strange world to grow up and live in, believing yourself to be the reincarnation of previous Dali Lamas, universally credited with possessing divine qualities and born with a right to rule. In this fairyland world, it's hardly surprising he didn't see the Chinese wolf at the door. But it's the wolf's house now, and I can't see him giving it back.

One Chinese word you pick up very quickly is 'fang bien' or 'convenient'. The Chinese use the word about ten times as frequently as we say 'convenient'. Perhaps their obsession with the term is because nothing is convenient in China, especially traveling. We had only four hours sleep on our last night in Llasa in order to catch the impossibly early flight out of there to Xian. Actually, the flight wasn't that early (10:00) but in the spirit of making life as inconvenient as possible, the Chinese authorities had decided to place Llasa airport a whopping 100km outside the city. There are only 200,000 people in Llasa - how much do they expect it to grow?

I tried to look on the bright side. The taxi ride gave us a chance to see dawn rise over the Tibetan mountains, as we sped through empty roads hugging the hillside as it followed the slow, green-blue and meandering Llasa river along its lonely path. Thick fog banks flowed over the mountain peaks and slid down the valleys. An occasional serene yak munched away on clumps of yellow semi-frozen grass, and for a while, Tibet seemed like a magical place.

That feeling immediately vanished when we left the warm taxi and entered the brand spanking new, and completely unheated, airport building. At the check-in counter we found that our flight had been cancelled, for reasons unknown, and how dare we have the audacity to demand to know why. We were waved away to the other side of the hall. There, a woman with zero English said she was the Bank of China, and waved us back to where we had come from. This happened over and over. Indeed, it is a feature of travel throughout China, and I can only assume the Chinese Tourist board trains its employees to maintain the highest standards in this regard.

The provision of trolleys by the airport authorities would have made things far too convenient, and my aging back rapidly tired of loading and unloading 20 kilograms onto its creaking frame. This coming and going was made all the more difficult by the abject inability of Chinese people to form a queue. Instead of an orderly line of people, you must enter a kind of scrum, or rather a tightly packed semi-circle of barking fiends, each one shouting at anyone behind or near the counter, stuffing documents under their noses, and nudging each other to and fro, jockeying for position like their life depended on it. In this kind of situation, the meek, as Jesus maintained, may very well inherit the earth, but they've absolutely no chance of getting a plane ticket.

Different cultures, sociologists tell us, have different acceptable levels of personal space, into which strangers must never tread. The Anglo Saxons, they say, have one of the greatest distances. The Chinese operate with a personal space threshold of zero. I should be able to accept this as a cultural difference and not expect other cultures to play by my rules, but I can't. The feeling of a stranger's breath on my neck, or the feeling of his crotch in my backside, or his falling asleep in a crowded bus on my shoulder, these things never fails to aggravate me. However, I have just to grin and bear it, or rather grind my teeth, mutter abusive remarks in Spanish, and bear it.

After a few more yo-yo perambulations of the airport, just to make sure we left Llasa feeling as dizzy as when we arrived, they informed us that the next flight to Xian was in two day's time, and we should sort out the details with a travel agent back in Llasa. Standing firm, while swaying firm anyway, we insisted on flying the same day and demanded an indirect route, if no direct one was available. They reluctantly offered to exchange the Llasa-Xian flight for a Llasa-Chengdu flight leaving in a couple of hours. We pointed out that this was only half way there, and wondered if we were expected to walk the rest of the way, or perhaps grab onto a passing swan. The girl behind the counter was getting angry now, and shooed us away like you would a malevolent ghost or a smelly skunk, and told us to buy another ticket in Chengdu. Sandra was getting pretty angry now too, and was beginning to take on the air of a tigress, with her flight to Xian representing cubs she was going to protect with her life. After a lot of snarling and bearing of teeth, they gave us the connecting flight, but made us pay a 50 dollar surcharge. Somebody in the scrum realized what had happened, and before you could say, "let me out of this fucking place," everyone was demanding the same thing, much to the attendant's displeasure. It was not 'convenient' for her, as she now had to fill in two pieces of paper for every customer instead of just one.

I had similar experiences in Russia when dealing with officials. I think it's something to do with communism. The 'service mentality' of Western cultures is turned on its head, and officials of every rank believe that they are doing you a favor by serving you. The customer is not always right, as in the west. On the contrary, the customer is nothing more than a petty inconvenience and should be ignored whenever possible, or if they must be dealt with, they should be treated with undisguised contempt.

Eventually, the plane took off and Llasa and Tibet disappeared from view. Forever. It's customary to say that you'll return one day, but I know I'll never go back to Llasa. I'm simply too weak to survive there, but I've nothing but admiration for those who can. I do hope the Tibetans and their culture manage to survive up here on 'the roof of the world.' There is something unique about them, and the world will be a poorer place for their passing.

However, I can't help but feel pessimistic about their prospects. History is full of peoples and cultures that have been laid waste by 'The Mighty Han.' Even those who appear to have defeated and conquered them, like the Manchus or the Qing, are later assimilated and become indistinguishable from the Han, in language and culture. Originally, they were merely one people among many in central China, but they grew and grew, and reached a 'critical mass.' Like the Borg from Star Trek, they conquer, assimilate and grow, growing stronger and stronger with each fresh conquest. However, no Captain Piquard is going to beam down from the Enterprise with an away team to protect the outnumbered and outgunned Tibetans. They must fight alone, and fight passively, without even the threat of violence, in a manner even more subtle than Gandhi's passive resistance movement in India. Can they succeed? I don't know. I hope so.

Looking at a group of army cadres on the plane, I softly hummed the tune of an old Morrissey song that had come into my head out of nowhere:
"Shelve you western plans
And understand
That life is hard enough
When you belong here
Life is hard enough
When you belong here"

As acts of defiance go, it was pretty pathetic, and I don't suppose it will make the Han leave their barracks.

As the plane landed in Chengdu, a group of Tibetans in the central rows of the plane ignored the 'Fasten your Seat Belt' sign, and stood up to get a better view out the plane windows. They looked in awe and wonder at the flat, green and lush farmland below them. Perhaps it was the first time they had seen such a landscape. How strange it must have appeared to them.

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