Xiaojiang HU

Perspectives, Vol. 2, No. 2

(Editor's note: This is a two-part series. The second part will be published in December.)

Story 1: "You owe me a safe return"

"Are you going to Tibet in WINTER? For three months? Are you crazy?" With monotonous regularity, it was with this kind of shock and disbelief that all my friends reacted to the news of my trip to Tibet. Yes, I am going to Tibet in winter for three months, and then again later in summer for four months. It is for my dissertation fieldwork since I want to study the ethnic Han small business people in Tibet. I can't just scan around like a tourist during the tourist seasons, I need to be in the field in winter as well as in summer because I want to see how people's life is like there all year long. The same well-rehearsed answers rolled out of my mouth, knowing that they would be insufficient to slake the sheer dread that the idea generated in the flatlander hearts of my friends.

I was not surprised at this reaction. It is almost a common knowledge in other parts of China that Tibetan winters are extremely cold and unfit for living. Tibetan winters are cold in an abstract, ineffable and preternatural way, a coldness that is more than an absence of heat and that has become a substance in itself. Tibet is cold in the way that Amazon jungles are mysteriously hot and humid; or African deserts are unforgiving and deceptive to the unwary. I knew that I didn't deserve the admiration that my friends gave me. It would have taken a simple check of the daily national weather report to see Lhasa's temperature in the day-time is always higher than Beijing's during winter, let alone the Bostonian icebox which I had lived in for the last four years. I could have told them that, just as I could have told them that it is the absence of indoor heating in Tibetan housing that makes people feel cold.

Same as the unbearable coldness, Tibet in the eyes of outsiders is also a land of mystery, beauty and exoticism, a land of minds and dreams. I have met people that genuinely loved Tibet and talked about it as "the home of my soul". But while they talked about their putative spiritual homeland for hours, with great passion and conviction, their Tibet was only of snow-covered mountains and holy lakes. The people in Tibet had been shield by the immensity of the monasteries, mountains, the lakes, the arid plateau, or else they had become bland characters in a romance, a Shangri-La world filled with natives in their traditional fur robes, quaint, colorful and filthy, seemingly doing naught but singing, dancing, drinking and praying in their characteristic full-length kowtows, unaware of and unconcerned about the rest of the world or its distractions.

However, the mundane Tibet is a much more real and complicated place. In this Tibet I see the variety, the bustle, the change and the tradition both that I can espy in my own hometown, Beijing, and my second home, Boston. I see a Tibet struggling to find its place in the real world of petty problems and great hopes, a Tibet trapped in the common dilemma of catching up with a modernizing world while preserving its culture. This Tibet is embedded in a real wider context, inextricably enmeshed with the rest of China, with its neighbors Nepal and India, the USA, the WTO, and the world at large. This Tibet has concrete housing projects, connected to the world by fiber cables, cell phones and the Internet. In this Tibet the locals dislike outsiders, and the city folks snob the rustics. In this Tibet old people stick to old beliefs while young people are fascinated by movie stars. This is a Tibet where the ailments and problems of so many other third world regions are apparent. Inefficient local government, unstoppable urbanization and bad city planning, corruption, inadequate education, public health problems, crime, police abuse, an unskilled labor force, unemployment, a brain drain, poverty, and ethnic tension and conflict. This is the Tibet I am going to and from which I will write my stories.

However, just as I reassure my friends, I am indeed, worried. I fear altitude sickness, I fear the old-too-common accidents and mishaps in the rough Tibetan land. Mother was careful as she asked me to reconsider, trying hard not to sound like an overprotective mother. "Why don't you think over your research plan? You don't have a very strong heart". Other relatives either offered me a medical check-up, or told me cautionary tales about someone they knew who had died of natural disasters, or had been crippled with permanent heart damage due to lack of oxygen. They repeatedly told me "if you ever start to feel uncomfortable, go to a hospital or fly down to Chengdu (the capital of the neighborhood Sichuan province) immediately. Don't be stubborn. Don't worry about money. Don't take chances. Don't be rash."

The day before I left, a Canadian friend in Beijing shook my hand in a special way. He crossed his little finger with mine and pushed our thumbs together, and then he looked into my eyes and said, "You owe me a safe return". At this moment, the real dangers of going to Tibet overcame me. So I silently promised my family, my friends, and everyone: I owe you all a safe return, and I will pay back that debt.

Story 2: Basang

The day before I left for Tibet, Basang was sitting with me in a cafe in Chengdu. She is a shockingly beautiful Tibetan girl of 20 from Lhasa. Wrapped in her fashionable gray outfit, she looked no different from any other Chengdu girls except her pierced earlobes and jade earrings, the only thing marking her out as an ethnic Tibetan. I met Basang in Lhasa on my first trip to Tibet in the summer of 1998 when she was home visiting her parents. Now she is a proud junior in a prestigious university in Chengdu.

"Sister, I will speak English to you sometimes, okay? I need to practice my English." The law major asked without the typical shyness of language students of China. She spoke English with less accent than her Han peers though her language skills were not as good. Basang graduated as one of the top students from her Tibetan high school, but she was able to enter this university only under China's "affirmative action" for ethnic minorities. In the National College Entrance Exams (the equivalent of the SATs), Basang's grade was 100 points (out of 700total) lower than the admission line for Han students. Now her department was giving her special tutoring sections. "I am catching up, now I can understand what they say in the English classes and I can speak too." Basang spoke with her usual enthusiasm. "It was Dad who insisted me to study law because he thought there were too few Tibetan lawyers. But I want to do Computer Science, and set up by own internet business. I like my school very much. The atmosphere there is very good. Every day after dinner, all my roommates would go to study. I used to be the only one watching TV in our dorm. I didn't have the habit of self-study when I was in high school, but now I also study by myself."

"Now, the biggest regret is that I can't study Tibetan anymore. Too busy. Our English classes are too heavy. I have taken my Tibetan books with me, but I have no time. I love studying Tibetan. Let me teach you some!

"My classmates all like me very much. They said that I was the first Tibetan they met. They all took for granted that I could sing very well, so I have to sing on every performance, though I don't particularly like singing. Most students know very little about Tibet, so I have to explain to them about Tibetan culture and social customs. ... No, I don't discuss with them about political issues, because it is very annoying. Once there was boy in my department asked me very rudely: 'Do you like the Dala Lama?' and 'Do you support Tibet Independence?' Foreign teachers also wanted to ask me those questions. That was very annoying. I got upset so I always simply said 'I don't know'. I don't know how I feel about the Dalai Lama. You've seen him in the US, was he kind? Do you think he really wants to split our country?"

"The day when the 1987 Lhasa riots broke out, I was right at Barkhor Street. I was only 8 and was on the street all alone. But I knew then that I was a Tibetan so I was not afraid. I just watched the scene and had fun. That was the first time I saw how violent we Tibetans could be. Woo! They threw stones and put up fires and shouted and ran around. In the chaos, I was hit by a tear-gas shell. Here." She rubbed the side of her arms with her fingers, "A lot of blood." "In primary school, I used to do as most other Tibetan students did, calling Han students names. Now I have grown up and can think on my own. I don't want splitism." and she switched to English, "I love my motherland."

"I don't know if I am a believer. I don't believe in superstitions, but I pray sometimes. Of course I prayed a lot before the college entrance exam. I know how to say some prayers." Basang recited some lines of Buddhist prayers for me in Tibetan. It was my first time to listen so closely to Tibetan prayers. The beauty of the rhymes and beats carried by her sweet voice touched me intensely.

While I was still immersed in the echoes of the Buddhist prayer-song, she suddenly asked: "Do you think NATO bombed our embassy intentionally?" Though I faced this question many times before, once people heard that I was just back from the US, I still didn't expect the question from her at that moment. When the bombing happened several months ago in May 1999, Basang was right in Chengdu, where the American consulate was damaged by protesters pretty badly." All my friends went to the demonstration. We were so angry! Angry to death!" her fists knocked the table. "I shouted and shouted and my voice went hoarse. I also threw an ink-bottle. You know that I liked McDonald's a lot, but I kept myself from going to eat there for many days."

No matter how much I wanted to hear more about these "important" topics, I couldn't prevent the 20-year-old from shifting into things she was more interested in, more relevant to her life. For an hour, Basang updated me about fashion, cosmetics, new gadgets, and the hottest movie stars and sizzling pop songs. She made me feel like an outdated cultural fossil that had been stored for years in a refrigerator in the US. In the middle of her discussion of these pop cultural topics, she also shared her first taste of philosophical thinking. "What is life?" She asked herself, "Have you ever felt at moments that you don't really exist? Close you eyes, and try to feel..."

On our way back, Basang suddenly tapped the taxi window and shouted: "Look, look, Sister, Liu Dehua (Andy Lau)! Isn't he cool!" Outside, the Hong Kong superstar was smiling from a big bill-board holding a cellular phone. Basang's beaming face immediately reminded me of another Tibetan girl whom I met in Boston. With the same young excitement, that Free Tibet fighter claimed: "I just love Madonna!", the innocent enthusiasm of youth uniting two girls separated by ideology.

I put into my pocket the list of Tibetan sentences Basang wrote for me with the pronunciation marked out in Chinese characters, Pinyin Romanization and English. I hugged this Tibetan girl and got ready to head into her homeland.

Story 3: Go on line

As said in newspapers, today's fad in China is to "go on line" (shangwang). One year apart from my last trip to Beijing, all subway commercial boards now have website addresses listed, and I could check and buy flight and train tickets on line. Internet cafes line up along the streets in university blocks and no one cares who you are or what you are checking. The number of Internet users is 8.9 million nationwide by the end of 1999, increased by 14 times from two years ago and is still soaring at an explosive speed.

I attended a news conference of a start-up Internet company when I was in Beijing. The company members, all under 30, were bringing up a small but very powerful software to facilitate Chinese laymen users to browse the Internet. As their peers around the world, these network experts are extremely smart, but pale and workaholic. I was very impressed by their expertise and vanguard vision for the future development of networks. In the conference, the officials from the Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Information Industry highly praised the company, saying that they are doing a great job helping ordinary people as well as the ongoing "Government go-on-line" project. There I also met an old classmate who is now working in the Central Committee of Chinese Communist Youth League. Guess what he is doing? His main responsibility is " to bring all 70 million league members go on line in certain number of years, and further bring all 200 million youth of the whole country to go-on-line by a bit more years."

Go-on-line is already well beyond the grips of computer experts. Newspapers, radio programs, especially TV educational programs all take everyone's go-on-line as the must-do for the country to further catch up with today's world. The funniest publicity I encountered was a TV show from Jiangxi Satellite TV channel. A group of 10 pretty girls, 5 in bright red, 5 in bright green, staged a modern dance show and sung a song of rap style: "Press, press the small keyboard, don't let the opportunities slip. In the world of the Internet, we will have lots of luck. Lots of luck!"

With such a white-hot zeal of bringing China go-on-line, no wonder that everywhere I meet people talking about the Internet. On the train to Xi'an(the capital of the relatively poor Shannxi Province in the west of China) I met two middle aged salesmen. Over scattered beer bottles and chicken bones, they shouted to each other in their typical loud voices on how to bring their factory on-line. In Lhasa, a vender from Sichuan painted the blueprint of his future in his tiny story selling melon seeds, cigarettes and cheap liquors: "After I accumulate some money I will go to training programs. I want to learn computer. I heard that something called in-some-net is very useful. If I work hard, I don't believe that I can't get it." In another store selling auto parts, a young man from Henan Province started his exploration of internet with the question: "What is the difference between Diannao and Jisuanji? If I learned how to use Diannao, then can I use Jisuanji?" [Note: Diannao (electric brain) is the translation of "computer" first used in Taiwan. Jisuanji (computing machine) is the translation of "computer" first used in China Mainland. Now the two words are interchangeable.] "I watched from CCTV that a peasant used the Internet to sell his agricultural products and the whole village got rich. I want to do the same."

A more serious discussion about the Internet was carried on by a handful of Lhasa professionals. The head of the group, a couple of Tibetan+Han marriage in their early 30s, invited a young man from Guangzhou as their network expert. The main goal of the group was to introduce Tibet to the world in their own way. "The best websites about Tibet right now are one built by someone in Shenzhen and another one in Shanghai. But our advantage is that we are in Tibet, we are Tibetans, and we have famous Tibetan scholars as advisors. We will definitely have more credibility." They were planning to start with tourism-on-line and then go to e-commerce on traditional Tibetan products. Even the ideas were good, but in terms of expertise, even I can tell that they were far behind from those people I met in Beijing.

In this environment I had no way but to go-on-line myself. So, I went to the Lhasa Telecom Building. It was 1pm. Nobody was at the relevant counter and I was told to go back at 3:30pm, the time that staffs started their afternoon shift. I had then had a hunch that I would go through a long bureaucratic process, maybe days, to get this high-tech issue done. When I went back in the late afternoon I filled in a form and handed in a symbolic introduction letter written by myself with a seal from a friend's working unit and paid 100 yuan($12) application fee. Then I waited for the ethnic Han staff to tell me how many days before I can go-on-line, but he had no indication to tell me anything about it. So I turned to ask how many people were on-line in Lhasa, the answer was "that is our secret. But I can tell you, there are a lot." [Note, from the series number I was given I guessed that the total number of individual Internet users in Lhasa was below 400.] He went on with: "We are now joining the WTO. So do you think our telecom will face a lot of foreign competitors soon?"

I wouldn't mind waiting for several days because I needed to get my phone line straight first. The original phone line was not long enough to reach my room and there was no build-in phone jacket in the room (or anywhere in the house). "No problem", the next door migrant worker from Sichuan offered help. From the corner of his dark and messy room, this self-made electrician towed out a big roll of very thick wire. "Good wire, copper core." He ensured me. With knife, matches, and black tapes, he skillfully added about 10 meters long wire to the phone line. He spat on the floor when finished, "Okay now, guaranteed!" The bright yellow thick wires meandered along the corridor in a funny way heading my room. I knew it would never pass the inspections of American Housing Safety codes, but it worked perfectly.

It was already around 7pm when I got the line ready so I tried the ChinaNet technical support number, half anticipating that either no answer, or being impatiently told "Already off today. Call tomorrow". But the line was busy. After a minute, a man of Tibetan accent called back. Without any greeting, without business style of politeness, even without identifying himself as the technical support personnel, he started with: "Here is your password, #####, and you need this and that number. You know how to use it? Okay." Hung up. This typical Chinese style service manner amused me a lot. Nevertheless I tried the number. Then it came the dear buzz of the modem, and it was through!

Excited as I was when walking out to the night after sending out my first email. I felt so connected. I breathed deeply of the thin air of Tibetan winter. Potala Palace and the gray mountains were clear under the moon. Yes, I have my own dail-in access to internet in Lhasa! I had waited for hours over the Telecom's lunch-break, then I got my account in minutes. Under the help from the shabby-looking migrant electrician, non-standard phone lines, and the straightforward technical support personnel, and with the electricity marked by occasional power off, I have been connected to the world. And so does Lhasa, so does Tibet.

Press, press the small keyboard, Don't let the opportunities slip. In the world of the Internet, We will have lots of luck. Lots of luck!

Story 4: Ultrasonic Teeth Cleaning

One day just after lunch, I was walking along a street lined with various small stores when something caught my attention. Between the doors of two shops, a cardboard board read "Ultrasonic Teeth Cleaning". I looked at the left of the board, a small store selling grains. I looked at the right, a small store selling gas stoves and gas cans. I looked under the board, no one was sitting there with a small table covered by white cloth. I looked up, no second floor existed. Who on earth was doing the ultrasonic teeth cleaning amid grain bags and gas cans? So I walked in the stove store to ask if anyone knew the dentist. The only person in the store, a man in his early forties, stood up from behind a pile of gas cans and responded that he was the teeth cleaner.

His face was tanned into the characteristic redness of the plateau. And he was wearing an old dark blue jacket wrapped around a gray sweater, gray pants covered in grease and small holes, and a pair of dirty sneakers. Stove seller, that I could accept. But he was in every sense very far from what I expected a dentist should look like. "How much is the teeth cleaning?" I asked. He answered: "Yesterday there were three men who did the cleaning, and today a Miss already has, and another Miss said she would come but hasn't showed up yet". I had to repeat my question before he said, "a Miss like you is 50yuan ($6), but male comrades is 80 yuan ($10)" because "men smoke and drink tea". Then he quickly added that other places charged 100 yuan. "Don't believe me? You can go check."

It seemed that he was not in any particular hurry to get to sit me down on his chair and get to work on my non-smoking, non-tea-sipping teeth. So I relaxed and chatted with him. He was from the countryside of Jiangsu province (a rich coastal province in the southeast of China), and had come to sell stoves because he heard that gas stoves have very good market in Lhasa (see story 6). There he found that there was a nice market for teeth cleaning too.

"People here don't know about teeth cleaning. In Nanjing (the capital city of Jiangsu Province) there are many teeth cleaning places, everyone has their teeth cleaned regularly! How did I learn? It doesn't need any learning! I just watched several times then I could do it." Just as I was starting to wonder this rather remarkable claim to having been able to master in days what dentists spend years learning, he suddenly took a mug of water and started brushing his teeth in the tiny space behind the shelves. "Sorry, I need to brush my teeth after lunch. I always brush three times a day." he explained.

After he had finished brushing, he went on preaching, "It doesn't matter if people look ugly, as long as you have clean teeth it will do. Because when you socialize, talk to others.... One day here came a young Miss, very pretty, but...." He seemed confident that I was someone "with culture" who would understand the paramount importance of teeth cleaning for modern life. He talked and talked, therefor gave me a good chance to examine his own teeth. They were indeed whiter and cleaner than the teeth of ordinary people. He was certainly not a handsome man, but his white teeth did add glamour, class even, to his face. Then he showed me a collection of newspaper clippings carefully wrapped in plastic and bound to a paperboard. "Look, it is already printed on newspapers. Teeth and Health. Teeth cleaning is not a vain luxury. People just don't understand that they should clean their teeth." On the margin of the paper, the handwritten note "imported equipment from Girmeny" contained a wrong character.

So I asked him to show me his equipment. It was stored in a shoe-box but it was indeed an ultrasonic teeth cleaner. "Very expensive, 8000 yuan ($1000)" he told me while carefully taking it out its box. It was a proud Made in China piece of hardware, I was sure, not the imported German equipment that he bragged about. But at this point, his relentless enthusiasm in preaching the gospel of white toothdom had managed to persuade me to give his methods a try.

There was something solemn about the way he went about his business. He seemed to be conveying once more his message that teeth are Important with a capital I, not something to trifle about. First, he carefully washed his hands with soap. Then he disinfected the dental mirror and probe head with alcohol twice, in an assured and skilled fashioned. After each time he used the equipment, he automatically rubbed his palms with alcohol. Reassured about the hygiene of his methods, I told myself I would be all right. It was ultrasonic, not the rotating grinding American-style cleaner. I'd be okay. So I sat on his folding chair.

The teeth cleaning turned out to be surprisingly good. His moves were gentle and professional. After 40 minutes he finished. No other customers came in, so he was happy to let me linger to listen to even more of his teachings and plans. "My wife has gone back to Jiangsu to buy more stoves. Usually men do that. It is a long trip, very hard. But my wife is very capable, you will meet her in 5 days. She doesn't like to do the teeth cleaning. So I stayed. Those who had their teeth cleaned here would feel good and they would come back again the next year and they will tell their friends to come too. So if this year I have 1000 customers, next year there will be 2000, the year after will be 4000.I will of course take all the market of Lhasa in several years. If others charge 100 yuan I will charge 50. I already rent several places and will move to there soon. After that? I will to go to Inner Mogolia and Xinjiang (Uigur Autonomous Region). People there eat raw mutton and beef, so teeth cleaning will have a big market. But now I will start advertising." He fumbled while getting out a student notebook from underneath a new stove and read it out loud to me: "Teeth cleaning is not "high consumption" [i.e. an unnecessary luxury]. Ultrasonic teeth cleaning. Imported equipment from Girmeny. Address and beeper number." "Tell me if you have any suggestions. I will advertise on beepers. For 1000 yuan the relay station will send out my ad once a day for quite a long time..." Finally, the stove-seller and teeth-cleaner was ready to let me go. "Come back when you have time, and bring your friends to clean their teeth." he shouted to me as I walked away.

I walked out of the stove store with clean teeth, felt pretty good. This man was one of many "inlanders" who have come to profit from Lhasa's golden market. In the West, it is a commonly held perception that the Chinese government has encouraged Han people to come to Tibet and exclude the Tibetans. However, at least from the perspective of the local entrepreneurs, the government has nothing to do with it. People like this enthusiastic factotum for Jiangsu know to navigate the treacherous currents of an opening market economy. It seems as if nothing would stop him from identifying a new promising niche market he can rush in with his contagious determination. Just around the corner, I bumped into another dental clinic. It looked more formal, likely a semi-state-owned enterprise. I asked the price: full mouth cleaning 100 yuan, front teeth only, 60yuan.The staff there were indifferent to my presence, needless to say, no one wanted to regale me with evangelical fervor about dental cleanliness being akin to saintliness.

The next time I visited the gas stove store, the owner was chatting with his cousin. He told me excitedly: "I've discovered a new market! Paper-wreaths (huaquan)[for funerals]!" But his cousin scorned him: "You idiot! Tibetans do sky burials. They don't use paper-wreaths! And Han all go back home to die. Whom are you going sell the paper-wreaths to?" The teeth cleaner looked surprised, "Still," he insisted, "there must be some demands. I will go to check again."

(The author is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University.)