Tibet: Stories of Change (Part II)

Xiaojiang HU

Perspectives, Vol. 2, No. 3

Story 5: Lhasa Departstore Ment

A new, modern department store, the "Lhasa Department Store", was opened three days before my arrival to Lhasa. The four-story building was shining new. Huge red streamers, on which bright yellow characters in both Tibetan and Chinese were wishing prosperity to the newborn store, draped from roof to floor. Flowers were still fresh in baskets at the doorways, and small pieces of colored paper decorated the floor. Cosmetic sections staffed by young, beautiful women in blue uniform were the first to greet the shoppers. It was said to be the biggest and best department store in Lhasa. I could almost imagine the extravagant opening ceremony, with much pomp, flowery speeches and government officials cutting the ribbon. On each of the two sides facing the streets the name of the store was written in big gilded characters in three languages. As is the rule in ethnic regions, atop is Tibetan, with Chinese in the middle and English at the bottom. The English reads: LHASA DEPARTMENT STORE. Oh no, wait! It actually is: LHASA DEPARTSTORE MENT.

It was already November. Tourist season had long been over. It had become hard to spot a foreigner on the streets. Crowds flowing in and out of the new department store were totally indifferent to how the foreign letters were arrayed. Although mis-spelt English is rather common in less developed regions of China, where English functions more as decorative than informative without any pretense that people will actually read the words, something as quite annoying as "Departstore Ment" is still beyond the linguistically pale. I waited for several days, until I could not bear it anymore. I finally spoke up as a concerned citizen and was told by the manager's office, to my relief, that someone had already pointed it out to them the previous day, and they planned to change it the day after (just two days after they were informed). But in any case, they did correct it. This incident seemed to raise my threshold of tolerance. After that, any other "problematic" signs seemed quite acceptable to my jaded eyes, no matter if they were at the Aviation Center or at the famous, heavily visited monasteries.

Soon I got a chance to teach English to the staff of a company run by a Tibetan friend. However, despite the enthusiasm of the boss, who himself was a French major in college, almost all the girls there (half were Tibetans half were Han) believed that they didn't have the brain to grasp more than what they already knew ("hello", "money", "I love you" and "Fxxx you"). The only good student I had was an immigrant girl of the Tu ethnic minority (Tu Zu) from Qinghai province. She was 25, had never studied any English, and couldn't pronounce certain sounds, but "if I learn one word each day, I can learn a lot after a while." The junior high school dropout had convinced everyone that she was a senior high school graduate and made herself one of the backbones of the company by dint of sheer hard work and capacity. She had won wide respect from both Han and Tibetan staff. But apart from this enthusiastic go-getter, teaching English was frustrating for me in general. I simply could not figure out a better way to teach most of the girls, although I usually consider myself to be a good language teacher. My stint of teaching ended soon after.

Then I met another frustrated teacher -- a Han "computer expert" hired from Guangzhou by a big state-owned trading enterprise. He was fresh out of college, which, inferred from his avoiding specifying the name, probably was not a very prestigious one. He was a nice and diligent guy for sure, but in terms of expertise, even a beginning computer user like me could tell that he was just so-so. But in Lhasa, he was undeniably THE expert. His current task was to train the staff in computer skills. This needs great efforts. For most people here, to learn "computer skills" means to learn typewriting. However, to achieve this goal the young expert encountered an unexpected difficulty. "At first I thought they didn't know where each letter was on the keyboard, only to find out later that they simply did not know English letters at all! How can I teach like that!" The poor computer specialist had been kept very busy in the company, often working overtime, not for computing or even to teach the ABC, but simply to type. As he, of course, was the best typist in the enterprise. "If this goes on, I will leave." He said in a low voice.

With the young computer experts and professionals I met in Beijing still vivid in my memory, the huge disparity between the booming coastal cities and the vast west regions hit me with its shocking immensity. In the "great west" (a term which includes all five ethnic autonomous regions, and three western provinces), the proportion of low and middle level technicians and professionals among the labor force is less than 1% of that of the east. In 1999, the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) officials in one economic conference expressed their "determination" to further economic development. About the same time, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and many other eastern coastal cities threw out competitive policies to attract "overseas students" and other talented people to their cities. It is obvious that a competition for human capital is raging, and Tibet is unlikely to win it.

Then I had a talk with a retired Western trained Tibetan English professor. An old man in his seventies, he was famous both in TAR and abroad for his outspokenness and his contributions to Tibetan education. When he learnt that I befriended with some exile Tibetans (Free Tibet fighters) who study or work in the US, he asked: "Do you think they will come back to Tibet?" I thought about this question for a second, and said: "Some say after Tibet becomes independent, they will come back. They say that is what they are fighting for." But the old man didn't let me go on that: "I know that. But do you think they will come back EVEN IF Tibet is independent? Tell me what you really think." So I answered him honestly: "I don't think so." "I don't think so either," he gave a sigh and lay back to the chair, "But I can understand. Tibet is poor. Real good Han professionals don't want to come, and our better-educated young Tibetans would rather stay in Beijing or Shanghai because the living standards there are higher. And for those who live in Western countries, they have already got certain social and economic status. They may come to visit, but they won't come to work and live here. We need more educated people, and," he concluded, "we need to train our own people."

Story 6: Central air conditioning

December, deep winter in Tibet, I was sitting in a teahouse, looking at its glass ceiling one afternoon. The bright, dusky sunlight gently caressed every table and, for a moment, the entire place was deceived into believing it was a lazy summer afternoon. Customers sipped their tea in an unhurried fashion, conversations dissolved into soft murmurs, and even the usually highly-strung and noisy Mah-Jong players seemed less tense. We were 3,600 meters (10,800 fts) closer to the sun after all. This seemingly preternatural brightness and warmth had the magic effect of making everybody forget the pressing business of modern life, including my own work. "This is our central air conditioner", the Tibetan friend sitting next to me said, giving me a big smile and raising his chin towards the sun.

But things changed very fast. From around 5:30 pm on, the fierce winter chill started to reclaim its territory, minute by minute. The shadows blanketed the teahouse with unholy haste. The customers retreated one by one. "The central air conditioner is off now. Let's go." So we hurriedly fled the teahouse, and were headed for our own way of trying to keep warm for yet another evening in Lhasa.

"Air Conditioner" is the quaint Tibetan manner of referring to heating systems. Since cold air conditioning is never necessary in Lhasa's mild summer, air conditioners are only used as heaters in winters. The normal winter temperature of Lhasa is between -10C (15F) and 10C (50F) and, on a typical clear day, goes from -7C to 8C. In fact, it is warmer than Beijing and almost all northern Chinese cities, and even warmer than some southern cities. In a windless day, the sun can bring back warmth and lovely springtime in an instant. For Sichuanese who are used to enduring excruciatingly damp and cloudy winters, Lhasa's bright winter sun is a blessing.

However, after the sun is gone, there is no alternative source of warmth to which to retire. Indoor heating is, even now, a relative rarity. Nightime room temperature is normally not much higher than freezing point, or even below it. Towels left wet overnight tend to be found frozen in the morning, and a layer of ice usually floats in the water barrel. Everyone must find his or her personal way to keep the cold at bay.

Every evening, after I came home, my very first move was to switch on the electric blanket. Then I dipped my cold feet into hot water, and jumped on the bed to sit on the top of the warm blanket, still wearing all my winter clothes--sweater, down vest, and leather jacket. From then on, nothing short of a nuclear attack would drag me off bed until the "central air conditioning" was turned on again in the morning. It was on my bed that I made phone calls, operated my remote control for the TV, read or wrote on my laptop. Very often I had to type with one hand while I warmed the other one under the blanket (I hope the gentle readers would appreciate the hardship I endured to bring you these stories...) Later it turned out that spending every evening sitting on an electric blanket or in front of a portable electric heater was a common practice in Lhasa. It was almost the only way you could sit still indoors, unless you went to a bar or entertainment place where indoor "air conditioning" was provided.

Naturally, the question arose: what did people do before there was electricity, and when there were no warm entertainment places to go? That was pretty much the case just ten years ago in Lhasa. The answer from a Tibetan young woman is: "What else? Just bear it. In the old days, even aristocrats had no indoor heating. They were called aristocrats, but they were indeed very backward, far more backward than, say, old French aristocrats." A Tibetan young man said: "Just stayed home and sat around the fire. Before the gas stoves were invented, there were vendors selling yak manure cakes and firewood. But now you can't sit around a gas stove to keep warm, can you?" A Han young man responded: "We sat by the fire and drank. What else could you do? After drinking for hours, you would get warm or too drunk to feel cold anymore, so you could fall asleep."

Some people might find this cold working its way into their bones and start wondering philosophically about modernity, tradition, and alike. Others, like most migrant business people, see market opportunities.

Apart from cold nights, the second bane of the Tibetan winter is the extreme dryness of the air. Historians are happy about how the dryness has preserved ancient texts in excellent condition for centuries. But what dry air does to paper it does to skin too.

During my first two weeks here, every morning I woke up with the throat being like dry parchment. It crackingly hurts with every attempt to swallow. I found a dry block of blood in my nostrils every morning. The skin in the back of my ankles also cracked and blood stained my socks. I once saw a Tibetan spreading butter inside his nostrils, and then I tried the same. Some days I felt like covering myself entirely in butter. After desperately trying all the traditional methods, I gave up and bought an ultrasonic humidifier. Another business opportunity arises.

Later I found out that the dry air is not only hostile to outsiders, but to Tibetans as well. Dry skin and bleeding noses are common street scenes. And therefore, sauna has been readily accepted as a fixture of life. Though many families have installed electric water heaters, the bathroom would be too cold for people to take showers at home in winter.

And here comes the third bane of the Tibetan winter. Catching a cold in the plateau is a considerably more serious thing than in the lowlands. A cold can easily lead to lung and brain edema, which can make any patient quickly lose consciousness and die, and hence a persistent fear for all residents in Lhasa. I caught a cold in my first week in Tibet, because I made the rookie mistake of trying to take a shower at home. All the symptoms were just as lowlands colds: running nose, congestion, coughing, etc. But before I went to bed I remembered the warning about edema. Not wanting to wake up dead, I decided to be cautious. So I carefully placed my cell phone under my pillow, preparing to call a friend to take me to hospital if I started feeling anything abnormal.

Of course, I did not die that night, but that experience did bring home the dangers of the Tibetan winter, and the harshness of nature in the Plateau. Catching a cold is easy in the freezing conditions of Tibet that relies on the "central air conditioning" for heat. Not every cold will lead to a mortal edema, and no one can rush to the hospital every time he or she catches one. But what is merely a nuisance in the lowlands might be lethal in the Plateau, and winter can claim a very strong price from those who face it in Tibet.

Story 7: Flies and Buddhism.

Some people are scared of snakes. Some cannot stand spiders. I hate flies. Not the small and agile run-of-the-mill houseflies, but those big, old, fat, plump and juicy black gadflies, who clumsily bump into things with a loud and annoying thump. As fate would have it, those are exactly the kind of flies which every day kept me company, and formed an inseparable part of my life in Tibet.

My room is on the second floor of the house, with big windows facing south. When the weather is fine, the whole room is sunny and warm from morning to mid afternoon, just the way flies love it. I have never quite figured out how exactly the big flies got into the room. Most likely they squeezed in through cracks in the old windows. But I never wanted to find out, out of fear of stumbling upon a mausoleum filled with mummified flies. So every morning I woke up to the sound of several big old flies bumping their merry way from one windowpane to another.

After the first several days of letting flies get their way, I decided, out of sheer species pride, that I could not let a human be defeated by flies,no matter how fat these flies are. So I put myself together and went to war against the hordes of huge Tibetan flies.

On the matters of tactics, I had to devise proper combatant methods. Flyswatters would squash the flies into a disgusting mess. No way. So I settled on my own patented approach in five easy steps: 1) Tear a piece of toilet paper to the size of a big index card and slowly tiptoe towards the target fly. 2) Swiftly but lightly cover the fly with the paper and pin it against the windowpane. 3) Quickly twist the paper into a thin small pouch containing the fly. 4) Tie a loose knot on the paper pouch. 5) Dispose of the fly in a manner befitting your mood. This toilet paper method was quite effective for the slow-reacting Tibetan flies. "Probably they are oxygen-deprived", a friend joked.

Catching flies had thus become my favorite way to start a fresh day. On average I caught 10 to 12 flies a day, with a record of 26. So in the three months of my first stay in this Buddhist land, I must have ended the lives of more than one thousand flies.

That's a lot of sinful killing! Or is it?

A Tibetan friend once asked me to translate when he invited an American social development expert to a traditional Tibetan meal. The meal was really good (much better than those Indian-flavored-Tibetan-meals I had in the US), but a dozen flies were hovering above the dishes all the time, occasionally landing on both the eaters and the food. My friend shouted something to the waitress in Tibetan and then whispered to me: "I asked the waitress to wave away the flies but she just won't listen. If the American guy asks, you can just say that because Tibetans are Buddhists, they won't harm even flies. That always works." I nodded. The American gentleman didn't say anything about the flies, but he didn't eat much either.

The Han owners of small restaurants often muse as to why they are more successful in attracting foreigners to their business than their Tibetan competitors. Among other things, "Tibetans don't kill flies! There are flies everywhere, in the kitchen, on the food, on the plates, everywhere. How can picky foreigners stand that? They will certainly go to eat in Tibetan restaurants at least once, but after that they will come back to my place. " To be fair, I have to point out that flies can also be easily found in Han restaurants, but customers there can take comfort at the presence of flyswatters, pest sprays, electronic pest killers, and various other fly control devices.

The most comfortable havens for flies are, naturally, the Buddhist monasteries. I once peered into the monks' kitchen in the famous Jokhang Monastery. The brim of the big wok where their meals were prepared was blackened by swarms of flies, and big, contented mice roamed leisurely on the floor. I would not want to offend the monks, but I certainly was happy that I didn't have to eat in the monastery.

Actually, there are many Tibetans that do not adhere too closely to the no-killing rule when it comes to flies. Once, when I visited a Tibetan family, the hostess opened the door for us while still holding a flyswatter. The hostess, a medical doctor in her 40s, proudly announced to both her Han and Tibetan guests: "There are two things I absolutely do not allow in my home: mice and flies! If one gets in, one will get killed! Ab-so-lu-te-ly! I don't care what others say!" Another time the young boss of an entertainment center joked: "if you don't kill them first, they will kill you." Later, my questioning on his skillful fly-killing apparently surprised a mid-aged Tibetan museum curator: "Does it bother you (that I kill flies)? Are you a Buddhist? I don't believe it at all and none of my family believes either."

Buddhism! It is hard not to be moved by the central Buddhist teaching that all lives are equal, and that one should not harm any life no matter how small it is. This fundamentally generous and loving philosophy must appeal to all compassionate individuals. Not killing an ant has thus become a symbol that Hollywood movies love to use when showing Tibetans. (Why not use a fly to make the point even stronger?) But I can't help wondering how many ardent Buddhist converts and Zen meditators in the US have had to face being bombarded by flies? And how many of them will be brave to dine in such a harmonious human-fly co-existence? Will the flies and mice not affect the health of pious Buddhist Tibetan nomads just as well as that of Westerners? Or shouldn't the bodily health of these believers be other people's concern, out of respect for their faiths alone? It is well understood that after death, believers might consider the possibility of being reborn as a fly. Is it a sufficient justification to allow diseases spread by flies to accelerate their next reincarnation?

Perhaps the lionization of the "not even a fly" version of Buddhism that sprouted in the West simply covers a failure to understand the consequences of such attitudes. That religious conduct developed in times when flies and other vermin, in EVEREWHERE in the world, were an accepted part of the human environment. Buddhists, Taoists, Christians or Muslims alike accepted that flies would swarm on their food, a nuisance rather than a threat. Modern hygienic concerns (and our modern disgust towards flies) developed for a reason - the realization that tolerance of vermin had serious health costs for us. Tibetan society, like Western society a few decades ago, has not yet adapted, for better or worse, to this modern concept of hygiene. The religious issue becomes considerably less pressing when you consider that even the devout Buddhist Thais will kill flies nowadays.

Should I kill Tibetan flies? And should Tibetans?

End.

(The author is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Harvard University.)