Tag Archive for ‘Tibet’ at China Droll

Tag Archive for 'Tibet'

The Tibetan Plateau

Published

on August 2, 2010

in Beauty, Environment, Travel, language, politics and religion

. 0 Comments

Tibet!!!!! For make no mistake; the little town of Xiahe in Qinghai province isn’t Xiahe in Qingdai province at all, but Sangchu in Amdo, Tibet. The beauty of the place elicited constant “waaaah”s from us, even while doing mundane things like being overcharged for inedible grapes. This was the view from my window, for example:

This was probably 5.45 in the morning, but the Tibetans were already at it, walking around the Labrang Monastery while turning the prayer wheels. My friend P and I also walked around the whole monastery

and although we did stop to take a couple of photographs, it took us a good two hours to get around the wondrous thing. So imagine the grannies, 80 something years old and walking with sticks, dragging themselves around the monastery, each day, every day. It must take them all day, only to get up the next morning (probably around 4) and start all over again. One must admire their devotion. And no doubt the Chinese must have banned monastery-circling at some stage, losing valuable walking years for the buddhists there.

But guess what: Black pigs wag their tails when they poo! I bet you didn’t know that.

On the bus to Xiahe I sat next to a monk in full maroon get-up and with one arm sticking out. We got talking (in Mandarin, unfortunately, as my abilities in Tibetan are, so far: Hello, goodbye, and thank you.) and he expressed a keen interest in the outside world. Well he would, having gone into the monastery when he was four! What a waste. Young, beautiful man looking really great in red, locked up like that. Unfortunately he couldn’t read and write Chinese, so it was difficult to have a conversation about the riots in Lhasa and stuff, with the Chinese guy in the seat behind obviously listening eagerly.

They didn’t have internet connection in the monastery which I thought was strange; those monks are so teched-up these days. But maybe someone who’s not them, has decided that the monks in the second biggest monastery in “China” aren’t allowed to have too much contact with the outside world. Whatever it was, every monk we met seemed very eager to talk.

Yes, Xiahe was wonderful in every way except one: The main street, think Nathan Road from Tsim Sha Tsui to well past Jordan, had been dug up completely. There was so much dust that we couldn’t be even in the side streets near it and walking along or across it was completely unbearable. Give them two months I say.

To accommodate tourism the whole town had in fact been torn down and rebuilt, in a style probably known as “tourist Tibetan with varying degrees of Chinese characteristics.” But I had to admire the restraint: There were very few tiles, no blue windows and only a small open, shadeless square with the normal green lights shaped like palm trees and a huge granite statue of an elephant. So all in all, when the dust settles, Xiahe may very well turn into one of the most beautiful new old towns in the country. But then, it is really Tibet …

The next day a taxi driver said: I’ll take you to three beautiful places for 200 kuai! This turned out to be an excellent idea. 200 kuai for five hours of more or less constant driving: Oh yeah. And the scenery outside Xiahe is just …

These are yaks, a cousin of whom we had eaten the night before. No it doesn’t taste like chicken and it’s excellent. Half reindeer, half horse?

This is the fourth or fifth year in a row that I spend the summer in the north of China. Why? Because I need a dose of big landscape every so often. It’s so soothing.

Here is a Han dynasty village that people still live in. It seems they have no TV. Is it possible? Yes we saw many villages on this trip without a single tv antenna. Nor satellite dish. They probably used the satellite dishes to boil water by solar power

while watching hard core porn online inside their gaffs…

On a grassy knoll in the distance we saw some motorbikes and some Tibetans. Then we saw a tripod. Oh no, another tour group taking photos of the colourful, dancing and devout locals.

Was it hell? It was four Tibetans having a party with biscuits, soft drinks and some singing and playing of eight string guitar. They called us over

and a good cultural exchange time was had by all. The three guys hardly spoke any Chinese, which was pretty cool I thought, as well as not very practical when it came to communication. But the girl did, altough the mobile seldom left her ear. All that Mando I suppose.

Yes, would you know? It was they who wanted to film and take photos of us! Not the other way around. Well, I snapped a few, but they?

They were veritable Tibetan anthropologists. And thus endeth another day in beautiful Amdo. The next morning we left at 06.10 very much against our will, only to be told that the water supply for the whole town had been shut down for three days just after we left. That dust and no shower? A lucky escape.

This Week’s Weirdest Bribe?

Published

cecilie

on November 7, 2009

in China, communism and corruption

. 2 Comments

Obama, Obama, Obama day and night. Apart from getting a totally undeserved Nobel’s peace prize; I’m really ashamed of my fellow countrymen the Norwegians there (guess how many people on the committee are of “middle eastern descent” though) it seems all he’s done so far is not being George W. Bush.
As much as that will always be a good thing for which we should all be thankful, so many others aren’t, so not really a huge achievement.

When he was first elected I wrote in this forum that he was certainly not a Messiah, so we’d have to wait and see, and that when you put someone on the very top of the sky-high expectations pinnacle, there’s only one direction to go. Down. For this I was roundly criticised for being an idiot who “got up on my soap box and spouted about things I didn’t know anything about.”
I lost all respect for him when he didn’t refuse the Nobel prize, but I suppose a few weeks in the top dog chair will do a lot of things to a man’s dignity.

Now it seems that he might, if not be the Messiah, so at least have a thing in common with the geezer after all. For how does this strike you: China is offering to commit to military transparency and to co-operation on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament - if the ‘Bamster would only find it in his heart to say publicly that Tibet is, has always been and will always be Chinese, and that the US opposes Tibetan independence. Where have we heard this one before? Oh yeah, in the Bible! “All this will be yours if you will fall on your knees and worship me.”

Open letter to Obama: Don’t do it, Barrie! Don’t do it! Jesus didn’t, so you can afford to let this one slide.

(Was it Julian Barnes who said: ” Who knows what would have happened if the devil had said: All this will be yours if you let me fall down on my knees and worship you?”)

Okay, I suppose I didn’t lose absolutely all respect for him over the Nobel rigmarole (it’s difficult for me to respect someone who wants to be president of the US in the first place) but I certainly will if he caves on this one.
And the Chinese - what are they ON? If they’re so bloody sure that Tibet is, has always, etc. and they certainly seem to be as they can speak of little else, why do they need arch enemy capitalist imperialist running dog whatever the US to say so? Who do they need to convince - the Tibetans? Themselves? Countries which seriously hurt the feelings of the Chinese people by having the Dalai Lama over for tea and a chat?

This is right up there with writing self criticism I reckon. Nobody cares if you really mean what you write, in fact everybody knows you don’t; it’s the old “I know that you know that I know that you know and so it goes round,” but as long as you’ve said it or written it, everything is fine. It becomes the truth. But then again with the Chinese government it was always thus.

But really, to drag Mister Wishy-washy Appeasement-monger Obbie into their sordid little games expecting to get some kind of result, knowing full well that if he says Yes! Tibetans should shut up and know their rightful place as ardently admiring subjects of the superior Chinese! he won’t mean it anyway - well that’s just too much even for them.

And that nasty little bribe bargaining chip of theirs, “military transparency” - hello! That’s what they should be doing anyway, voluntarily, if they want to be up there with the civilised nations to whose club they so dearly want to belong by doing absolutely zero in return.

What the article didn’t mention, of course, was the implied “or else.”

Don’t do it, Obbie! I so want to know what the “or else” is. And I so want to keep that tiny little smidgeon of respect I still have left for you - and yes, it is based on your not being George W. Bush.

Milk

Published

cecilie

on September 19, 2008

in China, Environment, Pollution, communism and corruption

. 11 Comments

We’re in the midst of a, or should I say the annual, milk powder scandal in China.

Unscrupulous baby milk manifacturers are lacing the product with so much poison, children are dropping dead or developing kidney stone. What a perfect metaphor for our times! Here you have a great product which has been working fine for tens of thousands of years: Mother’s milk. It not only nourishes the child, but enhances its immune system.

Greedy manufacturers get in on the act and through advertising make mothers believe that breast milk isn’t good enough, no, they must buy a milk product made from cow’s milk ( only suitable for calves) if they want to have a chance to see their baby grow strong and healthy like Americans.

This product, in order to make a little bit of a profit for the manufacturers, then proceeds to kill the children.

It’s beautiful isn’t it? Apart from the fact that dairy products have never been a part of the Chinese diet until the last ten years or so when MILK suddenly started to be advertised as health drink number one with the inevitable result; instant obesity - the entire north of China is now a desert because of over-grazing by cattle.

Yes, the western way is certainly the best way.

An Overpriced Experience And A Half

Published

cecilie

on July 13, 2008

in Beauty, Beer, China, Injustice, Pollution and Travel

. 4 Comments

We felt well pleased with ourselves having crossed the Taklamakan Desert, frequently described as “the terrible…” and “the super-dangerous…” without a scratch. When we even found a marvellous Sichuan restaurant in Ruoqiang with two charming young men more than willing to learn Chinese poker the Hong Kong way, we could go to bed with two smiles plastered on our respective faces.

But we were running out of time, and so chose a hotel near the bus station so we could get on one of the many buses we were sure would take us across the Kunlun Mountains and into Qinghai province the next day. Our friends in Urumqi had said there were no such buses but we never believe locals’ lying ways.
Imagine my consternation when I got up at six to secure tickets, had to wait until eight for the bus station to open, only to find that the only buses going were those going the way from which we had come. Into Qinghai? Zero.
Now we knew that hitchhiking was likely to take slightly longer than we had planned; i.e. no time at all, so were glad to be told that there were some so-called bao che, private passenger cars, which would take us to the border of Qinghai. I found a guy who would drive at ten o’clock, charging 100 yuan per head. Excellent! We rocked up at 9.50 and found three other people waiting. Now we could set off.

Ah, but he needed ten peopleto get going, the shameless geezer told us amid much laughing and spitting. Ten? The car could hardly hold six. And with luggage - forget it! We’d have to sit on top of each other and even then we wouldn’t have enough space. We felt cheated and hurt. Yes, hurt like the people of China when one of them or a foreigner dares to utter that for example the sacred olympicsare but a sham and money-milker for McDonald’s. That’s how hurt we felt.
Time was running out fast so we said we’d pay the difference, 700 yuan instead of 200, if we could only get going NOW. The other three guys, a Chinese and a toothless Uighur and his one-eared son (disabilities and disfigurements seem to be more prevalent among these, the indigenous people of the desert, than the newly arrived Chinese) looked well pleased and did a lot of thumbs-ups. Off we went to the petrol station where the driver wanted our 700 yuan straight away. Fair enough.
But when he stopped 200 yards down the road to pick up two other guys with a LOT of luggage, an incredulous, nay, shocked, silence descended on the car.

Vexed to the hilt I leapt out and told the driver in not so many words that we had paid for seven people and no other bastards would be allowed on. Sorry other travellers, but goodbye. A muffled applause sounded from the back seat and we set off again with the driver mumbling words I felt sure were not compliments. But: The nerve!

The road was beautiful and smooth, and looking at the map it was hard to believe that this little stretch of Go West Infrastructure would take six hours to cover. However, a few hundred yards down beautiful road the driver suddenly yanked the car to the left, and we were thumping across gravel, rocks … and more rocks.

The road looked more like anything like a hastily dug-out path to a construction site and yes, it was a “new road”, the driver told us. Then we started to ascend, and suddenly we were transported back to Tibet which we had visited the year before; a donkey path of scree, landslide, rock-avalanche and awful 2000 meter drops to the left. Or right, depending. If it hadn’t been for our aforementioned trip to Tibet, with five days of constant driving on so-called roads which could hardly accommodate the width of one car and where one second’s inattention on the driver’s part would result in a fall so spectacular nobody could even tell the wreck would be that of a car, I would have felt rather anxious.
As it was, I just held my camera out the window and hoped for the best.

We stopped on the top - to admire the view we thought, before we realised that the view was to be that of the toothless guy taking a dump right in front of us and without any evidence of toilet paper. On and on we drove at 20 to 25 kilometers an hour, and now we could start to believe that this little trip would indeed take six hours. Or, as it turned out, eight.

When the worst vertical drops were finally over I started to enjoy the scenery, and suddenly there was a building in the middle of this awful loneliness of rocks. A house where the driver wanted to have a meal. Three people and a donkey lived there, and there was a depression in the sand and rocks where only the top half of anyone’s body could be seen relieving itself.

Eventually we came to the place where we wanted to go - but wait. This wasn’t the oasis we had envisaged but a terrible hell-hole, really, really far away from all transport. “Yes, I told you so,” the shameless driver now said, adding that for only 100 yuan each he would take us to a transportation hub. Words cannot describe the words I let rain over him. Yes they can, actually. And “bastard” is only one of them. There were some shacks and some open-mouthed yokels, not even a Sichuan restaurant, and that’s were we were supposed to spend the night waiting for a bus which may or may not come, or pay the cheating bastard to take us out of?

No way. We were the middle-class westerners and would rather walk than be held ransom to. .. etc etc. In the event a taxi anti-climatically swung around, offering to take us to Mangnai (the transport hub) for 20 yuan.

Another endless stretch of road through desert followed. On the way we drove over a dropped sack, whose white, powder-ish contents drifted into the car. At the same time we became aware of some industry in the distance with a spectral white fog hanging over it. What’s that? Shi mian, explained the driver. Shi mian? Sounds like “rock face.” Must be some kind of quarry, we decided.

Probably a cement plant or whatever. It was only the next day we realised that “shi mian” (rock cotton) means asbestos, and that it was this charming substance which had wafted into the car; indeed that the place where we had just spent the night in a truck drivers’ hell-hole dwelling (40 yuan) where, if we hadn’t happened to have flashlights we would surely have fallen into the toilet which was two planks hovering over an abyss, “everybody gets ill and dies” according to a book about the Silk Road by Colin Thubron I happened to have with me.

Ignorance is surely bliss and personally I loved the little place in the middle of a huge nothing where workers with burnished faces and blackened teeth went about their business in identical overalls - red for the plebs and navy for the office workers. Like in every civilised place in China there were several Sichuan restaurants too. But without being a scientist or anything, I can tell you that the chemical reaction between asbestos and chili powder creates this: A lot of coughing.

Weirdiouser and weirdiouser

Published

cecilie

on April 18, 2008

in China, Government, Hong Kong and Travel

. 2 Comments

Yes yes so the Chinese government is worried that foreigners will crawl all over the mainland and infiltrate it with their subversive and misguided, misunderstood and mistaken views and actions.

Journalists will pose as hikers and sneak into Tibet, interviewing Tibetans and worse. CNN will further hurt the Chinese people’s feelings. All hell will break loose and there might now not even be any need for Beijing to keep its promise about cleaning up the air before the olympics. (And to think that they’ve kept all the other promises … what a waste!)

Yes I can understand all that.

BUT. By, as it seems they’re doing now, actively keeping all foreigners out by putting North Korea-like restrictions on how people can get into the country (it’ll be obligatory guided tours of no fewer than 20 participants next, mark my word) surely they must be shooting themselves in the foot economically?

Seeing that money in today’s China is even more important than getting their own back for the opium war and the sacking of the summer palace, isn’t this a very foolish and short-sighted action by the government? Won’t keeping tourists and business people out have real repercussion, namely a drop in revenue?

Surely that must be even worse for the Zhongnanhai geezers than being laughed at when they moan about how the splittists and Dalai clique are tearing the country apart with their flags and whatnot?

But what do I know. Maybe they have a long-term plan.

Oh, stop press. I just talked to a Belgian friend of mine, a businessman who was planning to exhibit at the Canton fair. Over the last two weeks he has applied for a visa to China three times and been rejected each time.

He tried for a tourist, then a business visa, and even showed an invitation from a mainland company - but no. And no explanation. So it’s not only a question about putting up the money for a visa anymore, it’s being able to pay and still get rejected.

This is getting seriously WEIRD!!!

Strange Action By China’s Government - For The First Time! Not!

Published

cecilie

on April 9, 2008

in Cantonese, China, Government, Hong Kong, Injustice, Media, Newspaper, Norway, Travel, communism, corruption, patriotism, politics and religion

. 7 Comments

I can’t understand this last antic of the Chinese government, that of not issuing any multiple-entry visas, not even for permanent residents of Hong Kong, until after the OLYMPICS, (a word that is fast becoming as tedious as the expression “Hong Kong - Asia’s World City.”)

What exactly is it they hope to achieve? Yeah all right, so they will make millions of yuan from all those who depend on going into the mainland several times a week or month for their livelihood, and who must now pay almost as much for one visit as they before paid for six months or a year’s worth.

But surely they could have got the same or almost the same money by changing the deal they have with that staunch upholder of public health and sports people’s staple, McDonald’s, OLYMPICS sponsor numero uno? After all, the Chinese government has (have, I never know which, help me people!) never been shy of backing down on or changing exorbitantly, deals?

If it’s money they’re after, one would think that by making it easier for people to get into China instead of harder, rich dividends could be reaped. (Raped)

Or is the new visa deal, where it now takes four days to be issued a visa instead of one, put into being so that the immigration people can search more carefully the background of the applicant to make sure that the seemingly innocent tourist isn’t in fact a rabid journalist who might report unfavourably on the situation in Tibet and other places?

Is the sudden decision not to let people be issued short-term visas on the border points between HK and China anymore (until the end of the OLYMPICS) to keep certain individuals who might otherwise have gone shopping, out? Just in case?

You can roll me in flour and fry me in butter as we say in Norwegian, but I still don’t understand. Wasn’t this whole OLYMPICS malarkey supposed to be all about China promising to become more open, let all journalists report freely, yes, even as mentioned in the news today, allow protesters to protest from a specially designed protester pen in the very heart of Beijing itself, or outskirts?

Today the ever reliable South China Morning Post, fortunately, came up with the answer to all the questions milling around in my head. The new visa situation is of course because the visa issuing office needs to upgrade its computer system.

Thank god - and here I was being suspicious again. Between now and, as it happens, the end of August, the computers, but of course, need to be taken care of. Now it all makes sense. Well, ha-ha, my three-year multiple entry visa fortunately runs out not before - August!

So like all good Norwegians before me, after this Tibet crackdown thingy happened, I will be earnestly debating with myself whether or not I should boycott the opening ceremony of the OLYMPICS. And unlike those Norwegians, I will actually do it. That should teach them!

Free Tibet? Yeah, Right!

Published

cecilie

on March 18, 2008

in China, Environment, Injustice, Media, Pollution, Travel, Uncategorized, communism, corruption, patriotism, politics, property and religion

. 19 Comments

Poor Chinese. For years they’ve been helping the Tibetans get rid of their backwardness and smelly culture, showering them with socialism with Chinese characteristics, sending their children, sorry, one child (after they helped them abort in the ninth month to get rid of the other ones,) to Chinese school, and generally tidied up the sorry mess of religion, nomadic lifestyle, reverence for nature and all the other crap in what the poor dears were misguidedly thinking was their country.

They give them a trainline, shops selling photos of chairman Mao and even a spanking new miniature Tiananmen Square complete with a four-lane highway in front of Potala Palace where before there was only a boring old lake.

They relieve them of their troublesome livestock and force them to, sorry, let them live in concrete tenement blocks with nothing to do but drink and live the life of Reilly all day long. They give them prostitution and karaoke bars for god’s sake.

And what do they get in return? Riots! Ingratitude!

It’s not fair. Here the Chinese have been bending over backwards year in and year out, helping and helping, giving and giving, but do the Tibetans thank them on their knees? Do they cast off the silly yoke of tradition and embrace the new and exciting world of The Mainland, served to them on a silver platter?

No they do not.
It’s buddhism this and the Dalai Lama that, prayers and pilgrimages from morning till night, as well as the irritating insistence on Tibet being a sovereign country with its own language and culture and not part of China at all. And that when the whole world knows that Tibet has always been and will always remain part of the motherland.

Just look at the way they dress for Christ’s sakes. Small wonder they can never really cut it in the Chinese world, no matter how many advantages they get. Well, it’s no more mister Nice Guy.

Now it’s out with the big guns, sorry, water cannons, to teach the ingrates a lesson. The Chinese have been patient, over-patient, with these people, for too long. Now bloggers and other right-thinking people all over the mainland are up in arms, pointing out quite rightly how the Chinese nation sacrificed all for these stubborn people, even letting Tibetans be part of the government of Tibet!!! Only as figureheads you understand, but still?

Haven’t the Chinese let them come to the National People’s Congress dressed in their funny costumes, haven’t they even trotted them out time and time again to do their quaint singing and dancing thing on national TV at Chinese New Year?

It makes you wonder, what are some people like?

Fortunately, these Tibetans who can’t see how good they have it under Chinese liberalisation are a rabid minority. With a little help they will soon come to their senses and realise that what Tibet needs, has always needed and will always need, is to be taken under the benevolent wing of the more spiritually developed Han Chinese.

The majority is glad and will always be glad, to get rid of this

in exchange for this

I think the Americans have a responsibility here. They’re helping everybody else in the world to get rid of injustice and oil, now it’s time the policeman of the world stepped in to help the Chinese get rid of the last of the Tibetan.

Publicity Be Damned

Published

cecilie

on May 11, 2007

in Cantonese, Cards, China, Government, Hong Kong, Media, Newspaper, TV, communism, language and politics

. 0 Comments

In Hong Kong it is really easy to get publicity. All you have to do is call up for example the South China Morning Post, HK’s biggest (of two) English language newspaper, and say: I had a successful bowel movement today! Or: I saw a sliver of blue sky above Shamshuipo! And they will send a reporter at once.

Over the last few years, no quite a few years actually, I’ve had a lot of publicity because I can speak Cantonese, the local language. This strikes me as decidedly odd. Let’s say you’re a Bulgarian or a Kenyan or something living in London, and you can string a couple of sentences together in English. All the TV stations going: My God, here’s a foreigner who can speak ENGLISH! Send a team over post-haste!

Continue reading ‘Publicity Be Damned’

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