The Hotel on the Roof of the World (16 page)

Just how Communism was going to be put into effect while the old government and clergy remained in power was not entirely clear and the Chinese soon started to break the agreement, point by point, so that they could push ahead with reforms and bring Tibet in line with Beijing. Robert Ford, an English radio operator working for the Tibetan Government in Chamdo, was amongst the first to find out the true nature of the ‘liberators' of Tibet. He was detained for five long years in Communist prison camps undergoing ‘thought reform' treatment until he could convince his captors that he had been converted.

By 1959 the Tibetans had seen enough, and a widespread uprising led by Khampa warriors tried in vain to turn the tide against the Chinese. Any pretence of sticking to the agreement was thrown out of the window and the Chinese ruthlessly crushed what their speech writers call ‘the reactionary clique of the upper strata', using means that were anything but peaceful. The feudal system was shattered by its very antithesis – Communism – in a big way. The 16-year-old Dalai Lama and an estimated 100,000 Tibetans fled into exile over the Himalayas to an uncertain future. The nobility had little choice: fight and be killed; leave Tibet and start a new life; or stay in their homeland and do the best they could for their country under the new regime.

The Chinese used the nobility who stayed to run the country, as a nobleman apparently converted to Communism was a good role model for the rest of the population and the ex-nobility could still command the respect of the people. Even today, when it is widely assumed by the outside world that the Han Chinese have total control in Tibet, a large proportion of Tibetan ex-nobility, the next generation from the negotiators of the 17-Point Agreement, have a say in the direct running of the day-to-day life of the Tibetan people.

Nobles who had not welcomed the change so rapidly were exposed for their sinful ways. Lhalu house, where Younghusband had stayed at the turn of the century and where lavish parties and the best
chang
of Lhasa had flowed during the years of independence, was confiscated for Lhalu Tsewang Dorje's role in the uprising. The Communists gave the land to the peasants with the slogan ‘crops to the cultivators' and held ominous ‘serf parties' in the courtyard of Lhalu house. These were the basis of the Communists' attempt to eradicate the feudal system. An American journalist who was strongly pro-Communist witnessed the serf party at Lhalu house, walked through the deserted rooms of the mansion and wrote of the ‘disorderly evidences of power and sex and religion and foreign contacts.' It must have been terrible.

According to the journalist, Lhalu was called into the courtyard and made to stand bowed down with his torso at right angles to his legs. A crowd of nearly a thousand Tibetans sat cross-legged in rows, cajoling Lhalu, mocking him and calling out: ‘Confess! Confess!'

Any one of the crowd was free to stand up and shout his or her accusation at Lhalu. A man crippled with a twisted back slowly raised himself from his cross-legged position and waited patiently for his turn to call out his grievance. ‘Lhalu, do you remember me?' Lhalu, trembling slightly, remained silent. ‘You forced me to sell my two horses and my wife's jewellery and turned me into a beggar! I lost everything I had worked for and became crippled because of you.'

It was a common claim that all aspiring peasants, who started to accumulate wealth by fair means and lay the foundations of a Tibetan middle class, were systematically ‘beggared' by the nobility. Being beggared by the nobility was even worse than the other common complaint of being buggered by the clergy, as ‘beggaring' condemned an entire family to life on the streets with no hope for them or future generations of ever climbing back up the ladder into Tibetan society.

There was just one other form of life on par, or possibly lower, than beggars: the Ragyapas. It is a paradox which still exists in the Buddhist community in Tibet today: Buddhists cannot kill, but as they eat meat, someone has to kill it for them. This is where the Ragyapas come in. They were considered so unclean, so base, that they were not permitted to reside in the holy city but instead lived as outcasts by the western gate of Lhasa in what Waddell described in 1904 as a village ‘built of the horns of yaks and sheep and other offal.' The work of the Ragyapas was not limited to abattoir attendants and butchers, they were also the sky burial specialists and purveyors of human thigh bones and skulls to the clergy.

The Ragyapas were not complainers by nature and there are no records of them attending the serf parties. They were considered socially unclean and unmarriable by anyone other than a fellow Ragyapa but they performed a function that kept them in full-time employment.

The old man with the twisted back sat down again as the crowd shouted, ‘Confess! Lhalu, confess!'

Another serf was quick to take up a new accusation: ‘Lhalu, you flogged my husband to death and killed my sons by taking them as slaves and putting them to hard labour!'

The serf party carried on all day under the watchful eye of the ‘tribunal' and the newly formed Peasants' Association. Several incensed peasants made dashes at Lhalu to beat him but all were rugby-tackled to the ground by their comrades: Communism aimed to take over by persuasion, not by force.

At one point a man came running in to the courtyard with a sackful of papers. The cry, ‘Burn the debts! Burn the debts!' rose from the crowd.

The papers were the notorious feudal debts which were carried by each family of serfs from generation to generation. The debts to their masters were calculated at exorbitant interest rates leading to a serf inheriting debt and leaving even greater debts for his offspring who would in turn leave even larger debts for their offspring. It was a vicious circle similar to the Third World debts of today only these were about to be written off forever by means of a giant bonfire in the Lhalu courtyard. The peasants were free at last from oppression. Or so they thought.

Tibet had to change but the price they were about to pay was far worse than anything the Tibetans could have imagined – and the Tibetans have pretty vivid imaginations. Hot on the heels of the serf parties and the genuine wish of the Chinese for equality and egalitarianism came Mao's ‘Great Leap Forward'. This leap into collectivisation and growing wheat instead of barley had disastrous effects for the Tibetans. Just when they thought it couldn't get any worse came the dreaded Cultural Revolution. All those centuries of warning the Tibetans against outsiders because foreigners would destroy the religion now came full circle as the Chinese themselves started the systematic destruction of Tibetan Buddhism.

The initial good intentions of Communism have long been forgotten by those in Tibet who remember the lunacy of collectivisation and the horrors of the Cultural Revolution. The entire Chinese nation was decimated in Mao's reign of madness and in Tibet the madness was particularly savage. Although the Potala Palace was saved, apparently by the orders of Zou En Lai, it is claimed that the fanatical red guards razed over 6,000 monasteries to the ground. Monks were killed, imprisoned or forced to sleep with nuns.

Today, less than fifty years after the ‘peaceful liberation' and twenty years after the end of the Cultural Revolution, the country which had managed to remain in the depths of the Middle Ages is being thrown into the deep end of the twentieth century. Present day Tibet is a melting pot of Buddhism, Communism and capitalism. Portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin hang on the walls of the government bookshop near the Barkhor, where posters of Chairman Mao Tse Tung are still on sale to the party faithful, and to Tibetans who don't yet know that Chairman Mao died a long time ago and doesn't count for anything anymore. Collectivisation is over.

Monasteries and nunneries are being rebuilt as the Chinese leaders admit that there were ‘some mistakes' during the decade of the Cultural Revolution. Although still severely restricted, Tibetan Buddhism has survived and the temples and shrines are packed once again by pilgrims and the devout of the city. But where Communism failed to eradicate Tibetan culture, capitalism is now taking over. The new economic policies of China, allowing private enterprise throughout the nation, have led to a complete transformation of Lhasa in just a matter of years. For the first time in their lives, the new generation of Tibetans are not forced to take on a government job but can now set up their own business, be hired or fired, work hard and make money. The old street fronts with their dilapidated Tibetan buildings, unchanged in appearance for centuries, are being torn down and row after row of monotonous concrete boxes erected.

Each box is built at relatively low cost by the unit which owns the land, and rented out to one of the thousands of eager new businessmen. Sadly, only a small number of Tibetans seem to be benefiting from the economic boom. Instead it is the Han Chinese who arrive in droves to open noodle shops, hot pots, jeans shops, toy shops, plastic flower shops, beauty product shops, hair salons, fluorescent nylon clothing shops, discos, bars and karaokes. Lhasa is the Wild West, a frontier town where prices are high, life is tough and there is money to be made.

The Han Chinese are not physically sent by the Beijing government, as some claim, but vast numbers are sucked into the economic vacuum of business opportunity in the boom town. They bring in cheap Western-style goods which are bought by eager Tibetans anxious to take part in the ‘progress' and follow fashion.

A modern Lhasa girl has been brought up wearing the long Tibetan cloak made of home-spun wool; the
chuba
. The design and fabric is the same as the
chuba
worn by her mother, her grandmother, her great-grandmother and way back down the generations, beyond when the first missionaries met them in Lhasa. Now, for the first time, the beautiful, increasingly fashion-conscious Tibetan girl can buy fluorescent pink nylon trousers with shiny buttons and zip pockets, a polyester blouse with disco sequins and a white collar which will show up in the UV lights of the Lhasa nightclubs. Times are changing, and much as Westerners (myself included) would like to see every Tibetan wearing traditional costume, it is the Tibetans themselves who are making the change.

It is a depressing thought that, as multinational companies push their concepts of the ‘global village' and marketers steer the course of global consumer needs, in a few hundred years all of humanity, from pole to pole, will be dressed in jeans, T-shirts and baseball caps, drinking Coca-Cola, eating at McDonalds and staying at Holiday Inns.

Well, perhaps not so soon.
All of humanity
was certainly not flooding in to the Holiday Inn Lhasa. Winter was setting in and visitors were becoming scarce. Harry read out the statistics in the Morning Meeting. Occupancy was taking a nose-dive. ‘Today twenty-three per cent. Tomorrow twenty per cent. The day after fourteen per cent.'

After the boom of the summer months it was the first time occupancy figures had dropped below 20 per cent. This was serious. Occupancy below 20 per cent meant that the heating would not just be switched off at night but there would be no more heating at any time anywhere in the hotel until the following year. The oil which fired the central heating system was strictly rationed and the year's supply had practically ran out. Switching on the heating could only be justified when the hotel achieved an occupancy of 20 per cent. The temperature was decreasing day by day and the prospect looked bleak for those of us who would be staying on throughout the winter. A solution did come but not one that any of us around the table at the Morning Meeting would have dared suggest.

THE MISS TIBET FIASCO

Virtually the only guests checking-in to the hotel by mid-November were the last groups of mountaineers returning from the Himalayas. Everest, or Chomolongma as the Tibetans refer to the world's highest mountain, was the most popular peak but we also had groups who had been on Cho Oyu, Shishapangma and the Japanese favourite: Namche Barwa. At 25,446 feet (7,756 m) Namche Barwa was the highest unclimbed mountain in the world and the Japanese kept throwing themselves at it, determined to score a ‘first'. The death toll was high, but to their great credit – if you happen to think it credit-worthy to risk your life for the sake of standing on top of a large piece of windswept rock and ice – they did eventually succeed.

The ‘Cowboys' were the last team of the season to arrive back from Everest: sixteen Americans, bearded, sunburnt, exhausted and filthy – but all alive. None had made it to the summit but all were in good spirits. They had every right to be. Climbing Everest depends on an equal amount of phenomenal skill and luck, and this season even the most skilful teams had been defeated by bad luck. Each team told their own version of being stuck a few hundred metres from the summit waiting for a ‘window' to appear in the blizzards which constantly sweep around the peak.

Curiously, the distance they reached from the summit diminishes in direct proportion to the length of time spent in the hotel bar, the number of Tsing Tao beers consumed and the chances of scoring with easily impressed tourists.

The ‘windows' on Everest never came that season and each team had to return to Base Camp without having planted their flag or taken the triumphant ‘here I am standing at 29,028 feet' photo. Tragically there had been two fatalities. It was usual for the majority of mountaineers to return untriumphant but after this season the gap in numbers between those making it to the top and those remaining dead on the mountain grew smaller.

The teams arriving back in the hotel headed first for the showers and then for the bar. Some tried it the other way around and we had to tactfully explain to them that they should experiment with soap and hot water before entering any of the public areas of the hotel. Not all the guests appreciated the smell of ripe mountaineer. Then there was the other odour particular to mountaineers and trekkers – the smell of burning yak dung, gained from happy evenings sitting around a yak dung fire. They thought they could wash it out of their clothes but even the Holiday Inn Lhasa laundry, which could reduce a perfectly good garment to shreds of unrecognisable fibre, could never remove the smell of burnt yak dung.

Once safely back in the hotel bar, the mountaineers played guitars, drank the hotel out of proprietary brands of liquor and partied late into the night. They were a fun crowd. The hotel became alive again and the corridors buzzed with stories of mankind's battle with the forces of nature.

There exists a friendly rivalry between groups of climbers, and although individual famous mountaineers are hero-worshipped, each team is quick to point out the deficiencies of the other. One team in particular had become the butt of all the Base Camp jokes – a group of Frenchmen who called themselves ‘Everest Express'.

They had been training at high altitude in the Alps and had planned to jet into Kathmandu, storm over into Tibet, rush straight onto Everest and be at the summit in seven days. They intended to be fully acclimatised from training in the Alps and so the climb on Everest would be très simple. But a week after crossing the border into Tibet they were still at Base Camp, suffering from jet lag, altitude sickness and arguing about food. The other teams renamed them ‘Everest Escargot'.

The expeditions returning to the hotel brought windfalls in the form of their surplus food supplies, or at least what remained of the supplies after pilfering by the notoriously dishonest Base Camp yak herders. The General Manager eagerly inspected the lorries as they came in to see what could be scrounged for the hotel's Delicatessen. The Cowboys produced a particularly bountiful supply of dried bacon bits, hot chocolate powder and fifteen boxes of nearly post-sell-by-date fruity nut bar. In fact these leftovers, together with a few cans of Chinese Spam, was about all there was in the Delicatessen. Several grumbling guests pointed out that ‘Delicatessen' was, perhaps, a slightly over-optimistic name for a shop with little more than spam and the mountaineers' leftovers, so in order to keep them happy, the shop was given the new name of ‘Picnic Corner'.

The mountaineers were good business all round. The hotel was the first taste of the comforts of Western civilisation after two and a half months on a mountainside and they made the most of it. Unfortunately they did not take enough rooms to hit the magic 20 per cent occupancy figure but they spent well in the restaurants, on their attempts at using the telephone, their sacks of yak-dungy laundry and especially in the bar. The only drawback was that you had to sit and listen to their stories.

There can be few people with a greater ego than a climber who has attempted the highest peak in the world. Later I was to discover there is one worse – those who have actually made it. Yes, it is deserved. He or she has diced with death and won, but all the same, the endless tales of death-defying acts and heroism repeated ad nauseam in a loud voice become very wearing.

My stories of climbing the mountain across the river seemed rather tame in comparison. Instead of ‘climbing the big one', I started referring to it as a ‘trek on the mountain' and then more accurately as a ‘walk on the small hill'. After I had suffered listening to an overripe mountaineer, who could hardly get his head through the door to the bar, talking loudly to the assembled crowd of adoring tourists (‘… the yaks had gone over the crevasse, my oxygen gave out on me at 27,000 feet, I was left with frostbite and had to carry the Sherpa with snow blindness…'), I thought it best not to mention my hill walk again.

The mountaineers had all left by the end of November and quiet settled in once again to the hotel. Occupancy dropped to single figures and the General Manager, weary after four long years, started looking forward to the arrival of his replacement. We were told that an Italian would be on his way to Lhasa in December.

Winter, although bleak in terms of hotel occupancy and temperature, is without doubt the best time to visit Lhasa. Don't believe the guidebooks. Don't believe the tour operators. Yes, it is freezing, but it is also fantastic. Snow is uncommon in Lhasa and when it does fall it is just enough to give a delicate veil of white over the surrounding hills. But it soon melts. There is not a cloud in the sky, not a drop of rain and each day is blessed with over eight hours of strong sunshine. The air is crisp and pure and a high-factor sun cream needs to be used if you want to avoid acquiring the Tibetan weather-beaten look. Although it is hot in the sun, take one step into the shade and the temperature plummets.

Fortunately my room in the hotel was south-facing. Now I could see why Harry had told me this was so important when I arrived. However the Sales Office faced north. Not a single ray of sunlight passed through the windows.

The temperature had now dropped to low single figures – the correct temperature for a walk-in refrigerator – and even my thick woollen suit, which had been so uncomfortable in Hong Kong, was not sufficient to prevent me from shaking as I sat at my desk.

I went down to the Barkhor, my usual haunt on a Sunday afternoon, to look for a pair of long johns. I had purchased one of the first mountain bikes to be found in Lhasa, a cheap Chinese version with dodgy brakes, which saved me the hassle of bargaining with the rickshaw drivers every time I wanted to leave the hotel. Cycling has the extra advantage that you can stop and look and explore, instead of just being bumped along on the rickshaw wondering what it is that you are passing.

It was some time before I realised that along the route to the Barkhor from the hotel, just past the government bookstore with the Stalin posters, was a building once described along with Lhalu House as one of the five beauties of Lhasa. Yutok Sampa – the Turquoise Bridge. It was hard to believe that it had once stood as a roofed bridge over a major stream running through the marshes around the Barkhor. Frank Ludlow, a member of the British Trade Mission stationed in Lhasa in the 1940s, wrote that in this same spot, wild bar-headed geese ‘used to waddle across the road in front of my pony just like tame geese.' Before the Communists arrived in Lhasa, all life was treated as sacred and wild animals showed no fear. Blue sheep grazed on the fields in the Lhasa valley, Brahminy ducks nested in the windows of the Potala Palace. How different it is now, when both Chinese and Tibetans go hunting and the former marshland around the bridge is now a concrete urban sprawl.

At least Yutok Sampa was still standing, but it was in a bad state of repair. It looked like a long barn, about 40 feet long and 15 feet wide, with a row of open windows at each side and a large opening at either end. The walls were stout, built of stone and supported rows of blue painted beams, which in turn held up the magnificent roof that gave the bridge its name. Centuries of exposure to the Tibetan weather had produced a deep blue-green colour that glowed from the earthenware tiles. I cycled on, hoping that one day it would be restored to its former glory.

The Barkhor in winter takes on a completely different complexion to the summer months. In November, after the harvest is over, the Tibetan buildings receive their annual whitewash. No need for paint brushes or rollers, the whitewash is simply flung against the walls from buckets. It is a spectacular sight but should be observed from a distance as everything in the vicinity; bicycles, tables, chairs and people, are whitewashed from head to toe.

The villages in the valley and the Tibetan houses of Lhasa positively shine in the strong winter sun. But it is not just the buildings which take on a new and brighter appearance – so too do the people. The tourists have vanished, the Chinese who can find an excuse to leave have returned to the ‘mainland' and the town is filled with newly arrived Tibetans for the winter pilgrimage. Yak-hair tents appear along the roadside by the river and the sterile Chinese parks are turned into lively Tibetan campsites. The nomads bring in goods to trade in the markets and the Barkhor comes to life. While Lhasa is becoming depressingly cosmopolitan, the glimmer of hope for Tibetan culture lies in these people from the far-flung corners of the great country.

For many of these villagers, the winter visit to Lhasa is a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage. The Barkhor is a moving mass, continually turning clockwise and humming with the chant of ‘Om Mani Padme Hom'. The pilgrims turn prayer wheels, cunningly clever devices which allow thousands of ‘Om Mani Padme Homs' to be said at the flick of the wrist.

A prayer wheel consists of a roll of paper covered in ‘Om Mani Padme Homs' inside a drum on the end of a short stick. You hold the stick in your hand and spin the drum in a clockwise direction. A small weight is attached to the drum, which helps to keep it spinning when the correct momentum is reached. Each spin of the wheel sends the entire prayer contents of the drum skywards – so gaining high merit points for the life to come. In addition to these handheld prayer wheels, each
kora
has large fixed wheels at certain points which should also be turned by the passing pilgrims. Each temple has a line of them, fixed top and bottom by a metal spindle, and spun by pushing a yak buttery wooden arm which is fixed to the base of the drum. The largest wheel I have seen was taller than a Khampa, and I can only guess at how many millions of prayers must be delivered when this is turned. Serious merit points.

The Tibetans are certainly ingenious when it comes to ways of scoring large amounts of merit in one simple move. There are also versions of prayer wheels which are turned by paddles in streams and smaller paper models, which are suspended above yak-butter lamps and turned by the rising heat. It will not be long until there is a battery version and an enormous marketing opportunity for Duracell. But, thankfully, the majority of Tibetans who crowd the Barkhor in winter and form queues at the great monasteries of Lhasa are still untouched by the commercialism of the twentieth century.

They arrive in their traditional clothes: mighty Khampas with
chubas
and hair braided with red or black tassels; wild-looking nomads from the north wearing
chuba
s made of turned-out sheep skins; Kongpo people from the east with their small rounded hats and square capes. Even the Lhasa folk dress differently in the winter time. Thick
chubas
are worn and each man proudly wears a flower-pot-shaped hat decorated with golden brocade and lined with rabbit fur. The pot has three large flaps and the de rigueur Tibetan wears one side flap folded in, with the front and other side flap sticking out like the peaks of baseball caps. Ladies have shorter hats of the same material but with four flaps. Some of the men wear an even more macho fox fur hat. These look as though an entire fox is curled up on top of the head, with its head and tail dangling at the back. So much for all life being sacred.