Lhasa

We fell off the bus in a tide of sweaty bodies. Beneath the glare of the midday sun, and amidst the cut throat scuffle for bags, all camaraderie was long spent. After extracting ourselves from the bus station, we did, what had by this time in our travels become a standard routine on dazed arrival in a new place, we wandered along the street and found a place to dump our bags, eat and rejuvenate before thinking about anything else.

We quickly found a little restaurant on the main street where we would continue to eat once a day for the rest of our stay. This also, was often the pattern. If we liked a place, having only the humble requirements of cheap, fresh vegetables and friendly service, we saw no reason to search for new eateries to frequent. The woman who placed our paper cups of green tea down, had a wide smile. Bing dug in his bag for a large, ridiculously heavy bottle of olive oil and disappeared into the kitchen to supervise the vegetable cooking. I’m left wondering to myself as to the origin of this new ostentatiously vegetarian-weirdo behaviour. He was a meat eater two weeks ago. As for me, I mutter to myself, I may be a vegetable eater who doesn’t like too much oil, but I’m flexible, I’m tolerant, and most of all, I so do not draw attention to myself. 'Women bu chi rou' (We don't eat meat') I hear him boom from behind the flimsy partition. But I have to admit, after a few more succulent meals under his directorship, I cease from cringing. The aberration is occasional, and the cooks don't seem to mind - on the contrary they bask in his praise and repartee. After they've finished cooking, the bottle of olive oil is always brought out and placed reverently on our table.

We had visits from four beggars and two lute players in the course of our meal. The musicians would do the rounds of the cheap eateries every evening, shouting and thrashing at their instruments until they were given something. It was understood by both parties that they were not being paid to play but to leave immediately. And I’m afraid their strategy was by far the most successful at divesting me of my change.

As a child I’d pulled the 1st edition hardcover of Seven Years in Tibet off the shelf of my father’s study, and have reread it a number of times since. Heinrick Harrier would’ve wept to see Lhasa now, and probably did in 1984 when he was among one of the first tour groups allowed to enter Tibet after its ‘opening’ up.
Bing had a little joke over the next few days where, every now and then, he would chant ‘Lhasa, Lhasa,Lha lha sa’, re-evoking the excitement of the bus-trip, and then ’women zai shenme difang? oh... Lhasa' (where are we?) it’s anti-climax. It was pretty funny. He doesn’t have much time for all this devoutness. He’s Hui Chinese (a Muslim minority group) and although he asserts his upbringing was not at all fundamentalist, he has rejected it in its entirety and it seems to have engendered a strong (but not stridently expressed) cynicism towards all forms of spiritual expression.

My first impression had not been good. The Potola was diminished and inconsequential behind buildings and traffic in the foreground as the bus had rolled in. But even amidst this discomforting awareness of the glaring banality caused by occupation and desecration, being in Lhasa was inevitably thrilling. Later on that first evening, when I stood directly beneath, looking up at the Potola, feeling so fortunate just to have made it there, my first assessment was forgotten.

After eating and taking stock, we’d wandered round searching for a CHEAP (you will meet this word many times in the following account) guesthouse. On the bus, I’d scrawled down some addresses from the Japanese guy’s Lonely Planet but everywhere was full or expensive. We ended up far away from the action, deep in the comparatively modern, un-atmospheric, Muslim quarter of town. There, we left our packs in a room filled to the brim by a small double bed and the essential T.V. The toilet was downstairs and trucks rolled past outside. I received looks not of curiosity but suspicion. But at Y15 each, who could complain? After paying, we quickly set off to find a public shower.

When we returned at 11pm, they were just about to give up on us and pull the roller-door down. Back in ‘the room’, I fleetingly noticed that the ceiling ran well above the walls leaving a large gap half hidden by a tinsel Christmas decoration and plastic grape vines, the TVs on either side of us were blaring, and that the bedding was like being on the bus at the end of the trip…then I was swept down a black tunnel into one of those anaesthetic, dreamless types of sleep.
Next morning the TVs were still on, or had started up again, but there was a thermos of boiling hot water by the door, I had some naan bread saved from the night before, and my book on Russia was waiting to be continued (the amazing Black Earth). I’d run down stairs and the toilet had been free, so everything needed for a good start to the day was supplied. I sat up in bed with my book and drank instant coffee out of the paper cup supplied by the establishment while Bing went out side to find a tree as the toilet was now not free in a big way.

Here I am, I thought, in Lhasa, staying amongst Muslims and my head is filled with Chechnya. How typical. When Bing returned I dictated that the morning's activity would be to find a (cheap) guesthouse close to the smell of incense and the sound of chanting.

Out on the street minutes later I found a joker, so we decided the guesthouse of our dreams was imminent. This practise of joker-finding was and is just a light hearted and corny game, but it’s fun. I’ve copied the habit off a friend who does the same, based on a book she lent me, in which a pack of cards come to life. China is the best place to find cards of any denomination as for some reason they are lying everywhere, on streets and mountain tracks, in rooms and gutters… I’ve taken to imbuing my jokers with good fortune, but I also find the diversity and surreal nature of the images ‘strangely compelling‘.

A foreign friend was a little bothered by all these discarded cards and decided that a mysterious custom must be at the bottom of it. No one he asked had any answers and this caused him to become convinced that the reason was a huge secret of conspiracy proportions. I’ve suggested that it’s probably just because people play cards out on the street and maybe the wind blows them away, or they like to use new packs and just abandon the cards after a game. But even so, he’s right, it does seem odd that when asked people don't seem to have noticed, or maybe they think that cards just lie around on the ground in every country...

My rule, which I usually stick to, is that I should not actively search for jokers. They must simply lie in my path, face up - actually seeking out and turning a card over I deem to be too obsessive. During our trip, Bing entered into the spirit of things and always professed surprise and amazement when a new joker appeared. From Lijiang to Panzhihua to Chengdu to Lanzhou to Xiahe to Xining to Geermu and now to Lhasa, I so far had nine, all different.