tafang

or in English: landslide.

And that’s all the two following posts are about - a bunch of landslides. Nothing really exciting happens. No one dies - although Bing did look like he might. My macpac doesn’t end up in the river - even if at one point I was sure it would. I don’t get in a fight with a broken beer bottle - I don‘t even come close.
And yet … I could have said even more. I didn’t mentioned the two cages of black Tibetan puppies that belonged to one of the drivers and were stacked next to his seat, or the weird, stylish French family with the extrovert wife who pull up in a land cruiser just before the second disaster is averted, and with whom the Deguos bond in record time.

Anyway, before I make it longer...

One doesn’t ask how many hours the bus from Lhasa to Deqin takes, at least not seriously. I was told two days. It was more than that, three I think, but my memory is fuzzy. Time took on a surreal and irrelevant quality.
I know we left in the morning, and then it was morning again, and then things get blurry.

During the first night after the evening meal stop, the driver called us off the bus three times so he could negotiate dangerous patches of road without a full load. The first time was because of a big rock. But it didn’t take much time for us to extend some ground around it the vital number of inches, using clumps of grass, soil, and stones that had come down with it, and a couple of concrete markers which were uplifted, then carried over. The next stop was at a skinny wooden bridge about fifty metres long. There were gaps between the planks and the bus lights shone from behind as it revved, impatient, I imagined, for Bing and I to get across to the other side where everyone else was. Poor Bing, always last out and last back on.

Morning. The bus has stopped. There are voices. I crawl out into the dawn. We’re next to a roaring muddy river sided by rocky mountains, their barren tips just touched by sun, mist rising in patches. This pristine beauty is just what I’d hoped for - so much better than the official truck-stops which encourage dingy clusters of over-priced restaurants, each with a blaring T.V, and nestled in a circumference of litter which doubles as a toilet.

I wander up the road to the landslide. There are only a couple of trucks in front of the bus. A waterfall gushes down the mountain and over what had been the road, to the river not far below; sludge and huge rocks fan out. In this still, clear dawn, the scene looks so solid and permanent, that its hard to imagine that all this suddenly whooshed down in the night - or that it will be cleared away any time soon. Some women from the bus have gathered at the place where the water is hitting the road. I carefully pick my way over to them. They’ve brought soap and toothbrushes and make a space for me to perch on a rock and wash my face in the cold torrent.

Some blue horse trucks strung with prayer flags and talismans have also stopped. Men, whose jet black hair is plaited with shanks of red cotton and looped through large bone rings, forage for wood. It’s wet from rain in the night but they still manage to get a roaring fire going. I help, and am rewarded with smiles of approval and even a marriage proposal. It's embarrassing how little a foreigner has to do to impress, or rather what low expectations people must have that we are capable of doing anything practical. Big pots and teapots filled with river water are soon boiling. Sacks come out; handfuls of what looks like bark, salt, and then yak butter are added. By now I’ve pulled up a rock and am settled with my book and plastic cup. I lean over to have it filled with tea, add an instant coffee sachet and stir it in with a twig. There is much laughter and talk, in both Tibetan and Mandarin. I understand very little. It’s way too fast and the accents confuse me. But I can pick up on the mood without any trouble; its like a big picnic.

A few monks and nuns zip windbreakers over their red robes - in response to the morning chill.
Bing emerges briefly, waves, has a piss, then disappears back into the bus. The two other foreigners from the bus wander over. They previously haven’t acknowledged me and have conversed to each other in German. They sit down with a group of men who are mixing a tsampa paste (barley flour and Yak butter tea) in their palms, and start chatting in Mandarin. Mandarin? An onslaught of jealousy and self-recrimination hits as I gauge that theirs is better than mine, followed by (very) mild (almost non existent) guilt at my childish reaction. I look in their direction but again, no acknowledgement. I console myself that these young upstarts have almost certainly benefited from the luxury of full-time language study without having to work. And no doubt studied Chinese in Germany(Deguo) before coming to China. Finally I turn and break into their conversation, speaking to them in Mandarin. They've been at Beijing uni for 1 year and yes, studied Mandarin throughout their degrees in Germany. They don’t ask me about myself - how, for example, my Chinese is so great - but I settle back, smug and vindicated, convinced that I too would be a brilliant conversationalist given similar unfair advantages.

Vehicles are piling up. More pots filled with water are appearing. One of the Deguos is taking photos and showing people their digital images. I have another Yak butter tea (su you cha) and Nescafe and start to read my book. I think maybe I'm onto something with this drink. Maybe there's a niche market out there waiting to be tapped. Sadly, Black Earth, the book about post Soviet Russia has been completed. I left it at the last guesthouse ruthlessly plundered (in keeping with the subject matter) of the pages with quotes I’d especially liked, and the front and back pages which I’d written all over. Now I’m onto my last book of the trip: The End of California, a contemporary American novel in virginal condition, clearly unread. What will it be like by the time I' ve finished with it? I found it at my local café where I'm forced to get most of my reading material by swopping two for one.

Little groups have formed around tsampa, kettles, and boxes of cooked meat, potatoes and bread. I dip a piece of da bing (large round flat bread) in my drink. The men use long, straight knives to hack the side branches off larger pieces of wood for the fire.
And then, from the other side of the landslide, accompanied by soldiers in camouflage gear who look to be about fifteen, a smallish grader appears. Now the sun has reached the river. Bing emerges once again and we take a slow walk until he finds a slab of concrete to stretch out on. His back is bad. I turn and look back at the colourful groups around the fire, feeling a little guilty at how much I’m enjoying it all, while he's in such discomfort. He looks up and gives me a stoic smile, then checks his special watch and tells me we‘re at 3500 metres. I make a long shadow. The Peruvian looking Tibetan hat we’d picked up from a stall in Lhasa is now misshapen from being squashed in the bus. The other Deguo strolls past, deep in conversation with an engaging young girl.

The grader huffs black smoke with gusto, but appears ant-like in proportion to its Herculean task. And as I scrutinise the painstaking manoeuvring, I find myself thinking that if they’d only let moi at the controls I’m sure I’d have it cleared in no time. As you do. The boys in green work without a break, calmly and methodically lifting rocks one by one and tossing them down the bank. In fact, no one appears to fret or complain, maybe because landslides in summer are integral to this stretch of road. But even so, I’m unable to conceive of same experience in a Western context. People would be so, so uptight.

And then, by mid afternoon, the tafang is finally cleared, but no one seems to be in a huge hurry to get going. Traffic intermittently trickles across. People are entertained by the occasional over laden motorbike wobbling down into the now slow moving water, and then whizzing up in a touch and go flourish of spray and anxiety. Finally its our big green bus’s turn and I call Bing from his ledge. By the time he gets to the bus door, everyone else has piled on, and hands reach down to pull him up the steps.