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Published: November 21st 2005
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The day was spent walking about Lhasa, taking in the sight and the atmosphere. The Tibetan quarters are extremely pleasant and full of happenings. They have all remained pedestrian, with no space for cars. Every street is transformed daily into a street market and nightly into a restaurant and play area. It is filled with pilgrims in their best Tibetan costume, going around the temples on the Bakhor (pilgrims path circling every monastry or temple). It is filled constantly by a contradicting yet happy blurr of sights, smells and sounds.
As soon as one leaves the relatively small Tibetan quarter, the atmospehere is terribly different: wide empty streets, the same shops, shop after shop selling the same poor quality Chinese goods. The buldings are of white tiles with few intresting features; maybe, apart from their state of degradation, only the occassional stone lion statue breaks the monotony of the streets. The atmosphere is not only different due to the building style but also to the people. 500 meters in Lhasa make a huge difference: the city harbours, often with difficulty, two entirely different cultures, physiques, dress codes, behavioral codes, etc...
The Chinese peaceful liberation / occupation army is the
cause of a sad record: Lhasa has the highest rate of prostitution per capita in the world. About 6 to 8% of the population works in the sex industry; at the last count there were more than 10,000 practicing prostitutes in a town little bigger than a village. It is estimated that HIV is the highest in theworld and 70% of the countryside population suffers from hepatitis. Those are figures compiled by foreign agencies in Lhasa; the Chinese maintain that there is no such thing as prostitution in the People's Republic of China. The whore houses are mainly seen in a 100 meter radius in every direction outside the large army barracks. Lhasa is entirely surrounded by barracks of varying sizes. For foreigners, this is a shoking sight. It is not even in disguise but openly advertised. It is even worse of an experience when it is seen with the Tibetan pilgrims doing their lamentations in the foreground, lying down on the floor every 3 meters, turning their prayer wheels and murmuring their prayers in front of the imported, vulgar, prostitutes - often busy knitting on the pavement in front of their shaby rooms. There are armed patrols at night
and an omnipresence of the uniform in the streets. There are more Chinese soldiers in Tibet than Tibetans...
In the morning, we visited the Jokhang monastery. Built in 650, it is not only the most ancient temple but also the most sacred in Tibet, as it contains a famous Buddha statue, gift of an Indian princess. The story goes that the statue formed itself, with no human intervention or help. During the 1959 cultural revolution, the outside wall was destroyed by Mao's tanks and the inside transformed into a pig stye. It has since returned to its former beauty.
This temple is also considered to be a site of importance for Tibetans as it is there that, in 1987, during the yearly large debate that follows the new year celebration, the Chinese puppet Panchen-Lama refused to sit on the throne normally reserved for the Dalai-Lama and paid hommage to the Dalai-Lama instead. The Chinese were furious and closed the temple for a number of months. The Panchen-Lama was given hospitality in a reeducation camp.
The temple is now the religious aim of all the pilgrims in Tibet: they journey for months if not years to see the
statue of Buddha and pray in its sanctuary.
It really is just that: a sanctuary from the madness and chaos of the outside streets. It is composed of little courtyards and corridors, prayer wheels and chapels shading the believer from the sun and giving a strong sense of peace and recollection to everyone who enters its massive gates.
There is a little path consisting of hundreds of prayer wheels going round the main body of the temple. I, unfortunately, turned one of the prayer wheels the wrong way (anti-clockwise); Bene told me it was bad Karma and no sooner had he said so that I fell down, breaking one of my beloved lucky sandals in the process.
After much sadness and recollection of good times spent with those sandals, I moved on barefooted still holding on to them with a sense of desperate hope that they might be ressucitated.
Later, during our wandering of the Jokhang, we are invited to have a chat with some local Tibetan monks in their shaded quarters. One enquires as to the story of my sandals; I describe tearfully the life and close bond I have shared with them and the
punishment of unfortunate bad Karma which has sadly disabled my trusted companions. They all take a sad look, play with the sandals and express their deep pain at my loss but offer little assistance, apart from the promise of a prayer in their memory.
We move on to visit the kitchens of the monastry, in the hope that it may bring back some of my good mood (kitchens have that effect on me). We visit the kitchens but little apart from yak butter tea is being prepared, so my spirits remain low. I make a prayer and offer a donation to the memory of my sandals. Barely had I finished to do so that a monk runs to me with pots of super glue. With unmeasurable joy in our hearts, we surgicaly operate on the sandals and they are given, with the help of the monk community of the temple, a new lease on life.
During the operation, we attracted quite a crowd who was most curious and sympathetic as to the fate of my sandals. We left the temple with a warm heart, among cheers and good whishes of the gathered crowd.
After yet more yak
for lunch, we headed to the Potala Palace to visit the thing itself. We arrived a 15:00 and were told that all tickets for the day were already sold and that we had to come back with passport and Tibet permit at 1600. A short walk in the neigbourhood and a quick look at the monument for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet later, we returned to the Potala Ticket office. 2 hours of queuing awaited us.
After two long hours spent in the too close vicinity of the garbage bins and upon presentation of our various documents, we were issued with a paper filled with colourful stamps giving us permission to buy a ticket for the Potala Palace. We have to return the following day, armed with our permissions, various documents and a lot of patience, to be able to have the huge privilege of buying an overpriced ticket to the palace.
Cursing the inefficiency of the system, we returned to the hotel, had an argument with the travel agent in Beijing for bad services, showered, had dinner in an local Indian restaurant and met up with a mad American who insisted on explaining to me his vision
of humankind and religion. It made for an intresting hour in a local Tibetan bar, drinking chang (challenging tibetan beer, served warm, made with barley, millet and rice, and left to ferment for a few weeks before being dried. It is served in a wooden casket as a powder where you add your desired amount of warm water; water can be added up to 10 times. Cheapest beer I have ever seen but not the most pleasing for a western palate).
We escaped the theories of god and humans to make joyfully to bad Chinese television and to bed.
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Jessica
non-member comment
Thank-you
Thankyou for sharing this with the world.I too,one day dream of doing this.I wish to see the Dalai Lama back home too.That seems to be up to China though.How sad.