Lost on Planet China - J. Maarten Troost [108]
The next day, we hopped into this minivan bound for Zhongdian. It was not at all like the spacious and comfortable minivans in the United States, but more like a toy minivan, made of tin, the tiny sort of vehicle that clowns would crowd into. The driver was a sane driver, possibly because the engine was no more powerful than a lawn mower’s, and we chugged up the hills at a speed of approximately twenty-seven miles per hour, heading ever higher into the mountains, paying tolls at tollbooths staffed by soldiers, until finally, we emerged upon a vast, desolate plateau spotted with large open wooden farmhouses. And to my delight I saw that there were yaks, huge shaggy yaks. A yak is a ruminant’s ruminant, the king of the bovine. We’d entered a region that was predominantly Tibetan in population, which explained the presence of yaks. With their immense horns and considerable size, they are intimidating, and yet in Tibet people not only use them to plow fields but they also race yaks. There is such a thing as yak racing.
Somewhere upon this plateau, we pulled into a dusty village, where we were joined by a gaggle of Tibetans: four, six, eight, nine. And soon there were twelve of us in a tiny bus designed to carry no more than four. We sat in laps. We stood. And we laughed, because it’s funny to be in an overcrowded minivan made of tin. Our fellow passengers were very friendly in their colorful dress. Or, rather, their clothes would have been colorful if not so dirty. One by one, they broke into song, and as we rolled along, singing the Tibetan songs of yore, Jack and I doing our best to join in, all seemed good.
If there is a stranger place to call Shangri-la than Zhongdian, I cannot image it. It’s a dirty frontier town, a place with a heavy military and Communist Party presence. And it sits near the edge of China, in a region largely populated by Tibetans, a place where the powers that be in Beijing seemed distant, and so to overcome this distance, Beijing manifests itself in Shangri-la with soldiers and ugly, boxy buildings of bureaucrats, functionaries, and Party officials. It was, of course, convenient to call Zhongdian Shangri-la. There was not a quicker way to turn a town near the Tibetan Autonomous Region into a Han Chinese city than by dangling the lure of money. And the name itself, with all its connotations of wonder and mystery and beauty, is nothing but a business opportunity.
But there was no wonder or mystery or beauty here. What had remained of the old village of Zhongdian had been swallowed by a scruffy Han city notable for its plethora of karaoke bars. Even the setting was uninspiring. I had expected that at the very least, the bare minimum, Shangri-la would be surrounded by soaring mountains, towering eminences dusted with snow. But this was not the case. There were merely a few scrubby, barren hills. True, these were 11,000-foot hills, far higher than most of the mountains in the Sierra Nevada. But when viewed from our current elevation of 9,500 feet, they looked scrubby, barren, and, well, decidedly small.
“So this is Shangri-la,” Jack said once we’d adjusted to the altitude. “It reminds me of Butte, Montana.”
The most intriguing part of the city, when we finally reached it, was the old town. This is because it was brand new. In the center of the city, where there was once a typical Tibetan village, we found hundreds of workers busy building a quaint replica of a Tibetan village. And here, too, there were many doors for sale, scuffed and dulled to make them look weathered and old. In the shops, there was Tibetan this and Tibetan that, knickknacks and leather cowboy hats like Jack’s, most likely made in a factory in Guangdong. We watched as, on cue, ruddy-faced dancers arrived on the old town square and gathered the Chinese tourists, held hands with them, and showed them how to dance Tibetan style. A small garbage truck drove by, announcing its presence with music, just like an ice-cream truck. Nearby, up a small hill and through an alley