Lost on Planet China - J. Maarten Troost [111]
At the guesthouse I was told that my room was on the fourth floor and that there wasn’t an elevator, and so I huffed my pack onto my shoulders and made for the stairs, where soon, several flights up, I could be found with my arms on the wall, chest thumping, desperately gasping for air. My body had suddenly realized that circumstances are indeed different up here at 12,000 feet. There is, for instance, a lot less oxygen up here—40 percent less, as a matter of fact. But I’ve been acclimatizing you, I said, breathlessly, to my heart, which thumped alarmingly. Dali, Lijiang, Shangri-la—I’ve been slowly going higher just so we could avoid this unpleasantness. Air! said my heart. More air!
One should always listen to one’s heart. So, it appeared, we would go slowly today.
Lhasa, as I had seen from the bus, is surrounded by drab, could-be-anywhere-in-China-except-I-can’t-breathe suburbs, but in the old town around Barkhor Square, it is a different place. There are warrens of white, mud-brick houses and shops, and streets of monks—monks begging, monks giving, monks in swirling maroon robes and running shoes—and sidewalks covered with the carcasses of giant yaks. It is a town of pilgrims, and there were Tibetans from distant valleys who had spent weeks traversing the rugged paths to get here. In front of the Jokhang Temple, a monastery of mud bricks and gold that is the holiest sight in Tibet, I watched ruddy-faced pilgrims doing the Barkhor circuit, a clockwise perambulation around the temple that took them through a market maze and tables of prayer wheels. Dozens of people knelt and prostrated themselves before the temple’s heavy wooden doors. Hundreds more were walking the circuit, spinning their own prayer wheels. Some had braided hair; others wore cowboy hats. And all had the distinctive ruddy red cheeks of the Tibetans. I thought of Jack. A little farther and he would have found his Other.
The late-afternoon light was ethereal, a darkening blue, but the mountains flared with sunlight. If Mars had been colonized by Buddhists, it would look like this. I felt awfully close to space here. I walked past bored-looking Chinese policemen playing cards at a table and headed across the square toward the Mandala restaurant. I had no expectation of finding good food, but they had a balcony that overlooked the colorful scene below. I climbed the staircase as if I were summiting Everest itself, a slow, arduous ascent with deep, labored breathing. Something told me to order vegetarian. This was a holy place, I thought, and perhaps I’d defile this holiness by eating flesh. I had no idea whether that was true, but it seemed like the right thing to do. California Buddhists eschew meat, ergo Tibetan Buddhists must avoid meat too. Also, the enormous yak carcasses strewn about the streets outside encouraged a vegetarian approach. I plucked at my noodles and vegetables and noticed two Tibetan teenage girls wildly out of control on a moped. They careened into another moped, sending everyone to the ground. I waited for the arguing, the screaming, the inevitable demands for compensation. I’d seen this show a hundred times in China. But no. They laughed. Everyone laughed. There was so much laughter. Oh, I thought. Oh, oh, oh. This is different. Laughter? After a crash? When there is damage? When there are dents? Scratches? When somebody has to pay for repairs? And they laugh about it in Lhasa?
Clearly, I’d entered a different world.
In the morning, when I awoke, the mountains were dusted with snow. But the air was very dry, dry enough to elicit the need for lip balm. I’d never felt the need for lip balm before. I am not a lip balm man. But here, up here, way up here, I had a need, and so I wandered into a Chinese pharmacy. The attendants were dressed all in white, as if this were a sanatorium, or possibly a lunatic asylum. I mimed what I needed and she understood completely. I was in need of skin-whitening cream for hands.
It’s always interesting to see the enduring persistence of this fair skin nonsense. Presumably, once,