Portrait of an LBX

By Evan

I said we’d go looking for Tibetan shenanigans in that last post, and boy, did we find them! We’ve seen and done so much in the last few days, I’ll do my best to redact and break up details. By the way, all the Tibetan names below have been changed and no pictures are included… just in case.

So out of Shuajingsi (刷經寺), we climbed and climbed all morning until we hit 4345 m (14,255 feet) and descended miraculously into the wide open grassland. Immediately we came across herds of yaks, nomadic tent clusters, and huge mastiffs — sure signs that we had entered the Tibetan regions. If the yaks weren’t enough to confirm this, the massive military presence sealed the deal. Behind the tourist trap tent city where we had our first real Tibetan meal was an encampment of hundreds of military tents, dozens of howitzers stationed on the road, and all other manner of malevolent machinery.

Thankfully though we were too lost in the scenery to care much about politics for awhile. These landscapes up in northern Sichuan are like something from another world, endless rolling hills of green sprinkled with yellow and purple flowers like the world’s biggest king cake, skies bluer than the deep ocean, and more clouds in every direction than I could even see in a dream. The place makes Yellowstone look like the Jersey Turnpike! It has also been refreshing, to say the least, to take in deep cycling breaths in some of the world’s cleanest (if thin) air, all the more striking due its proximity to some of the world’s dirtiest air.

So after a day of riding through heaven and dinner being stared at by five Tibetan men (they are quite curious), Andy suggested we try to camp out next to a nomad tent for kicks. Just down the road, and right as a storm filling half the sky was moving in, we pulled into a pasture on the side of the road. I asked the men sitting between the two army-sized tents (one was a blue earthquake rescue tent) if we could camp, and they said, sure! As we set up, we were joined by the youngest one, named Tenzin. Tenzin, 22, had an earing in his left ear, curly hair down to his ears, high rubber boots, and dirt on his face. He was fascinated watching us pull the gear from the bikes and set it all up into two tidy tents that held our bags and sleeping gear. Shortly thereafter, we were joined by Norbu, a 62 year old man wearing a traditional overly long sleeved coat and clutching prayer beads, Palden, 48 years old with a gaunt, dark face, and Palden’s 3 year old grandson.

As we sat in the grass, Norbu inquired our nationality. “We love Americans,” he said, “because you support our Dalai Lama.” We hadn’t expected the conversation to get serious so quickly, but they had nothing to hide from us. It turned out that they were all devoutly religious. In fact, I haven’t talked to a single Tibetan not serious about his religion or culture in the last 5 days. Through his shaky Chinese, Norbu let us know how important the Dalai is to the Tibetans and how “the heart is filled with pain” at the long separation from him. Norbu remembered vividly the “liberation” of Tibet when he was 13 and how the Dalai, 23, had been forced to flee. All three of them told of how difficult their situation is, how they hide pictures of the Dalai Lama in their houses despite the danger of doing so. All three of them even wore double-sided pendants bearing the image of the DL and the head monk of their local monastery.

They were as willing to talk about their resentment at Chinese occupation as they were about devotion to their spiritual leader. Both Norbu and Tenzin had participated in the protests of March, 2008, screaming “Long live the Dalai Lama” in the streets of their town with hundreds of compatriots. For their show of passion, they were both plucked from their homes by paramilitary police in the middle of the night and sentenced to prison terms for their outbursts. Norbu got a light 20 days, probably due to his advanced age, but Tenzin had to spend the entire 20th year of his life in prison. For stretches of four and five days at a time he was denied food. When he was finally released, he was told that next time he’d be facing not jail time but a bullet — like four others from his town and dozens in the surrounding area had faced this time. The year was particularly hard on the young man, who was the only man left to support his family after his father had been mauled to death by yaks when he was 13. Palden, who had been interpreting parts of the story for his junior and senior compatriots with weak Chinese, said that the Tibetans in the area had even pulled for the US against China in the Olympics. That’s how you know it’s serious.

After lots of really deep talk, two other men in their twenties, Lobsang and Choden showed up, and everybody headed over to the pen behind the tents where two yaks were tied down. Then Tenzin, a trained yak vet, got on a long pink glove and, after shooting me a smile that said, “I can’t believe my new American friends are going to see me do this” jammed his hand way up there to fidget something around before popping in a long artificial insemination needle and depressing the plunger. Thankfully, in case I had missed a detail, the spectacle was repeated on the second yak before both were released into the pen. About this time it started doomsday raining. Andy and I were rushed into the blue tent with Tenzin, and the other four spent 30 minutes in the rain pulling the herd of 200+ yaks into the pen.

Here I should explain something it took me a while to figure out. None of the men was related by blood. Instead, they were all part of a farming cooperative in which each family owned a certain number of yaks, which are taken care of in shifts. Tenzin was paid 1000 yuan a month for three consecutive months of living out of a tent and servicing the herd, which is all females of calving age. The other four were serving a short service term, for which each family in the cooperative has to turn out one man for fifteen days every year. They are paid 300 yuan for their time, or 20 yuan a day. Norbu, over the legal age to work, was risking a fine for his presence, but had come to take the place of his son who had some other business to attend to.

Back to the tent, Tenzin busily started a fire in the stove from dried yak dung and a little lighter fluid. Once it was going well, he threw a big pot of tea and a small pot of water on to boil. Incidentally, this mess tent was cluttered and dirty in a distinctly Tibetan way. There were two huge sacks of yak turds in the corners, dirty bowls flung around the sides, a solar battery powering a lightbulb, cloth sacks full of barley powder here and there, and a big slab of yak meat hanging from the ceiling. Soon the others returned soaking wet and joined us huddled around the dung stove. A few minutes later, three other men walked in from another herd several kilometers down the road to join us for dinner. Then it was like a yak herders’ bachelor den in the tent, with each of the men pitching in to help make the dinner: one setting rice to boil in a pressure cooker, one slicing the hanging yak meat, one slicing up some peppers, and everybody else passing bowls around to get washed out with boiling water. We weren’t allowed to help with anything. Instead, Lobsang, the 27 year old with long hair and two kids, handed us bowls, a his tin of yak butter, and his sack of barley powder to make zanba. We fingered out some butter into the bowl, over which he poured tea with the tea ladle. Once the butter was melted, we topped the bowl off with handfuls of barley powder, and then sank our fingers in to mix it all up until it was a brown doughy-y ball tasting like a combination of cheerios and butter. It’s filling as hell too, as it needs to be, since these guys eat it 3 meals a day! Eventually the rice and yak meat/peppers were done, and sticks were pulled from the yak dung sack to serve as chopsticks… yes, super gross. Since there were limited bowls, Tenzin and Lobsang had to wait until we were done.

After dinner, the men cut up with each other and laughed deeply at what I’m sure were lots of yak and women-related jokes. It kills us not to understand Tibetan and makes us embarrassed that we are forced to communicate with them in the language of their oppressors — which most of them can hardly speak anyway. Several of them pulled out their prayer beads and were reciting prayers between discourse. Every one had a cell phone and pulled it out to make prank calls or play music. Around 9, completely exhausted, we excused ourselves to our tents. They insisted that we come back to their tent in the morning for more zanba.

When we woke up, the guys, who had stayed up until 2 am playing cards neither gambling nor drinking in the process (I never thought it possible) were already up and in the pen with the yaks. To my horror, I saw that they were holding up the tea ladle from the previous night full of salt to lapping yak tongues… again, gross. Palden, the grandpa who had been our interpreter for most of the night, was also quite the yak-boy. He lassoed three heifers for the insemination pen, hitting their horns spot-on with every throw and reeling each one in within three throws. They then filed them out one at a time, counting as they went, and led the herd a few kilometers down the road to a pasture with high grasses. We sat with Tenzin in front of the yak crap stove and had more zanba, of which he couldn’t force enough onto us. Forty five minutes later, the others returned, we talked some more, and then it was time for us to break camp. This time they all pitched in, rolling up the tents, carrying bags, or just whatever they could see needed to be done. After some group pictures, we bid everyone “demu” (goodbye in Tibetan) and rolled down the gorgeous plain.

I can’t emphasize enough how well Tibetans work as a team — absolutely every task they undertake is everybody’s responsibility, regardless of age or status. They’re also the downright friendliest and most generous people we’ve met on our trip so far. It fills my heart with pain to know that they’re so tormented and bullied by their colonizers, the Chinese. Yes, peoples have been dominated by others since the beginning of time, and sure, some of the Chinese up here are ok people, but for the most part, it’s an ugly picture. I can’t help but imagine how I would feel if my dad were arrested and beaten for being caught with a rosary or publicly declaring his belief in Jesus. Heathen though I am, the experience with our yak herding friends has, more than anything, made me feel lucky that I was born in the USA.

More to come soon!