Portrait of an LBX

By Evan

黃昏我站在高高的山岡
At dusk I stand on a tall mountain
看那鐵路修到我家鄉
And see the railroad that has been built to my homeland
一條條巨龍翻山越嶺
Huge dragon after huge dragon cross the mountains
為雪域高原送來安康
Bringing peace and health to the snowy plateau
那是一條神奇的天路哎
It is a miraculous heavenly road
把人間的溫暖送到邊疆
Bringing the warmth of the human world to the frontier
從此山不再高路不再漫長
From now on, the mountains are no longer high, and the road is no longer endless
各族兒女歡聚一堂
The sons and daughters of every race joyously assemble under the same roof

The plateau, a place not easily forgotten, by Andy

The preceding is an excerpt from the song Heavenly Road (天路), a song sung in Chinese set to Tibetan style music about the Beijing-Lhasa railway. It is likely the current most popular propaganda song in China (by far surpassing Dao Lang’s “Salaam Chairman Mao”), and also the single song I hate most in the world. I hate it so because unfortunately I used to be pretty into it, owing to the frequency with which I heard it, until the one day I bothered to pay attention to the lyrics, which I’ve pasted in totality at the bottom of this post for the curious. Aside from the fact that it’s hilariously ridiculous to think that prop-pop is actually an acceptable art form in China, the song’s popularity highlights the attitudes most Chinese have toward Tibetans: that they are griping benefactors of the goodness of the Han. I’ll go into this topic in depth in the post that continues this one.

Aside the hundreds of times I’ve heard the first lines of this song as a ring tone on this trip, I was graced to hear a group of vacationing cyclists from Liaoning wearing matching red long spandex uniforms singing it boisterously within eyesight of the miraculous railroad on the northern bank of Lake Qinghai. Beside the fact that these were some real chumps (like most of the vacationers making a circuit of the lake), their shameless rendition reminded me that we were on our way out of traditional Tibet and headed back into the hard world of Northern China. (more…)

By Andy

2010/05/25 — 42 km

Devi, you're looking particularly Yi (彝族) today, by Andy

I wake up to the sound of a pitter-patter on the overhang outside the hotel window and the swish of car wheels on wet pavement outside. It’s raining. Evan, Devi and I all meet up in the hotel lobby to do some post writing and picture uploading, hoping the rain will let up.

Rain brings down our pace and our moods. Until today, the rain in Yunnan has come only in the form of monsoons — quick bursts of intense rain that drench us if we get caught in them, but which we can easily wait out without affecting our schedule if we can find shelter. It’s been a far cry from the weeks of steady, depressing downpours we were subjected to in the winter in Fujian province. To go back to the statistics spreadsheet that I’ve mentioned before, the rain in Fujian caused us to average a mere 33 km per day during our roughly one month in the province. In Yunnan, we’ve averaged 52 km per day over nearly a month and a half — and the mountains in Yunnan are much taller! Thinking about it makes the weather today seem all the more gloomy.

But it’s no longer winter, and Yunnan is warm. So when the steady rain turns to a drizzle, we pack up our gear and head out to breakfast. After a meal of noodles at one of two Muslim restaurants in town (which also serves at the only mosque in town), we make our way up to the town’s Buddhist temple where Evan has discovered a study session of monks from six counties is being held.

How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat, by Andy

Unfortunately, after our late start, we arrive just as the monks are breaking for lunch, but as luck would have it, they invite us to join them for lunch. We’re immediately surprised by the lack of discipline in the monks — when we arrive at the monastery, a group of them is standing outside the entrance smoking, and the majority of the dishes at lunch have meat in them. The meat is explained to us as a difference between the local Dai (傣族) style of Buddhism versus the Han (漢族) style, but the smokers outside are just being bad monks. From what we’ve witnessed on this trip, it seems that China has managed to water down the conventions of all its recognized religions — Muslim women don’t wear headscarves, Buddhist monks can get away with smoking, the bond between Catholics and the Pope is basically non-existent, etc. In China, it’s Religion Lite. (more…)