Rejected from Eastern Tibet

March 10th is the anniversary of a 1959 Tibetan uprising against Han Chinese Communist forces. This year (2008) many pro-Free Tibet groups are organizing campaigns to redirect some of the Beijing Olympics spotlight onto the Tibet-China tensions. Our original plans had been to cross into Tibet from Nepal but the incongruent red tape in China would've cost us our rare 1-year multiple-entry Chinese visas. They would've canceled these and made us buy 30-day single-entry visas if we wanted to enter through Nepal. So our alternative was to fly to Hong Kong, one of our planned destinations anyway and work our way across China to Tibet instead of vice versa. If we had gone straight into Tibet, we would've arrived only a few days before the riots broke out. We probably would've had our cameras confiscated and been pushed out of the region into the rest of China with only three weeks left on our shortened visas.

Instead, we were traveling to Chengdu, one of the largest cities in Western China (more like the middle of China), from Guilin when the riots began. We spent almost a week in Chengdu, watching the news and inquiring about access to Tibetan areas. Foreigners were banned from the Tibetan Autonomous Zone (which is a single province) but ethnically Tibetan areas extended outside this political boundary into the neighboring provinces, including Sichuan, where Chengdu is located.

After a detour south to visit the 3rd largest Buddha statue in the world, we took a day-long bus ride west to get to the Tibetan areas of Sichuan. Our destination was a town called Kangding. As we started up into the foothills of the mountain ranges that border the Tibetan Plateau, we began seeing long convoys of army trucks. Most of them had soldiers holding their protective shields peeking out of the back. We passed over a hundred of these vehicles. More and more as we got closer to Kangding. A couple hours before nightfall, our bus stopped at the police checkpoint outside of Kangding and the two policeman that came on scanned the passengers and then motioned for Zack and I to get out. We brought along our carry on bags, unsure of what was going on. But when we got out, the bus driver was already pulling our larger packs out of the storage bins underneath so it was obvious we were not going to be allowed to continue with the bus. The officers were wearing their full length green winter coats that make them indistinguishable from soldiers. They brought us into their small gate room and invited us to sit on the cots. None of them spoke a whit of English but made an effort to explain when I asked in Chinese. You wenti ma? The key word in their response was anquan, safety. It wasn't safe for us to go to Kangding, they said.

We had to wait a bit for them to convince a bus that was going away from Kangding to give us a lift down to Luding, a Han Chinese town, where we could stay the night and then tomorrow we would have to go back to Chengdu. So we rode an hour back down the road in an empty bus which stopped for a bit for a wash. There are a lot of places along the roads in China that have the characters for car wash, xi che, spray painted on the wall. We watched the military convoys go by and waved a bit at the young soldiers who were amused and often surprised to see us foreigners this far out and waving at them.

On arrival in Luding, the bus just let us out and kept going. It seemed we were left to our devices to find a room, which was fine by me. There was a fancy hotel nearby but that was too expensive, at least 150 kuai (~$20). I left Zack with the bags for a bit so I could look around faster. Finally, I found a super cheap place that was around the corner from the fancy hotel. I'd been wanting to try one of these places that looked like a residence and was marked only with the characters for "room to rent". The woman running the place was very nice and we arranged to stay there for 20 kuai. Of course, it was the worst room we'd ever been in, but tolerable. There was no way the bed linens were clean, but we had sleeping bags anyway. The windows were cracked and letting in the outside air but, again, the sleeping bags nullified this concern. The toilets were no better than a hole in the ground. If there was running water, we wouldn't have used it anyway. For one night, it was fine. Like sleeping outside but with a basic roof and walls. We did get boiled water in a tall thermos though.

After we had warmed up, processed the recent events, and were contemplating going out to eat dinner before it go too late, the proprietress came back and told me that we needed to move somewhere else and that the police were here. I kept asking for clarification because I wanted to get it straight before we ran into the police again, if that was going to be the case. She told us we had to bring all of our things and gave me back the money for the room. I was confused at first because we were quite happy about finding our cheapest room yet and wanted to stay. But we finally allowed ourselves to be ushered up to street level where a well-dressed middle-aged plainclothes policeman was waiting. He explained that the place we were staying in couldn't host foreigners and led us over to the fancy hotel and insisted that we stay there against my complaints that it was expensive. He insisted that we stay there and leave for Chengdu tomorrow on the morning bus that would leave from this same hotel. We had to fill out 3 copies of hotel registration forms and buy our bus tickets while he waited and watched. Finally, when he was sure we were in the proper hotel and would leave tomorrow, he left and we were able to go next door to get a late dinner before returning to the nicest of rooms we ever stayed in.

Guilin is a little too large for my tastes. We only stayed one night and left the next day for Yangshuo, a smaller town not too far away. The highway between the two is small and has a lot of bicycle traffic between various villages along the way so I saw students riding home from school in their uniforms and a half dozen plump, live brown chickens tied upside down to the back of a scooter. After we arrived in Yangshuo, a man speaking English convinced us to come see his hostel and kept dropping his price until we agreed to stay, 70 RMB per night for both of us. He had said it was an international youth hostel but we realized later that there are a dozen hotels who have named themselves international youth hostels in Yangshuo, we should've kept looking and we might've found the real one. The town is small enough that we are walking between these sharp limestone hills which are more technically described as karst hills. It's quite touristy but I feel like I can get away from the tourism easily so I don't mind.

It's been tiring sometimes trying to communicate in Chinese. I haven't been in Chinese class for 9 months and I haven't been in a Chinese-speaking environment since I studied in Taiwan in the summer of '06. I can make do but my ears are rusty and I am forgetting simple stuff. But slowly, it's coming back to me. I am stressed sometimes because Zaq is relying on me to pass on my faulty understanding of whatever situation we may be in and to order a decent array of dishes at each meal. I'm sure he would prefer to fend for himself. Menu recognition is my top priority.

I am happy to see cats in China, they were rare in India and Nepal. Here, they lounge on sacks of grain in shops and mew for attention or food.

We took a 9.5 hour bus ride from Guangzhou to Guilin. So far, the buses here in China are large, clean, and comfortable with uniform stations everywhere. There were a pair of Germans on the bus with us that I helped when we stopped for lunch. The bus attendant motioned to me and explained in Chinese that we would get small meals for free if we showed our tickets at the restaurant. My ears were not well trained yet but I could figure out her meaning from a few words and some good guessing. Later, the German folks had tried to ask the attendant if they could get off the bus early and then asked me to try to translate for them. I was pretty sure that the attendant was telling me she had understood and agreed to their request but it was my first time helping strangers and I was afraid my poor Chinese would create a misunderstanding I didn't want to be responsible for. It's easier to make mistakes for yourself (and your traveling partner).

The bus ride took us through beautiful fields, divided into small crops of various types, small towns and villages of old stone architecture, decorative roofs, and large healthy chickens. Large towns have big four-story buildings with shiny tiles facing the main road and shops on the bottom floor. Almost every doorway is outlined with red papers of auspicious sayings.

After we arrived in Guilin, we had the specialty noodles of the town in a place that kept live chickens, ducks, fish, and eels to the side of the entrance out front so that customers could go out and select which one they would like for their meal.

It's raining and humid here but not hot.