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March 23, 2008 Shangri-la (CHINA) Investing in Warm Clothes for Shangri-La (I am a Fashion Guru) and Touring Shangri-La's Ganden Sumtseling Gompa If it weren't for the double-layering of blankets and the electronic heater in my bed, I may very well have frozen last night. The door and windows to my room left gaping holes for the sub-zero cold to seep through, and I even went so far as to sleep with a pair of socks on my hands. Fortunately, the hostel has a motorized power-supply that provided hot-water in the morning. It was somewhat incongruous taking a steaming hot shower (steam forms at a lower temperature here because of the altitude difference) while I could see my breath at every exhalation.
With my new outfit, I was finally warm enough to move around the city, but what I gained in comfort was lost in conspicuity (isn't that a mouthful). Quite simply, every person I passed in the streets stopped dead in their tracks, mouth agape, to look at me. I adapted several small dances, complete with 'clever' phrases like, "What is better, my dance or foreigner's new fashion?" Some people laughed, some people didn't, but most people just continued to stare at me well after I passed. For the next day or so, I will serve as the village idiot.
Afterward, Neil and I decided to walk
about an hour outside of town (there wasn't a whole lot
else to do with our time) to the Ganden Sumtseling
Gompa. As a 300-year old Tibetan monastery complex
with (supposedly) 600 resident monks, this is the most
important in southwest China.
The walk outside the city was an interesting escapade in its own right: we saw all the standard sights like decapitated animal skulls resting outside meat restaurants, pigs eating garbage along the side of streets, and plenty of dilapidated billiards tables, plus the added bonus of towering snow-capped mountains on all sides. Lest it be forgotten, Shangri-la is the last stop before reaching the famed land of Tibet. As a side note, I don't mention the pigs or animal skulls to paint China in a negative light - most people recognize that I am one of China's biggest advocates - but rather to accurately describe the condition of the country.
The one monk who did converse with me was a young monk aged only 16 (I have since forgotten his name). His Mandarin was very poor - most Tibetans do not speak 'standard' Chinese, which is something the PRC government is desperately trying to change - so it was not easy to understand everything, but he said many of the monks work around the area and only return to the monastery in the evenings. However, he also said that there has been a lot of unrest recently because of the protests and military presence, and many of the top monks have been gone for over one week now (he was not sure if they left on their own will or were forced to). Obviously, I did not want to press him too hard because it is very dangerous for him to be seen speaking to me, especially with everything that has happened recently (nearly 40 protestors were confirmed dead yesterday after being shot by the military).
After visiting the monastery Neil and I caught a bus back into town as it was getting late in the day. We spent the rest of the evening read books, eating, and drinking beer at the cafe-turned pub in the center of town. Joining us were the 7 other foreigners who also made it out to Shangri-la at this time of year. |
As
is made painfully clear in the paragraph above, I would
need to do something to counter the cold in Shangri-la.
Neil and I headed into town where we searched out the
first army-surplus store we could find - a trick I
learned when I traveled from the blistering heat of the
Gobi Desert (in the summer, nonetheless) to the roof of
the world at Mount Everest. 
I
proceeded to rummage through the heaps of junk around
the shop until I found the kind of outfit that would
make me a star on the runways of Milan. Complete with a
People's Liberation Army military jacket, an old
Communist-styled wooly hat, gloves, and new shoes, I
began the bargaining process. The owner of the shop was
a Han Chinese, which worked to my advantage because we
were able to understand one another. I ended up buying
everything with a crisp 100 rmb note (roughly $14USD),
with my chief threat being that I could buy a similar
jacket from the hundreds of military men who are
converging on the city because of the feared unrest.
(Thankfully, this brought a smile to her face.)
We
grabbed breakfast at one of the few foreign-oriented
cafes open in town - a place where Neil and I
capitalized on the opportunity to mix Mexican food (a
depressing attempt at a quesadilla) with Chinese
egg-and-tomato soup. I also capitalized on the cup of
hot water served to warm our hands by pouring the
contents of a Nescafe instant-coffee packet into it, and
saving myself 6 rmb. It is a telling observation to note
that the cafe brought a pot of coals to every table to
help keep the customers warm.
Between
the burned red and white coloring (a very accurate
description of the hues, in my opinion) and the standard
geometric shapes of the buildings, I felt immediately
reminiscent of my time spent in
Below
are a variety of photos taken from the monastery
complex, which was surprisingly empty: we only saw a
dozen monks in total. Whether this is because of the
protests or some other reason was not clear, but I could
sense the monks' hesitation when I asked them (always
when we were alone) what they thought of the the recent
Tibetan protests.
