On the Way to the Land of Snows

BARABISE, Nepal — Driving north from Kathmandu, the road to Tibet is a series of sharp turns around blind corners, ascents of steep hills with subtropical vegetation and breathtaking views of quaint Nepali villages. Four hours north of the capital the paved road abruptly stops, disintegrating into a mess of pebbles, stones and small rocks. About 100 meters into this section there is a yellow sign on the left sign of the road. "Welcome," it says, "to the Last Resort."

The Last Resort is the playground of the Westerner on vacation. Here, 8,000 feet above sea level, is excellent river rafting on deep, fast streams, luxury tents with thick mattresses and oil lanterns, a full bar with a selection of several dozen cocktails and a restaurant that makes a mean macaroni and cheese. I came for the bungee jump, the second highest in the world. My travel companion Jeremy paid $90 in Kathmandu to walk off a 500 foot high bridge and plunge very close to a raging river. He did this willingly, placing his life in the hands of a Swiss-made rope.

I came just to watch. The bungee bridge connects the road to the resort, and also provides access to the couple dozen villagers who live on the other side of the deep canyon. Between jumps the villagers carry heavy baskets of hay or herd goats across the bent beams of steel. Then another Swede spends four seconds in free fall.

Calling it The Last Resort is accurate, because it is one of the last businesses before the Chinese border. After The Last Resort the road rises even further, and by the border it's left the subtropical Nepalese climate and entered the frigid Himalaya.

The resort is popular with tour group coming and going to Tibet, as its huge bridge makes for the most entertaining pit stop in a fairly monotonous seven hour drive from the border to Kathmandu. This is how I met a party of seven Chinese men who stopped at the Last Resort for lunch.

I heard their Mandarin as they worked their way past me on the road side of the bridge. I was there waiting for Jeremy to bungee. After he went I crossed the bridge and found the party at the resort's outdoor restaurant, playing cards and sipping herbal beverages they brought from the Motherland. I introduced myself, in Chinese, and they invited me to sit down.

They were from Guangzhou, the huge city of trade near Hong Kong. They worked in different companies, but were on a trip to Nepal that mixed business and pleasure. There were a couple business meetings, dinner with contacts, but mostly the trip had been about seeing Nepalis dance and good food in Kathmandu.

I tried to figure out the card game they were playing, which involved dealing 24 cards and then throwing them down in an aggressive manner (the harder the better). Twos seemed to be good, but not as good as threes, although sometimes a player would save the threes only to lose the game. They bet with Chinese money, and a couple hundred renminbi changed hands each round - a fair chunk of change for the Chinese.

"He doesn't get it," one man said to another, gesturing over to me. I didn't, so one man took me aside for some additional conversation. He showed me pictures of his wife and son, who recently performed in a talented competition in Macau. He played the drums, and in the pictures the boy of seven or eight looked thrilled on the set of the television program.

Later today the men would travel to the border town of Zhangmu, where they would reenter China. There they planned to visit a couple friends from Guangzhou who now worked in the Tibetan government. They were Chinese, and the man said they were helping to develop an undeveloped region.

"Wen Jiabo and the Chinese government care about Tibet. They have given aid to build schools, hospitals and roads there. I'm proud of my government."

This was close enough to the border that Chinese politics found their into innocent conversation. A couple hours later I got back in the bus, heading south, away from China.

Friendship is Radioactive

XIHAI, China - I'm warming up to this industrial outpost on the far end of China. My first impressions, that this might be a sneak peek at the world during a nuclear winter, are slowly changing, and it's not because of a sudden love for Soviet block-housing. A Mongolian, Tibetan and Muslim changed my mind.

The Mongolian prefers to be called Xiao Tian. He lives in a guesthouse near Xihai's main outdoor market, an works as an independent truck driver. Because he's self employed he works everyday, hauling supplies and food around town. He started talking to me as I was registering at the hotel, and looked at my Tsinghua student card with interest.

"You're from Tsinghua?" he said. "Then I'll have to take you out to a bar tonight, my treat."

We left the guesthouse around 9:30. Xiao Tian wore a crisp button down shirt with brown vertical stripes. His shoulder length hair was freshly comed. We walked through the center of the market, now deserted.

"Don't worry," he said. "Xihai is a safe place." This made me more nervous, as I was trying to forget that I was in the middle of the Tibetan Plateau, 100 miles from the nearest foreigner in a strange town. The only people who knew I'd come here were Rebecca, now back in Changsha, and my father back in New York. I hoped Xiao Tian was right, and this was a safe town.

We went to a small club, a multi-purpose place setup to handle all of the town's entertainment needs. On the back wall was a small bar, covered in Christmas lights. At the front was a stage and a microphone for crooning karaoke songs. The middle served as a dancefloor, and it was ringed by tables and chairs.

"There's not too many people here!" my host said, apologetically. It didn't matter, I wanted to watch the town have fun, and there were enough people to do that. The DJ played mostly slow Chinese pop songs, occasionally letting a person in the bar sing the vocals live. At a song's beginning, the dancefloor would be clear. Slowly four or five couples would come dance, each holding hands and doing some that resembled a waltz. Many of the couples were single sex, men who I had seen carrying wood through the market were now dancing with a colleague, slowly moving to the beat.

A Tibetan woman came over to our table, a high school student celebrating the final night of her May Break. Tomorrow she'd go back to school, and there could be no more trip to the bar for some time. Her friend went to the stage and sung a song in Tibetan. People seemed excited, and Chinese and Tibetan couples took the dancefloor.

The Tibetan girl wasn't terribly happy about living in Xihai, things were boring here, she said, but it seemed like not a bad place to be. The different ethnic groups seemed to mix relatively well, sharing public spaces and enjoying songs of different cultures.

Toward the end of the evening, after several bottles of Yellow River Beer, the DJ switched the hard Chinese trance music. The couples on the dance floor broke up, and finally Xiao Tian, the Tibetan and I stood up and started handbanging.

The next morning I took my still ringing head to a small Muslim restaurant several blocks from the hotel. The restaurant occupied an enclosed patio off a four-story block-house, and was run by a young Muslim man with a small son, who watched him make my noodles and fried dough. When serving the meal, the Muslim brought over a small bowl with a thick white liquid in it. He told me to try some of his yogurt, which I did, at first with small spoonfuls but then with bigger bites.

"It's horse milk," he said, and I had fight not to spit out the piece in mouth.

"What?" I said.

"This yogurt. It's made from yak milk."

I'd heard incorrectly.

When I finished, the owner refused payment.

It was a great final meal in Nuclear City. While the physical city remained ugly, my encounters with the town's people meant it's a place I might come back to even before the next nuclear holocaust.

Our Chinese Representation

ALBANY, N.Y. - Sunday's Times Union features a lengthy profile of successful Democratic candidate for Congress and my former employer Kristen Gillibrand. In it I learned a few interesting tidbits:

She majored in Asian Studies at Dartmouth.

She spent a year abroad in China, and writes decent Chinese.

She visited the home base of the Dalai Lama in India, with her mother.

She wrote a lengthy paper on the religious fervor of Tibetans.

I feel closer to my Congress-woman elect already. Perhaps she can be my new Chinese study partner?