Roam, roam around

Was in Tibet for five days till the morning of Sept. 19, 2009. My fourth time in Tibet. It was a very different experience than before.  Have I changed or has Tibet changed too much?  Well, mabye we both have changed in different ways. I somehow miss Tibet 10 years ago, when tourism was not so bad like now. And it seems last year’s *tragic event has greatly affected this wonderful land. Any way, here is a quick edit from Tibet.

Feet again! I know some day I will an essay called FEET.

A staircase in a Tibetan style house.

Outside Bahkore Street.

Zongkaba, one of the most sacred religious leader in Tibetan Bhuddism.

A barbar shop on Beijing Road.

Tibetan young people seem to love playing pool and they are pretty good at it.

Harvest in Delong Duiqing, a county less than 50 km west of Lhasa.

Are you surprised to see the *Communist leaders’ pictures at an ordinary Tibetan’s home? I have to tell some westerners that a lot of Tibetan people are actually grateful to the *Communist Party for liberating them from slavery in 1958.  Each time I went to Tibet, I talked to different people from different areas and find this quite true.

This is a not a shadow of a cowboy, but a Tibetan farmer. Tibetan people love hats as much as they need them. The frame is a weaving machine.

The pious people in a sacred place. I am always moved by them.

Field through Gesang flower, in the suburb of Lhasa.

It is these people, not DL, who really touched me. They came all the way from Sichuan to Lhasa this way. Thousands of kilometers measured by their bodies!

I’d better not say too much about this picture because it is “*illegal” to take pictures of them. There are so many of them, poor people.

A nun who lives right next to Potala. She and other nuns seemed cold to me at first, a Han Chinese. However, they soon invited  me have tea with them:)

A night club in Lhasa, a combination of “*moderness” and “*Tibetanness”?

Does commercialism affect peoples’ religious life? I don’t know yet. How would you think when you see *Tibetan people walking past a huge ad, their hands holding the Bhudist beads?

Another picture I have to be *careful with. You know why, esp. *China’s 60th National Day is coming up.

On the train from Lhasa to Guangzhou. This is a 56-hour train, the longest I’ve ever taken. I know a lot of people critically think the train will bring more damage than benefit to Tibet – *badly-controlled tourism, worsened *environment and even worse, the loss of *Tibetan identity… Interestingly, the *Tibetan people I talked to have no  problem with the train at all. On the contrary, they enjoy the convenience of it. And while I don’t deny the negative effects the train has brought to Tibet, I couldn’t help but think: what do they mean by “the *loss of Tibetan Identity, or *Tibetanness? But what is *Tibetanness? Will isolation help keep the Tibetan identity unchanged? But isn’t identity always changing? (I finally realized I am more or less influenced by some post-structuralist anthropological training.) Is it fair to cut Tibet off the other part of the world to preserve its identity? Think about myself. Does my experiences in several foreign cultures make me less Chinese? What about you? Would you not reach out to the outside world because you want to preserve your precious identity? … Obviously this is a big anthropological issue…

A friend of mine commented that I am now a surplus woman. In big cities of China, women who are ‘too well-educated and too old to get married” are labeled SURPLUS WOMEN, women that men are afraid to marry or date. So I decide to wear a moustache – sometimes.

Was in Xining 10 days. It happened to be the slowest days. Hope I can go back to Xining before I leave the country. But I will surely go back many times.

Zhao Cunlu, a scholar who spends his whole life collecting and studying hua’er. He is one of the few respectable scholars I’ve known in China, also a lengendary figure.

The girl in purple is  flirting with her customers, a way to please the men and to get tips, and maybe more, as is often believed.

A customer who enjoys both hua’er and the hua’er singers.

Again, this is Suonanjie, a very good hua’er singer, but who has not much luck despite her good voice and her moving performances. She claims herserlf to be 37, but a friend of hers told me she was probably over 40. Suonanjie is getting old and she refused to accept the fact. She used to be very beaufitul, beautiful and young. Alas, time is never sympathetic.

A stairway leading to a hua’er tea house.

From the decorations inside the hua’er tea houses, you know who go there.

The men at the foreground got drunk and the people in the background were amused. But thank goodness, the drunkards didn’t get violent. Instead, they kept asking me to put down my camera to dance with them and insisted buying me drinks. I was a bit scared, but not so much that I would put down my camera.

Flirt again.

And the following: the drunk men

When some think of Tibet, they think of the pious Bhuddists, who walk around The Potala Palace and all the monasteries and temples, big and small, as they pray. The eyes in their mind saw only the turning praying wheels, and colorful flags in the wind, the burning incense, and of course, the purest blue sky and snowy mountains…All they see are just colorful, beautiful and romantic pictures. Sure all these exist in Tibet, and I love them, too. But they are just part of Tibet. Besides religion, the Tibetan people have a life like others. They eat and they poo, too, for example. And as the picture shows, they don’t always wear their traditional outfit. Some may be offended by the picture? But I am sure my friend Tom Balzer of Ward, Colo is not. I hear him laugh now! The picture is from a small village about 20 kilometers west of Lhasa.

In Xining (northwest China), lamb is the best. Each butcher I met that day told me he sold about 14 sheep per day. That’s a street with two long lines of butcher’s shops!

These are from a hua’er tea house called White Peony. It is said to be the first hua’er tea house in Xining, also the first one in China. The boss, Yi Wanbai, is himself an excellent singer. He had very little school education. By running his tea house, he is now living quite a comfortable life, compared to other immigrants from the rural northwest China. He is the owner of a car, an apartment in Xining and the best house in his home village. The hua’er singers don’t get paid. The the only income is the tips from the guests.

Yi Wanbai,current owner of White Peony, the first hua’er tea house in Xining.

A hua’er singer who has no luck with either her voice or her look.

A male singer with a good voice. He gets good tips.

Yi Wanbai sings hua’er and gets very good tips, as is shown by the red scarfs over him.

Inside White Peony.

A guest.

A singer serves tea to the guests. Although singers don’t get paid, they have to serve the guests and do the cleaning before, between and after the performances.

Singer Du Chengying and her guests.

A shot from Xining. Obviously, the big day is coming.

Would you trust the dentist here?

The man, far left, makes about $5 a day by renting the pool tables.

Hua’er, or “flower” if translated literally, is a kind of folk music in northwest China, particularly popular among the Muslims. Since the late 1980s, hua’er migrated to the city with their singers and hua’er tea houses came into being.  An insteresting thing here at the hua’er tea house is that most singers are Tibetan and Han women from rural Qinghai, most of the customers are Muslim men. “The Muslim women are too ‘feudal’ to sing at the club,” I was told by a Tibetan singer, Suonanjie, who herself is a tragic story. Most hua’er singers live by tips. With luck, they make $50 a day. This is rare even for a young and pretty singer who has a good voice. The average income is between $3 and $10 a day.

Zhang Cunxiu and her picture she took 18 years ago. Zhang is one of the most famous Hua’er Queens in Qinghai. She is illeterary, but she composes and sings touching poems.

Customers at Zhang Cunxiu’s hua’er tea house.

A tea house in Ping’an county, which is about 25 km from Xining, capital city of Qwinghai. It is closed in Setptember due to Ramadan.

The bedroom of a couple who work at a tea house in Ping’an.

The kitchen of a tea house. There is always a big consumption at hua’er tea houses as each customer, once they stepped in the tea house, is supposed to by an eight-treasure tea, a kind of Chinese assorted tea. Pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and alcolhol are also popular.

Suonanjie, one of the hua’er singers with a little name both among the hua’er scholars and the customers pray to Bhudda for a big fortune and a happy marriage. Suananjie is a tragic figure. It is said most hua’er singers lead tragic lives.

Suonanjie and two other hua’er singers cross stitch after work. The hua’er singers in Xining usually work from 1 pm to 6 pm.

Suonanjie about to visit Ta’er Monastery, one of the most Tibetan Bhuddist monastery in China. To avoid ticket fare, she tried to make her look more Tibetan than she usually is.

Sunanjie offers insense to Bhudda.

The red prayer Suonanjie offers to Bhudda is a symbol for seeking fortunes.

People play Majiang (gamble) as  a man singer sings hua’er on the stage at a tea house in Huangzhongqiao, a lower-class neighborhood in Xining. He didn’t get any tips despite his excellent performance. Were he a pretty young woman, things would be different, Suonanjie told me.

A young man singer got a tip! When one gives the singer a tip, he/she offers the ready scarf as well as the money. The red scarfs are recyclable.

A tea house in Huangzhongqiao, Xining.

Believe me, her voice is horrible. And she is not really young or pretty. I wonder how she survives.

Another tea house in Huangzhongqiao.

You have to be super ‘friendly” to the customers so you get tips.