Reliving memories: Hong Kong and Macau

Hong Kong and Macau are full of happy memories for Paul and me: here we had our first date, fell in love, got married, had a baby. The skyline of Hong Kong Island, viewed from Kowloon, brings tears to my eyes when I recall the happiness of the eight years I lived here, 1982 to 1990. In a way, I grew up in Hong Kong.

We arrived by train from Guangzhou (Canton) – a two hour trip that used to take three hours. The minute we stepped out of the station, we saw protestors from Falun Gong with posters criticizing China’s Communist Party and leaders: a clear sign of freedom of speech in territory belonging to China. Beijing promised “one country, two systems” after 1997, and that is still in practice. When Beijing’s leaders first made that promise, back in 1983, it seemed highly unlikely they could keep it, yet they did.

On the surface, Hong Kong seems just as prosperous as it was when we lived here, under British rule. China did not promise democracy to the people of Hong Kong, who were used to being subjects in a British colony. But in fact they now have greater say in their government than the people of the rest of China. Recently, Hong Kong was permitted to enact political reform that promises “one person, two votes” – that is, direct election to Hong Kong’s Legislative Council. One vote reflects where you live, as in the U.S.; the other reflects your profession or other such work life. Hong Kong people still find plenty of reasons to grouse about Beijing, but there is no doubt that the unlikely agreement over Hong Kong’s future has been working well. Tibet’s situation is very different, but perhaps a similar leap of faith will provide solutions to some of the tensions there.

Paul and I indulged ourselves with a topnotch hotel: the Kowloon Shangri-La. It was modern and luxurious back in the 1980s, and it still is. It makes all the “five star” hotels we stayed in during our China trip look “less than.” The attentive concierge, dressed in a lovely chi-pao, told us she is 22, a year younger than Emily!

For old times’ sake, we had a drink at what used to be the Regent Hotel. Now it is called the Intercontinental, but it still has floor-to-ceiling windows in the lobby bar, with breathtaking views of the Hong Kong skyline. A musical quintet was playing, and we had afternoon tea: scrumptious little cakes and open-faced sandwiches. In 1983, Paul and I had mango milkshakes here on one of our first dates.

Outside, the air is thick and hot and humid in July; we had forgotten about that. You can’t go far without sweating. Anyway, we walked to the “Star” Ferry and took it across the harbor to Hong Kong side. The double-decker ferries with their reversible wooden seats are just the same, as are the blue sailor-boy outfits of the men who toss the thick ropes to dock the ferries.

Since we last came here five years ago, there are no noticeably new buildings; the super-tall needle of the IFC was already built then. On Hong Kong side, the ferry docks are new, but the waterfront reclamation is not finished. The Furama Hotel is gone; good riddance. We could not see the apartment building where we lived in Wanchai; it is blocked now by a larger building.

We tried to have dinner at Paul’s favorite place, the Ningpo Residents’ Association. It is for members only, and we have never been members. This time, they told us they had no tables. So we had dinner at another old favorite: Peking Garden in the basement of Alexandra House. On Sunday, Chater Road was blocked to traffic – primarily, it appears, so that the Filipino maids have a place to gather and picnic on their day off. Twenty-five years later, Filipino women still find this work to be more attractive than options back home. At Peking Garden, waiters still toss hand-pulled noodles and hammer open the beggar’s chicken. The air conditioning is still too cold – requiring a “pay-gum” or shawl.

On our way back to the hotel, we walked along the “Avenue of the Stars” – a pleasant waterfront walkway with stars on the sidewalk for Hong Kong’s most famous movie stars.

On Monday Paul had a short business meeting, and then we had dim sum. Yum. No visit to Hong Kong is complete without little plates and bamboo baskets of dim sum! That evening, we had dinner at Shanghai Garden with several old friends: Frank Ching and Anna Wu, Anne LeBourgeois and Bob Grieves. It was wonderful to get caught up and hear their views on what’s going on in Hong Kong and China.

 

 

On Tuesday, Paul and I went to Macau, primarily to revisit the lovely little hotel where we had our wedding banquet, Pousada de Sao Tiago. This year marks our 25^th anniversary. The Portuguese-style hotel, built on a fort at the tip of Macau’s peninsula, is as charming as ever from the outside: whitewashed walls, rounded arches, orange tiled roofs, blue-and-white tile artwork, 200-year-old cinnamon tree, outdoor patio shaded by mulberry trees. I looked around and remembered where the dance floor was, where the buffet table stood with its huge ice sculpture, where the head table was. However -!- the new owners have completely renovated the furnishings in the rooms, with horrible taste. Instead of 24 rooms, they now have 12 suites; and the interior décor is awful. So ugly that we have no desire to come back.

 

Yesterday afternoon, we took a taxi to Macau’s biggest new hotel: The Venetian, modeled on the Las Vegas version but bigger. Like the Las Vegas one, it has “streets” of shops, with several canals, gondolas and gondoliers, and a fake sky on the ceiling that does give the sense of being outdoors (but with air conditioning!) There must be hundreds of shops, most of them empty of buyers on a Tuesday afternoon. However, the casino floor had many gamblers, all Asians. China allows its citizens to cross the border and gamble in Macau’s casinos. Sad. Recently, we heard, China limited visits by government workers to once a month. What is so attractive about gambling? I don’t get it!

Anyway, we had one last great Chinese dinner, Shanghai style, including xiao-long-bao dumplings, fish pieces in wine sauce, Sichuan style beans, tofu, and Paul’s favorite dessert, mashed-date pancakes. Aaah.

Today we head back to the U.S., after more than three weeks on the road. Looking forward to getting home!

Last Day in Tibet: Boat ride, horse ride, ancient sites

Imagine a river so wide it takes an hour and 15 minutes to cross it by boat. We crossed the Yarlung Tsangpo River this morning on a small boat shared with ten Tibetans, including a mother with her ten-day-old baby daughter, a cow, two calves, and a boatman steering with an engine that looked like it belonged on a tractor. Because of the currents and shoals, he had to navigate a zig-zag course across the river; the return trip took only 30 minutes.

 

On the other side, we took a “luxury tour bus” (rattletrap bus) over dirt roads for about 20 minutes to Tibet’s very first Buddhist monastery, Samye. With a history of over 1200 years, Samye was built around 780, founded during the reign of King Trisong Detsen, who first allowed Buddhism into Tibet. The leaders of the indigenous religion, Bon, opposed this and tried to prevent it. The design of Samye is based on a temple in Bihar, India, and meant to represent the universe. It has one room of “secrets” – and some dark staircases leading to upper floors with various statues of Buddhas, kings, and lamas. Very ancient and mysterious.

In the late afternoon, we went to Tibet’s oldest building, a castle called Yumbulagang. Parts of it are said to date from 2000 or more years ago, but it was definitely occupied in the 7^th century. From a distance, it looks like a medieval white tower, a finger pointing up from a cliff overlooking a rich agricultural valley. It reminds me of Minas Tirith, in Tolkien’s Middle Earth.

We rode horses up the steep hill to see the old castle, which is now a Buddhist chapel, only a small part of the original fortress. Each of our horses had a horseboy (man, actually), who led the horse up the hill by rope. It was fun.

 

The most fun was when we each bought a string of colorful prayer flags. Following local custom, we wrote the names of our loved ones on the prayer flags. Each couple had a string of about 30 of them. By writing these names on the flags, then stringing them together and letting them fly in the Tibetan breeze, we asked blessings on all of you. That means you! Just think, your name is on a prayer flag fluttering in the Tibetan breeze, right now.

We took a group photo of our tour group – 12 of us, from California, Seattle and Chicago – in front of the prayer flags, strung up on the hill behind us

Blessings to all of you, especially those who have read this far! Or, as the Tibetans say, “tashidelek.”

And many thanks to Paul, who took most of these photos.

Road to Tsetang

What a great day! We spent all day on a road trip from Shigatse to Tsetang but stopped many times to see fascinating sights along the way. The road followed the Yarlung Tsangpo River – a river that most of you have probably never heard of. It is the main river that flows east through the heart of Tibet, then makes a sharp turn south and west and flows through India as the Brahmaputra River. South of the river are the Himalaya Mountains, and north are mountains in the Tanggula Range. The river valley widened as we went along, and got lower and greener, with trees and farmland. This is the cradle of Tibetan history, the home of its first kings.

Four Tibetan girls hitched a ride on our bus. They are 15 years old, on their way home for the weekend. Our guide made them answer a lot of questions for us and sing a few songs.

Our first stop was at a sky burial site. For Tibetans, the preferred burial is a sky burial, where the body is cut up and left on a hilltop for vultures to eat. This sounds extremely yucky to us Americans, but Tibetans consider it the most natural way, and the best way to get to heaven. Those who have committed crimes or died on the 29^th (don’t ask why!) have to have a “water burial,” where the body is cut up and thrown into the river. This is why Tibetans do not eat fish. For a sky burial, any hilltop will not do; it has to be a holy one, and there are strict rules about how it’s done. Family is not allowed to attend, but best friends are! The details are best left unread.

We also stopped briefly to talk to a watermelon farmer by the side of the road. He was an old Tibetan man with a white beard, watering his plants one by one, helped by his daughter. He looked ancient but he told us he was 68! Very friendly and talkative, as most Tibetans have been with us.

We stopped to see a beautiful gorge with rapids, then had a picnic lunch by the river: dried yak meat, sausage, milk, French fries, corn muffin, banana, apple, and Sprite. Go figure.

After lunch, we passed the Lhasa Airport, which is actually on this river, a ways away from Lhasa. We saw lots of evidence of a massive tree-planting effort along the river, in areas where the dirt has turned to sand.

The most exciting stop was a home visit. We stopped along the road and went to a Tibetan farmer’s home, with his permission. A husband and wife with two preteen sons, in Gongga County. Here’s Paul with the homeowner.

 

They live in one of many Tibetan farmers’ homes built with government money, all built in typical Tibetan two-story style. In the courtyard were a pump, a solar water-heating panel, and an outhouse. Also a weaving machine (Don’t be fooled! I have no idea how it works!)

 

On the roof was a TV satellite dish, and the family had three TVs, one of which the boys were watching avidly.

The ground floor had a primitive kitchen, with a stove that burns wood and yak dung, as well as storage rooms for the barley crop and the TV room.

 

The second floor had a fancy furnished “guest room” with long sofas and brightly painted wooden tables and a large refrigerator, as well as a room with a Buddha altar, with a picture of the previous Panchen Lama.

 

The master bedroom had brightly painted walls and trunks for clothing and bedding. The satellite dish was labeled as a 2010 gift from the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the State Council. We heard that all Tibetans got them this year, a commemoration of the 60^th anniversary of the “peaceful liberation of Tibet” in 1950.

The wife’s proudest possession, though, was a stack of woolen blankets she had woven herself – which gave her much greater prestige than the tall refrigerator in her formal sitting room.

At each corner of the roof, like all Tibetan homes, they had prayer flags. What a view!

Shigatse: Tibet’s second city

Okay, we’ve all heard of the Dalai Lama. Who is the Panchen Lama? He’s the #2 guy in Tibetan Buddhism, another one of those lama leaders who gets reincarnated every time the last one dies.

By tradition, for hundreds of years, the Dalai Lama ruled from Lhasa, while the Panchen Lama ruled from Tibet’s second city, Shigatse. It is west of Lhasa, across a range of mountains, in a different region, with its own customs and dialect. Shigatse has its own version of the Potala Palace, on a hill overlooking the city, though it is not open for visitors.

The current Panchen Lama, the one recognized by the Chinese government, is 20 years old; he spends most of his time in Beijing. However, by chance, he is in Shigatse now! We didn’t get to see him, though. All it meant for us was that we didn’t get to stay in the Shigatse Hotel as planned but had to stay in a place called the Tibetan Lung Hotel, which I DO NOT recommend. Our toilet broke, and the shower leaked all over the bathroom floor. This, however, was an exception – the hotel in Lhasa was excellent, five-star, with a safe in the room, which makes the traveler’s life easier.

Still this hotel had a cute sign next to our beds:

"Wishes Mr. The Good Night"

The major site in Shigatse is the Tashilhunpo Monastery. Despite the unpromising name, it is fantastically beautiful.

There were few tourists and many Tibetan pilgrims worshipping here: prostrating before the statues and walking around the holy sites, spinning their hand carried prayer wheels. These people were very friendly and photogenic!

Serendipity: as we were touring, we heard some singing. In a big courtyard, near a flagpole, a group of about twenty women, all dressed in Tibetan style, held hands and began a traditional circle/line dance. It was charming! Seemed spontaneous and cheerful, not something put on for the tourists, and they did not ask for money afterwards. One of our tour members danced with them. The highlight of the day.

The Long and Winding Road to Shigatse

 

We spent nine long hours on the road today, by bus from Lhasa to Tibet’s #2 city, Shigatse. The sun was bright, the weather hot, the scenery dramatic. The road winds up and up, around hairpin curves, through areas badly affected by the drought. At higher elevations, the river beds are dry, and the herder’s homes abandoned.

Finally we reached the pass at Kambala, elevation over 13,300 feet. From the pass, a gorgeous sight appeared: Yamdrok-tso Lake, one of the holiest in Tibet, turquoise blue under blue skies.

We stopped for a picnic by the lake – spicy fried chicken burgers, French fried tofu sticks, a cucumber and an apple. The lake is huge and meandering, and the road followed alongside it for some ways, until we reached a hydroelectric dam. This dam was controversial, opposed by the then Panchen Lama, since Yamdrok-tso is not only sacred but also a “dead lake” with little inflow of water. So the water spilling over the dam may gradually drain it. The project was stopped until that Panchen Lama died in 1989, then completed in the 1990s.

No photos of dams or bridges in Tibet are allowed. But here is a gorgeous photo of a field of yellow flowers in bloom in Tibet. These are the flowers of the rapeseed plant, grown for cooking oil. We were surprised at the lovely fragrance of the flowers, whose bright yellow color livens up Tibet’s farming areas.

The farmland of the Yarlung Tsangpo River valley seems rich and fertile, and all the farmhouses had prayer flags flying from the corners of the roof, showing that they were Tibetan homes. Most of these houses are newly built, grey-brick, two-story homes. Our guide told us the government has agreed to pay for new houses for every Tibetan who wants one. Since the whole population of Tibetan Autonomous Region is about three million, and there are another two-three million Tibetans in other provinces, this is an easy way for a newly-rich China to buy loyalty, or at least gratitude, from the Tibetans, who account for less than .005 percent of China’s overall population of 1.3 billion. Most of the houses we saw, by the main road, had electricity.

We passed an impressive glacier called Kharo-la, which we were told was holy to Tibetans. Its elevation is 15,000 feet. Paul paid three Tibetan women the equivalent of $2 total to take this picture with them and their baby goats at the glacier.

What we weren’t told is that Kharo-la was the site of a battle between the Tibetans and the British in 1903, the highest land-based battle the British ever fought. It was part of the ill-fated Younghusband expedition, in which the British sent 3,000 troops to Tibet from India. They were well-armed with modern weapons, and I read that they slaughtered 700 poorly-armed Tibetans in four minutes. The British won trade concessions but were never able to take advantage of them. That’s the story in the Lonely Planet Tibet guidebook; our guide said the Tibetans were so overwhelmed they ran up a hill and jumped off a cliff. We saw a castle on a hill in Gyantse and a monument commemorating these Tibetan “heroes.”

Our major stop of the day was at the town of Gyantse. Its most famous site is the Gyantse Kumbum, the largest Tibetan white tower, a lovely tiered structure with eyes looking out in four directions. I remember those distinctive eyes from my visit to Nepal in 1978; this is the only place I’ve seen them here. The tower is 500 years old and has an endless series of murals and chapels, reputedly showing 100,000 images of Buddha.

The Kumbum is part of Pelkor Chode Monastery, founded in 1418. It is known in Tibet as one of the few where all the various Tibetan Buddhist sects coexisted. Those of you who think Buddhists are always peaceful should read up on how the various sects fought for power in Tibet. Not pretty.

Can’t we all just get along?

Mostly, we do, I guess. It’s the times we don’t that get remembered in history.