The Hotel on the Roof of the World (25 page)

Never again did I doubt the word of Dr Ga Ma. He was so honest and refreshingly unaware of commercialism. He could have sold all the Tibetan medicine he could make but if anyone asked for pills the interpreter would say for him, ‘Well, Dr Ga Ma says you can buy some of these if you want but they may not be necessary.'

I tried his pills once when I had a stomach ache. Apparently they were mixtures of wild herbs and minerals but they tasted as bitter as boiled Shanghai coffee and looked suspiciously like mouse droppings. Dr Ga Ma became increasingly busy and had to step up the production of mouse droppings as the high season approached.

One of the first groups to arrive was an expeditionary force of the English upper class, or the English ‘upper-strata clique' to give them the correct Communist Chinglish title. They were stopping off in Lhasa as one of the stages on the Jules Verne London to Saigon rally. We sold more champagne in the two days they stayed than in the rest of the year put together. They were paying $20,000 each for the trip, so a bottle of champagne at $120 was quite a bargain. Although most of the cars were four-wheel-drive Range Rover types, there was also a beautiful 1950s Daimler – without doubt the first and only Daimler to run in the streets of Lhasa. After the Morning Meeting, I found the owner of the Daimler in the Hard Yak Cafe trying to order toast and marmalade. Each time he asked, Zhang Li replied, ‘Yes' and smiled. She then went about her business clearing tables. She had no clue what he was talking about. Breakfast consisted of yak yogurt, doughnuts, cake, egg, hairy pork fat and fried spam. What was ‘marmalade?'

I rescued him from this near disaster and enquired how the trip from London had been.

‘Until now the last decent hotel we had was in Moscow. The rest have been simply dreadful.'

It also appeared that the food had been ‘simply dreadful'. ‘Fortunately we had a Fortnum and Masons' hamper in the back of the car and we have survived on potted quail for the last three days.' He bit into his toast and strawberry jam which had now arrived. ‘But mind you,' he continued, ‘one can dine at the Ritz any night of the week. When can one experience this?'

Lhasa was certainly an experience that many people will never forget. A group of Japanese tourists arrived in the lobby, shaking and white. Harry was placing bets for a record-breaking drop factor – but their fears were not from the altitude. Their tour leader explained to us what had happened. As they had crossed the bridge over the Tsangpo on the way to Lhasa from the airport, Chinese troops had suddenly dived in front of them from all directions. Soldiers in full combat gear crawled along the pavements with AK47s outstretched. Commandos scaled the sides of the bridge on rope ladders and charged along the road. The Japanese had found themselves caught in the middle of a practice assault on the bridge by the PLA.

We had no warning of the mock attack on the bridge but we were informed of another army manoeuvre which would affect tourists. We were told that the overland route would be closed for several days. We could not know the exact days as this was a secret. Any tourists who had paid thousands of dollars for their trip of a lifetime would just have to wait until the road was open again. But how long this would be was also a top secret. We pushed Party A and the owners of the hotel, the Tibet Tourism Bureau, to use their guanxi to the full extent. A compromise was reached. Tourists could take the overland route but only at night and as long as they promised not to look out of the windows. So much for ‘top secret' – everyone knew there was an arms delivery going on between China and Nepal.

Occasionally the military were actually helpful to us and it was due to the Chinese government that occupancy soared above 20 per cent for the first time in the year, when they booked both presidential villas and an entire wing of the hotel. Unfortunately it was the same wing that the expatriates lived in and we were all kicked out for a week. It was on the happy occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the ‘peaceful liberation' of Tibet and the signing of the famous 17-Point Agreement. This was the paper signed by old Ngapoh Ape Renchen, which the Communists wave around as their right of ownership of Tibet.

The whole of Lhasa was tidied up for the celebrations. A 10-metre-high statue of two golden yaks was built at a new roundabout on the way to the Potala. A six-lane tankway was built for no particular reason from the Unknown Road Builders' Monument by the Kyi Chu up to the hotel. Rows of street lights were put up all over town and hideous railings enclosed the open land by the Norbulingka. Other wild parts of Lhasa were also subjected to this unnecessary urbanisation as the Chinese made another unwanted attempt to drag Lhasa into the twentieth century – socialist style. Propaganda booklets, written in English, poured into the hotel from Beijing. The booklets had subtle titles such as
Why Tibet is an Integral Part of China
. They are crammed with ‘indisputable facts' including explanations of how the Dalai Lama did not flee from Lhasa in 1959 being chased by nasty Communists, but was actually abducted and forced into exile by Tibetan ‘upper-strata splittists'. Amazing. All this time we thought he was on the run from the Communists but actually he is being held prisoner by splittists. This is an ‘indisputable fact' published by the New Star Press of Beijing, so it must be true. Reading the booklets is as painful as reading the anti-Chinese articles published by the Tibetans in exile. We did eventually find a good use for the booklets – they do not burn as fiercely as yak dung, but the smell doesn't stick to your clothing.

There was also a serious attempt by the Chinese to clean the streets of the thousands of stray dogs which roam around Lhasa. The Tibetans were horrified. It is well known that not only are all forms of life sacred but the dogs around monasteries are the reincarnations of naughty monks. Sue, from Save the Children Fund, heard the best suggestion to the dog problem from the Tibetan mayor of Lhasa. He asked the Chinese to catch all the male dogs and put them in one pen and all the female dogs and put them in another pen. They could be looked after until they had all died of old age, there would be no more stray dogs on the streets and everyone would live happily ever after.

The Chinese were not so sentimental. Poison was laid along the streets and shooting parties patrolled at dawn. Dorje saved the favourite of the hotel's pack of dogs by giving her a lift down to the airport. She was a beautiful Lassie look-alike and was taken regular food supplies by both the Tibetan and Chinese hotel staff. We heard many other stories of Tibetans hiding dogs and no one ate in the Chinese restaurants for weeks.

Strolling around the grounds of the hotel, while dead dogs were carted off out of the back entrance, were some of the elite leaders of China. Soldiers stood to attention as Li Tie Yin, the all-powerful State Councillor from Beijing, checked-in to one of the Presidential villas. We had also been home to Zhang She Min on a state visit, popping up from the motherland to see how the Tibetan Comrades were getting on.

The hotel was crawling with Chinese VIPs and heavily laden soldiers. I tried to take a group of Germans into our newly opened Himalayan Restaurant, but found the door blocked by two armed guards. I was furious. They had taken over half the hotel but they could not just ban us from feeding our Western guests. I found Jig Me and told him that Party A could not let them push us around like this. An official appeared and after a long discussion in Chinese, barked an order at the two soldiers. Their jaws dropped, they saluted and sped off down the corridor clutching their automatic weapons. Jig Me chuckled as he whispered to me what had happened. The soldiers had been told to stand in front of the red door and not let anyone in. They had seen the red door to the Himalayan Restaurant and had taken up their positions. But this was the wrong red door – they should have been standing in front of the door where Li Tie Yin was dining.

On 23 May, the phone rang all day long with Western journalists looking for action. But there was none. The ‘peaceful liberation' celebrations were passing peacefully. A few undercover journalists had sneaked into Tibet under the guise of being ‘teachers' on holiday. They probed us with questions. ‘There were gun shots this morning. Do you know how many Tibetans have been killed?'

These people were as annoying as the New Star Press of Beijing and would not leave us alone. A Frenchman from
Le Monde
who had been going around giving his business card to every Tibetan he met accosted me in the lobby one evening.

‘I 'ave been stopped by ze police! I 'ave to leave tomorrow. It is all because of you. You are a
Communist spy
!'

At the same time as the accusation of being a Communist spy, I found my mail was being censored by the Chinese. I received a letter from home which had been steamed open and re-sealed. I would never have known if they had not forgotten to rub out the pencilled-in words. Neatly written above my father's news about the beans growing well in Jersey was a Chinese translation. They gave up halfway through, realising that news on the variety of vegetables growing in Jersey was not a threat to Chinese national security. Or could it have been in code?

It was a relief when the Chinese and the journalists checked out and we could go back to our own rooms again. Barba was back in a happy mood and invited any female guests of his ‘target market' to his private dining table. He homed in on a Baroness who fell immediately for his powerful, seductive charm.

Conny was away on a sales trip. Chef, Harry and Bonetti came to my room with a bag of Tsing Tao beer cans. We had given up on Lasa Beer after hearing a report from two visiting American diplomats from the embassy in Beijing. They had been given the customary ‘progress' tour of Lhasa by the Foreign Affairs Office, which had included a trip to the Lasa Beer factory. They did not know that it had just been built by our Romanian comrades, but thought that the factory dated from the 1950s. Very little of the machinery was working and the Romanian bottle-washing machine was permanently out of order. They found groups of Tibetan ladies, sitting outside around large brown puddles, washing the bottles by hand. Tibetan hygiene standards leave much to be desired at the best of times and when you have 5,000 bottles to clean and a pool of muddy water, it is easy to see why each bottle of Lasa Beer has its own distinctive flavour.

We sat in my room holding empty Tsing Tao beer cans. We had seen the in-house videos dozens of times. The hotel had originally possessed 47 video tapes but the Chinese had confiscated all but four of them. Among those never returned were several
Fawlty Towers
videos which we had been using for training. Also ruled out, presumably for being too subversive, was
The Sound of Music
. Was the sight of nuns dancing away to freedom over mountain passes too dangerous?

The remaining four films had gone around so many times that they were now becoming unrecognisable.
Death on the Nile
looked like it had been filmed during a snowstorm and
The Thirty-Nine Steps
was now missing the final three minutes.

We looked around for something to do.

‘I have an idea!' Bonetti called out. ‘Harry, you still have fireworks left over from Chinese New Year don't you?'

‘Sure,' Harry replied, ‘I have a whole bag in my room.'

‘OK, let's give Barba a surprise – he's gonna love it!'

‘No, no, no.'

It was Chef who spoke.

‘I am not doing anyzing like zat.'

But it was not too difficult to persuade Chef, and with military precision, we crept out of a ground floor corridor window and lined up the fireworks in front of Barba's window. We strung firecrackers in the trees, planted a row of ‘golden rain' beneath his window-ledge and stepped back either side of the opening. Bonetti stood against the starlight and gave us the countdown for ignition. He brought his arm down in silence – three, two, one. Harry lit the blue touch paper of the cones beneath the window, Bonetti turned to light the strings of firecrackers and Chef and I primed Chinese Bangers, fat as cans of soup. When Bonetti and Harry were clear and the first of the Golden Rain sent a shower of sparks skywards, we lit the bangers and lobbed them in front of the window.

Thunderclaps echoed between the hotel and the concrete walls of the staff quarters. Flashes of light streaked out across the night sky. The trees shook with the explosions of the firecrackers. We scrambled for cover, dived back in through the corridor window and disappeared, undetected, back to our rooms.

There was no reaction from Barba during breakfast and the Morning Meeting passed smoothly. At the end of the meeting, Barba said calmly, ‘Bonetti, Alec, Harry, stay here.'

We exchanged glances nervously and looked up at Chef who was leaving with the rest of the expats and the local deputies. He gave us a thumbs-up sign from through the door, turned on his heels and sped away down the stairs.

‘Let me tell you the story of how I, as a junior officer, went to Taiwan with my General.'

Barba started in a low and calm tone. ‘When we arrived at the brothel, the girls could not tell us apart – we looked about the same size. We joked a bit and in the end we swapped uniforms around and I pretended to be the General.'

We relaxed; Barba was telling us one of his surplus testosterone stories.

‘When we got back to base, even though I knew I shouldn't, I told my friends all about it. The General got to hear about this and called me in to his office. He said, “I used to consider you as one of my finest officers. But now you have spurned my trust. I now consider you to be the lowest scum possible.”'

Barba leant forwards slightly and started to shake. He was a fully wound spring that was about to snap. He was Mount Vesuvius on the eve before Pompeii was buried. A few moments passed as the vibrations became stronger. He lost control and shouted at the top of his voice, ‘And that gentlemen is how I feel about you! I was in the middle of one of my numbers!
You are all fired! Get out of here!'