The Hotel on the Roof of the World (5 page)

The Chinese propaganda machine has made a concerted effort to show that despite what certain ‘splittist' Tibetans may think, Tibet has always been an integral part of China. From the very first moment that you enter Tibet, it is clear that there is a great divide between these peoples: different culture, different religion, different language, different race. But the one area of common ground which does support the Chinese claim and tie Tibet irrefutably to China soon becomes clear: there can be no doubt that Tibetan drivers have direct genetic links with the taxi drivers of Chengdu.

Dorje had an interesting driving technique which involved keeping the car off the ground for as much time as possible. ‘Terrible!' Tashi called out whenever we were airborne, grinning from ear to ear and bracing himself for the inevitable impact when the Landcruiser would hit the tarmac again. It was hardly surprising that our car had virtually no suspension.

Dorje had an advantage which would have made his Chengdu taxi comrades green with envy: visibility. In the pure, rarefied air of Tibet the view is not hindered by smog or pollution. Mountains which are tens of miles away appear crisp against the horizon. Apart from a few army trucks, the roads are free of traffic and the only limiting factor on Dorje's driving was how hard he could keep his foot pressed down on the accelerator pedal, weighed up against the likelihood that at any moment one of the rattles could lead to the total disintegration of the vehicle.

Just visible through the vibrating windows were rectangular coracles setting out across the river. Tashi saw me trying to look at them. ‘Yak-skin boats,' he shouted over the roar of the Landcruiser engine. It seems that every part of the yak has a use. To make watertight boats the skins are stretched over a wooden frame, sewn together with wool made from yak hair and the joins are then sealed with yak butter.

Every so often we would speed through a village lined with waving Tibetan children. Their villages looked wonderful and so inviting but Dorje was not showing any signs of slowing down. Small clusters of single- and double-storey buildings with walled-in courtyards jostled together in the foothills to gain maximum exposure to the sun. The houses looked solid, built to withstand the harsh environment. Walls were made of stone up to waist height and finished off with mud bricks to the roof.

Windows, set deep into the whitewashed walls, were surrounded by peculiar black frames: the base of every Tibetan window frame is several inches wider than the top. This is echoed in the general construction of the buildings, as the walls also tend to lean inwards.

Tin cans lined the window ledges, with the bright orange of marigolds in full bloom livening up the stark black and white of the houses. Branches of trees adorned with colourful prayer flags stood high into the wind from the top of the flat roofs. The auspicious blue, white, red, green and yellow colours of the fabrics stood out against the rich blue of the Tibetan sky. Each prayer flag carries a picture of
lungta
, the jewelled dragon-horse who carries the owners' prayers up to the divinities every time the flag flaps in the wind.

The larger villages had a healthy copse of trees, usually willows or poplars which looked quite out of place in the generally treeless landscape. Wood is a precious commodity in the highland areas of Tibet and is never wasted. The few shrubs which grow wild on the hillsides are harvested for use as brushwood and each courtyard wall is piled high with kindling gathered from the mountains.

The lack of solid fuel in the shape of wood is of little consequence to the Tibetans who have an ingenious wood substitute: yak dung. The dung is collected during the day by young children who are out on the hills tending to flocks of sheep or yaks. What better way to pass the time when out on the hills than by collecting every piece of dung which can be found? It certainly sounds more attractive than being locked up in a school room.

When the children return in the evenings with their panniers of dung, it is usually the mother of the household, or an elder sister, who has the task of mixing the raw material with a little water and, if available, some barley straw. This concoction is then made into attractive chocolate-chip-cookie shapes and slapped against the whitewashed walls to bake in the sun. Once dry, the cookies are stacked in rows on top of the walls, to be used as fuel throughout the year. They burn with a fierce flame, but unfortunately leave a recognisable odour, which is virtually impossible to extract from clothing worn in the vicinity of the fire.

Somehow, Tashi had managed to fall asleep. His head lolled from side to side on the headrest of the front seat and jolted upwards when we hit air speed. Dorje kept his hands tight on the steering wheel, his eyes fixed on the contours of the road ahead. I kept holding on to the handrail above the door, gripping tight to keep myself from flying across the back seat when we swerved to overtake army trucks.

A few miles after crossing the Chinese bridge to the north side of the Tsangpo, Dorje hit the brakes and we screeched to a halt. He was pointing to a building about 60 feet away which stood by itself between us and the river. There was nothing else to be seen. A closer look revealed that the building had a facade of gaudy orange and blue tiles. Amongst the tiles was a picture of a man's head and a picture of a lady's head. With a mime from Dorje which needed no words, he told me that this was the only toilet between the airport and Lhasa, if I needed to go.

This is the great modernisation of Tibet by the Chinese: tiled toilets in the middle of the countryside. Tashi remained asleep. Dorje didn't bother to walk as far as the public conveniences, and after a very brief inspection of what the Chinese thought was an improvement to the Tibetan way of life, I followed Dorje's example. I wondered what the American tourists behind us would make of the modernisation of Tibet.

The only other stop on the way to Lhasa was for an obligatory picture-taking session at a 40 feet high carving of Sakyamuni Buddha. Every tourist stops here and wastes a picture on the Buddha, who is invariably in deep shade by the time cars from the airport reach him.

‘Potala,' a voice said from the front of the car.

Tashi had woken up as we entered the suburban sprawl in the Lhasa valley, just in time to point out the small triangle standing above the buildings at the far end of the valley. Even from this distance I could make out the whitewashed base and the gold of the roofs of the Potala Palace – the former winter residence of the Dalai Lamas. This first picture of the Potala is now obscured by another piece of Chinese progress: a concrete army barracks, which entirely blocks the view from the western approach to Lhasa. Most of the land to the immediate west of the city is owned by the military. The road from the airport leads through a sea of green uniforms and the very worst of Chinese architecture.

Amongst the ugly concrete, one building stood out: an oblong block of insipid green corrugated iron. How anyone could ever have imagined that this building was anything less than hideous is hard to believe.

‘Hotel,' said Tashi.

I panicked, thinking he meant the corrugated iron monstrosity, but regained my breath when I saw that he was pointing up the road. Dorje swung into a left turn and passed in front of the Norbulingka summer palace. This was more like it – would the hotel be part of the palace?

We drove on past some dilapidated blocks of flats which had sides of meat hanging from the windows.

‘Staff,' said Tashi, pointing at them.

Before I could ask him to explain, the familiar green of the Holiday Inn neon sign came into view.

Behind a row of flags stood three creamy-grey blocks of concrete. It reminded me of World War Two German bunker defences. I told myself this concrete was beautiful. It had to be beautiful. I was going to be promoting it.

I was met at the door by a Chinese man in a suit who ran down the steps laughing. He shook my hand profusely and presented me with another silk scarf. Harry was his name, the Front Office Manager. Chinese from Singapore. ‘Not from here,' he added quickly.

The sight of the lobby was a great relief after the shock of the concrete bunker design of the exterior. A vast expanse of rich marble swept across the floor to the cool marble reception desk. Wooden beams with a hint of Tibetan design took the eye up to an immense tapestry of the Himalayas. A mezzanine area – the lobby bar and home to the Holiday Inn Lhasa string quartet – looked out across the tapestry and marble.

Tashi and Dorje had vanished. The Chinese receptionists smiled as Harry ushered me past them to the small coffee shop. All new expatriate staff are taken here for an obligatory drink before being shown to their quarters. A high liquid intake in the first few days is considered to reduce the risk of altitude sickness, so tea was ordered while Harry went to call the General Manager.

The coffee shop was of a rather basic design. The furniture consisted of metal-framed tables and chairs which would have been better suited to a cheap village banqueting hall than an international hotel. The green tiles on the floor matched the insipid corrugated iron colour from down the road. What saved the coffee shop was a magnificent awning of blue dragons which stretched from above the cashier's seat at one end to the tea machine at the far corner. This had been commissioned from the Lhasa tent factory in the same manner that wealthy Tibetan families ordered decorative tents for the picnic season.

A waitress spotted me from her leaning post by the tea machine. She put herself into slow speed and pointed herself in my direction. I was hoping that she would bring the tea which had been ordered but she came empty-handed. When she arrived she stood in front of me and said: ‘meal voucher.' I tried to ask her what she meant but all she could do was to repeat ‘meal voucher'.

Fortunately, Harry returned in time to save me from the meal-voucher robot and he went to fetch some tea.

A chef arrived from the kitchen dressed in whites from head to toe.

‘The Executive Chef,' Harry whispered to me, letting me know that this was not just any chef but the number one in the kitchen. Short and plump with closely cropped hair and an angry expression, there was really no one else who the person steaming towards us could have been.

Executive Chefs have reached the pinnacle of their careers. They have worked hard through all the stages: from Commis de Cuisine to a Chef de Partie, through Executive Sous Chef to the crown in the kitchen – Executive Chef. It is a difficult route, requiring a combination of artistic culinary skills, great knowledge of ingredients and equipment, tough physical work and above all a driving ambition to beat contemporaries to the top. From the apex of his pyramid, as Executive Chef, he can go no further and from then on he will spend his time running the Food and Beverage Manager out of the kitchen, insisting that he be called ‘Chef' and consolidating his position as king of his domain.

My first encounter with an Executive Chef was in a five-star hotel in London. I had just started work in the kitchens and was busy topping and tailing green beans when the Executive Chef came up to me and asked me how I was doing. ‘Fine, thank you, Mr Dupont,' I replied.

This brought on a most unpleasant and unexpected response which was screamed at me at the top of his voice: ‘You say “Fine thank you, Chef” to me!'

My only explanation for this is that chefs must have peculiarly small brains and as they are already crammed full with culinary terms, there is no further space for them to remember their own names. When one Chef meets another Chef, they find it extraordinarily amusing that they have found someone else with the same name and spend a number of minutes going ‘Hello, Chef' to each other and chuckling at their original and witty joke.

‘Good morning, Chef,' I ventured to the man in whites who had arrived at our table.

‘It's a bloody mess in zer. Zey brought yaks on ze hoof again. Ver's the Food and Beverage Manager?' is all he could come out with before charging off again.

The waitresses in the corner stopped chatting and stood up straight from their leaning post. The cashier cut her yawn short and picked up her pen.

No matter which hotel in the world you are working in, it is always the same when the General Manager approaches. Without knowing it, he has an aura with a radius of approximately 60 feet, within which every member of staff is seen to be working intently. Once the General Manager has passed, all pretence of work is given up and the staff return to their normal daily habits.

‘Has he been drinking?' a voice bellowed out from behind me. The General Manager had arrived and was making his presence known.

‘You must be young Le Sueur. That name won't work here, better stick to Alec. Now, you must drink. At least three litres today. Three tomorrow, three the next. Rest today. Drink. See you Monday.'

‘More tea!' he scowled at the waitresses as he passed them on his way into the kitchen.

It had been a short briefing. On the face of it, it certainly wasn't a bad first meeting with my boss. It was only Friday morning and I had been ordered to rest until Monday. Little did I know that this was to be the longest time off in Tibet that I would have. No one had told me yet that work in China meant six and often seven days a week for twelve hours a day.

Harry showed me up to my room. South block, second floor, number 3205. We walked along carpeted corridors, stepping over the bumps where luggage trolleys had pushed the carpet into high creases. The corridor looked over the garden outside the coffee shop which was dominated by a large concrete pond containing a rock sculpture. Natural pieces of rock had been crudely cemented together in a simulated rock formation. It had no purpose that I could see, but at least a pair of white wagtails were nesting in a gap in the cement.

The overwhelming first impression upon entering my room was that of brown. The sofa and curtains were streaked beige, the carpet chestnut, the wallpaper khaki cream, the ghastly five-pronged chandelier a sort of lobster bisque brown and the cupboards an artificial wood brown. Why naturally brown wood should have been painted over with a brown paint, to make it look like wood, defeated me. The only thing that was not a shade of brown were the curious green stains on the carpet.