The Hotel on the Roof of the World (6 page)

The view from my room was across an area of waste land, which had been used as a building site when the hotel was constructed, and then over a high wall to the dilapidated blocks of flats which I had seen from the car. They were the worst kind of slums: carcasses of animals hung from the window ledges and wild dogs barked ferociously from the stairwells. Beyond the flats were the inviting summits of the hills on the south bank of the Kyi Chu.

Harry had told me that I was lucky to have a south-facing room.

‘You will see why in winter,' he chuckled. ‘Anyway, it's better than being in the staff quarters across there,' he said, pointing out of the window to the slums.

At lunchtime I met the rest of the expatriate managers. There were ten of us altogether. Mostly men, mostly chain smokers. Each had his own particular reason to be there. For some it was money, others were on the run from something or someone, but the most unfortunate had made their way to Lhasa under the impression that they were entering exotic Asia. Despite the warnings, these people had expected palm trees and night life and had got a shock when they discovered that Lhasa was set amidst barren mountains in the middle of nowhere, more than two and a half miles above sea level. The usual tour of duty was two years but in these extreme conditions it was rare that anyone lasted the full contract. Holiday Inn Lhasa was known in the hotel trade as the hardest hardship posting of all.

I asked Harry why we didn't eat in the Everest Room restaurant with the other guests. He shuddered, ‘That's the group buffet,' he explained, ‘obviously you haven't seen it yet. We always eat in the coffee shop.'

The General Manager was already sitting at the head of a long table laid out for ten people. Every expat had his favourite place around the table and jealously guarded it against newcomers.

Vacant spaces were only created when an expat left, then the seat would be offered to the others in order of their seniority. It happened that my predecessor had occupied the seat next to the General Manager and, as no one wanted to move into this position when it became vacant, it was pointed out as mine. On my other side was Mr Liu, the Financial Controller from Hong Kong. He was not a great conversationalist, preferring to keep his eyes fixed on his plate during the entire meal, closely examining every forkful before putting it into his mouth.

The other expats were eager to talk. The ritual was to tell the newcomer that however bad the hotel looked, it was far better now than ever before. I had arrived as the end of the first batch of Holiday Inn Lhasa expats were leaving. These were the hardy pioneers who had survived the first two years of operation.

The hotel had been built by the Chinese in 1985 as part of the great modernisation of Tibet. It had been one of the forty construction works donated by other provinces of China to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of autonomy for the region. Most of the donations were completely inappropriate and remain today as great eyesores on the skyline. Across from the hotel is the monstrous ‘Cultural Theatre' which is occasionally used to hold party conferences or entertain the troops. Down the road is another gift; the empty concrete bus terminal building with its clock tower permanently set at ten to two.

The hotel was a gift of Gansu province, one of the poorest provinces in China and in need of a great deal of aid itself. The Chinese were continually trying great leaps in various directions and it was hoped that the leap forward to tourism would provide a much-needed boost for the Tibetan economy. The imaginative name of ‘Lhasa Hotel' was thought up by the Communist marketing strategists. In Shigatse the new hotel was called the ‘Shigatse Hotel', in Gyantse the ‘Gyantse Hotel' and so the naming continued in each of the Tibetan towns which were opened to tourism. The major flaw in their great leap was that once they had built their hotels, they had no clue how to run them.

The Chinese struggled for six months with the Lhasa Hotel before courageously admitting defeat and looking for help from outside. The first team from Holiday Inn arrived to find the hotel in chaos. Each of the department heads had his own disaster story to tell for what they had found.

The Housekeeper described arriving at a hotel which seemed to be set in a field of snow. As the bus drew closer he saw that the white of the snow was actually hundreds of sheets placed out on the grass. Lhasa Hotel had the most advanced laundry unit in western China but no one knew how to use it. All the sheets had been washed by hand in the river and dried by the sun in the hotel grounds.

Derek, the Chief Engineer, told of his first inspection of the hotel when he found that flood waters from the kitchens had submerged the boiler room and were just an inch away from blowing the boiler sky high.

The Food and Beverage Manager, a sombre Austrian called Gunter, told of his discovery that the coffee shop floor tiles were green. They had been covered in an overflow from the corridor toilets and their original colour was hidden under a layer of a substance which should not usually be found in food areas.

Harry, the Front Office Manager, described what had happened to the 468 guest rooms. Over 350 of them were used by the staff and their friends. A cook gave a receptionist a steak. The receptionist gave the cook a room key. A very simple arrangement. One of the problems was that the rooms featured en suite bathrooms with flush toilets. The only previous flush toilet in Tibet was the English one installed in the summer palace of the Dalai Lama and consequently the local staff had no knowledge of how they functioned. The rooms were used until they were considered too dirty for further use and a second room would be taken. The number of rooms left for paying guests was diminishing every day.

The allocation of keys to guests had also been based on very different ideas from Holiday Inn management. There were only two drawers for the 468 keys: one for occupied rooms, one for unoccupied rooms. When a guest asked for his key the receptionist had to search through the entire drawer to find it. If the key was in the correct drawer, this process might only take 20 minutes or so, but if the key had inadvertently been slipped into the wrong drawer then the process of reclaiming a key could take hours. The longest queues at the reception formed when the groups returned to the hotel at lunch time, as this was the time when the receptionists would have their lunch break.

Checking out was a similar story of inefficiency. A guest would arrive at the cashiers' desk and ask for his bill. ‘Room not occupied' the cashier would reply and despite any protests of honesty, the guest would be waved away to his bus to take him to the airport. If you are offering to pay for something, how many times do you keep offering if the person whom you are meant to pay keeps insisting that you are wrong?

As a result of this madness, the great scheme to attract the tourist dollar was backfiring and the Lhasa Hotel was becoming a bottomless pit of subsidy for the government. The tourists were not entirely satisfied either. In fear of his own safety, the General Manager would pass to his hotel room around the back of the hotel so that he did not have to walk through the lobby and encounter screaming guests.

Chef told me of the battle that ensued every morning when guests appeared in the Everest Room for breakfast. Buses to the airport would leave as early as 5:30 a.m. and guests would enter the restaurant at five o'clock. This was considered too early by the staff who would only report on duty by mid morning. Guests would line up in the kitchen to cook their own breakfasts. This may sound like fun but few of the early visitors to Tibet were paying less than $10,000 for their trip of a life-time. It had said nothing in the tour brochures about fighting for their breakfasts.

All those around the lunch table assured me that the hotel had completely changed now. What they had been describing was two years ago and now everything ran smoothly. They nodded in agreement and then laughed. Even Mr Liu managed a smile as he scrutinised his next fork load.

‘We haven't told him about the vacuum cleaners,' said the General Manager between drags on his cigarette. He leant back in his chair in preparation for his favourite story. It had become the classic story of the Holiday Inn Lhasa and could only be passed down to newcomers by the General Manager himself. It is a tradition which still exists today.

‘We bought thirty of them. Very expensive. From Hong Kong, Charlie had to bring them in himself after one of his breaks.' He pointed to Charlie, the Housekeeper, who nodded to acknowledge his moment of fame in the vacuum cleaner story.

‘After a month we didn't see them any more. The maids were back to sweeping the corridors with brushes. Chinese brushes which left more bits on the carpet than they picked up. So, one day I asked where they were, the vacuums, and I was taken to a store cupboard with thirty broken vacuum cleaners. These were the finest in the land! There were no better in China!' He thumped the table to emphasise his point.

I was to discover that table thumping was one of his favourite forms of speech, either used when very angry or when enjoying himself tremendously.

‘Every one of them had a burnt out motor. And, do you know why?' I did, because I had read the story in the Hong Kong newspapers, but I was not anxious to have a table thumping display at my expense, so I said that I had no idea why all the motors should have been burnt out.

‘Because they never emptied the bags. They thought the dust went up that little magic black cord which plugged into the wall!' Another thump of the table.

His cigarette lay untouched on the ashtray, burning itself into dust, when the run for the dessert table started. The return of Mr Liu with two yellow bananas on his plate had launched a stampede from the management table. The General Manager explained to me, when he too had returned with his prize, that yellow bananas were a rarity in Lhasa. ‘Fruit!' he bellowed. ‘I hope you had some in Hong Kong.'

Having witnessed a flurry of bananas rushing past, a party of hopeful guests headed for the dessert table in search of fresh fruit.

‘Nobody comes to Tibet for bananas,' said Mr Liu, breaking his silence. It was just as well, there was none left.

The General Manager stayed to smoke another cigarette while the other expatriates returned to their offices. He was concerned for the welfare of every new recruit.

‘Don't worry if you have a loss of appetite today – that's normal at high altitude. Nothing to worry about. Just keep drinking. Worse is the headache that you can get.' He shook his head. ‘The headache. Terrible. Terrible. It can lead to pulmonary oedema or cerebral oedema which is very nasty. Let's hope it doesn't happen to you. Ha! You should have seen Mr Liu when he came up here! I thought he'd never make it.'

His eyes lit up with excitement as he launched into one of his stories: ‘And once there was a guest in hospital, I shouldn't tell you this today, but it was incredible, first they had to put a tube in his throat, this big, through a hole they made in his neck, and get the water out of his lungs with a…'

I let the words pass over my head and struggled through the remains of my Giant Yak Burger. I preferred to think that the headache I could feel coming on was caused by lack of food and not from the shortage of oxygen. I chewed on through the heavy, stringy yak burger, hoping that it would help in some way.

Altitude sickness was the fear of every newcomer to Tibet. The sudden increase of 12,000 feet and the subsequent lowering of the oxygen level in the air had potentially fatal consequences. There is a diuretic pill, sold on prescription in the West, which reduces the effects of the altitude, but no one tells you that until you get to Lhasa, where of course they are not available.

There was no way of predicting who would be struck with altitude sickness, and no cure apart from being flown back down to sea level.

Anxious to see something of Tibet in case I was going to be flying on CAAC sooner than I would have wished for, I asked for a taxi to the Barkhor – the ancient bazaar in the heart of Lhasa.

THE SHOCK OF THE SYSTEM

‘Taxis?' the General Manager thumped the table. ‘This is Lhasa!'

The only transport service, apart from public buses and tractors, consisted of a set of mafia-style rickshaw drivers who pedalled shaky three-wheelers about town. Each rickshaw was of the sports convertible design, with a cloth hood that could be raised or lowered over the passengers, depending on weather conditions. The driver who pedalled the contraption had no such luxury and braved whatever the elements could throw at him. Two passengers could just squeeze into the carriage over the back wheels and if the price was high enough a driver would even accept three passengers and luggage. It was a cut-throat business with high money at stake from first-time tourists who did not yet know that all rickshaw prices must be keenly haggled for.

The first rickshaw driver who approached me made an award-winning display of disappointment when I gave him the news that I would not be paying his initial asking price. We eventually settled for a fee equivalent to one day's wages for an office worker for the 20-minute pedal across town to the bazaar. He was still upset with me but smiled to his colleagues as we pulled away from the hotel down the wide cycle lane.

It cannot be said that the Chinese in Tibet have not made good provisions for cyclists. Whether this is how the Chinese should be judged is another question but there can be no doubt that cycling facilities have improved since the Chinese established their rule in Tibet. The only drawback is that no one pays the slightest attention to the most basic cycling etiquette.

Lorries and army jeeps are parked across the cycle track, cyclists pedal down the lanes in any direction they feel like and groups of pedestrians saunter along in the centre, preferring the risk of being run over by a rickshaw to the much greater risk of breaking a leg down one of the open manholes in the pavement. There are also some open manholes along the cycle track but these are usually only along the gutter edge of the track and a skilled rickshaw driver knows when to swerve to avoid them.

More difficult to avoid is the chaos created by the large skips piled high with stinking refuse which are stationed at regular intervals across the tracks. Packs of dogs and a few gaunt cattle always gather around the skips, giving rise to unpredictable moving objects in the path of the rickshaw.

While yaks are taken to the high pastures during the summer months, ordinary cattle are kept in the city and are left to roam the streets and graze on whatever they can find in Lhasa. As the green areas in the city centre are rapidly disappearing, the normal menu for these street cows consists of newspaper and cardboard boxes dumped in skips.

After dodging the cattle and shouting at dogs that approached us, we emerged under a string of prayer flags at the south face of the Potala Palace. What had appeared as a small triangle in the distance when I came in from the airport, now towered above us, dominating the Lhasa valley. High white walls swept skywards to the red ochre palace, topped with golden roofs sparkling in the sun.

The Potala Palace – home of the Dalai Lamas. Here was the image I had dreamt of, yet in reality the palace exceeded the visions of my dreams. Until the Chinese entered Tibet this building had been home to the leader of the country, parliament, treasury, law courts and high security prison. Within these walls Dalai Lamas have studied, ruled and died, revolutions have been hatched and traitors poisoned. Gold and precious stones of untold beauty have lined the vaults and heinous tortures have been carried out in the dungeons. We pedalled on. The Potala was not open to pilgrims or visitors today.

A few hundred yards further into the city, past the tantalising aroma of roast lamb kebabs, the rickshaw drew up to the edge of a wide open cobbled square. This area had remained as a rabbit warren of Tibetan houses until 1985 when the Chinese liberated the people from the inconvenience of walking through the small streets and demolished the old Tibetan buildings to make an official people's square.

Somewhat ironically, the square which was meant to be for the good of the people soon turned out to be a favourite spot for rioting and anti-government demonstrations. 27 September 1987 saw the first group of monks chanting for independence in the square. The monks were arrested and on 1 October, Chinese National Day, an angry crowd of Tibetans gathered outside the police station on the square to demand their release. The exact sequence of events that followed is unclear but it is generally accepted that panicking Chinese soldiers fired into the unarmed mob, killing at least six Tibetans. Somewhere in the chaos that followed the police station was burnt down.

The Chinese had many lessons to learn from their first experience of rioting in the ‘New Tibet.' Unfortunately one of the lessons they did not learn is that when your police station has been burnt down, you should get a new set of fire extinguishers. They still don't seem to have learnt this basic rule, as every time there is rioting in Lhasa, the police station on the square burns down again. Clearly there is an opportunity for a good sprinkler salesman.

The square itself shows no signs of the troubles that have passed over its cobbled stones. Its dilapidated state is not from riots but from dirt and zero maintenance. An unkempt garden with a muddy concrete-lined pond and broken fountains stands in the centre. To the western end of the pond a sorry-looking rose attempts to climb a metal arch painted in Blackpool beach colours. This appears to be a favourite picture spot for both Chinese and Tibetans alike and a brisk trade is carried out by the dozen or so photographers who tout for business.

At the far end of the square, beyond the railings, roses and pool, is the modest entrance to the Jokhang temple – the centre of the Tibetan Buddhists' world.

I had arrived in Tibet nearly a year after the 1987 riots and despite some more shootings in the Barkhor in March 1988 I had been assured that the troubles were a thing of the past. Even tourism was picking up again, which was just as well as it was now my job to see that business to the hotel increased. Confident that I would be riding the crest of a wave as tours poured back into Tibet, I approached an unmistakably American tourist to ask the way to the bazaar of which I had heard so much.

Barbara, from a Smithsonian Institute tour, had been twice around the bazaar and was now on her way back to the group bus. ‘You gotta go clockwise,' she said, pointing to a queue of people walking from right to left in front of the temple. ‘Just follow them.'

Barbara was being followed by a determined group of Tibetan Khampa ladies haggling profusely. It was their livelihood and they knew how to haggle to perfection. Bracelets, necklaces, prayer wheels, rings, brooches and useless trinkets were being pulled out of bags and thrust under Barbara's nose. She really had no chance.

‘Only one thousand. I like you. Six hundred. You how much? Holy silver. Holy, holy! Five hundred. You how much? Very cheap. One hundred. You how much?! You special price. Seventy-five.'

The sound of the prayer flags flapping above in the wind was momentarily drowned by a crescendo of the haggling chorus as Barbara climbed onto the tour bus. She could not be permitted to be out of reach or they would lose the close on their sales.

The Khampas rushed around to the side of the bus and knocked fervently on the window by Barbara's seat. It was a pleasure to watch professional sales people at work. With the engine revving and the driver waving the girls to move away Barbara finally gave in at, ‘OK. For you fifty.'

The driver shook his head. All the Tibetans knew it was only worth five, but Barbara would never know and would be happy to show off her bargain from the bazaar over dinner parties back home.

The Khampa girls returned from the scene of their sale giggling at the fun of it all. Another tourist ripped off and happy. Some more money for the family.

Khampa women have a
joie de vivre
as strong as the pride of their fierce husbands. Beautiful rounded faces with sparkling eyes above rosy cheeks smile out at every foreigner. Strings of turquoise beads are woven into the hair and occasionally crowned by a centre piece of coral or amber. A scowl at a Chinaman, a smile to a foreigner: the Khampa girls love to flirt. Gold-capped teeth flash from their inviting smiles but they know that they are safe – no one would wish to pick trouble with their Khampa husbands.

I followed the direction in which Barbara had pointed and found myself on the edge of the square at the opening to the Jokhang temple. Deep behind the whitewashed walls of the opening passage, red painted pillars, the width of stout men, support a balcony draped in yak-hair cloth. Two gilded deer and a Dharma wheel shine down from over the balcony on all who pass beneath. But your attention is not held by any of the interesting structural technicalities or adornments of the building, instead it is focused on the people who crowd the forecourt.

The granite paving stones are worn to a polish that no hotel Housekeeper could ever produce. Apart from a lapse during the Cultural Revolution, every day for hundreds of years has seen many thousands of prostrations over these slabs. With hands first clasped together in front of the head, the chest and the waist, each prostrater then lies flat down on the ground with arms outstretched in the direction of the temple.

Merit is what Buddhism is all about. At least that is what I had gathered so far from my meagre research into the subject. I had found most books on Buddhism terribly difficult to digest – all those incomprehensible names and anatomically impossible beings. I could guess that the Eleven-Headed One-Thousand-Armed Avalokitesvara would not be a Bodhisattva to take on at table tennis, but I had yet to consider any of the more complex ideologies of Buddhism.

Without going into tiresome detail and very long names, the simple formula to follow is that the more merit you have gained during this lifetime, the better your chance of being reincarnated as something higher than an earwig in the next. If you are really pious and score high numbers of merit points, you could come back as a human being again and if you earn just those few more points you could come back as a rich nobleman or a high lama, instead of having to be a down-trodden peasant again. It's a bit like collecting Air Miles.

Hitting the jackpot, in terms of merit, would be to score so many points that you could leave the endless cycle of rebirths and achieve nirvana. Once you have reached this Buddhist's bingo there are no more worries about who or what you are going to come back to.

With this clear incentive to keep prostrating, some manage to keep going for over a thousand per day. Others stick to the holy number of 108 prostrations which is quite difficult enough. To ease the pain of sliding outstretched across the granite, special gloves fashioned in the shape of small clogs are often worn. Aprons can be used to protect clothing from wearing out and women prostrating will often tie their long dresses close around their ankles if they are going in for a lengthy session.

Around the temple entrance is also where the first-time visitor to Tibet has his initial encounter with an unfamiliar odour: yak butter. Or the more fragrant variety: rancid yak butter. It is brought into the temple by devout pilgrims who carry blocks of the yellow grease in yak-bladder bags. They scoop the butter out by the spoonful into each of the stone and silver vessels of yak butter which burn in the holy chambers of the temple. Yak butter is not an easy odour to forget. It clings to every person in the Barkhor, to every item sold on the stalls, to every piece of clothing. Even when you think that you have left Tibet far behind, the smell of yak butter will still be lingering in your suitcases, waiting to hit you when you open them to pack for next year's holiday.

Fortunately, two holy incense burners are within a few yards of the temple entrance, and a step towards them brings the very pleasing fragrance of a blend of burning juniper and a finely scented artemisia. Piles of dried herbs and small bundles of wood collected from high in the hills around Lhasa are offered for sale to those who did not bring their own supplies for the burners.

Starting from the entrance to the Jokhang temple the market street continues clockwise in a half-mile perimeter circuit right around the temple and back to the entrance again. By no small coincidence the market street is also a holy walk. Every temple, monastery, holy mountain, holy lake and holy entity is surrounded by a holy walk known as a
kora
, and by walking this
kora
in a clockwise direction you gain merit. All these merit points keep adding to your running total of merit to give you a better chance for a good reincarnation next time around. The beauty of the Barkhor bazaar is that you can gain merit and do your shopping at the same time.

A ramshackle collection of metal stalls lines each side of the street selling a mixture of imports, antiques, fakes and forgeries. Trinkets from Kathmandu and nylon clothes from China share stands with Tibetan rugs and traditional jewellery. Bulky silver rings studded with beads of red coral or turquoise, heavy-set earrings of gold, old Indian coins made into brooches and any amount of religious paraphernalia are all on offer for sale.