The Hotel on the Roof of the World (7 page)

The word ‘antique' is used for anything which dates from pre-1959, when the Dalai Lama went into exile. Customs laws are strict in China and they declare that anything that is ‘antique' or a ‘cultural relic' cannot be removed from the country.

‘Holy Turquoise!' called out a Khampa girl, thrusting a piece of blue plastic in my face and then running off down the street giggling to her friends. I followed, caught up in the clockwise stream of bodies that flows continually around the Barkhor. Only the most ignorant tourist and a few belligerent Chinese attempt to walk against the flow.

Just past the Jokhang entrance on the main Barkhor street I was attacked by a small child. A boy of no more than five years of age grabbed my right leg and clung on as hard as he could while launching into his sales pitch in perfect English: ‘I have no money. I have no parents. I have no money. I have no parents. I have no money. Please give me money. I have no parents. I have no money. Please give me money…'

The ‘Rapper', as we called him, was the most persistent of all the Barkhor beggars. His ruthlessly pitiful approach was used to great effect. He could only be shaken off with either a considerable amount of force or a large contribution to his funds which he would then take back to his parents who eagerly awaited him at the front of the temple.

One of the favourite claims by the Chinese is that they eradicated begging when they liberated Tibet in 1951 and that they turned the beggars into ‘the new proletariat of the New Tibet.'

I pictured the Rapper clinging on the leg of a diehard Communist and wondered who would win: the lecture on the no-begging policy of New Tibet, or a contribution to the Rapper's welfare funds?

For the Tibetans, there has never been anything unwholesome about begging. There are claims that before the Chinese entered Tibet there were some 20,000 beggars making their living across the country. In the constant search throughout life to gain merit, giving money to beggars scores high points and giving money to beggars in the Barkhor scores some of the highest merit points of all. For some pilgrims the walk to Lhasa, their spiritual capital, was the accomplishment of a lifetime which had taken their entire life savings to achieve. They would beg in the Barkhor to raise enough money to see them through the trip home.

Colonel Waddell, who accompanied the British invasion of Tibet in 1904 and who may well have had the Rapper's great, great grandfather around his leg, described the Barkhor beggars as ‘repulsively dirty'. It is a description which could be used very accurately today and after removing the Rapper and his sticky lollipop from my trouser leg I set off down the side streets for some relief from the bombardment of sensations at the Barkhor.

In the narrow streets behind the Barkhor I would find my favourite part of Lhasa – where time has stood still for hundreds of years. Streets twist and turn, sometimes 30 feet wide, sometimes six feet wide, veering off at right angles between old whitewashed stone buildings three to four storeys high with black trapezoid windows. Here you only see Tibetan faces – the Chinese do not venture alone down these little alleyways.

One street corner always has a ram tethered to a door post. He has a very short rope and can only stand or sit on the large granite doorstep. There is never any food visible yet he is permanently chewing something, sitting on his doorstep gazing at the world going by. Sheep are often saved from the slaughterhouse by Tibetans who take them on as pets. It is thought that this saving of a soul from death is a very merit-worthy action and therefore adds to the running total of merit of the new sheep owner. It is quite common to see Tibetans walking around the Barkhor with a sheep on a lead, or taking a couple of sheep on a long pilgrimage.

At least I used to hope that this ram was one of the saved ones. It did dawn on me one day that perhaps it was a different ram there every time and that they were just being fattened up for slaughter.

In a dimly lit doorway across from the ram, an old Tibetan lady in full Tibetan dress slices a turnip on a chopping board across her lap. Another spins wool into thread. Small girls lean out of first floor windows calling, ‘Hello,
tashi delai
, hello!' to passers-by. Everyone has time to greet you, whether by a smile, a nod, a
tashi delai
or occasionally by the really traditional greeting of sticking a tongue out at you. This is the Tibet of the past that so many wish was still here today.

Trying to find my way back to the Barkhor market, I found myself trapped between two narrow streets filled with excrement and the decaying carcasses of dogs. The pungent stench of rotting flesh and maggot-infested pools sent me scrambling for the fresh air of the open square. Even rancid yak butter was perfume compared with this. Halfway down the narrow alley, at a point where the path consisted of stepping stones through the sewage, two men came out of a doorway, their eyes wide with excitement and their breath heavy with a strong alcohol. They stopped in front of me, blocking the only dry path through the nauseous street. Both had the distinctive profiles of Khampas. They stood tall and proud with red braid wrapped across their matted black hair. One was bare-chested with his
chuba
, the Tibetan cloak, tied around his waist. They stared at me in silence for some time, looking me up and down. Their surly expressions did not change and they held firm their position blocking the only dry exit. There was no one else around. There were no old ladies in the doorways, no little children smiling and waving from the windows. Alone in excrement alley face-to-face with two alcohol-steaming Khampas. I was a long way up the creek without a paddle.

‘Do drigey rey?' the bare-chested one broke the silence.

I had no idea what he was saying.

‘Do drigey rey?' he shouted.

I smiled at him but to no avail. He pulled a sword from its sheath, stooped over me and held it up to my chest. Why had I been so mean to the Rapper? Is this what happens if you don't earn merit? Where was a Chinese soldier when you needed one?

The other Khampa looked over his shoulder and moved in closer to me. ‘Katse rey?' he called out with a nod of his head. The bare-chested one waved the sword closer to my face. Sunlight flashed in my eyes as he tilted the steel blade towards me. I could even see every detail of the intricate engravings running along the centre of the blade between the two razor edges.

He withdrew the sword, pointed to the space beside us and made a series of cuts in the air to demonstrate a nifty disembowelling motion. He shook it in front of my face again.

‘Katse rey?
Katse rey!?
' he shouted.

The bare-chested one frowned in thought, recalling the only English words which he had heard, learnt from his wife.

‘You how much?' he called to me.

It was with an enormous sense of relief that I suddenly realised they were not threatening to decapitate me if I crossed their path, but were merely trying to sell me the sword. Their scowls turned into broad gold-capped grins as I took the sword and examined it closely. The swirling engravings of the steel blade ended abruptly inside a gaping dragon's mouth of silver which formed the base of the handle. The body of the dragon curled around on itself to provide the bulk of the grip. It was newly made, perhaps one of the imports from Kathmandu, and certainly practical for the man about town. But disembowelling daggers were not high on my shopping list and I had no intention of buying it, I just wanted to get out of the place with dry feet and in one piece.

I shook my head and passed the sword back to him. Recalling Tashi's words of greeting at the airport, I ventured the only Tibetan words that I knew:
‘Tashi delai.'
This earned me a great slap on the back that pushed me dangerously close to the edge of the excrement area. My two new Khampa friends strode off down the lane howling with laughter.

There are only so many smells and sensations that the body can take on the first day of reaching an altitude of 12,000 feet, so after I had found my way back to the Barkhor I haggled for another rickshaw to return to the hotel.

Two luminous figures ran out of the lobby at me as I walked across the forecourt. Greg and Dave had made it to Lhasa. Their permit had arrived from Beijing and the man in Chengdu had waved them through with a smile, happy to see the back of these two troublesome foreigners.

Once in Tibet, they were anxious to set out immediately and had decided not to take the customary rest to acclimatise. ‘We can rest when we come back,' joked Dave as he charged off to the headquarters of the Tibet Mountaineering Association to check on the final arrangements.

It is said that a successful climb on Everest is as much to do with luck as mountaineering skills, and while no one was questioning Greg and Dave's capabilities, their luck was certainly running very thin.

Dave returned an hour later with the news that the Chinese Mountaineering Association had forgotten to inform their Tibetan counterparts, the Tibet Mountaineering Association (TMA), of the delay with the permit. Quite understandably, the TMA had assumed that the climb was cancelled and had already been out partying with the fully paid-up deposit and proceeds from the sale of the equipment that Greg and Dave had sent in advance.

The porters had all been sent back to their villages. Tang Chong, the manager of TMA, had decided that there was only one thing for it; the TMA would hold a banquet for Greg and Dave (naturally to be charged to the Canadians' expenses at a later date), in order to honour their arrival in Lhasa and cover up any bad feelings that may have been caused. Tang Chong had promised that the expedition would start off in ‘a few days', when he had recovered the equipment and found new porters.

‘It is always like this when you deal with those people,' said a friendly Tibetan voice in perfect English. The words had come from the smartest Tibetan I had met so far who was now walking towards us across the lobby. A stocky man in his early fifties with a winning smile, a good suit and well-groomed hair that all seemed to be growing upwards.

He looked at Greg and Dave. His smile disappeared as he spoke to them. ‘Go away and deal with it yourselves, it is not our problem.'

Well, perhaps not quite as friendly as I had first thought. Greg and Dave, exhausted from their day of frustration, didn't bother to answer. They trudged off to their rooms to make phone calls.

Harry rushed across the lobby to introduce me to the Tibetan.

‘Alec, here is Mr Jig Me,' he whispered urgently in my ear as Jig Me glared behind us at the reception desk. ‘You know, the DGM.
Head of Party A.
'

‘I know who
you
are,' said Mr Jig Me, turning to face me. ‘Welcome to our hotel.
Tashi delai
.'

He walked over to a receptionist and shouted at her in Tibetan. The lobby cleared of all the local staff who did not have a good reason to be there.

As Jig Me disappeared down the corridor Harry explained the bizarre system of management that exists in all the foreign hotels of Communist countries. ‘There is a
Party A
and a
Party B
. We are
Party B
; the foreigners. They are
Party A
; the locals. They watch us all the time. They know who we are, where we are, what we are doing, who we are with and even what we are doing with who we are with.'

The words of warning of the Vice President in Hong Kong echoed through my mind.

Although I had been cautioned of the Big Brother aspect of Party A, no one had told me about the Party system of management. It is not commonly encountered in management text books and nothing in my training or past experience had prepared me for Communist management – Party style.

Party B managers are not permitted to make decisions without the consent of Party A managers, and Party A managers may not take any decisions without permission from Party B. Each Party is dependent on the other and tied down by mind-boggling bureaucracy and endless rounds of meetings.

Party A control their side of hotel through a series of assistants, officially called ‘deputies', who are assigned to each of the expatriate managers. Every week the deputies report to the head of what is known in local Communist terms as the
unit
. The head of the Lhasa hotel unit being Mr Jig Me: Commander in Chief of Party A and Deputy General Manager of the hotel.

The deputies are known by the expatriates as ‘shadows' because they have the annoying habit of following your every move and being right behind you when you least expect them. They have two main purposes. Firstly, they have the task of learning all they can from the expatriate, so that eventually they can take over. The deputy earns roughly 3,000 per cent less than the foreigner he shadows – which is reason enough to do away with all the foreigners as soon as possible.

Secondly, the deputy has the far more important responsibility of ensuring that his foreigner is not involved in any activity that may bring disrepute to the unit. Political stability and following whatever directive the government has requested is infinitely more important than good business results. The only way to stay in power is to follow the Party line, agree with what is being said from those higher than you in the Party and make sure that those beneath you agree with what you have just agreed to from those above you. No one is allowed to stand up and shout, ‘But this is absolutely ridiculous!' That would take them out of the Party and hence out of power.

Meanwhile, Party B (that's us – the foreigners, in case you are as confused as I was when it was explained to me) try to get on with running the hotel efficiently, giving customer satisfaction and making money for the company. The General Manager liked to call the relationship between Party A and Party B a ‘marriage'.

It was certainly a stormy love affair and tensions frequently flew high. There was a famous incident in Beijing where a General Manager of a foreign-managed hotel was beaten up by his deputy while the hotel security guards cheered on. General Managers often resigned or were moved by their company head office because they could not work with their deputy.