please grab my soap box.
Thursday, November 23rd, 2006Happy thanksgiving everyone, or at least every American one. I just hit the eight month mark on my travels a few days ago, and I really haven’t missed a thing about my country, (family and friends don’t count, I miss them very much) I mean the “american things” like turkey and pumkin pie.. yummy, I can almost smell the aroma, from grandma’s kitchen..
Well sometimes you have to improvise and I haven’t seen a turkey in ages, the closest I have come is a very cripsy chicken, in one of the thousands of chinsese restaurants here in Tibet. Tonight, I will have Yak meat noodle soup, and wash it all down with a Lhasa beer! Not in a Chinese restraunt, but a smoky Tibetan tea shop, heated by the yak poo stove in the center of the room.
It is very hard to always support Tibetans here, truly the Chinese have taken over.. everything. The shops, supermarkets, restaurants. F**ing Chinese, the evidence is so blatant. Wandering through the old quarters of the cities, the houses made of stone, then covered in yak poo ( I think) and then white washed, ala Potala Palace style.. the cloth banners that are hung on the eaves of the rooves flap in the breeze, along with the tattered prayer flags that are on every rooftop usually accomipanied by a Yak head, The Yak the symbol of life, for these people. Everything is used from the poo, to the hair, woven into blankets.
Oops, getting off track, the Chinese influence on Tibet is staggering. The wide boulevards, and sterile modern buildings, in contrast of the old city makes the Chinese parts look nothing like progression, it looks like a hostile take over. Not to mention the communist statues that seem to be in front of every national monmuent, reflecting pools with the Chinese Flags waving so proudly in the bitter wind.
I am saddened to see these flags fly as well next to the prayer flags on the tops of the houses. I hate to be so anti- anything, really I think subjectivity is important on every level. But in the short time I have been here it is very clear that what the Chinese have been taking out of Tibet, extremely outweighs what they are putting in.. (and I don’t mean millions of people, new roads, and commericalistic binge)
It becomes evident to me that they are putting the Tibetans in a situation where, drinking and gambling are the favorite past times of the men, the women, unable to get jobs working at the nice new shops are reduced to selling handicraft at a side street stall, or worse doing road construction(yes the women) the children are going to the Chinese schools, learing no Tibetan of course,and the little ones too young to go to school are in the streets begging from the tourists and little can be done. The people watch as the rape of their county continues at a rapid pace, with what to do? I have to metion the Dali Lama is still in exile in India, and the Panchen lama is a puppet of the Communist party, the real one is still a political prisoner somewhere in China.
Yikes!
And the main reason I needed to say this is beacause of the fact that it is Thanksgiving.
I am reminded of what my country did to the Native Americans, when I look around at the situation here, It looks like the Chinese may have even taken some pointers on our genocide of a race, and rape and pillage of a country for their gain.. Of course we cannot turn back time, but maybe it is not too late for Tibet.. I would have hated to have written only of the amazing experiences I am having here, and not mentioned the poltitical situation which weighs on me so heavily at times I am reduced to tears.
So all I can do today, instead of having Turkey dinner, is eating Yak soup with some Locals, and playing with their kids until my cheeks hurt, Of course there will be much dancing and chang-a-mo (yak milk sweet tea) drinking, as another yak chip is thrown on the fire, and the faces are distorted through the smoke but are still smiling..
Tibetan people will never stop smiling…
jessica