Tashi Delay. This must be the highest traffic jam in the
world. I’m sitting on a bus on Highway 318 at Kezi La, some 4400m in altitude,
just outside the Tibetan border town of Litang. We’re stuck here for a couple
of hours as the road is temporarily closed while a tarmac crew is at work
resurfacing a section of this part of this rollercoaster Sichuan to Lhasa
highway. Behind us the traffic is backed up as far as the eye can see – a mix
of trucks, buses and a huge number of SUVs carrying the new breed of Chinese
adventure tourist. This is the new
reality for the road to Tibet as ‘Shangri La’ experiences a tourism and
construction boom.
I started my journey in Kangding, the traditional border
town between the Han Chinese lowlands of Sichuan and the Tibetan plateau.
Statues outside the spanking new Kangding bus station portray the Chinese
coolies who used to carry heavy loads of tea on their backs up the trails from
Sichuan. This was the old ‘Tea Horse Trail’ on which tea was brought to
Kangding to be traded for Tibetan goods such as furs and jade. Nowadays Kangding
is still an important trading centre where Chinese and wild-looking Khampa
Tibetans still mingle on the streets. These days, however, you’re more likely
to see the Khampa cowboys browsing in Jeans West, or you might have a Tibetan
girl asking if you want an extra large fries with your fried chicken at the
KFC-clone Dico’s restaurant. Saffron-clad
Buddhist monks can be seen sizing up the latest iPhones in Kangding’s Apple
store, or sipping fruit smoothies from the many new food outlets lining the
main street.
On the surface, relations between Chinese and Tibetans
appear good. In the evening, hundreds of people of both races take part in a
mass Tibetan circle dance around the Kangding town square to the accompaniment
of traditional folk music played on a huge public video screen. The Chinese
take it seriously and have the dance moves down to a tee, whereas the Tibetans
just shuffle around, enjoying themselves and chatting to each other. The atmosphere
is one of innocence, tolerance and fun as young and old, men and women, sweep
around doing all the accompanying moves to tunes such as Kangding Love Song. At
the nearby Anjue Buddhist Monastery, authorities allow a large portrait of the
Dalai Lama to be displayed, below which the local Tibetans have placed prayer
candles and wads of renminbi offerings.
Below the surface, however, tensions remain. Outside the bus
station I saw a dispute erupt between Tibetan van drivers and municipal
cheng-guan inspectors over the issue of unofficial taxis plying for trade. It
quickly escalated into a shouting and shoving match and drew a large crowd like
a school playground fight, with onlookers jeering and goading for their
respective sides. For a few minutes it seemed likely to turn into a riot, but
the row then dissipated almost as quickly as it started when police hauled away
the offending driver in a car.
During my stay in the area I overheard Chinese making
negative comments about the character of Tibetans. According to my bus driver
they were “unreliable … lazy … hotheaded … prone to fighting … too much liking
for drink.” In my own experience the Kham Tibetans were still essentially a
wild and anarchic bunch, many still yak herders in spirit, and with their own
strong sense of identity firmly linked to Buddhism and Lamaism.
The differences between the races are highlighted on the
steep rocky crags that tower over Kangding. On these cliffs the Tibetans have
painted many colourful Buddhist frescoes and chortens. Around them, the Chinese
have erected electricity pylons and mobile phone towers. A similar pattern can be seen on the
windswept hillsides in the highland areas surrounding Kangding. Beyond the
4500m Zheduo Pass above the town, the Tibetans have planted a sea of prayer
flags that flutter in bands of yellow, blue and white in the strong breeze.
Above this are carved the words “Om Mane Padme Hum” in huge white Tibetan
characters into the hillside. Nearby stands a huge and incongruous Chinese
advertising hoarding for the Kangding Airport, while below there is a cluster
of prefabricated blue worker’s huts for a gravel processing plant, where rocks
from the riverbed are crushed in a massive hopper and spewed out on a conveyor
belt onto the fleet of trucks.
In Kham the resurgence in Tibetan Buddhism is more than
matched by a resurgence in major infrastructure projects run by Chinese
state-owned companies. There is construction going on everywhere – new tunnels,
bridges, roads, apartments and hotels. On the road to Kangding the town of
Luding used to be famous for its chain link iron bridge over the churning Dadu
river that was the scene for a famous battle between Mao’s Long Marchers and
the Kuomintang soldiers. These days the once sleepy riverside town has been greatly
expanded and is now overshadowed by a huge hydro dam that has created a large
lake, the surface of which is sadly already cluttered with a raft of plastic
and polystyrene rubbish from upriver.
Perhaps connected with this, on the other side of Kangding
amid the clusters of picturesque Tibetan villages there is a huge new National
Electricity Grid relay station comprising a massive field of pylons and
transformers. Construction has also transformed the town of Kangding itself.
The ramshackle ‘old town’ that sits in a valley astride a raging mountain river
is being supplanted by a completely new Hong Kong-style town of high rises that
has been constructed on a ‘green field’ site up a nearby side valley above the
original town. This literally-named Kangding New Town is located on the route
to the Gongga Shan mountain range, whose snowy peaks now overlook a whole new
community of apartments, colleges and grandiose buildings for the various local
government departments. This once secluded valley that once contained only a
scattering of traditional Tibetan houses and a woolen mill now has landscaped
gardens, roundabouts and sports fields.
All this construction requires a workforce and supplies, and
these are much in evidence on the Sichuan-Tibet highway. Route 318 is now a
nose-to tail stream of trucks and vans bringing materials up from Sichuan. Gone
are the simple old Jiefang (Liberation) trucks, replaced by hulking
eight-wheeler Foton heavy transporters, overloaded with everything from huge
pipes and pylons to boulders, logs and scrap metal. Many are driven by the new
breed of Tibetan truckies, who decorate their windscreens with pictures of
their preferred lama, and with floral paintings and prayer flags festooned around
the cabin. In contrast, the Chinese truckers have Transformer decals on their
doors and “For Hire” signs in their windows.
But trucks only account for about half the traffic on Route
318 these days. The traffic jam I found myself in on the Kazi Pass was mostly
made up of the new breed of Chinese tourist – the SUV adventurer. Clad in shiny
new North Face gear and driving anything from a late model Land Rover Freelander
to a Landcruiser, there are now huge numbers of newly-wealthy Chinese heading
out into the hills wielding their DSLRs and walking poles. Kham is now prime vacation
territory for many Chinese who are seeking an escape from the crowded and
polluted lowland provinces. These are not the coach-bound tour groups with
matching baseball caps following a
leader with a flag and a megaphone. The new Chinese tourists have their own
cars, and travel in small groups of family or friends. And more young Chinese
now travel independently as backpackers, and can be seen on the outskirts of settlements
along the Tibet highway trying to hitch lifts with their destination written on
Chinese characters on a piece of cardboard. Cycling is also hugely popular,
judging by the large numbers of Chinese cyclists to be seen sweating on
mountain bikes with bulging panniers over the high passes on their way to
Lhasa.
To cater for this new wave of tourism, the Kham Tibetans
have responded by converting their sturdy stone farmhouses into guesthouses and
‘backpacker’ hostels. The town of Xinduqiao above Kangding has become something
of an adventure tourism hub, with almost every house bearing a sign offering accommodation,
pony trekking and Tibetan food. The signage is all in Chinese of course – this
is a huge domestic market, and foreign tourists must account for less than 1%
of those travelling the Tibetan highway.
The change has been rapid and profound. Ten years ago I made
an arduous and uncomfortable trip to the three sacred mountain peaks at Yading,
near Daocheng. The only way to get there at that time was by an uncomfortable
and unpredictable three day bus ride over unsealed mountain roads from
Kangding. Accommodation was in wooden shacks and marquee tents that had been hastily
thrown up at the entrance to the newly established National Park to cater for
the initial trickle of visitors.
This year I returned to find that an airport had just been
opened at Yading-Daocheng – one of the higest in the world - and the influx of
visitors from the several flights a day was now catered for by a series of
flashy new hotels that had been built in Daocheng. At the once remote Yading, village
the shacks had been replaced with a series of upmarket Tibetan-style
guesthouses where you can access wifi while sipping on a 48 yuan cup of Yunnan
coffee. Entrance fees to the National Park are now set at a whopping 270 yuan,
which includes an obligatory shuttle bus, as SUVs are banned from the National
Park (I saw around a hundred 4WDs parked up in a special new car park set up at
the gateway town of Riwa). And yet despite the high fees, there are literally
hundreds of Chinese tourists swarming into Yading every day. The crowds waiting
to board the fleet of golf buggy-style electric carts that now run through the
park are so dense that it’s is almost impossible to swing a telephoto lens
without hitting someone.
In despair, I fled the hustle of Yading and tried to find
some tranquility in the more off-the-beaten-track region of Gongga Shan, near
Kangding. But even in the remote Yulongxi valley adjacent to this 7600m peak we
found the Tibetan houses had been converted into guesthouses and ‘adventure
centres’. The local Minya Tibetans are turning from yak herding to tourism.
Almost every house now offers accommodation, food and horse hire. Our young
Tibetan guide for the hike over the pass to the remote Konka Gompa monastery was
more interested in playing with his iPhone than talking about the local
features and culture.
On the bus back to Kangding we inevitably hit another
traffic jam. For four hours we were stranded in a ten mile tailback of trucks,
cars and other coaches on a remote section of road. Drivers and passenger
spilled out on to the road to smoke, crack melon seeds and sip from their
flasks of their tea. The cause wasn’t clear and there were no traffic cops to
be seen. Some said it was a landslip, others said it was more roadworks. We never found out. A young guy next to me
from Chongqing tutted and cursed as we
sat immobile for hours. He fiddled with
his phone and made the same call that everyone else made:
“I’m on the bus. Stuck in traffic … I’ll call you when we
get in.”
Then he muttered to nobody in particular: “Aiya! Even in Shangri-La there are too many
people.”
