I Was An Honorary Member of the PLA!

One of the nice things about having Party Members in the friend and family circle is that you can do things that are otherwise patently illegal. In this case, a PLA commander who is a friend of the local tourism agent in Zhongdian took us out to a firing range and we shot machine guns at targets high in the Tibetan Plateau. I was not to be let out of that experience, in spite of the fact that I told them I’d never handled a gun before, and my uncle worked for the CIA. They probably know that already. There were none of those sissy one-shot-at-a-time locks on this gun, and those things are LOUD. And they throw shells everywhere.
This was a particularly bizarre experience after the morning’s activities. We went to Na Pa Hai where black-necked cranes overwinter, and there were still cranes there, despite the warm winter and early spring. Zhongdian is generally considered to be the Shangri-La of literature, and it is remarkably peaceful, pastoral and spiritual. In New Age reference, I guess it is a vortex. We also visited a Tibetan Buddhist Lamasery, and got to see the yellow-hat monks calling their charges to prayer. Yak-butter lamps were the only lighting, but the vivid colors inside the temple were well-represented in this lighting.
There is a great museum here that describes the botany, geography, and cultures of the area, complete with the expected sad dead and stuffed animals with inappropriately painted lips and eyes. The early Tibetans used human bones and skin to decorate their homes, and there is graphic detail about this. So, as the saying goes, “Thank you, Chairman Mao, for liberating Tibet.” David (who knows how Americans feel on the subject of Tibet) likes to tease me and sing the Thank You Chairman Mao song, which was crafted in Tibetan musical style and remains a popular song even now. I told him it was not my battle.
After the lake and the lamasery we had lunch with a Tibetan family, the local agent’s parents. They served yak butter tea, dumplings and various fried breads, and buckwheat flour which you use to make a paste that kind of tastes like peanut butter. Then on to the shooting range...
When we arrived in Zhongdian, we were taken to a “local flavor” restaurant where the waitress threw salt on the little fire pot that they place under the table to keep your feet warm. This was supposed to help with altitude sickness. I believe Zhongdian is over 11,000 feet. But the usual “gan bei” ritual followed, ameliorated by a group of Japanese mountain climbers who were full of themselves (well, ok, all mountain climbers are full of themselves) and ready to drink the place dry. The local agent put water in an empty bottle and used it for the many toasts that repeatedly came our way, and I was seriously worried about those guys going anywhere the next day, much less managing a mountain. Never mind, I ran into them later in a disco/karaoke bar and we danced the spirits out. (And when was the last time any of you danced to Funky Town?) It was the only way I could manage, having been abandoned by my host who went to send e-mails to the states. Imagine, though, disco dancing at 11,000 feet when you’ve spent the past two weeks in a cigarette-smoke haze (these guys are chain-smokers). It’s been an interesting trip, but I haven’t improved my Chinese all that much. David and Zhao speak Yunnanese most of the time, not that they don’t know Mandarin, but they don’t use it with any of their many friends. And Yunnanese is like Cantonese, I only “get” about 10 percent (acw 50 percent with Mandarin).
The ethnic Tibetans don’t speak Han necessarily, and for once, my guides don’t speak their language, so everyone reverts to English on the Tibet circuit, a happy change. I’m back in Kunming now, for one night, then on to Hong Kong tomorrow, and home the day after.
Zaijian