Portrait of Hago Tenzin Wang Yal

The tale of my Sichuan travels is written as a continuous story and starts on the entry "In Chengdu" on Nov. 5th, 2008. For context and continuity, feel free to start back at that point and read on forward first if you have not already done so.

Meanwhile, Larry had run into Hago Tenzin Wang Yal (啊郭 邓真旺甲), owner of the Snow Land Tibetan Medical Massage Centre (雪城藏式按摩中心), a few doors down from our hostel.



"Well hello! How are you?"
"Larry! It's such a coincidence to run into you again!" We had just met him yesterday, and so he got to chatting with Larry for some time. Eventually, he started telling his life story.

"Years earlier, I had joined the army, and traveled all over China. It was then that I met my wife, a Han Chinese woman from Henan. However, as you know, I am Tibetan, and according to the traditions of my people, the custom was for all the brothers in our family to share one wife and live together, taking care of our family's lands. But I didn't want to follow the old ways anymore, and I loved LiXia (his wife). So against my parents’ wishes, I married her. The problem was, my mother would not acknowledge my marriage, and she tried to chase me and LiXia out of town. At one point, I was going to leave the country and stay with my grandfather in India. But once my wife got pregnant, my mom relented and let us stay, though we're basically shunned by our people."

He was only 28 years old, and had already lived quite an eventful life. The conversation continued, and Hago Tenzin Wang Yal explained why the mountainsides of Songpan were barren:

"We used to have trees at one point, but in recent years, people have been cutting them down without replacing them. So the last 7-8 years, the government has been encouraging locals to plant trees with monetary incentives. Unfortunately, such incentives are not having the desired effect. Instead of actually planting new trees, some of our people (the Tibetans), who don't know a lot about tree-planting, go to the forest and uproot some small trees. They transplant them to the mountainside right before inspection, for the sole purpose of passing the inspection (which allows them to claim the incentives, anywhere from several hundred to a few thousand RMB). The problem is, the trees are not well transplanted, and after the inspections, they soon wither and die. As a result, the very next year, they need to start transplanting new trees, only they go deeper and deeper into the neighboring forests. Not only do no trees grow on the mountainside, but they are destroyed elsewhere."

Larry notes that it is perhaps because of these experiences and family problems, that he often feels rather dejected. He has a broader prespective than most Tibetans here, and a lot of ambitious plans, but no one listens to him.

As Larry observed, what really needs to be done here is the implementation of this "learning classroom" idea. As with many things, the main issue is education; the people here do not have the proper perspective - they are limited to the learnings of local experiences around them, and have nothing to broaden their horizons, tell them of what the rest of the world is like out there, how other people in other places have handled similar issues.

Portrait of BaoZhu

The tale of my Sichuan travels is written as a continuous story and starts on the entry "In Chengdu" on Nov. 5th, 2008. For context and continuity, feel free to start back at that point and read on forward first if you have not already done so.

We soon met an affable older gentleman. His name was 寶珠 (BaoZhu, translates to "Precious Jewel," a somewhat peculiar name for him, even in Chinese), and he was a herdsmen in the Ruoergai area.

Larry started speaking to him in Sichuanese, and while I understood most of what Larry was saying, it was harder to catch BaoZhu's accent. He had a tendency to say, “Oh ja!” a lot. It was apparently the lingo up here, the way to say good, or to express some kind of positive affirmation.

What I could make out from the conversation is that he owns 200 heads of cattle, and is from Baxi, a town about 30-40km (20-25 miles) to the east of Ruoergai. What made him more interesting is he had the opportunity to travel around when he was in the army for six years, starting back in 1962. He went all over China, and thus his perspective was wider, less provincial.

Anyhow, he was explaining what it was like to live up in Northern Sichuan. The living conditions are rough, as the air is thin and dry, and there’s not much around. Because of the poor living conditions, many Tibetans also suffer from some kind of fairly uncommon disease, which causes their joints to swell uncomfortably.

As we talked, people gather around us to see what the commotion was all about. They were curious to see outsiders talking to locals. Another Tibetan stopped by, and Larry started to talk to him too, but it was apparent he did not have the same level of education or broadness of experience. He soon left us. Meanwhile, I was left with BaoZhu for a few minutes, and asked him a couple questions. He understood me and responded, but I couldn’t really make out what he was saying, so I just nodded and smiled.

Larry and Baba turned their attention back to BaoZhu, and Baba asked him why he wears his coat on only one shoulder. He replied that sometimes it gets too hot outside, and so he take it off partway, but doesn’t want to take it all the way off in case it gets cold again. Also, having an arm free from the coat makes it easier to do things with that arm. We though it was indeed a very interesting and potentially good idea, so we decided to try it ourselves:

Then we saw the idea wasn’t BaoZhu’s - we looked around, and saw almost everyone in Ruoergai was wearing the same style! We were amazed; it was hilarious how we did not notice.



Two guys walked down the street towards us, with half a coat on, dressed like characters out of a wuxia novel. A few women passed by, also dressed in the same style.

We asked BaoZhu if he wanted to eat, but he said he had already eaten. So we bid him farewell, and continued our search for dining company.

Portrait of Mr. Chiu

I met Mr. Chiu in the OCT (Overseas Chinese Town) Park, a theme park/residential area that houses man-made Shenzhen attractions such as Windows of the World, Splendid China, Chinese Folk Culture Village, and Happy Valley. He was pulling weeds out of the flower bed by the road when I decided to stop by and help him. I had been walking for over an hour and was going to see more of the park before heading back, but decided it was better to look for something else to do (I forget sometimes I have no schedule and can do whatever I please - this is one instance I actually remembered and was well rewarded for putting my plans aside).


Mr. Chiu would not let me help him initially, so we just chatted at the beginning. He first apologized for his poor Mandarin even though it was mostly intelligble to me; he said he hasn't spoken Mandarin in a long time, as everyone around him including his supervisor spoke Cantonese. Mr. Chiu was from Maoming, Guangdong in the South and had come to Shenzhen after his boss at the factory told him of the new opportunities here. However, the work is hard, and he is already in his early 50s. In the mornings he cleans the streets and works on maintaining the gardens in the afternoon until 6:10pm. He works everyday outside of national holidays, and earns about 1100 RMB a month, roughly 35 RMB (about $7 USD) a day, though he is given free meals and lodging. His wife also works in the complex, but their 3 sons are in Guangzhou.

I asked Mr. Chiu about his background, and he said that growing up, he did not like to study. Consequently, he only went to school until 3rd grade before he quit and helped out on the family farm. His sons also were not fond of studying, and had all quit in middle school. They enjoy playing mahjong, and, Mr. Chiu says proudly, are quite good players; however, perhaps they are not good enough, as they have lost much money gambling away their money. Mr. Chiu also said he wasted quite a bit of money on cigarettes, a habit he had picked up since he was 19 through friends. The supervisor gets mad when he smokes while he's working, but nonetheless he can't help himself sometimes.

I asked Mr. Chiu if he had dinner plans, and he said that usually he eats in the cafeteria with all the other employees of the OCT Park. The food there is quite terrible, but it is enough. I asked him what he liked to eat, and he said that sometimes if he has a bit of extra savings, he would buy some pork lard/oil to add flavor to his rice.

After talking for quite some time, I convinced him to have me help him weed the garden, as he was falling behind due to our conversation. We worked at it for some time until about 5:40pm, when he said he was going to call it a day. I invited him out to dinner, but he repeatedly declined me out of politeness and also because he felt embarrassed to be dressed in workman's clothes in a nice restaurant. I told him it was no bother - my shorts were not so clean either after all the gardening, and my t-shirt was nothing formal. We compromised in the end - I would buy him dinner but it would have to be take-out. So we washed the mud off our hands at the nearby water faucet and headed over to the plaza.

We asked around the various restaurants, but Mr. Chiu was clearly intimidated by the high end restaurants even when we were only inquiring about take-out possibilities. In the end, there appeared to be not too many take-out places in the area, and so we settled on getting some prepared food to go from the supermarket. I got a plate of cold noodles, 4 chicken drumsticks, and a couple cold drinks for the two of us, all for about $27 RMB ($4 USD). We ate together outside and chatted some more before exchanging phone numbers. He offered to take me to the subway stop via his bike, and so I pedaled to the subway with him in the back - quite an experience, due to my lack of experience biking with a load and with the local traffic patterns - where we parted ways.



On reflection, I think it's time I get out of my own world and do my best to really connect with people from different backgrounds, to understand them better. This reminds me to greet and be nicer to the people we often tend to never see or talk to - the garbage collectors, street cleaners, etc - and not take for granted their hard work in maintaining the various parks, city commons, etc. At the same time, such interactions may be delicate, and it is important to try to approach from a humble position in order to avoid natural class biases and unbalanced social interactions.