June 28

Through My Eyes

Saturday June 28

( Still in Lhassa.)

"Some of the street urchins making the rounds on their bellies are doing it for people who have paid the children to do their prayers for them. The shops around the Barkhor are changing too. More and more non-Tibetan stalls are opening up to sell ugly Asian rip-offs of American products: Marlboro cigarette T-shirts, polyester pantsuits, and just plain, plastic junk. The Barkhor use to be the most exotic market in the world. You could buy a carved bowl made from a human skull, a necklace with a river of blue-green turquoise, and detailed ink encrusted printings blocks of Tibetan prayers in Sanskrit with images of flying horses. You can still see some of these treasures on display, yet the tinny loudspeakers used by shouting Chinese merchants and the annoying blast of Asian pop music are turning the magic and the mystery of the Barkhor into a tasteless mall. One of the more bizarre versions of Asian pop to be found in Tibet is the Chinese singer Dadawa, who in 1996 had an international hit with her recording of Sister Drum. The record is a repugnant Chinese aping of Tibetan culture as a novelty act. Dadawa even appears on the cover of Sister Drum wearing a Buddhist nun's robes.

It gets uglier farther down Tsang Gyu Shar, the long street that runs parallel to the Kyi Chu River. First, you enter a Chinese market. A woman in a straw hat, silk dress,high heels, long blood-red nails, and a gold ring on each of her fingers plunges her hand into a pail of live eels. Her smileless face stared at nothingness as she pushes the squirming eels into a used plastic bag. Overhead, a makeshift fiberglass roof casts an unhealthy green glow over faces and the buckets of half dead catfish and the crammed cages of half-feathered chickens and pigeons. It is one of the most depressing places I have ever visited. Joyless and cruel, the merchants spit and crouch in the dirt; then, tossing their cigarette butts toward the cages, they drink long mouthfuls of cold tea from glass jars.

Still farther along Tsang Gyu Shar there is a long line of Chinese brothels. These are nothing more than storefronts opening to the street. Inside fake leather couches face the window toward a wide sidewalk littered with candy wrappers and cigarette packages. Seated on the sidewalk in straight back kitchen chairs are prostitutes. They wear heavy white face makeup that becomes garish and utterly burlesque in the harsh sunlight. Their over-red lips seem to float, unattached to their pasty faces. Inside, groups of men and women loll on the sofas. They smoke and drink tea and stare at the street. On the walls over their heads hang large colored posters of fresh vegetables. Every brothel is the same: large glossy posters of vegetables. In the narrow hallway are a number of doors that lead to closet sized rooms. By the doorways, baskets of plastic flowers fit perfectly with the garish vegetable posters.

At the end of Tsang Gyu Shar, you can turn up Chingdrol Lam, the street that travels to the statue of Golden Yaks. These chunky yaks commemorate forty years of Tibetan "liberation" by the Chinese. On the way to the yak statue are more brothels. Pimps in oversized suits, large labels still proudly sewn to dangling sleeves,sit with their ladies. "Oversized" is the key word here : large double breasted suits, wristwatches the size of hubcaps, and sunglasses as big as windshields. It is a far cry from old Lhasa, the street market, the silk tasseled Khampa butchers, and the strange electric excitement and tradition of the Barkhor. The Chinese section of Lhasa looks cheap, crass and utterly tasteless: gaudy posters,plastic flowers, cheap sex, cheap architecture, cheap ethics. There is no fun and no faith in this part of town, only dying animals, fish and birds, and people whose lives seem not much better.

I remember returning to my room in the old part of the town after walking through the brothels and markets of Lhasa's Chinatown. Just as I arrived in the hotel courtyard, a hailstorm opened up and dumped a blanket of icy snow on the ground. Within seconds the laughing Tibetan staff of the hotel tumbled into the courtyard for a snowball fight in their heavy woolen and fur coats. They took handfuls of the snow and shoved it down each other's shirts as they shrieked and chased each other around like kids. Their enthusiasm and laughter were as explosive as the storm itself. I thought of the unsmiling Chinese merchant in the silk dress and gold rings who fished out the eels. I thought about the whores in the white makeup on the sofas with their silly pimps. As I watched the Tibetan snow frolics, these contrasting images said so much about the two cultures that now lived side by side, but worlds apart, in Lhasa. ( This is a stark contrast that shows the situation as it is there. It's tough reading. Still it's important for us to know. I thought we could learn more of the Tibetan viewpoint and then read another book. I was thinking of one about the Dalai Lama the spiritual leader of Tibet. We can read from Sarangerel's book tomorrow. That will inspire us! I promise to add more tomorrow...)

*( please click here to read of the day with me )

* This is once again from Art Perry's book the Tibetans.

Through my eyes

( Please see my spinning for you!.)

( Tahshi gentle one! I went up on the hill early this morning and tried to get as much done as I could. It was really hot up on the hill today! It helps to use the hose to soak your hat down every now and then. Groundhog is still gnarfing up the trees but now confines his attention to those just outside of his hole. I'm going to try adding more repellant and feeding him a bit of corn outside the tree area as well. Hopefully this will work until I've got something growing there that will interest him more. I've ordered some clover, it is tolerant of drought conditions and he can munch it to the ground and tear it up without ill effect. I'm hoping to finish off the fencing in the new planting tomorrow. The trees are growing rapidly in some parts of the Grove and have put on a couple of feet of growth on their branches in some places. I hope you liked our time in the solstice place together. In the picture I was actually doing a little Qigong on the raspberries because they'd been chewed on by the deer. Plants are after all energy beings of course so I figured it would help. We can practice this together along with the techniques I learned in California if you would like. It was almost midnight by the time I got the pages finished so it was a bit of a struggle. I've ordered the lumber for the staircase in front of the studio today and worked on our lotus blossoms a bit. I'd better get back up there again to get a bit more done before dark. I thought I'd bring this to you earlier to make up for last night. I'll bring a poem to you tomorrow of course!

And so, as always we'll continue two as one on to tomorrow

my one beautiful patient dream bright

long dark mane in sunlight

so for now I bid goodnight...Simjah Nahngo!)


	Through My Eyes Saturday June 28 ( Still in Lhassa.) "Some of the street urchins making the rounds on their bellies are doing it for people who have paid the children to do their prayers for them. The shops around the Barkhor are changing too. More and more non-Tibetan stalls are opening up to sell ugly Asian rip-offs of American products: Marlboro cigarette T-shirts, polyester pantsuits, and just plain, plastic junk. The Barkhor use to be the most exotic market in the world. You could buy a carved bowl made from a human skull, a necklace with a river of blue-green turquoise, and detailed ink encrusted printings blocks of Tibetan prayers in Sanskrit with images of flying horses. You can still see some of these treasures on display, yet the tinny loudspeakers used by shouting Chinese merchants and the annoying blast of Asian pop music are turning the magic and the mystery of the Barkhor into a tasteless mall. One of the more bizarre versions of Asian pop to be found in Tibet is the Chinese singer Dadawa, who in 1996 had an international hit with her recording of Sister Drum. The record is a repugnant Chinese aping of Tibetan culture as a novelty act. Dadawa even appears on the cover of Sister Drum wearing a Buddhist nun's robes. It gets uglier farther down Tsang Gyu Shar, the long street that runs parallel to the Kyi Chu River. First, you enter a Chinese market. A woman in a straw hat, silk dress,high heels, long blood-red nails, and a gold ring on each of her fingers plunges her hand into a pail of live eels. Her smileless face stared at nothingness as she pushes the squirming eels into a used plastic bag. Overhead, a makeshift fiberglass roof casts an unhealthy green glow over faces and the buckets of half dead catfish and the crammed cages of half-feathered chickens and pigeons. It is one of the most depressing places I have ever visited. Joyless and cruel, the merchants spit and crouch in the dirt; then, tossing their cigarette butts toward the cages, they drink long mouthfuls of cold tea from glass jars. Still farther along Tsang Gyu Shar there is a long line of Chinese brothels. These are nothing more than storefronts opening to the street. Inside fake leather couches face the window toward a wide sidewalk littered with candy wrappers and cigarette packages. Seated on the sidewalk in straight back kitchen chairs are prostitutes. They wear heavy white face makeup that becomes garish and utterly burlesque in the harsh sunlight. Their over-red lips seem to float, unattached to their pasty faces. Inside, groups of men and women loll on the sofas. They smoke and drink tea and stare at the street. On the walls over their heads hang large colored posters of fresh vegetables. Every brothel is the same: large glossy posters of vegetables. In the narrow hallway are a number of doors that lead to closet sized rooms. By the doorways, baskets of plastic flowers fit perfectly with the garish vegetable posters. At the end of Tsang Gyu Shar, you can turn up Chingdrol Lam, the street that travels to the statue of Golden Yaks. These chunky yaks commemorate forty years of Tibetan "liberation" by the Chinese. On the way to the yak statue are more brothels. Pimps in oversized suits, large labels still proudly sewn to dangling sleeves,sit with their ladies. "Oversized" is the key word here : large double breasted suits, wristwatches the size of hubcaps, and sunglasses as big as windshields. It is a far cry from old Lhasa, the street market, the silk tasseled Khampa butchers, and the strange electric excitement and tradition of the Barkhor. The Chinese section of Lhasa looks cheap, crass and utterly tasteless: gaudy posters,plastic flowers, cheap sex, cheap architecture, cheap ethics. There is no fun and no faith in this part of town, only dying animals, fish and birds, and people whose lives seem not much better. I remember returning to my room in the old part of the town after walking through the brothels and markets of Lhasa's Chinatown. Just as I arrived in the hotel courtyard, a hailstorm opened up and dumped a blanket of icy snow on the ground. Within seconds the laughing Tibetan staff of the hotel tumbled into the courtyard for a snowball fight in their heavy woolen and fur coats. They took handfuls of the snow and shoved it down each other's shirts as they shrieked and chased each other around like kids. Their enthusiasm and laughter were as explosive as the storm itself. I thought of the unsmiling Chinese merchant in the silk dress and gold rings who fished out the eels. I thought about the whores in the white makeup on the sofas with their silly pimps. As I watched the Tibetan snow frolics, these contrasting images said so much about the two cultures that now lived side by side, but worlds apart, in Lhasa. ( This is a stark contrast that shows the situation as it is there. It's tough reading. Still it's important for us to know. I thought we could learn more of the Tibetan viewpoint and then read another book. I was thinking of one about the Dalai Lama the spiritual leader of Tibet. We can read from Sarangerel's book tomorrow. That will inspire us! I promise to add more tomorrow...) ( please click here to read of the day with me ) This is once again from Art Perry's book the Tibetans. Through my eyes ( Please see my spinning for you!.) ( Tahshi gentle one! I went up on the hill early this morning and tried to get as much done as I could. It was really hot up on the hill today! It helps to use the hose to soak your hat down every now and then. Groundhog is still gnarfing up the trees but now confines his attention to those just outside of his hole. I'm going to try adding more repellant and feeding him a bit of corn outside the tree area as well. Hopefully this will work until I've got something growing there that will interest him more. I've ordered some clover, it is tolerant of drought conditions and he can munch it to the ground and tear it up without ill effect. I'm hoping to finish off the fencing in the new planting tomorrow. The trees are growing rapidly in some parts of the Grove and have put on a couple of feet of growth on their branches in some places. I hope you liked our time in the solstice place together. In the picture I was actually doing a little Qigong on the raspberries because they'd been chewed on by the deer. Plants are after all energy beings of course so I figured it would help. We can practice this together along with the techniques I learned in California if you would like. It was almost midnight by the time I got the pages finished so it was a bit of a struggle. I've ordered the lumber for the staircase in front of the studio today and worked on our lotus blossoms a bit. I'd better get back up there again to get a bit more done before dark. I thought I'd bring this to you earlier to make up for last night. I'll bring a poem to you tomorrow of course! And so, as always we'll continue two as one on to tomorrow my one beautiful patient dream bright long dark mane in sunlight so for now I bid goodnight...Simjah Nahngo!)