Tibet: Part I

So we departed for Tibet last Friday and took a 50 hour train ride to get there. We were 9 students in all. The train route is the highest in the world, and there are oxygen tanks above each seat. The train goes as high as 17,000 feet.

We sat next to a young 18 year-old Chinese guy who seemed to be running away from home. He spent 70 hours on a train to get to Tibet. He had no plans or friends in Tibet, just the urge to get away from home.

I wasn’t very worried about the high altitude because I had been eating this Tibetan plant that’s supposed to prevent high-altitude sickness. As we got higher and higher, I kept on thinking that I was feeling better and better. While my friends were complaining about headaches and sinus problems, I was surprised at how I had no symptoms. I was feeling so good that I decided to help out and try to find a tube to get the oxygen out of the tanks. My friend and I walked across the train until we found one of the stewardesses and asked her about the tubes. She told us we don’t need tubes and the oxygen would come out the next morning. She then started to bombard us with questions. First, she asked if I was half-Chinese. Then while she continued her barrage of questions, I started to feel extremely tired. I decided to quickly walk back to my bed and stopped in the bathroom along the way. I lost vision while I was peeing and spent a few minutes trying to get out of the bathroom. Several minutes had passed and I still had no vision whatsoever. I fainted a minute later right after I had gotten out of the bathroom. Thankfully, my friend had been looking for me and found me passed out on the floor. After about half a minute I regained consciousness and felt great. What a wonderful way to adapt to higher elevation. Passing out.

However, that was the only health problem that I had on my entire trip. Everything went uphill from then on. Literally.

The next morning I was spotted by this 6’4 Tibetan man walking around the soft-sleepers. As soon as he saw me, he started smiling and took a picture. He smelled pretty, pretty bad and looked like he hadn’t showered in a while. I tried to speak to him in Chinese and English, but I still got no response. About an hour later, he came in to our room and took pictures of all the white people in our group. He then started waving his tongue at us and finally went to bother some other foreigners. This must be the closest thing China has to a boogeyman.

Taking a train through China makes you realize at how big the gap is between different parts of the country. This is especially true between big cities and everything else. While Beijing looks like a legitimate city, so much of Western China looks like nothing has been changed since the 1960’s. Some towns look like they have stopped progressing since the 1900’s. It is a little ironic that the train and tracks are the most modern things in these small towns. I saw a father putting his son on his shoulder just so he could catch a glimpse of our train passing through.

Which is real China? The shiny new skyscrapers or the broken down brick homes? As of now it looks like the skyscrapers are being built higher and higher; many of them to impress foreigners coming to Beijing for the Olympics. The question is whether the rest of the country can keep up.

Check back tomorrow for more on the rest of Tibet.