A Boy of China

by Richard Loseby

  When the boy saw me standing there in my blue jeans, thigh-length olive green coat and walking boots, he uttered a somewhat surprised greeting in Tibetan, then stuck a hand over his mouth and giggled at his mistake.

  ‘Hello,’ he finally said, having collected himself. ‘I am pleasing to meet you.’

  ‘I am pleasing to meet you too,’ I replied. ‘May I come in?’

  Tsongpa, as I soon discovered, was about ten years old and it was his job that morning to clean the head lama’s Hyundai. His intervention hadn’t been a premeditated rescue, just a timely arrival. I was certainly grateful nonetheless.

  I looked around and took in the buildings. On either side were some small houses separated by alleyways. At the far end, towering over the Hyundai, was a 20-metre-high red-washed wall; the top three metres or so were painted a darker brown and inset with large, circular shields of gold. Just visible over the wall was a golden roof, probably belonging to the main temple.

  Tsongpa led me down one of the side paths to where a group of older monks were gathered on some stone steps that led into a large meditation hall. They appeared to be in their late twenties and were quite surprised to see the young boy return so soon. One of the monks frowned as if about to scold the boy, but relented when I came into view. They all got to their feet and shook my hand, then for a while we all stood around not quite knowing what to do next. In the end, Tsongpa was sent off to make some tea and we sat on the steps and communicated in silence. I speak hardly any Tibetan, and they knew only a few words of English, but somehow we managed to communicate. One monk in particular was quite loud and raucous. When I performed a mime to explain how I had come to China and then Qinghai province, he bellowed with laughter and shook my hand vigorously.

  Tsongpa reappeared with a glass of hot tea, which tasted pretty good, and a piece of tsampa bread, made from roasted barley, which didn’t. I thanked him anyway and he beamed with delight, before he was tersely reminded that the boss’s car was still dirty. He scampered off in the direction of the courtyard to find a bucket and some water.

  From within the meditation hall came the clink of chimes and the tapping of drums, prompting the monks to ready themselves for prayer. The loud one pulled out a cellphone from under his robes and switched it to silent mode, much to the others’ amusement. Before going inside, however, he showed me a picture he’d taken with the phone’s camera. It was of another temple, set into a dramatic cliff face and named after Wencheng, a seventh-century princess. He was most insistent that I should visit it with him, though exactly when was unclear. I simply nodded in agreement as he hurried up the steps with the other monks.

  Departing soon after, I walked back down to the village accompanied by the sound of gongs and murmured incantations. I resolved to go to the Temple of Princess Wencheng the next day, with or without the monk. In the meantime, I would spend the rest of this day getting a feel for the area.

  Under a brilliant blue sky, I wandered the streets and poked my nose into all sorts of nooks and crannies. Sometimes I received an immediate welcome from those I encountered; at other times I was met with a steely glare. The very young usually followed me about so closely that I resembled the Pied Piper. If I stopped suddenly, they crashed into the back of my legs.

  At one restaurant where I sat down for dinner, I was watched attentively by a group of Tibetan lads in wide-brimmed felt hats and traditional Tibetan coats. They had movie-star looks, with high cheekbones and long black hair. In their belts they carried long knives in richly adorned scabbards. They were like armed peacocks.

  I heard someone call my name and turned to find Hua at the doorway. She came in and sat opposite me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the boys paying us even more attention.

  ‘I’m tired,’ she said.

  ‘Of Yushu?’

  ‘No, just tired from the trip. I’ve spoken to the others and they will be here tomorrow.’

  ‘How do you know?’ I asked, somewhat surprised, and she laughed at me mockingly.

  ‘Cellphone, of course.’

  I still couldn’t quite get used to the fact that even in remote regions like this there was now cellphone coverage. This wasn’t the China I remembered from my previous visits, a country isolated from modern inventions to such a degree that it still used steam-age machinery. The China of old had been cloaked in a soft mystique that had since, with the passing of time and the spread of technology, hardened into a much less romantic reality.

  We talked about Hua’s life in Shanghai as a child, before her father was given a teaching post in Xi’an. When her family arrived there, they discovered the school had been demolished to make way for a new hotel. Fortunately, Hua’s father managed to find work at the hotel, once it was built, and after many years became its manager. Hua had no brothers or sisters: she was the sole recipient of all her parent’s love and adoration, not to mention wealth.

  ‘Do you work?’ I asked.

  ‘I am student. But I do not like to get a job. I want to marry a handsome man and have a family. My father has already picked someone out for me, but he is boring!’

  Her eyes widened to add emphasis. She then cast a coy look over her shoulder at the group of wild, young Tibetans in the corner.

  ‘Maybe one of these boys,’ I suggested.

  ‘No,’ she said with a grimace. ‘I do not like milking yaks.’

  Later, in the thin night air, I lay on my bed trying to get back to sleep, listening to the sound of the cold river clattering by somewhere outside. It was 3 a.m. High altitude changes the air pressure in the lungs and always makes sleeping through the night more difficult, even if the body is exhausted. I’d often wake around this time and then have to wait for the dawn. At this hour, the mind plays tricks. The challenges I faced in finding the boy appeared bigger; the improbable started to seem impossible.

  I switched on a torch and let the beam play across the walls, finding a stain in the corner from a leak in the roof, a mirror on a nail, and a picture of Yushu in the spring, with alpine flowers growing profusely. The image filled me with a new hope and I decided not to lie there dwelling on my seemingly slender chances of success. The solution, I knew, was to get up and start walking. So I slipped on my clothes, laced up my boots, wrapped myself in my warm coat and crept silently out the back door.

  I’d discovered that the Temple of Princess Wencheng was a 40-minute taxi ride out of town or a 13-kilometre hike that followed the river. There was plenty of time to walk and so I decided to head in that direction.

  The river was there before me, flowing steadily, unwavering in its goal. I began to pick my way along its edge. It was difficult at first because there were houses and fences in the way, but once I was free of Yushu I was able to more easily follow its winding path. Small animals scurried into their burrows as I approached; eyes reflected in the light from my torch. Were they the eyes of cats, I wondered, or foxes, or marmots, or deer perhaps, drinking from the same river I was navigating by? It was difficult to get an idea of their size or shape; only their presence could be sensed.

  An hour passed, then two. The pre-dawn light filled the valley with a ghostly hue. I passed a small cottage built directly on the riverbank, but it was empty save for a family of mice and the smell of dung. Further on was an old swing bridge connecting a path that ran down from the hills to my left then continued on the other side of the river. I checked the ground around me for any sign of footprints that would suggest the bridge was still in use, but there were none to be seen. The wooden planks creaked when I put some weight on them, but held, so I took another step and then another. Quite soon I was at the halfway point and the bridge swung gently as I looked down into the water below. It was perhaps only a metre or two deep, no more I thought. If I fell, I’d only get wet. A little further on I came to the last section, where the planks weren’t tied down but simply sat loosely upon the cables. There were ten or twelve boards like this, spanning the last three or four metres of the bridge, all the way to the oppo
site bank. When I’d crossed them and reached the safety of dry land again, it struck me as odd that no one had bothered to secure them firmly.

  Soon the dawn light slid down the mountainsides and a blue sky replaced the early-morning grey. Because the path followed the river I stuck to it, wondering where it might lead. At times, where the river turned a corner sharply and a small but steep cliff was formed, the path diverted round and over the rocky headland, but for the most part the way was unerringly smooth.

  I lost track of time and simply trudged on, enjoying the solitude immensely, feeling at peace. I wondered whether, long ago, this same path had seen the passing of Red Army feet, fleeing the Nationalist soldiers or marauding Tibetans who would not have welcomed these strangers to their lands. The lucky ones would have worn boots while the less fortunate hobbled along in sandals made of rough twine. Whenever the former fell, through sickness or deathly exhaustion, they were set upon by the others and their boots were ripped from their bodies with hardly a word said. A good pair of shoes was worth its weight in gold in Mao’s military, even more so than a rifle. Not that the Communist forces were poorly equipped. On the contrary, they carried the latest weapons: German, British or American machine guns and ammunition, nearly always captured from enemy troops. What they also had on their side was youth. Their average age was 19, while their commanders were hardly much older, yet many had already experienced several years of fighting, after joining up in their early teens. Most came from the land: they were the sons of hardy farmers who could work all day on a handful of rice or a bowl of soup made from bark. They were slender of build, but stout of mind.

  The members of the Red Army were fighting not only for their lives, but for their homes and their country. They never called themselves ping, or ‘soldiers’, but used the term chan-shih, which translates as ‘fighters’ or ‘warriors’. This, together with their evident skill and bravery, created a mystique that played upon the minds of their enemy. Many Nationalist soldiers began to believe the Communists were invincible; often they would surrender without a fight or even, in some cases, change sides and join the Communist ranks. It was only the very best of Chiang Kai-shek’s army that could be trusted to follow orders. And even then they would return and tell stories of their foes, how the Reds ran at their lines with such fierce determination, their regimental commanders standing shoulder to shoulder, in the heat of battle, with the lowest rank-and-file recruits.

  The tiny Temple of Princess Wencheng, named after a Tang Dynasty Chinese princess who married King Gampo of Tibet and converted him to Buddhism, was tucked in against the side of a cliff just beyond a narrow gorge, which eventually opened out into a wide, bowl-shaped valley. Overhead, lines of colourful prayer flags bearing sutras, the holy scriptures believed to be the teachings of Buddha, stretched from one side of the gorge to the other and festooned the mountainsides. Higher up on the cliffs, small meditation retreats had been built into every available crevice, like eagles’ nests; the steps that climbed to them precipitously were hewn from the very rock.

  The river I had been following had created the gorge over millions of years. No doubt it had provided water for the 16-year-old princess when she paused here in about 641 AD en route to her wedding to King Gampo in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. It would also have served to cool the aching muscles of her entourage, who had already carried her for so long and still had so far to go. Clearly she was in no hurry, because the poor king had to wait three years for her to arrive; though once she did, Wencheng became a formidable force in Tibet, founding some of Lhasa’s greatest monasteries and temples.

  I crunched across the gravel path and came to wooden doors in the outer wall of the temple. They were locked. I banged on them, but no one came. It was then I noticed a pilgrimage path, or kora, leading up onto the mountain. Thinking that perhaps the temple would open later, I set out on the steep climb and it wasn’t long before I was high enough to get a panoramic view. I found a rocky ledge, worn smooth as silk by the centuries of passing Tibetan feet on the clockwise circumambulation of this temple, stretched out in the sun and, finally, fell fast asleep.

  It was the sound of voices that woke me some hours later. I sat up and saw three monks approaching the kora, quickly mounting its steps. There was a van parked outside the temple; soon after I heard the engine rev and it turned around to leave via a road through the gorge. When it had gone, silence filled the valley again, except for the chattering of the three men — or, should I say, the chattering of one monk, because the lead man was doing all the talking. As soon as I realised that, I recognised him: he was the same fellow I had met at the monastery above Yushu — the loud, talkative one with the cellphone.

  ‘Tashi dele,’ I said, once they were only a few metres below me.

  ‘Tashi de—’ They stopped almost in unison, then broke out in a chorus of welcome. There was much handshaking and backslapping, mostly from the loud one, whom I soon came to know was called Tenzin, after the fourteenth Dalai Lama. The other two were Dawa, who was a short, stout, bull of a man, and Sopa, who smiled a lot and wore a yellow hat. At their insistence I joined them on the kora, which involved an arduous hike passing many sacred sites along the way. At one point we had to leap across a deep ravine three times. At another we had to venture out onto a ledge and place the palm of a hand against a particular spot on a cliff face. So many pilgrims had preceded us that the spot on the wall bore the perfect imprint of a human hand, darker than the rock and incredibly smooth to the touch.

  About an hour and a half into the walk, nearing the end of the circuit, we climbed up to a high peak where I could see no further way forward. The path ended at a sheer drop, or so it seemed. But then Tenzin led us halfway down the cliff face to a ledge no more than three metres long by one metre wide. When we had all gathered in the same spot, little Sopa started to lower himself, feet first, into a small, dark hole at one end of the ledge.

  All I could think to say was ‘Bugger’.

  Then the lithe frame of Tenzin followed him down into it and soon only Dawa and I were left on the ledge. He gestured that I should go first, either because it was the polite Buddhist thing to do or because he was as concerned as I was about descending into a black hole in the ground. Dawa was no lightweight after all. I looked at the hole, then at Dawa, then back at the hole again. If I went first and got stuck, I would have Dawa to pull me out. Then again, if he could fit through then, surely, so could I.

  ‘After you my friend,’ I said, stepping back and giving him a hearty slap on the shoulder.

  Dawa dropped to the ground and inched his way into the hole, feet first, then sucked in his ample girth and was soon swallowed whole by the earth. It was like watching a man being devoured by a boa constrictor, bit by bit. Finally, just the top of his head was visible. Then, after one final wriggle, that part of him was gone too.

  The snag in my brilliant plan was starkly illuminated under the bright Qinghai sun. I was now alone on a ledge, more than 60 metres down a cliff face, with the only exit at my feet and absolutely no way of knowing what to expect once I was in that tunnel. With no one to say ‘go here’ or ‘go there’, I felt a crippling sense of fear. Spawned by doubt, questions started bouncing around in my head. Should I go head first to see what was down there, or feet first like the others? Following the example of the others seemed like the better option. But what if, I wondered, the others were now dead in a heap at the base of the cliff, victims of not being able to see where they were going? I got down on my knees and shouted into the darkness. Seconds later a voice came back, obviously alive, not too stressed, marginally impatient if anything, as if to say, ‘Come on, we’re waiting’. Relieved to hear their voices, I sat down, swung both feet into the hole and slowly dropped myself in.

  It was completely black inside, but I could feel the tunnel wall just a few centimetres from my face. The initial stage was steep and the surface as slippery as ice, worn smooth by the robes of passing pilgrims. Little effort was required to mov
e downwards; in fact, I was continually feeling for something to help slow my progress. I pressed my elbows against the walls and dug my heels into any rocky protrusion I came upon. Finally, the tunnel levelled out a little and I could shuffle along on my back. At one stage a glimmer of light appeared through a 30-centimetre crack in the wall that opened out onto the face of the cliff. Fresh air wafted through, though as I carried on it was soon left behind and the dark returned anew. I sensed the tunnel widening and thought I might be nearing the end, only for my feet to come in contact with a sickening sensation: nothing! No rock, no stone, just air. I had come to a precipice and my legs now dangled over it like noodles hanging from a chopstick. The only thing to do was flip over on my stomach, drop down and hope there was some terra firma below. Gripping with my fingernails to slow my descent, I blindly lowered myself and then let out an audible sigh of relief as my right boot reached rock again. Suddenly I could hear Tenzin laughing somewhere below, then a short while later a second voice, rich and mellow, which was Dawa’s. Twenty minutes later, having edged my way down and round an unseen bend and over some rougher ground, light appeared between my feet and the tunnel opened out into a small cave about two metres square. At the far end was a crack in the wall about as wide as a man — the source of the light. Never have I been so relieved to see the sun again! And I was happy, too, to see the smirking faces of Tenzin, Sopa and Dawa.