Man Man Zou

It’s our last night in Dege, a small town right on the Tibetan border. We took a multi-day bus just to come here to see a famous 270 year old Tibetan printing press. The printing press holds a majority of all the important Tibetan literature that exists. There are tons of workers who, by hand, press thousands of ink rubbings a day and bind them into books.

We had to travel for three days from Chengdu to get to Dege. We caught the bus to Dege from Kangding, which is only 5 hours away from Chengdu. We stayed in Kangding for two nights because it was a comfortable Tibetan town. The town seems to be catered to the somewhat adventurous Chinese tourists, which meant things were cheap (our nice hotel was 40 Yuan ~ 5 bucks), and we still had all the conveniences of a large town. It rained and snowed the whole time we stayed in Kangding, so we made a few more visits to the outdoors store to stock up on some more things. The stuff in the outdoors shops in Kangding was often half the price of that in Chengdu- doh!

While in Kangding, we walked out of town to Nanwu, a small lamasery. It was under construction, which meant there were lots of people at work, and we were free to roam the insides of the buildings and take photos without bothering anyone.

From Kangding, we had to buy a 2-day bus trip to Dege. On the first morning of our 2-day bus, we woke up early to be the first people on the bus for a seat at the front. Whenever we buy bus tickets, we’re almost always the first people to buy them and we are assigned seats 1 and 2. But when it comes time to take the bus, some people randomly decide whether or not it’s a ’seat yourselves’ kind of thing. We’ve had bad experiences with this in the past- thinking we’re ok because we have seats 1 and 2, but when we get on someone has taken our seat, claiming it’s a ’seat yourself’ bus. Other times, when we seat ourselves, people come on and tell us to move to our ‘assigned seats’. It really sucks, so now I’ve turned into a psycho and I buy tickets early and get there early, fighting anyone who gets in my way. We just can’t fit our legs into the seats that aren’t at the front.

With our front seats secured and the bus ready to go at 7:30am, I couldn’t believe that there were only several people on our bus. Usually when that happens, the bus sits in the station for hours waiting for more people to come, and then rolls through town at about 2km/hour trying to find more passengers- right down to the last seat. But we were off in record time, and for the first part of our trip, our driver didn’t even stop for most of the people along the road trying to flag down the bus.

The snowy, mountainous scenery was awesome- so nice that I wasn’t even bothered by the fact that we were driving at an average of 20km/hour. In the front of our bus was a meter that I couldn’t help but stare at from time to time. It told us how many hours the bus had been running, how fast (or slow) we were going, and the total kilometers we had driven. For the first day, we drove for 9 hours (but were on the road for about 12 hours), and we went about 200km. We had a lot of delays because of other vehicles. Whenever a truck decided to chain up for the snow, it would just stop in the middle of the road and block all the other traffic. I don’t know why our bus driver was so patient with things like this, but then the second we all wanted to stop for a pee, he would start honking the horn less than a minute after we stepped off the bus.

In the evening, we made it to Luhuo where the bus stopped for the night. Since it was already dark, there wasn’t much to do except eat barbequed veggies outside our hotel. One big highlight of the famous spicy Sichuan food is the barbequed food- I could eat it everyday if I had my way. Another bonus of eating bbq is that we get to sit outside on the streets and draw big crowds of staring people. On this particular night, we met a 21-year old Tibetan girl who really wanted to come back to Canada with us. She wanted to marry Mark’s older brother (sorry Joe!). I said she was probably too young, but her mother cut in and told me that she’s the perfect age. It was a great conversation, I was only able to end it by saying that I’m not going to Canada for a long time.

The next morning, we picked up a few more passengers and rolled out of the bus station 20 minutes late. It was pretty cold and frosty on the unheated bus until the sun came up. Later in the afternoon, we stopped in a town and filled our bus up completely with more passengers. Then about an hour later we came to another town for lunch, and found at least a dozen more people fighting to get on our bus. The driver let all of them on, filling the aisles with boxes and bags for seats. Some people even stood for the remaining five hours of our trip.

The last leg of the 2-day bus to Dege was definitely the most exciting. Our bus slowly climbed up a mountain, passing overturned trucks and stalled vehicles on the snowy road. We climbed for at least an hour until we came to the Chola pass, at an elevation of 5050m! That was very exciting for me, as it’s the highest I’ve ever been. Previously, the highest I had been was the 4100m mountain on Borneo-Malaysia that Mark and I hiked up.

Since mountains are just one of the few things that are sacred to Tibetans, some of the Tibetans on our bus shouted joyfully and threw prayer paper out the window as we were going over the 5050m pass. I was desperately trying to take a few photos out the window of the Tibetan flags at the pass, when our bus driver decided to stop and chain up. What luck! We were all able to get out and enjoy the thin, cool air at over 5000m. After that, we inched our way down the mountain. The road was just long switchbacks all down a cliff.

We arrived in Dege in the late afternoon and walked around to see some of the lamaseries. At first I was shocked at how comparatively unfriendly the town is. I didn’t hear a ‘Hello!’ for quite a while, so I was worried that Dege was overtouristed (even though we haven’t seen another tourist for days). As soon as we neared the big lamasery though, things changed and we were soon hanging out with the coolest, friendliest people in China.

We walked up to the monk school, and they were all gathered together giving each other exams. The monks test each other for their knowledge of the many sutras they need to memorize. I also saw this in another Tibetan town, but the monks here in Dege were much more welcoming. They were very friendly, and even showed off for the camera. The way they examine each other is entertaining. The examinee sits on the ground, and another monk stands in front of him and asks him questions. Each time he asks a question, he makes a huge clap in front of the examinee’s face. It’s very strange, but the clapping keeps everything lively as some monks make giant claps that almost look like they’re going to hit the examinee.

The next day was the moment we were both waiting for and the only reason we took a 3-day long bus ride- the Bakong Scripture Printing Lamasery. We walked up to the lamasery mid-morning, and just as we were approaching the open door at the entrance, a man jumped in front of us and closed it. hmmm. Mark asked him where we can buy tickets. His answer was a very rude “No, you can’t”. Mark then patiently asked him what time we can come back to enter the lamasery. His answer was the same: “NO”. (This was all spoken in Chinese, by the way). Mark kept trying to ask some more questions and kept getting the same negative answers. Since I have no patience for this kind of thing and I would have been yelling by this time, I didn’t say anything. Then I saw a sign on the table saying “Purchase Tickets”. I held it up and pointed to it, and still got a big fat NO for an answer. We tried asking why, and he just kept looking away, ignoring us and pretending we weren’t there. I was considering knocking him down and just walking in myself, but instead we plunked ourselves right at the entrance. There was no way we were going to give up.

I remembered a meeting a French tourist who said he went to Dege, and the printing lamasery was closed and he didn’t know why. The book says that it’s open everyday except holidays. It wasn’t a holiday. I knew something sketchy was going on- Something stupid, something very China-like. I started to get upset. A kid who had just been playing contently nearby decided to start begging for no reason in particular. I got even angrier. Eventually the water works started. I couldn’t believe that we had traveled on a crap road in a crap bus for three days for nothing. So I sat outside the printing lamasery, pissed off at the world.

Finally, a guy opened the door and started talking with the arsehole guy. After talking about it for a while, they decided to let us buy tickets and the arse took us in on a tour. Because none of the BS we just went through made any sense, I was so mad at this point that I just kept ignoring the arse whenever he told us to come along. I frowned at him, walked away from him, and did the best I could to disrespect him. I enjoyed seeing the printing press so much, and was lucky that he left me alone when I took photos of the people at work, since I heard from other tourists that photography is not allowed. I guess that was one good thing that came out of it- if we had been on friendly terms, I might have asked first if photography was allowed and been denied.

There were perhaps 25 or so guys working at the printing lamasery when we were there. They worked in pairs. An older guy held the rubber steady and added ink or washed the rubber off when needed, while a younger guy quickly threw a piece of paper over the rubber and rubbed the ink on. The younger guys moved so quickly, and held such a groove with their movements, that they almost looked autistic. They were very friendly, and one of the helpers was so interested in Mark’s little digital camera, that he took it around and made a recording of the workers.

Upstairs in the lamasery were two friendly old guys printing fabric prayer flags, which Tibetans use to decorate just about anything- fences, bridges, mountains, water sources, lamaseries, etc… In another area of the lamasery were a few more guys binding the books together, and downstairs were two older men mixing the ink for the press. The Bakong lamasery was such an awesome place; I just don’t know why they had to make it so difficult to get in.

After visiting the printing lamasery, I was still angry and I decided to make myself feel better by circling around the lamasery dozens of times with many other pilgrims doing the same thing. Circling around the lamasery, or walking any religious Tibetan circuit is called a kora. I always have a great time on a kora, since the Tibetan pilgrims are always interesting. They love to see my eyebrow piercing, and most of them stop for a big look (or touch), and then smile or tisk at it. It’s great for me because it always gets me a good photograph in return for their gawking. While the Tibetans are on a kora, they pray with their prayer beads, twirl their small prayer wheels, or prostrate on the cold ground.

In Dege, I had the absolute best time with the pilgrims there. Other places weren’t nearly as welcoming to tourists- perhaps it was so great because there were no other tourists in Dege. On the circuit, we walked past a big group sitting and resting. I took their picture, and then they asked us to sit down. I said that we didn’t want to sit down because we wanted to continue the kora. So all 15 of them stood up, and followed me around the whole circuit. It was almost a little overwhelming having so many followers! They were very cool though. They all wanted their photos taken, and kept commanding me to take photos of other unsuspecting people, which of course I couldn’t turn down.

One surprising thing that we often saw around lamaseries and chorten were dead cats… I really don’t know why, and I can’t begin to guess why.

So now that we’re right on the Tibetan border, we’re going to explore some more little Tibetan towns (though not in Tibet, since we’re not allowed to go there) before we return back to the China life.

I made a 3-minute video of our trip to Dege (13mb)- Footage includes the road up over the 5050m pass, the Dege Bakong Printing Lamasery, and the monks and pilgrims around the lamasery.

Update:
Days: 77
Photos taken: Approx. 7300 photos.
Money spent: We’re averaging $25cdn each per day.
Items lost: my REAL Nikon battery for my D70- we left it in Jiuzhaigou.