Jan 2007

So, the new year has finally arrived. And, while it came with more pomp than I am used to, the circumstance was less than ideal for me. Don't get me wrong, I had a wonderful time dancing, chatting and doing a little drinking at the newest, and second, disco in Lhasa. However, New Year for me is always spent with my family or close friends, at home. Sounds a little old fashioned, I know, but it works for me.

This year, I spent it out. As I said, I was at the new disco in town, the Tang Club. It is a bit smaller than the other disco, Babila, the music is a little slower, making it a smidge difficult to dance to all the time, and since it is new, it is packed like you wouldn't believe. The dance floor is so small and the tables so close to it that you end up bumping people who are sitting, while you are dancing. The lights and the lighting are nice though, and overall it was a fun time. They have a giant screen behind the dj table that usually displays various colored lights, but with five minutes to go until midnight, it turned into a giant countdown clock.

I was home by 2am, and went right to sleep, something I do a lot--come home early and go to sleep. Anyway, it was nice, I enjoyed it and met some nice people, with whom I spent the evening.

All right, so the week between Christmas and New Year was a bit interesting. I have started teaching English to a nice man, a Khampa (meaning he comes from the Kham region of the TAR/China) who teaches Tibetan to children living in Shangrila. Yes, it is a real place, and I have heard it is beautiful. It is currently located in Yunnan province, China, but the people there are ethnically Tibetan. This guy I'm teaching is only in Lhasa for two months, so we have class 5 or 6 days a week for an hour or two, or three. He learns fast, studies, and is quite respectful even though I am a bit younger than he is.

We had an interesting discussion about tipping. It is not a common practice in the TAR or in China. In fact, when I was in China two years ago, a friend of mine tried to leave a tip at a fancy restaurant we had eaten at. However, we had just crossed the street outside the restaurant to visit a nice little teahouse, when our server came running out with money in hand to return the small amount my friend had left. The only places here that refer to tipping are the hardcore tourist places. They usually have a tip box on the front counter, but I couldn't say for sure how often people leave tips. I did hear that when Colin Farrell was in town, he left a 300 yuan tip at one restaurant, which was probably almost 100 times the cost of his food.

Anyway, the first week of teaching went well, minus two days. One day, I lost my voice. Why, I don't know. The only time I have ever lost my voice was when I spent too much time screaming on roller coasters, and that only happened once. The second day that teaching didn't happen for me was Saturday. During the day on Friday, my eye swelled up and was oozing. I won't go into too much detail about that. It was not better on Saturday so I asked Rachel, who has excellent Chinese, to go with me to the hospital to see a doctor.

It is an interesting point that there is no such thing as private practice here. You either visit the hospital, or you go without treatment. So, Rachel and I hopped in a cab at 10am and made our way to the military hospital on the other side of Lhasa. I had heard that it was the best, and Rachel had been there before with our friend Lauren. Earlier in the semester, my Japanese friend Minako had been hospitalized for what the doctors thought was appendicitis. In fact, they were going to operate, when it turned out not to be appendicitis at all. She was in the hospital for three days, and some of us went to visit her. I vowed then that I would never be sick enough to have to stay in the hospital. It was dirty, had public toilets that smelled horrible, and people were smoking all over the place.

I would like to say for the record, that the military hospital is not like this at all. It is a large compound, no cobwebs on the ceiling, minimal dirt on the floor, the toilet facilities did not smell, there was almost no smoking and the people were super nice.

So, we arrived at the hospital and asked a couple of people where to go to check in, since they were doing some moving. We found our way to the check-in counter, I paid 5 yuan to get a little gold card and a visit book and then we had our own personal helper. One young woman who worked there took it upon herself to make sure we had all the help we needed. She took us back to see the opthamologist, who was a very pleasant Chinese man. He took a look at my eye and then prescribed two different eye drops and an antibiotic ointment. Apparently, I had developed a bacterial infection, which seemed similar to pink eye. Rachel did a wonderful job translating. Then, we took the prescription to the pharmacy counter where we got the prices of the medicines, took the prices to the counter, paid, got a receipt, went back to the pharmacy and picked up the medicines.

I have to say it was quite a pleasant experience. I was surprised. Even better though, is that two of the medicines I received are in fact Western imports, and less than four days later, the condition is almost gone. Thank goodness.

In the way of random thoughts, there is one thing I have noticed since I have been here. It took me a while to figure it out. In China, when you leave, you say "zai jian" and so does the person you are leaving behind. In Tibet, there are two phrases, one for the person leaving and one for the person staying. The person leaving says, "ka le shu" which means, literally, "stay slow", but means something more like "stay well". The person staying says, "ka le peb" which literally means, "go slow", but means "go well".

A few weeks ago, I noticed a taxi driver say, in Chinese, "man zuo" but did not understand what he said (I was a little drunk and it was about 3am). Sometime later, I heard a Chinese woman, a sales clerk say the same thing, and it being the middle of the day, I finally figured out what they were saying. It has become customary for Chinese people here to say "man zuo" when a person leaves, rather than "zai jian". I bring this point up because "man zuo" literally means "go slow", the same as the Tibetan phrase. There is some degree of reverse cultural assimilation going on, and this is the first linguistic bit of evidence that has presented itself to show this.

Now that I have said that, I'm going to end this entry.