frank’s big adventure

Hello all, Jesse here. I’m posting this on Frank’s behalf as he is inside China at the moment. Not every day you get to help defy a major Communist nation (other than by purchasing Beastie Boys music, of course).

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Hello everyone, I’m writing from behind the Great Firewall of China so I cannot actually access this site myself, but I wanted to let everyone know that I have safely arrived in Lhasa and will be taking a train into mainland China today.  It is a 36 hour journey to Xi’an.
Tibet has been amazing.  I was not sure what to expect from this trip beyond cold nights and high altitude, but it has turned out to be a wonderful experience.  We travelled the first day in a microbus up to the Chinese border climbing higher and higher and winding through river valleys and past tiny Nepali towns.  We stopped at a tourist hotspot where paying customers could bungee jump off a narrow suspension bridge several hundred feet above the rocks and water below.

Our group, assembled from various different countries and backgrounds, is about 25 strong.  Most everyone is in their 20’s and we’ve become quite the crew.  Every night at dinner I marvel that we’ve only known each other for a few days as the conversation flows as smooth as the Lhasa beer, which has been consumed en masse (and would you believe that Pabst Blue Ribbon has made it’s way into Tibet?).  As we all stood on the bridge at the border waiting to get into China, Jacob and I thought about the implications of entering a communist country and the whole idea of a nation clicked into focus in my mind.

I was humbled by the landscape.  The river along the border is fresh and quick, cutting sharply down from the mountains, and there is a marked difference between China and Nepal.  The stoic soldiers and construction of massive new buildings made the Nepali side look a bit like a cozy little shanty town.  My paper visa passed the test and we were across.  From the border we all poured into five Land Cruisers and begin to make our way over the rough, unpaved road to Zhangmu.

The Chinese government began to pave the Friendship Highway last year and already they have almost completed the entire 700 or so kilometers to Lhasa.  The road itself is an amazing feat, but to think of how quickly it has been completed baffles the mind.  There is no doubt that once it is done, more and more goods and people are going to be cruising through this previously remote part of the world.  We got caught in some traffic due to construction and once we got into Zhangmu a wedding procession stopped us again.  Our group got out and watched as the bride and groom, looking rather glum, waded through the throngs of drunken revelers.

The first night into Tibet, I went out drinking with some of the guys and as we walked from bar to bar the cultural differences between a night out in Austin and a night out in Tibet became very apparent.  Climbing the steps up to one of the bars, the booming folksy-sounding Tibetan music that had drawn us in from the street became louder and louder and pulling aside the drape of a door revealed a nearly empty room.  It was very dark and there was a little dance floor occupied by 4 or 5 kids that looked to be no more than 16 years old performing some archaic looking circle dance.

With a few beers in my system I was quick to try out my dancing feet and I tried to follow the pattern of steps and kicks as we spun in lethargic circles.  My eager attempts to introduce new steps into the fold were met with looks that seemed to say “Who do you think you are?” so I spun and hopped and jumped my way back to the guys laughing at my failure.  The song hadn’t changed in what felt like years so we pressed on to the next bar, which was just like the previous one.

The next day I was moving slow and we had a long ride ahead of us to Lhatse.  Our driver had decked out his Land Cruiser with fancy seat covers and a fuzzy rear-view mirror dog slip and he insisted on playing his cassette of modern Tibetan dance music.  The incessant beats were driving my brain into a wall and the frequent English samples of lines like “Whys it gotta be so damn hot in here?” or “C’mon party people, get sexy!” were not funny enough to make up for the endless 30 minute loop of music.  I vowed there and then that I would buy another tape at the first opportunity, no matter what it might be.