The Hotel on the Roof of the World (11 page)

At our table was one of the Deputy Directors of the Foreign Affairs Office, his translator, and several people whose jobs the translator couldn't translate. The translator, a young girl in her early twenties with a Tibetan mother and a Han-Chinese father, had recently returned from the Foreign Affairs School in Beijing, where she had been taught ‘diplomatic English'. This is a clever type of language which involves talking constantly to diplomats without telling them anything at all.

The National Day banquet was her first official function and as a Deputy Director of the Foreign Affairs Office was sitting at our table, she was especially anxious to ensure that all the foreigners at table six were having a good time. She smiled nervously at everyone.

‘Please enjoy yourselves. Help yourself. Please enjoy yourselves,' she repeated incessantly, with the frequency of worn-out vinyl.

Spilling over one of the chairs at our table was a rotund Tibetan who I had not met before. He wore a Western suit with an assortment of stains down the front, an unbuttoned shirt and a wrongly knotted polyester tie. He looked most uncomfortable. He sat silent, scowling through most of the party but his whole face lit up whenever anyone spoke to him. Our translator introduced him as a ‘living Buddha' and head of the Tibetan Buddhist Association. I suppose that being a living Buddha himself, he would be the right person for the job. He did once break a long silence in conversation around the table by proposing a toast to everyone for their hard work. He knocked back a glass of Lasa Beer and apart from a further statement that the hotel should have more Tibetan decoration, he remained more or less silent to the very end. He was by the far the most interesting person at our table and I wished that I spoke Tibetan, so that I could have learnt more from him, rather than just exchanging pleasantries through the stilted words of our jittery ‘please enjoy yourselves' translator.

Sitting at table eight were the Germans from the Lhasa Leather Factory. Chancellor Kohl had promised German support for a Tibetan project during his visit to Lhasa in 1987, and this unlikely business enterprise was the result. Three German technicians and their wives battled against the odds to produce high-quality leather products from Tibetan yak skins. It was an uphill struggle. Most of their work went into producing shoes and jackets for local use but a small outlet in the hotel provided some foreign exchange from selling yak skin trinkets to eager tourists. They had lived for a while in the hotel, before their own accommodation had been built at the leather factory on the outskirts of the city near the new army barracks.

Closer to the hotel were the expatriates of the two Lhasa-based charity projects or ‘NGOs' (Non Governmental Organisations) as they like to be called. Save the Children Fund from Britain and Médecins Sans Frontières from Belgium maintained highly active offices near the city centre. The numbers of foreigners working there varied according to project needs, but usually consisted of a small community of between five and ten staff from Britain, Holland, Belgium and France. The Swiss Red Cross was the only other NGO based in Tibet but their headquarters were in Shigatse, some 200 miles to the west. Unbelievable as it seemed to some of the hotel expatriates, who considered that there could be no town on earth more primitive than Lhasa, the Swiss couple stationed in Shigatse regularly came on trips to Lhasa to see the big city of bright lights and shops.

Overworked and underfunded, the three NGOs were stretched to the limits to push ahead with their Tibetan projects. Village schools were built, TB inoculations given out by the bucketful, local doctors were trained and wells were sunk in waterless villages. It was a rare example of aid organisations working together in providing meaningful help to the local population.

It was a stark contrast to the aid effort in neighbouring Nepal, from where stories regularly drifted up about the immense bungling of foreign aid projects. The entire economy of Nepal depends on overseas aid and the opportunities for corruption and mismanagement on a large scale are enormous.

We occasionally saw the effects of foreign do-gooder organisations in Tibet, who would sail through, handing out wads of money and Toyota Landcruisers to the first who asked. The only effect this had on the local population was that certain minor officials suddenly had enormous amounts of spending money and some very nice cars to go shopping with.

The expatriates of the NGOs in Tibet were frequently in the hotel, meeting visiting diplomats who were looking for suitable causes to give foreign aid to. They looked forward to the charade of the National Day celebrations about as much as we did.

The only foreigners who really enjoyed the banquet were the English teachers. Six Americans lived downtown in the harshest conditions of any foreigners in Tibet, teaching English for practically no salary except for meagre pocket money and biannual airfares to Hong Kong.

They were a peculiar mix of people. Some were genuine teachers with a taste for adventure but others had ulterior motives. It did not take long to distinguish the real ones from the fakes: their uniforms gave it away. You know those people who knock on your door and ask you if you've read Revelations recently? Have you ever wondered what they wear when they don't have suits and briefcases? Well the answer is dungarees and lumberjack shirts. Some of the so-called teachers had entire wardrobes of dungarees and lumberjack shirts, sported suspiciously sensible haircuts and smiled intensely at everyone in sight. A real give-away.

At the table nearest the door was a group of foreigners who I was sure that I had not seen in Lhasa before. It would have been hard to miss them. They wore a selection of dark purple corduroy jackets with flapping lapels over butterfly collars on nylon shirts. Flared drip-dry trousers of the non-crease variety draped over dirty training shoes. Their flat hair styles, sticking to the sides of their faces over long sideburns, gave tell-tale signs that they used the same shampoo as Heather and with the same frequency. But large bushy moustaches and round European eyes ended the similarity. I asked our translator who they were. ‘Please enjoy yourselves. We warmly welcome you,' she twitched at me for an answer.

I found out later, from Harry (who had also made enquiries), that they were six Romanians who had set up a beer factory in Lhasa, as an overseas aid project of the Romanian government. They were living on the factory site, beneath Sera monastery, and were about to return to Romania, having just completed the installation of the bottling plant. Green 70 cl beer bottles were imported from China, together with the hops and the machinery. Tibet provided most of the labour force and the water. It was another great leap forward in the modernisation of Tibet, this time with help from their modern Romanian comrades.

The words ‘Lasa Beer' appeared on the label, with writing in Tibetan and Chinese, surrounded by two jumping fish – an auspicious Tibetan symbol. This led to many a suggestion about the contents but despite the flavour varying from bottle to bottle, the beer sold well, particularly to Khampas. It was predominantly watery, sometimes with a hint of a noxious chemical, perhaps a detergent concentrate, and occasionally it was so strong that it knocked you off the kebab stand. We tended to drink it with the excuse that we were supporting the local economy, and all the expatriates at table six requested a Lasa Beer from the waitress who came to take our drinks order.

Suddenly, there was an ear-piercing screech in the banquet room. The loudspeaker behind my chair had leapt off the floor as Mrs Chen shrieked into her microphone. We all turned to Derek, the Chief Engineer. He always needed a push to get him into action and had a store of unimaginative excuses for not being able to do things.

‘There's nothing wrong with it,' he shouted across the table. As Derek was hard of hearing from working most of life in ships' boiler rooms it was no surprise that he found the noise level bearable. However, the rest of us had no intention of spending the evening sitting inches away from the interpreter's amplified squawks, so he reluctantly agreed to adjust the volume. Derek waved to one of his Engineering Department staff who was standing by the doorway in the opposite corner of the room. He pointed to the loudspeaker and made a turning motion with his hand to indicate that the volume needed to be lowered. The man in the Engineering Department uniform waved back to Derek, nodded, and ran out of the door.

Derek, who liked to tell anyone who had the misfortune to be stuck in one of his monologue conversations, that all of his staff understood him perfectly, was somewhat put out by this. ‘He must have gone to get something,' he stammered.

The volume remained at full blast.

Mrs Chen, a Han–Chinese lady from the Foreign Affairs Office who they wheeled out every year for the occasion, continued her preamble to the top table introductions, unaware of the decibel level at table six. She used the standard Chinglish phrases for official parties: ‘We warmly welcome all our guests. We warmly welcome you to enjoy yourselves. We warmly welcome you to celebrate.'

Her peculiar pronunciation and an unfortunate lisp led to the ‘Tibet Autonomous Region of China' becoming the ‘Tibet
Anonymous
Region of China', and this curious turn of speech, interspersed with ‘We warmly welcome you to your comings' was well received by the foreigners.

Derek was relieved when the engineer he had sent to turn the volume down reappeared by our table. ‘You see,' he shouted, ‘I don't need to speak Chinese, these people understand me.'

The man from the Engineering Department handed him a microphone, a length of electrical cable and a spare plug socket. ‘No, no, that's not what I wanted. Noise. Down. Turn it down!' He pointed to the loudspeaker. A waitress approached our table, straining under the weight of a tray fully laden with Lasa Beer bottles. Seeing the commotion where Derek was sitting she carefully made her way around the back of the table, concentrating on keeping the tray steady just as the General Manager had shown her. Stepping forward to lower the tray onto the table, her left foot came down squarely on the electrical cable that led to the loudspeaker. A noise similar to the crackle of gun-fire shot from the sound system as the plug snapped out of its socket and our loudspeaker was silenced.

It was too late for Derek to stop the words coming out of his mouth. His exclamation of ‘TURN IT DOWN!' coincided precisely with the moment of silence created by the unplugging of the loudspeaker and a pause in the introductions from Mrs Chen. All heads, including the Vice Governor's, turned to our table and a mortified Chief Engineer shrank in his chair. The military commanders glanced over their shoulders and the General Manager kept a fixed angry stare at our table.

‘Please enjoy yourselves,' our translator continued as if nothing had happened. The living Buddha smiled and the startled waitress poured out Lasa Beers as the head table introductions resumed.

Mrs Chen read out the name of each of the guests at the head table and the VIP stood up to return a polite clap to the applauding crowd. The situation was complicated by the audience not knowing whether to applaud after the Chinese introduction, or after the English introduction. The interpreter didn't know whether to wait for applause and then translate, or translate and then hope the applause would follow. The result was a table-load of embarrassed VIPs who received a constant trickle of feeble applause, rendering it impossible to hear exactly what each of their titles was. Snippets of translation could occasionally be made out over the din: ‘The Deputy Chairman of the Standing Committee for Internal Affairs of the Tibet Anonymous Region… Please warmly welcome the coming of the Vice Chairman of the Political Bureau of the Party of the Tibet Anonymous Region…'

When the introductions were over, the speeches began. They were always terrific. A copy in English would be circulated to the foreigners present so that we didn't have to rely on the spoken words of the interpreter to understand the wonderful statements being made. Chinglish, the pidgin English version of Chinese and English combined, is funny enough as a language but Communist Chinglish is an art form in its own right. It is an extraordinary language that ignores negatives, conveniently forgets atrocities and speaks only of good things. Figures, particularly exceeded quotas and increased production percentages, are scattered liberally throughout Communist Chinglish to add scientific weight to the language and to prove beyond all doubt that the truth is being told. Mastering this language is even more important than learning Mandarin Chinese for the foreigner who wants to succeed in China. Who would have thought of calling the armed invasion of Tibet the ‘peaceful liberation', or describing the gunning down of innocent Tibetans in the Barkhor as: ‘winning great victory against the splittists in the anti-split struggle?'

No one dares to laugh out loud and the Chinese and Tibetans all nod their heads in agreement with what is being said. They do not even listen to the words. The speeches are always the same and as they are not permitted to disagree with what is being said, it is better just to sit there quietly and go along with whatever the speech writers are saying.

The most powerful politician in Tibet, Mr Mao Ru Bai – the Vice Governor – took the stage to deliver the National Day message. Mao Ru Bai was an articulate speaker and had the baby-kissing appearance that would even have made him a successful politician – if voting had been necessary to be in power. His receding hairline and permanently shining forehead gave him an unusually distinguished appearance compared with his political peers who always looked as if they had just come off the back of a yak. He smiled continually and oozed understanding and compassion, even when uttering harsh words about the
splittists
. He gave short bursts of speech and glancing across at Mrs Chen, twitched his cheekbones while pausing for her to translate.

The start of the speech never altered: ‘Cordial greetings to all the workers, peasants, herdsmen, intellectuals, cadres, soldiers and to Tibetans residing abroad.'