lhasa.

It's good to be king, before 1959.

Tibetans, we realized immediately, are much, much better looking than Han Chinese. They're also quite a bit sweeter. The children ran up to my (Dutch and German) traveling companions to practice their English. Everybody smiled; nobody hollered. It was warm, and the sky was a magnificent shade of blue. Lhasa, at first glance, seemed suspiciously perfect. Portola Palace, like a luscious, strawberry layer cake-in-the-clouds, holds an impotent, innocuous court over white picket pedestrian fences, perfectly-hemmed hedges, outdoor fruit vendors, cheerful cookie shops. Pretty, subtle Jankhor Temple, with its bastions of smiling pilgrims, sits swathed in brightly-colored prayer flags, amidst the hustle of the large, outdoor market, in which turquoise trinkets and furry hats are being gently hocked to an amalgam of Han, Tibetan and Western passersby. Pleasantly-voiced public service announcements, aired over sporadic gold megaphones affixed to bright white lamp posts, reminded us that dental care was a personal priority.

(I was glad, presently, that I hadn't emptied my pockets on outdoor apparel in Chengdu, the more loosely regulated Lhasa economy was host to plenty of handsome, knock-off North Face goods. Gortex + soft shell = 100rmb.)

We spent our first day touring the immaculate Portola Palace and strolling the manageable surrounding areas. It's a rather young, liberal American attitude, I think, to suspect religious politicos. In contemplating the China-Tibet issue, of which I really have very little information, I was trying to get a sense of why, to teach and observe a religion who preached immaterial absolution, the venerable lamas should reside in some severely bejeweled, five thousand rooms. The gigantic gold stupas, encrusted with egg-sized coral and turquoise hunks - which we would see throughout Tibetan monasteries - were being visited by Tibetans hunched with poverty. Alms were being shoved in the stupas' foundations. Paper money meant for the exiled lamas rained down from the upper levels of the Portola and rotted, untouched, in the gutters. Meanwhile, smaller alleys revealed a grittier Lhasa, where toothless men and dirty children begged anybody who didn't look Tibetan, presumably for more alms to stuff into the ostentatious altars. Hunks of hooved, raw yak meat hung from bloodied butcher counters. Flies gathered, nested. The stink of the yak butter smeared on oily prayer flags and altars clung to our clothes. And long parades of soldiers - with shields and automatic weapons and loads of cigarettes and bad teeth - trampled on withered fruit and loose alms that had presumably rained down from Portola.
Our motley band of five bilingual strangers hailing from a combined total of four countries and possessing, in addition to those passports, four additional unrelated ethnicities, afterwards dined together on spicy lamb chops, fried momos and Lhasa Beer.