Route 312 (cont.)

Following my earlier post on Route 312 some of Gifford' stories are intriguing.

A Tibetan teaching Tibetans Chinese

Gifford met a young Tibetan, Xiao Lin, who was returning from training in Lanzhou to his hometown, south of Xiahe, in Tibet and to teach the Chinese language to Tibetan kids.

'You are a Tibetan. But you have been raised in the Chinese system. And now you are returning to teach the language of what many Tibetans call your "oppressors' to your own people. Doesn't that make you uncomfortable at all?' Gifford asked.

'I have no choice,' Lin replied, who was among the top students in Tibet to enter one of the best universities in western China, 'The only way to say I'm not going to take part in this is to not learn Chinese and reject the whole Chinese system. But that would condemn me to poverty. You can never get a good job and improve your living standards if you do that.'

'Of course our culture is being diluted,' he admitted, 'The need to learn Chinese, the influx of more Chinese people. And that is sad. But it is not being completely diluted. There are some non-negotiables.' What are they? 'For instance, I would never marry a Han Chinese girl. And my Buddhist faith is something I will never give up,' he added. What about the lifestyle? Tibetans are nomads.

'First, there is nothing romantic about being a nomad. It's a very tough life. Second, I think nomads realise there is no future as nomads. That is simply today's world. The modern world. The globalised world. I'm not sure we can completely blame the Chinese for that.' (p. 172-3)

One-child policy

Gifford has two children. Unfortunately, it seems to be an offence to some.

'It's not right to have more than two children,' a woman, who worked in government family planning, listening to his conversation with his neighbour on a bus said.

'what happens if you find that there are women who are pregnant who shouldn't be pregnant?'Gifford asked.

'We try to persuade them to have an abortion.' 'And if they don't agree?' 'We have to fore them. You know. There are too many Chinese people.' 'But how do you force them? What if they won't go?' 'if she will not come voluntarily, she is taken to the clinic by force.' 'But what if there is a woman who is eight months pregnant, and she shouldn't be?' 'She is...' The woman makes an action with her hands in front of her stomach, an action of flushing something away.

'But that's a living child, that could be born and survive.' 'There are too many Chinese people.'

'But don't you find it...a bit brutal?' 'It's necessary. There are too many Chinese people.'

'But how do you actually do it? How do you kill an eight-month-old baby?' 'You inject into the mother's uterus, and that kills the child.' 'But she still has to give birth to the child, doesn't she?' 'Yes. Sometimes the child doesn't die in the womb and is still alive when it is born. But, we leave it...and it...' to drown the infants in buckets of water. (p. 189-193)

Facai

Travelling along the desert area near Qilian Mountains on a bus, Gifford looked out of the window towards the open scrubland of the desert separated by a wire fence and found small groups of people walking around looking at the ground, and occasionally stooping to pick clumps of greenery from the dry desert earth. They're picking facai, which is a type of edible grass to be sold to Hong Kong. 'The name of the plant sounds like the words for "get rich" in Cantonese, so the Hong Kongers like to eat it. They are very superstitious.' A young seed salesman explained.