Sichuan-Tibet Episode Four: The Horse Festival in Litang
Having made up my mind to go to Litang, I set out in Zhongdian to discern two logistical elements: How long would the journey to Litang take, and would it be possible to find accommodation in Litang during its popular annual horse festival?
Responses varied wildly. Everyone said the journey to Litang required two days, and that I would have to spend the night in a transit city called Xiangcheng. But nobody was certain how long it would take to get to Xiangcheng, or whether the road was in passable condition given the recent rainy weather. Some estimated the bus to Xiangcheng would take six hours, while others said twelve. Some assured me that we would have to stop to clear debris from the road, while others said no such interruptions would occur. The bus to Litang would take four hours. Or maybe eight. One person heard from someone else that once it took twelve. Clearly, it would be difficult to pin down precise information on the nature of this trip.
In any event, I was certain I would be without creature comforts for awhile. During my last day in Zhongdian, I indulged in whatever Western culture I could find. My breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee. I ate a pizza for dinner, at the same restaurant. I spent two hours horsing around on the Internet, catching up on the latest news, gossip, and sports from distant America. At night, I wandered into a bar populated by Zhongdian's small expat community, where we listened to Frank Zappa and discussed politics. I even spotted a Rancid poster.
Rancid Poster in Zhongdian's Raven Bar
The journey to Litang, in the end, lasted two days. First, there was a cramped eight-hour bus trip to Xiangcheng, a city on the Yunnan/Sichuan border most accurately described as "grim". After one night there, I boarded a pre-dawn bus with a few other foreigners, a gaggle of Tibetans, and various livestock to Litang. Our arrival was delayed by our bus drivers' inability to get us out of the Xiangcheng bus station without getting stuck, an ordeal that delayed us by more than an hour. Apparently, having a muddy lot serve as a bus station has its disadvantages.
Bus stuck in mud at Xiancheng "Bus Station"
Litang, a city of 50,000 people in west-central Sichuan, was the first and only purely Tibetan city on my itinerary. I immediately had the impression I had left China. The men wore dapper fedoras and stylish coats or else cowboy hats, and the women dressed in full-length gowns reminiscent of Grant Wood's iconic "American Gothic". I distinctly felt trapped on the set of a Western film, though here the brown-skinned were the ones wearing the cowboy costumes. Several Tibetan boys as young as six wandered in their Buddhist robes, some impiously smoking cigarettes. Other robed boys, their heads shaved, shouted obscenities as they played ultra-violent video games imported from America. The best of cultural exchange, one could say.
Photo of Litang girls by Flickr user iamtonyang used under a Creative Commons license
Photo by Flickr user rheanna2 used under a Creative Common license
Even on a sunny day in early August, Litang's weather was uncomfortably cold. I wandered around town in a windbreaker and fleece, slowing my pace to compensate for altitude illness. At 4,050 meters, Litang is one of the highest cities in the world, and even 200 meters higher than Tibet's holy capital of Lhasa. In a shop, I bought a beer from the shelf. No refrigeration necessary. It was ice cold.
The horse festival began the day after our arrival. I walked two kilometers out of town into an open grassland area and spotted a small grandstand, guessing it would represent the central venue of the festival. Surrounding the grandstand were tents, visible in for miles. Tibetans walked around tending their horses, eating noodles, or else squatting in circles and smoking. Mostly, though, there was openness- such a rare phenomenon in China that I noticed it immediately. There were no construction cranes, neon signs, blaring karaoke halls, honking taxi drivers, or anything else that characterizes a typical Chinese setting. It was a place one could commune with nature, no small feet in a country of 1.3 billion inhabitants who typically prefer a more landscaped approach to natural beauty.
Photo by Flickr user meitingting used under a Creative Commons license
I wandered among the tents and horses, exchanging smiles with the assembled Tibetans. They had come from all over the Tibetan world, in typically nomadic fashion, in order to attend the ten day festival. Their tents were sophisticated and colorfully adorned, and inside they had assembled comfortable mattresses and mini-tables. I had an idle thought- do thousands of years of sedentary agriculturalism represent progress? Aren't these nomads, able to pick up and leave wherever they are for any purpose, truly free? The Tibetans I encountered at the festival struck me as contented and at ease.*
Two Tibetan girls dressed in traditional costume
Tibetan boy wearing monk costume and Miami Heat jersey
After a brief display of dancing in the morning, the festival resumed hours later with its featured event: the horse races. I had imagined something akin to a Western-style race, in which horses with uniformed jockeys raced around in a circle, meticulously timed. Instead, the horse racing had a far looser structure, and in most cases two manned horses simply raced in a straight line until one's superior speed proved evident.
Horse racing man
The jockeys were having a ball. Dressed like cowboys, several performed macho tricks such as standing on their horse, or else falling to the side and riding just inches above the ground. A Tibetan wielding a stick brushed back spectators he felt encroached upon the racing space, and would-be journalists stood on their toes attempting to get a better shot of the horses flying past.
Several other foreigners I met decided to spend the night out in the tent city, but I retired back at my guesthouse in town. Being an relativist, I determined that a smelly squat toilet was superior to no toilet at all, and that despite my rugged appearance taking a hot shower wouldn't be a bad idea. I also had to sneak into a internet cafe to keep track of which players changed teams during the previous day's trade deadline in Major League Baseball.
Litang's restaurant and bar scene, such as it exists, is not what attracts people to the town. We found one restaurant advertising a "Western breakfast" and discovered it consisted of sweet Chinese bread, sugary coffee, runny eggs, and a piece of bacon so small I expected it to be accompanied by a microscope. The town's lone pub refused to allow us to stand at the bar and instead attempted to shuffle us into the karaoke room, something we refused to do to the pub owner's consternation. Finally, having decided to buy a bottle of wine and share it among three people, we drank the wine in our guesthouse, felt unwell, and woke up with hangovers so bad we all stayed home from the festival that day. Never before had I experienced the sensation of having a bad hangover without having been drunk the night before.
Yet I don't think I was alone in feeling a slight sadness at leaving Litang, a neat city high in the mountains with miles of grass on each side. Discomforts aside, Litang had a far more friendly atmosphere than most anywhere else I'd been in China. Perhaps it isn't a coincidence, after all.
* I'm about as urban a creature as they come so having hippieish thoughts is a very rare occurrence.
August 25th, 2007 - 12:08
“I also had to sneak into a internet cafe to keep track of which players changed teams during the previous day’s trade deadline in Major League Baseball.”
Priorities, man. You should’ve been checking real sports like rugby.
Yeah, I keep thinking that these nomadic types, in so many ways, have got it made. Of course, they also have less access to healthcare, education, books, the internet, and so on….. But still, all that freedom.
Great write-up. Y’know, it kinda reminds me of my in-laws’ village. It’s small, basic, the facilities, in many respects, are very much Third World. And yet, the people are a gazillion times more friendly, open and hospitable than anybody down here in the city, and it’s only a short walk through the fields to the mountains.