We watched anxiously as they spoke. It was worse not knowing what they were saying. Our driver was Tibetan, and whatever it was they wanted, he was not in a position to negotiate. He came back to the jeep and, in a trembling voice, summoned Tsedup. My mouth went dry as I tried to block out my parents' hysteria and concentrate on the figure of my husband in front of the policeman. They exchanged a few words, then Tsedup came back and asked us for our passports, including his own. The documents were passed lazily around the group, who scrutinised them upside down, methodically turning the pages. One of the officers came up to the jeep and peered at us dispassionately for a few moments. Then there appeared to be a small commotion; they were all pointing at something and getting excited. Tsedup seemed to be making some progress. Suddenly they handed him back our passports and appeared to be waving us on. We couldn't believe our luck, but sat quietly as our driver, visibly shaking, chain-smoked his way out of town.
When we were far enough away to feel safe, Tsedup revealed the details of his experience to us. He had got out of the jeep and the fat sergeant had asked him, 'Where are you from?' He'd told him Machu. The policemen had then deduced that he was a local and the deputy had asked him for his identity card, which all nationals are obliged to carry. He'd told them he didn't have one. The fat man had groaned while his deputy had exclaimed incredulously, 'You haven't got one?' They had been mentally limbering up. It might mean prison, a fine, anything.
'What are they doing here?' the fat man had demanded, pointing out the westerners, huddled in the back of the jeep.
'They are my family,' Tsedup had said. There is my wife in the middle and her mother and father.'
They had had no idea what he was talking about.
'Go and get those people's passports,' the fat one had bellowed.
Tsedup had brought them back the passports and the sergeant had examined them slowly, one after the other. One of the young policemen with his feet on the table had suddenly grabbed one of the passports out of the sergeant's thick hands to have a look for himself. He had nearly fallen off his chair when he saw the picture inside. Immediately he had passed the document to his superior. 'Look! Look!' he had cried out in shock. The fat officer had not deigned to look at Tsedup until that point.
Suddenly he had turned to him. 'Where did you get this?' he had demanded.
' London,' Tsedup had replied.
'What? In England? London?' he'd exclaimed.
'Yes,' Tsedup had said. ‘I am a British citizen.'
The shift in mood was almost tangible: the policeman had slipped from barking orders to an ingratiating tone. 'Well, you be very careful,' he had said. 'We don't want to make any trouble. We will get the blame if any harm comes to you, so please look after yourselves. Normally when we catch foreigners driving in a private vehicle we impose a massive fine, but I'll let you off.' Then he had offered, 'You can extend your visas in Labrang if you need to.'
Labrang, or Xiahe as it has been renamed by the Chinese, stands at about 8,400feet (2,820metres) above sea level and is near the Hexi Corridor, part of the old Silk Road, which was once the main thoroughfare for military, economic and cultural exchanges between Asia and Europe. It is home to one of the six major lamaseries of the Gelugpa, or Yellow Hat, sect of Tibetan Buddhism founded by Tsong Khapa around ad1400.Labrang literally means 'Palace of the Lamas'. For Tibetans, it carries a unique religious and cultural heritage. It was established in 1709,according to the guidebook, and at one time housed up to four thousand monks. Now there are about 1,300.The lamasery, or The Grand Golden House' as the Tibetans call it, was cradled between the mountains, the golden rooftops of its temples winking in the sun. Each building was terracotta red, the colour of warm earth, and had white and black detailing under the gilded roofs and around the windows. Each window was of traditional Tibetan style, with the bottom slightly wider than the top of the frame, like a blunt triangle.
On the main street of the town, fuchsia-robed monks jostled with nomad pilgrims and western tourists. In the profusion of trinket stalls and shops that lined the road to the monastery, Chinese traders sold Tibetan carpets, prayer beads, cymbals, jewellery and thankas - religious paintings. In customary style the Chinese modern architecture of the town was concrete and unimaginative. What had once been temples was now a mass of breeze-block hotels and glass-fronted shops.
We arrived late in the afternoon. The hotel that my mother had chosen was the former Summer Palace of the lama Jamyang Jhapa, the reincarnation of the founder of Labrang Monastery. It sat among the flutter of birch leaves and the gurgle of water in the rocky riverbed. It was quiet and out of reach of the throb of the main town. The receptionist wore the traditional Tibetan dress of the Lhasa region, which was coincidentally what I was wearing that day. It consisted of a full-length, sleeveless, silk pinafore dress tied at the back, with a woven apron of thin, horizontal coloured stripes and a long-sleeved silk blouse underneath. She stood in front of a huge mural of the grassland, which covered the entire reception wall. Yaks and sheep grazed behind her head and a nomad woman fetched water from a blue river to take back to the tent in the background. A real Tibetan hotel. Tsedup smiled and greeted her in Tibetan. But she did not speak Tibetan.
In curt Chinese she stopped him short. 'Speak Chinese!' she commanded. His tone changed to indignation and he switched language. It appeared that the dress and the painting were nothing more than a sham for the next bus of tourists.
We were led to our rooms through a circular garden with flower-beds radiating out from its centre. Around the edge of the circle, positioned just like a tribe, were Tibetan tents, not the black yak-hair variety that we had just come from but white festival marquees with blue swirling patterns on them.
'Wow, real tents! This is great,' exclaimed Tsedup, prepared to forgo his displeasure. I could tell that he was beginning to worry about whether my mother would be happy staying in a tent again. But his fears were allayed when he reached the entrance to ours. As he touched the white surface, his face fell. It was concrete. The inside was fitted with all the usual hotel amenities, TV with thirty channels, plastic shower slippers, hot water twice a day. It was surreal.
Tsedup and I took a rickshaw into town to meet Amnye. A collection of lethargic drivers lazed around the gate of the hotel and we took our pick, haggled, and were ripped off. It was a motorbike with a metal cart attached and it buzzed with great ferocity along the road, past terracotta mud huts and over layers of barley straw. The local farmers required the assistance of passing vehicles to crush their barley husks and release the seed. We crossed the bridge over the river, passing rain-washed prayer flags and hundreds of red and gold prayer wheels lining the wall of a monastery. Nomads and monks were circumambulating the lamasery in the early evening light, performing their kora, turning each wheel as they passed it. They would be reciting the Buddhist mantra Ommani padme hum, as they moved clockwise round the temple, although I couldn't hear them for the rickshaw's whine.
We alighted at the White Conch Hotel in the centre of town where we were due to meet Tsedup's father. Inside, the Amdo receptionist said that he had not been there and that there was no note. We decided to check out the Tibetan hotels and come back later. Perhaps the bus had been delayed. We walked slowly in the gutter as cycle rickshaws clanked past, churning up the dust on the tarmac road. On either side of the street we passed shops crammed with hats, shoes, cauldrons, kettles, steamers and piles of plastic buckets. This was where the nomads came to stock up on provisions. The prices in Labrang were often much lower than in their own nearby towns, so it was not uncommon for a pilgrimage to be combined with an annual shopping spree. They bartered loudly with the Chinese owners, often in their own language, so both parties were left shouting over the other in total incomprehension. Most of the nomad men could speak basic Chinese, and for women, most transactions were covered by a knowledge of numbers and the word for noodle soup. But some of the older generation were none the wiser. Pointing and shouting seemed to work best.