‘You’re in luck, then. A group from my office is going to Yangbachen next week. I’ll ask them to give you a lift.’ He pulls on a woollen tank top. The nights are cold here even in the middle of summer. Liu Ren’s face is identical to mine. Same beard, same ponderous eyes, same involuntary scowl. We look so alike that I can cycle through the compound gates on my bicycle without having to register. Once on my way out, a man stopped me and said, ‘Why didn’t you come up yesterday?’ I had no idea what he meant so I mumbled, ‘I’ve just come down,’ and peddled away at full speed. When I told Liu Ren he said, ‘That was the deputy chairman, you fool. There was a Party members’ meeting on the third floor yesterday. I should have attended, but I skived off.’
‘You seem troubled tonight. What’s up?’ I ask.
His nose twitches like mine. ‘Nothing. Pass me a fag.’
He doesn’t usually smoke, and his face goes red after just two sips of beer. When he has finished presenting his radio programmes, he returns to his room, sits in front of a picture of his wife and a photograph of the blind Borges torn from a literary magazine, and works on his short stories.
‘Seen anything interesting today?’ he asks. ‘Oh by the way, I found these letters for you on Mo Yuan’s desk.’
‘Got hit on my back with a black stone,’ I reply.
There are two letters. One from Li Tao and one from Fan Cheng. Yesterday I received a bundle of post that had accumulated for me in Chengdu. In the covering letter, Yang Ming said she has divorced Wu Jian and plans to study English and go abroad. Wang Ping has not replied to the postcard I sent her from Lijiang. I have not heard from her for four months.
‘Ha! The sacred stone! Tibetans only visit that cave when they are sick. They believe the stone can strike disease from the body. You must be careful where you take your camera, Ma Jian. You can’t go snooping around like that. Relations between Han and Tibetans are very tense. If you cause any upset the rest of us will have to pay the price. When I first came to Lhasa, the Tibetans held a water-splashing festival — completely bogus of course. No one has a water splashing festival in the middle of winter! It was just an excuse to vent their anger. If a Han walked past, they splashed him with water. It was very frightening. None of us dared go out. They dragged a colleague of mine off her bicycle and poured freezing water down her shirt.’
‘I have been travelling for three years, but this is the first time I have sensed there are places on this earth where my feet should not tread. Perhaps that’s how it feels for those people who go abroad. The Tibetans have been pushed to the limit, they have a right to be angry. Imagine if you invited some friends for supper and they decided to move in and take over your house. It is not the loss of power that hurts, it’s the loss of dignity and respect. A man tried to steal my camera in the Barkhor today. The strap was tied to my hand, but he tugged and tugged. His friend tossed a yak hide over our hands so the police wouldn’t see. The thing was still dripping with blood. In the end he gave up. I threw the hide off and held my camera in the air, daring him to have another go. But he just spat at me and walked away.’
I pour some hot water into a basin and wash last night’s bowls and chopsticks. Then I sit down and take the clay tablets from my pocket. ‘So how did the water-splashing festival end?’ My ballpoint pen has leaked and Avalokiteshvara’s faces are stained with blue ink.
‘Same as usual. "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun" as Old Mao said. The soldiers stood on the streets waving their guns and everyone went home. We bear the brunt of the anger though. Tibetans can spit in our faces but we’re not allowed to fight back. They have huge daggers dangling from their belts but we can’t carry so much as a fruit knife.’
The wooden chest I am sitting on is draped with a soft Tibetan rug. Liu Ren meets many Tibetan artists through his job and his room is crammed with their gifts of religious scroll paintings, opera masks, thigh bone horns and ritual conch shells. Liu Ren fetches the egg and tomato soup from the stove and pours it into wooden bowls.
‘What have you gained from these four years in Tibet?’ I ask him. He was assigned to the radio station after graduating from Shaanxi Nationalities Institute. At the time boys who applied for posts in Xinjiang or Tibet were the heroes of their universities, and were worshipped by girls for their bravery and self-sacrifice. But times are changing, and now the best students dream of moving south to make their fortunes in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. In the market yesterday I bumped into one of the Hebei boys I met in Golmud. He told me he likes his job at Tibet Press, but his friend found life too hard here and returned to China after the first week.
‘Quite a lot. There are only two things people write about in China: the contradictions of market socialism or painful memories of the Cultural Revolution. Tibet has so much more to offer: relations between man and man, man and God, the primitive and the modern. Tibetan Literature is featuring our work next month. I think it will make a great impact. They have dubbed us the Asian Mystical Realists.’
‘Sounds interesting. But be careful not to form a group or you will lose your individual voice. That Roots Group is a farce. They write stories about brave men killing wolves in the grasslands, but never mention communism, which is the biggest wolf of all.’
I remember the political argument we fell into last night, so I stop talking and take a chunk of beef.
‘And what have you gained from your month here?’ Liu Ren asks.
‘I didn’t come as a tourist, or a writer looking for exotic stories. I came as a pilgrim. I was hoping for a revelation, or confirmation at least, but now I am more confused than ever. I sense man and Buddha exist, but not in the same realm. I feel I have walked onto a stage. The people around me are absorbed in their parts, putting on this great show, but nothing seems real. Every object looks like a prop. Since I have no part I am reduced to the role of a spectator, but there is nowhere to sit, so I have to mingle with the actors on stage. It is a terrible feeling.’
‘It’s not always a performance. The older generation worship the Buddha as sincerely as the Chinese used to worship Old Mao. For them life and religion are inseparable. The Buddha is in their every thought and move. I met some lamas in Drepung who have spent their entire lives in the monastery. Their souls are not human any more, they have reached a higher plane. Do you think the government can change all that?’
‘Communism can wipe out individual rights, but it cannot destroy a nation’s traditions. Although, when traditions are too strong, they can smother the individual as much as any political tyranny. This country is now caught between the two faiths. I saw little boys in Young Pioneer scarves drop their school bags in front of Jokhang Temple and perform five full prostrations.’
‘Tibetans are different from us. They care little for material wealth. If you give them plimsolls and a packet of seeds, they will sell them the next day for beer money. But they are kind people, and when they accept you as a friend they will trust you with their lives. They are not as crafty or sly as the Han.’
‘It’s easy to be kind when you are poor. I’ve met a lot of kind people in my travels, but the cost of their kindness is exclusion from the outside world. As soon as a road is built, the kindness vanishes. The communists are pushing China into the modern age and our values are changing. Soon kindness will be perceived as a weakness. I came here hoping to see man saved by the Buddha’s compassion, but in Tibet the Buddha cannot even save himself.’