A Different Kind of Freedom - Kreisel Ray - Страница 24

Ali is the capital of Western Tibet. Ugly concrete buildings fill the town that serves as a base for the military, truck drivers and traders. It lies roughly midway between Lhasa and Kashgar. The trucks that travel this remote route are forced to carry a vast array of spare parts and at least one 50-gallon drum of fuel. Once they make it to Ali, they can refill their fuel tanks and find just about anything else needed to continue the journey. The famous “Mr. Lee” also resides in Ali. Each province in China is broken down into counties, that have a county seat, and a corresponding police headquarters. Ali is the county seat of the north Western region of Tibet, and Mr. Lee works as one of the police in charge of this area. Most all the travel guidebooks that talk about the routes through Western Tibet have some mention of Mr. Lee and his encounters with previous travelers. In my previous trips through Ali I fortunately avoided Mr. Lee by traveling through town during the middle of the night-in this way trading my encounters with police for possible encounters with packs of dogs.

Ali straddles the banks of the Shiquanhe River. The main streets of town consist of a large “T” intersection. One road from the south comes from Mt. Kailash, this road continues on through town to become the road to Kashgar. To the east runs the “north road” through Western Tibet that goes back toward Lhasa. As I approached town in the warm afternoon sun, I knew that I could not avoid an encounter with Mr. Lee this time. I had planned it so that my Chinese visa expired on the day that I arrived in Ali. In that way Mr. Lee would be forced to give me a visa extension, because the trip to the nearest border crossing with either Nepal or Pakistan required at least two weeks. As I got closer to the edge of town I saw what looked to be two young and dusty Westerners sitting on the side of the road.

Chris and Adrian had just hitched a ride down from Kashgar and were trying to get to Lhasa. We all talked for a while, and I explained to them what they could expect on the road back to Lhasa and they told me about the lack of fine dining establishments on the road to Kashgar. It had taken them ten days to travel the almost 900 miles between Kashgar and Ali. It seemed that their truck was unable to travel for more than an hour at a time without breaking down. The three of us walked back into town over the bridge and past the abandoned guard station. Chris pointed out the hotel where they had gotten special permission to stay the night before. After a 20-minute argument with the owner in Chinese, she reluctantly allowed me to lock my bike in an empty storage room. When we finished lunch, I made the trip down the street to the Ali Hotel. The police office resided inside the only “official” foreigner hotel in town. It made it much easier to catch illegal travelers if the attendant at the front desk of the hotel just notified the police down the hall whenever new foreigners showed up.

Mr. Lee introduced himself in excellent English, as I sat down in front of his desk. I showed him the permit that the Darchen police had written for me. I explained that I needed a visa extension so that I could get back to Lhasa to meet my wife. I thought he might have more sympathy for that story than for the illegal activities that I was actually involved in. On the side of his desk sat a few different English short story books, alongside those rested books of Chinese poetry. Mr. Lee informed me that he had taught himself English. It was all too obvious that he was an intelligent man with endless spare time. By this point in my trip, my clothes had not been washed for at least a month. Layers of dirt covered everything I had. “You look like a sportsman. Are you riding a bike?” Mr. Lee inquired. I quickly replied, “No. Before I had been riding a bicycle, a few months earlier on this trip in a different part of China.” I knew that if he found my bike that he would have to confiscate it. I would not have the same good fortune that I had down in Darchen. A few days earlier Dominique and Damien told me that Mr. Lee had stopped them in Ali. During a conversation over lunch they mentioned to him that they thought of riding bicycles out to Ali from Lhasa, but in the end decided that it would be too difficult. Mr. Lee politely responded, with “Well, if you would have ridden bikes to Ali, I would have been forced to confiscate them.” With this conversation floating though my head I knew that there was no way that I could allow him to know that I possessed a bike, otherwise my trip would be over. After a short discussion with his boss in the other room, Mr. Lee told me that he would be able to give me a visa extension for one more month, but I would have to stay here in the Ali Hotel for the night. I thanked him greatly for the extension and started to leave the room. “Where is your luggage?” he asked. “Oh, I dropped it at another hotel down the street. I’ll go pick it up now.” I answered. Being a polite man, he said “I can help you carry it back here.” After I refused his help three times, he finally relented.

I spent the rest of the afternoon buying supplies for the journey across the highest section of road in the world. I stocked up on dried fruit, dried fish, peanuts, raisins, noodles, chocolate and “761 Army Biscuits.” “761 Army Biscuits” are one of those rare food products that I have only seen in Western China. They come in a simple rectangular package a few inches across with a dark green figure of a Chinese solider on the label. The translation of the label reads, “761 Compressed Food, Contains: protein, sugar, fat and calories”. On my first trip to Tibet it took me a month or two to figure out that 761 biscuits were edible. I had always passed them by when I saw the military looking packages in the shops, thinking that they were some kind of spare parts or fuel. Each pack contains four baked flour and sugar biscuits with the consistency of small dirt bricks, but they are indestructible and last forever and eventually became one of my food staples. Most of the packages that I purchased during the summer of 1994 had a manufacturing date of 1989 stamped on them and I don’t think that they even contain any preservatives.

Once again, I knew that I would have to skillfully ration out my food to make it across the Askin Chin. As darkness settled in, I returned to the hotel where I had locked my bike. The owner happily allowed me to remove my bike from her hotel, because she knew that she would receive a fine if the police found it. In the darkness I pedaled as fast as I could to a side door of the Ali Hotel. Once I made sure that no one occupied the hall, I wheeled my bike into my room. I quickly taped some pieces of an unused map over the hall window, so that no one could see inside my room. With a little work I fit my bike underneath the bed.

I had planned to stay another day in Ali, to rest, eat and make a feeble attempt to gain some weight, but like so many times before other factors cut my rest day plans short. In the early evening I had rapidly fallen asleep. Later the knocking of a large Chinese man at my door woke me up. When I first awoke I had no idea what time it was, I thought that it was only 10 or 11 o’clock. I opened the door and we exchanged a few words. Once I realized that it was 3 A.M. and my visitor had drunken too much, I shooed him out of my room, telling him that I felt very tired and needed to get back to sleep. After a short 10-minute rest, the visitor returned to my room and banged on the door again. I yelled out that I needed my sleep and that he should go away. For some reason unknown to me, he proceeded to loudly pound on my door for the next 40 minutes, yelling that I should open the door for him. During that time I heard someone else in the hall, speaking in Chinese, about the American on a bicycle. Once I heard that, I knew that somehow people had discovered that I had a bike in the room, and by morning Mr. Lee would be made aware of the situation. After shouting at these men at the top of my lungs, they finally left, enabling me to get a few hours sleep. I knew that I had to leave town before sunrise, which was only a two hours away.