Read Online The Hotel on the Roof of the World by Alec le Sueur - Free Book Online

whatever they can find in Lhasa. As the green areas in the city centre are rapidly disappearing, the normal menu for these street cows consists of newspaper and cardboard boxes dumped in skips.
    After dodging the cattle and shouting at dogs that approached us, we emerged under a string of prayer flags at the south face of the Potala Palace. What had appeared as a small triangle in the distance when I came in from the airport, now towered above us, dominating the Lhasa valley. High white walls swept skywards to the red ochre palace, topped with golden roofs sparkling in the sun.
    The Potala Palace – home of the Dalai Lamas. Here was the image I had dreamt of, yet in reality the palace exceeded the visions of my dreams. Until the Chinese entered Tibet this building had been home to the leader of the country, parliament, treasury, law courts and high security prison. Within these walls Dalai Lamas have studied, ruled and died, revolutions have been hatched and traitors poisoned. Gold and precious stones of untold beauty have lined the vaults and heinous tortures have been carried out in the dungeons. We pedalled on. The Potala was not open to pilgrims or visitors today.
    A few hundred yards further into the city, past the tantalising aroma of roast lamb kebabs, the rickshaw drew up to the edge of a wide open cobbled square. This area had remained as a rabbit warren of Tibetan houses until 1985 when the Chinese liberated the people from the inconvenience of walking through the small streets and demolished the old Tibetan buildings to make an official people’s square.
    Somewhat ironically, the square which was meant to be for the good of the people soon turned out to be a favourite spot for rioting and anti-government demonstrations. 27 September 1987 saw the first group of monks chanting for independence in the square. The monks were arrested and on 1 October, Chinese National Day, an angry crowd of Tibetans gathered outside the police station on the square to demand their release. The exact sequence of events that followed is unclear but it is generally accepted that panicking Chinese soldiers fired into the unarmed mob, killing at least six Tibetans. Somewhere in the chaos that followed the police station was burnt down.
    The Chinese had many lessons to learn from their first experience of rioting in the ‘New Tibet.’ Unfortunately one of the lessons they did not learn is that when your police station has been burnt down, you should get a new set of fire extinguishers. They still don’t seem to have learnt this basic rule, as every time there is rioting in Lhasa, the police station on the square burns down again. Clearly there is an opportunity for a good sprinkler salesman.
    The square itself shows no signs of the troubles that have passed over its cobbled stones. Its dilapidated state is not from riots but from dirt and zero maintenance. An unkempt garden with a muddy concrete-lined pond and broken fountains stands in the centre. To the western end of the pond a sorry-looking rose attempts to climb a metal arch painted in Blackpool beach colours. This appears to be a favourite picture spot for both Chinese and Tibetans alike and a brisk trade is carried out by the dozen or so photographers who tout for business.
    At the far end of the square, beyond the railings, roses and pool, is the modest entrance to the Jokhang temple – the centre of the Tibetan Buddhists’ world.
    I had arrived in Tibet nearly a year after the 1987 riots and despite some more shootings in the Barkhor in March 1988 I had been assured that the troubles were a thing of the past. Even tourism was picking up again, which was just as well as it was now my job to see that business to the hotel increased. Confident that I would be riding the crest of a wave as tours poured back into Tibet, I approached an unmistakably American tourist to ask the way to the bazaar of which I had heard so much.
    Barbara, from a Smithsonian Institute