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The day was spent walking about Lhasa, taking in the sight and the atmosphere. The Tibetan quarters are extremely pleasant and full of happenings. They have all remained pedestrian, with no space for cars. Every street is transformed daily into a street market and nightly into a restaurant and play area. It is filled with pilgrims in their best Tibetan costume, going around the temples on the Bakhor (pilgrims path circling every monastry or temple). It is filled constantly by a contradicting yet happy blurr of sights, smells and sounds.

Views on the Chinese Liberation of Tibet

Degrubenc
2005-12-09 12:57:16

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The day was spent walking about Lhasa, taking in the sight and the atmosphere. The Tibetan quarters are extremely pleasant and full of happenings. They have all remained pedestrian, with no space for cars. Every street is transformed daily into a street market and nightly into a restaurant and play area. It is filled with pilgrims in their best Tibetan costume, going around the temples on the Bakhor (pilgrims path circling every monastry or temple). It is filled constantly by a contradicting yet happy blurr of sights, smells and sounds.

As soon as one leaves the relatively small Tibetan quarter, the atmospehere is terribly different: wide empty streets, the same shops, shop after shop selling the same poor quality Chinese goods. The buldings are of white tiles with few intresting features; maybe, apart from their state of degradation, only the occassional stone lion statue breaks the monotony of the streets. The atmosphere is not only different due to the building style but also to the people. 500 meters in Lhasa make a huge difference: the city harbours, often with difficulty, two entirely different cultures, physiques, dress codes, behavioral codes, etc...

The Chinese peaceful liberation / occupation army is the cause of a sad
record: Lhasa has the highest rate of prostitution per capita in the world. About 6 to 8% of the population works in the sex industry; at the last count there were more than 10,000 practicing prostitutes in a town little bigger than a village. It is estimated that HIV is the highest in theworld and 70% of the countryside population suffers from hepatitis. Those are figures compiled by foreign agencies in Lhasa; the Chinese maintain that there is no such thing as prostitution in the People's Republic of China. The whore houses are mainly seen in a 100 meter radius in every direction outside the large army barracks. Lhasa is entirely surrounded by barracks of varying sizes. For foreigners, this ...