Travellers cruising 5km above sea level across the mystical Tibetan plateau on the Shanghai-Lhasa railway will have plenty of time to consider the long, complex relationship between China and Tibet. Gary Bowerman reports
The view is white. Not more than 20 metres from the train window is the vast, frozen Cuona Lake, whose encrusted icy banks peel back to reveal a dazzling landscape of uneven white ridges. The bright sunlight refracts in myriad shades of aqua blue. Beyond, black-coated yaks graze on the foothills of sharp, snow-capped peaks. The mesmerising scene has enraptured my Chinese co-passengers, many of whom are clicking expensive digital cameras.
It is mid-afternoon, and almost 48 hours have passed since we eased out of Shanghai’s sea-level train station at 4pm on a Friday evening bound for the Tibetan capital, Lhasa. According to the on-board information display, we are cruising at 90kph across the high-altitude Tibetan plateau. The temperature outside is -8°C.
As the whole carriage stands to admire the view, the words of my first-night compartment mate echo in my head. ‘I think you will see some special scenery tomorrow,’ he said, as we pulled into his home city of Xi’an. A Chinese electrical engineer, he had studied for a year in Barcelona, and though we never exchanged names, we passed that first night conversing in a mix of English, Chinese and Spanish. He had never considered going to Tibet (Xizang in Chinese), but liked the new train because it was a cheaper way to return home to ‘the dirty city of Xi’an’ than flying.
His prediction was true. Since I awoke at 8:45am on the second full day of the journey with the sun breaking over the Tibetan plateau, the scenery had evolved effortlessly. Flat, almondcoloured desert flanked by rounded, red-hued hills morphed into softer-focus green marshlands and grey, snow-capped pinnacles. Frozen rivers, grazing wild horses, glaciers, isolated Tibetan farmhouses with four corner turrets, prayer flags and walled compounds all formed part of the backdrop. Adjacent to the rail tracks, convoys of Chinese goods trucks worked the laboriously long road to Tibet, stopping only at the isolated new-build villages created as truck stops.
As the lake receded into memory, and everyone had pored diligently over their digital frames, the train pulled into An Duo station. Sitting back in my four-berth sleeper compartment, with private television, air-conditioning and emergency oxygen supply, I spotted a small platform sign. We had reached an altitude of 4,702m.
The scale of the engineering achievement represented by the Qinghai-Lhasa section of the China-Tibet railway is impressive. Crossing the Tibetan plateau at an average elevation of more than 4,000m, the railway is cut through perma-frozen soil, presenting a logistical challenge many scientists believed impossible. In some areas, liquid nitrogen is pumped into under-soil pipes to ensure year-round freezing – pre-empting the dangerous possible effects of global warming. The 1,837km final stretch, between Golmud and Lhasa, is, according to official literature, ‘the longest plateau railway with the highest elevation in the world.’
Inaugurated on July 1 2006, China’s new 4,000km Beijing- Tibet railway uses specially commissioned trains built by the Chinese arm of Canadian firm Bombardier. The first journey was greeted with great national fanfare, marking a high-profile achievement for the government of China’s president, Hu Jintao, himself a former Communist Party secretary of Tibet.
Three months later, at the start of China’s week-long National Day holiday, the Shanghai-Lhasa route was opened. Wending west from China’s east coast commercial metropolis, it joins up with the Beijing-Tibet line headed for Lhasa. China’s two largest cities now have a steadfast umbilical link with Tibet, a previously independent nation with whom China’s historical punch-and-counterpunch military stand-off was finalised by annexation in 1950.
The physical connecting of China and Tibet voyages beyond superlatives, although China is fond of those. It proudly boasts the world’s largest population (1.3 billion) and the largest foreign exchange reserves (over $1 trillion) and is constructing what it proclaims is the first self-sustaining eco-city (on Chongming Island). Add in the world’s largest mobile phone population (around 460 million), largest initial public offering (Industrial and Commercial Banking of China in October 2006) and its status as Asia’s largest generator of outbound tourists, however, and you have a nation preparing for a greater global role.
The railway is not short of grand statements, including the world’s longest frozen soil tunnel and highest train station, sitting at 5,072m. Indeed, the Chinese media marvelled that the railway runs ‘200m higher than the Peruvian Andes line’. But almost 40 years of scientific research and billions of dollars invested to construct a high-altitude railway capable of overcoming the natural barriers of sub-zero temperatures, frozen soil, uneven terrain and one of the world’s most fragile eco-systems had more strategic objectives in mind.
As the official brochure states, ‘The completion of the world-class Qinghai-Tibet railway is set to provide powerful transport capacity for the Western development programmes.’ Deconstruct that statement and two conclusions emerge. Firstly, the ‘powerful transport capacity’ mostly means newly affluent Chinese tourists who are being increasingly encouraged to visit Tibet. Television travel shows frequently feature Lhasa, and magazines and newspapers regularly carry tour trip ads. During last October’s National Day celebrations, a giant replica of the Potala Palace, the former winter palace of the Dalai Lama, was erected in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
Tourism to Tibet serves two main purposes for China’s leaders. The ‘roof of the world, land of snows’ represents a mysterious destination of discovery that appeals to China’s ever-more adventurous middle class. As Patrick French writes in his book Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History of a Lost Land: ‘Everyone has a Tibet of the mind, a notion of a pure, distant land, a place of personal escape, the heart of lightness.’ Crucially, as China encourages greater consumer spending to sustain its economic growth, Tibet tourism keeps revenues within Chinese borders.
The second aspect of the official statement refers to the trade opportunities created by the new railway. These apply not just for entrepreneurs from Beijing and Shanghai, but also from the fast-developing cities of western China – such as Chongqing, Chengdu, Kunming and Xi’an – to which the government is seeking to funnel investment from the affluent eastern coastal belt. The aim is to create a more balanced national economy. While Shanghai and Beijing represent China’s New York and Washington, DC, China fancies developing its own Atlanta, Dallas, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles and Miami.
But the new railway has inflamed the controversial ‘Tibet question,’ particularly outside China. While interest in Tibet travel is rising globally and tourism facilities are improving – a US entrepreneur recently opened the city’s first boutique hotel, called House of Shambhala, and next year a Sino-foreign partnership called RailPartners will launch the Tangula luxury train from Beijing-Lhasa, managed by a five-star hotel group – do not expect Free Tibet activists such as Richard Gere, for example, to be on board any time soon.
The 1950 annexation, which China calls ‘the peaceful liberation of Tibet from feudal serfdom,’ was the climax to several centuries of military feuding between the two nations. The subsequent and ongoing suppression of Tibetan political, cultural and religious freedoms and the enforced exile of the Dalai Lama have outraged Western support organisations. Tibetans may be prohibited from displaying photos of the Dalai Lama, but he is still reverentially referred to as His Holiness throughout Tibet.
But the relationship between the two neighbours has never been simple. Throughout history, the malign influences of external powers with interests in the region, such as the UK, the US, India and Russia, exacerbated the bilateral sense of mistrust. In Tibet, Tibet, French refers to ‘the complex reality of Tibet’s past and present… [its] history, like the history of any country, is full of war, gore and male domination.’
Although often perceived as a Buddhist mountain kingdom of timeless meditative traditions, Tibet was once an important regional power. By the late seventh century, it dominated a swathe of territory giving it effective control over Central Asia’s trade routes. China’s Tang Dynasty rulers were unnerved and invaded Tibet, starting a 60-year war. In the eighth century, another bout of Tibetan expansion saw it acquire parts of what are now the Chinese provinces of Qinghai, Gansu and Mongolia. Today, more Tibetans live in the surrounding provinces than in Tibet itself. It also briefly seized Chang’an (now Xi’an), the then-capital of China.
Internal squabbling dissolved Tibet’s power base and it turned inward, eventually falling prey to the Mongols in the 13th century. In 1904, British soldiers arrived from India, seeing Tibet as a buffer to any military expansion plans by Russia. This infuriated China, which invaded in 1909 using British crimes in Tibet as a justification. The Dalai Lama expelled Chinese troops in 1912, following the fall of China’s Tang Dynasty and, though the CIA funded military training camps in the country, Tibet asserted its own independence, which would last until 1950.
Some 51 hours and 35 minutes after departing Shanghai, the train pulls into Lhasa’s brightly lit new station, 3,650m above sea level. Swathes of Chinese traders, tourists and returning native Tibetans spill on to the broad, spotlessly clean platform. The frozen air is preciously thin.
Passing through the exit gate to a throng of smiling taxi drivers, the striking outer façade of the station is a modernist representation of Tibet’s most famous landmark: the Potala Palace. Once the winter abode of the Dalai Lama, Lhasa’s royal palace symbolises many of the contradictions of China’s relationship with Tibet. While being the showpiece – and recently repainted landmark– that defines the destiny of the Beijing/Shanghai- Lhasa train, it is also represents the legacy of a Buddhist leader forced into exile in India and the uncertain future of its native peoples and their timeless traditions. It is an incongruity that will be mulled over by many a traveller as they cruise three miles above sea level across the mystical Tibetan plateau.
Getting there
Shanghai-Lhasa trains depart every other day (leaving Shanghai at 16:11 and arriving in Lhasa at 19:50 two days later). A one-way soft sleeper berth costs $170.
Regulation issue
Entry rules for foreigners to Tibet can be somewhat confusing. If visiting Lhasa only, it is best to purchase a Tibet entry permit in advance (about $130). You must show this permit if purchasing a train ticket in person, though not if a Chinese travel agent or a local person buys it for you. You must also show the permit when booking an exit flight from Lhasa. If travelling in Tibet beyond Lhasa, an additional permit is required, and can be purchased as part of a package tour trip
Money matters
The Chinese Yuan Renminbi is the accepted currency in Tibet.
Where to stay
Lhasa Hotel 1 Minzu RoadLhasa, Tibet PRC Tel: (+86) 891 683 2221 www.lhasahotel.com.cn
