TIBET - Part III: Not Just a National Geographic Article

Walking through the zig zagging narrow back streets of towns and cities, gaining glimpses of a daily life that seem more likely to appear on a one-hour slot on the Discovery Channel than in my personal worldly travels, I floated through the hours, bowled over by the timeless existence of a people and culture so far away, yet so genuinely nearby.

A child, wearing leather pants with a slit down the rear, relieves himself on the street as his mother cleans vegetables at her nearby stand. Butchers take an axe to half a yak, still showing some of its black fur, chopping up pieces to be hung from their cart, while two stories overhead, smaller pieces of yak meat bake in the sun, wired to the metal bars covering someone’s bedroom window. A Muslim man pushes a ten-foot long flatbed cart divided into sections; each with its own brightly colored dry fruit, nut, or sugary candy.

A group of kids play “tibit” (our ‘hackeysack’) with a policeman as a group of teenagers walk by me and shout “hello!” “Hello” back! People seem so kind, so happy, they have their way of life and they endure the hot sun and the cold air and they smile, and they play, and they make the most of out everything they are given. Some might stare as a group of six attractive westerners walk through their neighborhood, past their cart selling beads, prayer wheels, and bananas, but all-in-all I did not feel like an intruder, or at least as an unwelcome one.

We asked our tour guide why, after spending four months in Mainland China where we seemed unwelcome more times than not, we received such an enthusiastic reception from the people here in Tibet. His answer was simply: “they like you because they know you are leaving.” Perhaps, in a contrary parallel manner, I felt the same way.

I couldn’t do it. As exciting and challenging as it sounds, I could not live in a village of 300 with no electricity, no running water, and no flushing toilet. I could not sleep (again) in a bed with no heat, wake up two hours before sunrise and walk around by candlelight as I try to retain whatever heat did not escape my body during the previous hours of icy sleep (yes, we did this once…). No, I could, I just would not want to.

Ignorance is more than bliss in some parts of the world: it is subsistence. A monk walks down the street wearing yak-leather boots and a deep maroon, flowing cloak, talking on his cell phone and donning a ‘puma’ winter cap. He does not know that on Union Square West in Manhattan, a preppy NYU kid is buying a similar puma cap for more money than it takes to run that monk’s monastery for an entire week. The vendor on the street perhaps does not grasp that selling me a copper meditation bowl for less than 40yuan ($5US) is a steal for me, while it is breakfast, lunch, and dinner for him.

I do not look down at a people or a culture ‘unaffected’ by the rest of the world whilst they simultaneously and unknowingly take part in pop culture (playing Western top 40’s CDs in restaurants), Western fashion (selling fake Diesel jeans and Kappa jackets), and international cuisine (serving grilled cheese sandwiches along with Indian paneer panak and Tibetan shebalab bread). I do not marvel at their unawareness, either. I simply wonder how long it will last, this culture and people, before, as our tour guides reiterated time and again, “China and mainstream society take over Tibet, ruining its culture and traditional lifestyle forever.”

I feel genuinely blessed to have visited and experienced Tibet now, as it still holds on to its tradition and history, its culture and its people, while teetering on a match head for change to come sweeping through its land. So much devastation and change has taken place over the course of even the last fifty years in Tibet, and I can only hope that people will be able to, if not visit, then at the very least grasp its existence in our world, not our just our history, and as a people living on our earth, not just appearing in pictures in a National Geographic article.

They like us. They really like us.

As I double-time-stepped my way downstage at the front tip of what I refer to as the “flying triangle formation" (pictured above: photo by Chris Clay) getting closer and closer to the final few bars of tapping in the encore number, I had ‘the moment.’ At first I thought I heard merely the echo of twenty-six tappers bouncing off of the acoustically assembled auditorium, but as our mass of sweaty, glistening and gleaming dancers pushed its way to the front of the stage, I realized it was not the sound of our own tapping but rather the sound of applause and cheering that drove us into our final clicks and clanks of the evening. It was ‘the moment’ when I thought to myself; “this is cool…they like us!”

I wish I could say that wanting an audience to “like us” is not of utmost importance when putting on a show, but that would be a lie. In most cases, however, when you are proud of and recognize the quality of your work and product, it generally comes as no surprise whether an audience will enjoy the show or not. In this case, however, we had no friggin; clue! Anyone can enjoy a good tap number, but can they really grasp and appreciate in one sitting an entirely new art form, musical comedy, never before introduced into the Chinese culture? It was a concern and an anxiety all of us shared. I didn’t know if I could spend a year doing a show, no matter how fabulous or exciting, to vapid and unappreciative audiences.

And so I caught myself staring offstage in the beginning of Act II, fixated on the supertitles scrolling on the side of the proscenium, wondering exactly how the script translated into Mandarin and whether or not the audience was actually ‘getting it.’ Every once in a while, however, a joke would land and we would hear laughter (sometimes when we least expected it, but laughter is laughter), or a number would get applause before the final bump, and we would share a moment, on or offstage; a smile or simple glance that said in perhaps no words at all: “they’re getting it.”

So after we had finished the show, taken our bows, and persisted to dance our little hearts out in the dazzling costumes and striking formations of the Encore dance, I felt a shiver that I later discovered was shared by everyone on that stage. It went sweeping through the cast as we stood, winded but utterly wound up, poised in our final pose of the evening, listening to the crowd go crazy and watching the audience rise to their feet, thinking to ourselves; “we’ve got ourselves a show!”

Great Wall. Not-so-great wine.

Yesterday was the last day of our first “week” of rehearsals here in Longgang. So far we have learned six production numbers (including the 9-minute long “tap ballet”) and pretty much blocked, if not sung through, over half the show. For five days’ work, that ain’t too shabby. In fact, it’s pretty impressive, and we were in much need of a day off. So instead of going to the noodle house during our lunch break, people headed past the restaurants and the man dressed in camo hawking live turtles hanging on a rope, past the man selling grapes who, after I snapped a picture of him with his cart, made some comment in Chinese that made just about everyone around me look in my direction (damn language barrier!)…we walked by the fountain where people were resting in the shade of the giant dragon statues, past the hundreds of colorful umbrellas and indifferent locals, and finally to the supermarket. In particular, to the second floor where we wine aisle was located.

For starting at 18 RMB (about $2.50) you can get a bottle of Great Wall or Great Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon (1998 vintage, thank God, ‘cause I heard that was a great year for the Jiaodong Peninsula!). The “heavy wind bouquet” and “lingering after-taste” that it boasts about on the back label perhaps are a little misconstrued, given that it tastes more like a “bouquet” of leather shoes with a lovely after-taste of…oh, what is it…blood? Yeah, not a big fan, but from the escalating noise level in our hotel rooms, it was apparently doing the trick. Besides, the bottles of wine merely headed the oncoming festivities.

Whereas the urge to “go out” was palpable after having eaten at the same two restaurants and rehearsed in the same low-ceilinged, windowless room for a week, the actual expression “go out” is quite relative when staying in Longgang, China. The reality was, in fact, that going out meant going down or going up…in the hotel. Unless we wanted to venture over to one of the two bordellos we pass on the way to rehearsals, or perhaps to the market where we felt like circus freaks being gawked at by locals, it was pretty much “which floor would you like to go to tonight?” For a Chinese meal, try floors #1 or #2. For “Western Style Food” try floor #18. For a foot, full body, or “other” massage, floor #7 is for you. Floors #3 and #4 are the “international night club,” one of our first stops of the night, though we seemed to be the only “international” people there. We did enjoy the crooning of one local Chinese man who sat alone at a table drinking and occasionally got up to sing a karaoke song; alone, in a chair, on stage, beneath the Christmas decorations and stage lights that looked as if they weren’t even plugged in.

Then there was floor #6. Thus we were introduced to the seemingly fashionable pastime of private karaoke parties in China. We all pitched in for a private karaoke room (the last one available that night) that we would have until 4am in the morning. Private waiter service, fruit plates, plush red couches, flat screen televisions with music videos from the 80’s, glass tables, lights of every color except white, gigantic stereo speakers that outclassed any surround-sound system I’ve experienced in a room no bigger than my parents’ living room…oh, and twenty-some twenty-somethings bouncing around like it was 1999 (do people use that expression anymore?) wielding wireless microphones with enough echo and reverb on them to make my dad sound like a rock star and, naturally, singing inaccurate lyrics to songs no younger than 15 years old (think New Kids on the Block, Love Shack…). If our first ‘night off’ was any indication of the ensuing year of feeling a tad isolated in a land of unfamiliarity, I think we’ll make it through. As long as we’ve got some “classic” 80s songs to fall back on.

…but we’ll come to your caning...and try to sell tickets to the show.

Orientation day; 36 jet-lagged, confused, wide-eyed and under-caffeinated performers, directors, and producers gathered altogether for the first time in the 7th floor conference room at the peculiarly-placed Rivan hotel in Longgang, China, one of the nation’s leading industrial cities. No one had quite recouped from the 24+ hours of travel the day(s) before, as we all determined upon miraculously waking up at 6am…a mere five hours after our heads had hit a pillow for the first time in days. Previously, a 16-hour flight from JFK during which two meals were served…I had chicken and “chicken,” we created our own “happy hour” (free booze=happy), I watched three and a half movies, slept for half-an-hour three times, and played video trivia with cast members on our personal televisions.

Arriving in Hong Kong was hardly a destination, as we went through customs and boarded two buses that scarcely fit our luggage, then proceeded to the Hong Kong border where we made two stops; one to get off the bus, walk through a customs office, have our passport stamped and visa crossed off, and get back on the bus to drive another few hundred yards only to take ALL of our baggage off the buses to go through a whole new set of customs just to get into the People’s Republic of China. At 11pm. 80 degrees and what seemed like 95% humidity.

And so, after waking up in our plush five-star hotel rooms on the twelfth floor, overlooking a river and what we later discovered to be a marketplace with unusually-large zucchinis and 50-lb bags of rice, after discovering how to use the showerhead that resembled a light saber more so than anything that could produce water, and after fending our ways through the “asian-fusion” style breakfast (would you prefer fried eggs or rice noodle soup with warm soy milk?), we convened in that conference room, feeling a little like fighter pilots in the beginning of Top Gun (remember…very little sleep now) and thus ensued our “orientation” to the 42nd Street tour of China.

And hardly China, as we soon found out. Not only was mainland China on the menu, but South Korea as well as, oh, I don’t know…Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia. We heard all about safety, the production company, the “exciting” public relations opportunities we would have (riding bikes in local parades, judging “China Idol” type competitions, sing-a-long contests, video blogging and guest appearances), as well as what we can and cannot do while on tour. One big no-no was drugs. We are under strict law of the country in which we are traveling and therefore subject to THEIR laws. Meaning if we do drugs in Singapore, we could quite possibly be sentenced to public caning. But as our producers assured us, were we to have a caning, they would surely attend. And probably try to sell tickets to the show. Publicity IS publicity!!