Pyramid Asia. Ian Purdie
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and it was a natural progression that Wen should become a participant in its not so mysterious disappearance.
Bisexuality, drug addiction and alcoholism constitute the three immutable pillars absolutely crucial to sustain this rare and delicate life form.
So it was an immense tragedy when a still smouldering joint dropped onto an open copy of Tom Robbin’s Jitterbug Perfume, resulting in a fire that burnt Jim’s house down, with him and Wen unconscious in the middle of it. The world lost two fully optioned deviates in less than ten minutes, proving once again, what fragile creatures these people are.
Tashi did much better.
When he was seven-years-old, his parents took him to Lhasa. For them the trip was a pilgrimage to the Buddhist Sera Monastery. For Tashi it was the first time he saw real members of the distantly despised Chinese community. They drove past in large, shiny cars, the men dressed in dark, tailored suits and the women in fine silks.
He’d heard a lot of bad things about the Chinese from his fellow villagers, but when he compared them to the rural peasant community he’d been brought up in, he decided he’d rather be Chinese.
They were clean and appeared to live superior lives of opulence and prosperity. They laughed and seemed a lot happier than the average Tibetan.
After the family returned to Womadige, Tashi was determined to learn to speak Chinese. He applied himself scrupulously to his studies and was the top pupil in his year at the school in nearby Nagqu.
Eventually his diligence paid off and he was awarded a rare scholarship by the central government in Beijing to study at a Chinese university, one that didn’t supply free syringes and KY jelly.
He enrolled at the Institute of Tibetan Nationalities in Xian’yang, a small city, 23 kilometres from historic Xi’an.
He decided to study dentistry, a practical profession he hoped would allow him to live like the Chinese while also being able to help his fellow villagers.
The scholarship was a great deposit but wouldn’t fully cover his expenses. Even if his entire village donated their year’s earnings to help pay for his education, it wouldn’t have been enough. But his choice of the unpopular but worthy career of dentistry helped him to secure a loan from the Chinese Agricultural Bank.
His mother cried as he boarded the train at Nagqu railway station to begin the 2,450 kilometre journey to Xi’an.
The 28 hours, travelling ‘third class, hard seat’, was an education in itself. During the journey he met several young Chinese and was able to converse with them, even though his clothing and accent set him apart.
The city of Xi’an was beyond anything he’d ever imagined. Modern and thriving, it represented everything he wanted his life to be. Crowds of beautifully dressed city dwellers swarmed in every direction. Cars and buses ferried the city’s millions of inhabitants along wide, clean streets patrolled by traffic wardens and policemen in neat, crisp uniforms.
The final leg of his journey involved a train trip from Xi’an to Xian’yang. It was over in 18 minutes, another reflection of the fabulously fast pace of life he so desperately wanted to become a part of.
He carried his only bag filled with freshly washed, neatly ironed but threadbare clothes to the university campus and was directed to his dormitory by an efficient young clerk at the university’s registration office.
* * *
Tashi and Ping met in the cafeteria. Ping usually avoided the cafeteria. She thought it was decadent and unhealthy, but on the day she met Tashi she had made an exception, and was in line behind him waiting to buy her lunch.
Ping thought Tashi was disgusting. In front of her in the queue, he chose fatty, sugary, over-processed poison on every possible occasion. He piled sugar onto anything that provided a suitable platform, showing as much respect for his teeth and insight into the concept of nutrition as a freshly poisoned goldfish.
By the time they arrived at the cashier Ping was lecturing Tashi on his diet and general health. She had him turned around and walking backwards. It was an encounter from which neither ever recovered.
Ping was studying archaeology, history, anthropology and the Tibetan language. She and Tashi were the most exotic combination of incongruous ingredients the cafeteria would ever facilitate mixing. But mix they did and the recipe produced a result far more agreeable to romantics than to mainstream academics or gourmets.
Love is an extremely complex subject, a composite, made up of many parts.
Part one is lust. Upon this platform, which eventually dissolves, a complicated edifice of trust, commitment, admiration, adoration, and empathy is painstakingly constructed.
Love needs a future. Without a future, love quickly morphs into misery and despair. It grows fangs and eats away at its victim’s heart.
Love is dangerous, but try telling that to teenagers.
Ping paid cash, Tashi had a food voucher. They continued to debate the dangers of modern dietary trends as they sat together at one of the long benches filling the crowded, noisy dining hall.
The next subject was Tashi’s table manners. He didn’t have any according to Ping, who considered most mainlanders devoid of the most rudimentary etiquette.
She was from Hong Kong where, she assured him, nobody burped or spat, or shoveled food into their mouths like they were throwing logs into a furnace.
Tashi was fascinated. The concept of table manners was as alien to him as flying saucers. In fact any kind of saucers were far more sophisticated than anything he’d ever experienced in Womadige.
After augmenting each other’s education way beyond any aspects of the official curriculum, they reluctantly parted and headed to opposite ends of the campus to immerse their minds in subjects that were closer to opposite than intellectual endeavors normally accommodate.
Tashi lived in one of the university dormitories with seven other male students. He slept in a bunk, the second up from the bottom with two others above him and another four bunks on the other side of the room. The rules were very strict with a rigidly enforced 11pm curfew. Girls were only allowed in the boys’ dormitories during Tibetan New Year and otherwise they were similarly confined to their own dormitories.
China’s one child policy insisted that potential parents first be married. Interaction between the sexes at this extremely volatile stage of their development was actively discouraged.
But it was too late for Tashi and Ping. They were busy constructing a composite of blissful togetherness based on a strong foundation of never mentioned, never acknowledged and never demonstrated lust.
Ping’s father was a wealthy Hong Kong businessman and was worth more than every yak in Tibet.
Ping rented a small flat near the university campus. The first time she took him home, Tashi thought she was playing some kind of trick on him. It was more opulent than anywhere he’d ever been in his life. He’d finally attained his briefly glimpsed, childhood vision of nirvana.
After about two months the inevitable happened. Ping began talking about her family in terms that strongly implied Tashi would soon be meeting them. Tashi hoped this meant they would be coming to the mainland. It didn’t. It meant he was going to Hong Kong. Apparently the break after the next semester was the most convenient time for her busy father.
Inevitability doesn’t budge, it doesn’t negotiate. Inevitability is fascist, dogmatic certainty, cleverly disguised as fascist, dogmatic certainty. Inevitability doesn’t need to hide.
Nor did Tashi. He accepted inevitability and bowed graciously to ‘the will of the family’.
This introduced a whole new series of never before imagined problems. Ping expected to fly to Hong Kong and she expected Tashi to fly with her so they would arrive together, at face value a reasonable expectation. However it also assumed a financial capacity that was not within the range of Tashi’s otherwise impressive arsenal of abilities. With his family’s