Free The Hotel on the Roof of the World by Alec le Sueur

on as hard as he could while launching into his sales pitch in perfect English: ‘I have no money. I have no parents. I have no money. I have no parents. I have no money. Please give me money. I have no parents. I have no money. Please give me money…’
    The ‘Rapper’, as we called him, was the most persistent of all the Barkhor beggars. His ruthlessly pitiful approach was used to great effect. He could only be shaken off with either a considerable amount of force or a large contribution to his funds which he would then take back to his parents who eagerly awaited him at the front of the temple.
    One of the favourite claims by the Chinese is that they eradicated begging when they liberated Tibet in 1951 and that they turned the beggars into ‘the new proletariat of the New Tibet.’
    I pictured the Rapper clinging on the leg of a diehard Communist and wondered who would win: the lecture on the no-begging policy of New Tibet, or a contribution to the Rapper’s welfare funds?
    For the Tibetans, there has never been anything unwholesome about begging. There are claims that before the Chinese entered Tibet there were some 20,000 beggars making their living across the country. In the constant search throughout life to gain merit, giving money to beggars scores high points and giving money to beggars in the Barkhor scores some of the highest merit points of all. For some pilgrims the walk to Lhasa, their spiritual capital, was the accomplishment of a lifetime which had taken their entire life savings to achieve. They would beg in the Barkhor to raise enough money to see them through the trip home.
    Colonel Waddell, who accompanied the British invasion of Tibet in 1904 and who may well have had the Rapper’s great, great grandfather around his leg, described the Barkhor beggars as ‘repulsively dirty’. It is a description which could be used very accurately today and after removing the Rapper and his sticky lollipop from my trouser leg I set off down the side streets for some relief from the bombardment of sensations at the Barkhor.
    In the narrow streets behind the Barkhor I would find my favourite part of Lhasa – where time has stood still for hundreds of years. Streets twist and turn, sometimes 30 feet wide, sometimes six feet wide, veering off at right angles between old whitewashed stone buildings three to four storeys high with black trapezoid windows. Here you only see Tibetan faces – the Chinese do not venture alone down these little alleyways.
    One street corner always has a ram tethered to a door post. He has a very short rope and can only stand or sit on the large granite doorstep. There is never any food visible yet he is permanently chewing something, sitting on his doorstep gazing at the world going by. Sheep are often saved from the slaughterhouse by Tibetans who take them on as pets. It is thought that this saving of a soul from death is a very merit-worthy action and therefore adds to the running total of merit of the new sheep owner. It is quite common to see Tibetans walking around the Barkhor with a sheep on a lead, or taking a couple of sheep on a long pilgrimage.
    At least I used to hope that this ram was one of the saved ones. It did dawn on me one day that perhaps it was a different ram there every time and that they were just being fattened up for slaughter.
    In a dimly lit doorway across from the ram, an old Tibetan lady in full Tibetan dress slices a turnip on a chopping board across her lap. Another spins wool into thread. Small girls lean out of first floor windows calling, ‘Hello, tashi delai , hello!’ to passers-by. Everyone has time to greet you, whether by a smile, a nod, a tashi delai or occasionally by the really traditional greeting of sticking a tongue out at you. This is the Tibet of the past that so many wish was still here today.
    Trying to find my way back to the Barkhor market, I found myself trapped between two narrow streets