Story: Let's Get Ready to Rumble

My visit to Litang brings to mind the old punchline of attending a fight and a hockey game breaking out. No flying pucks per se, however day two of the horse festival did devolve into a riot between the Chinese police and the knife-wielding Tibetan cowboys and I managed to find myself square in the middle. But I'm getting ahead of myself, as Litang was much more than that and I should probably start the story at the beginning.

After seemingly days of bouncing along not quite interstate grade roads to this small village amidst the high grasslands of the eastern Tibetan plateau, I'd finally found my bliss. The main street was the standard dusty collection of ugly tiled Chinese architecture, but behind that, on the way up to a beautiful monastery were winding roads lined with mud brick homes and elaborately carved woodwork. Tibetan people are some of the warmest in the world and greetings of "tashi dalek" rang out from all corners. I chased giggling little girls around and around mud yards, greeted toothless grinning old women as they spun their portable prayer wheels in shady doorways and chatted up a young monk beneath a high-perched chorten as the sun settled in for the night. My face literally hurt from smiling and laughing so much, and I could not have been more relieved to leave the world of Chinese package tours behind. It was two days before the start of the region's biggest horse festival and the town was starting to fill up and a palpable buzz filled the air. The only guesthouse with not just showers but hot ones at that, became ground zero for a gathering of a great group of Western travelers who added immediate friends to share the upcoming festivities with. A click or two outside of town, the pasture was sprinkled with the numerous tents of those in for the festival; many plain white, many more elaborately coloured with intricate designs.

Day one went off without a hitch, commencing with opening ceremonies featuring Tibetans dressed in their finest traditional finery. Lining the "midway" were stalls with kebabs and stuffed breads, tents serving up stirfrys and wonton soup and numerous kitschy games of chance (eg. roll an innertube around the cheesy plastic gold buddah and he's yours for keeps). Afternoon festivities kicked off at 2pm with an exhibition of horsemanship skills as riders hurled themselves off their horses with thier oversized sleeves flapping in the winds, hanging on only by the stirrups. They'd bounce themselves off the ground again and again before returning to the saddle having thumbed their nose at gravity. Those that didn't make the return journey horse-side were inevitably hooted and jeered. They still smiled.

Day two got interesting, and brings me back around to my subject line and its intended double entendre. Get it? Rumble of horsey hoofs? Riots? Yeah, okay...sorry. Anyway, there was apparently some dispute during the morning race over 2nd/3rd place, which led to a bit of a fight and sort of a stabbing. Well, cowboys will be cowboys and it really only became a problem when the police stepped in. Tibetans are happy to settle things amongst themselves and that would have been that, but Chinese police are not some of their favorite people. Goes back to that whole liberation/occupation debate. A couple cops got bloodied and lost face in the process. A big no-no in China. Fast forward to the afternoon dance competition, where people are packed in watching more or less the same dance performed to the same music, with variation coming only in the different colours of the costumes and slightly different formations. Anyway, you seen one, you've seen 'em all and we exited the tightly packed crowd just in time to see a lynch mob of belt-wielding police charge in, indiscriminately whipping any and everyone in their path. Apparently, Tibetans are used to seeing this kind of crap and whooped and laughed, ultimately chasing back the severely outnumbered police force, who were quickly losing face yet again as they fled across the road to a barrage of hurled rocks and watermelon rinds. As the crowd swelled along the road with the cops debating what to do from their retreat-to position, the rocks continued to fly forth. Not being much of a fan of assholes or police, I'd even grabbed a hefty chunk of my own when the gunshots rang out. Needless to say, the sound of bullets whizzing overhead is a touch disconcerting and Monty Python's rally cry of "run away! run away!" rang loudly in my ears. The confrontation likely would have continued were it not for a sudden downpour of freezing rain that sent people scrambling for shelter. Apart from the getting shot at part, it really was good fun. Word on the street had it that the police were looking for some of the perpetrators from that morning, but I tend to think they were trying to reassert their authority and ended up looking like even bigger sissies. Seriously, its a really dumb idea to mess with a heap of Tibetan cowboys armed only with a leather belt, and its excedingly bad form to plunge whipping away into a crowd filled with women and children. We bought a beer for the guy whose rock took out a squad car window. The Chinese are shits to the Tibetans and I really don't blame them for having little respect for their authority or patience for their shenanigans. Its also pretty stoopid to pull a stunt like that in a crowd with hundreds of western photographers.

We stuck around for day three to see what was on tap next, but the police were nowhere to be seen, so we had to settle for a singing contest (painful!) and some more horseback fun and games (pretty cool). All in all, it was my kind of festival and certainly my top experience in China, if not one of the best of the entire trip. Great people, stunning scenery and police humiliation...what more could you ask for? How about a Free Tibet!?