Black Dragon Cafe

A Nakhi friend of ours, Okui, turned up today with his family and friends. They’d come to Dali to carry out tshethar 1 – the Buddhist practise of releasing animals back into the wild. In fact, it was more his friend Yongshun who was the devout religious one; for Okui and the others it was more just a good day out for the kids, all of whom were clutching black plastic bags filled with turtles, crabs and eels they’d picked up at the market.

Unfortunately, after the ten of us had all squeezed into the van one of the bags broke spraying eels across the floor. I missed most of the scenery on the way to the lake, scrabbling around trying to collect the little buggers and wondering what that meant for my karma.

On the boat, the children decided that the turtles were the most entertaining of the animals, and played with them like toy cars. The excitement was briefly broken by Yongshun saying Tibetan prayers over them, blessing them with peace, health and long life, before the kids gave the turtles their baptism into freedom by lobbing them hand-grenade style across the water.

The black plastic carrier bags of eels were then unceremoniously dumped from the side of the boat, but it turned out that the crabs (huge things, their shells bigger than my outstretched hand) were, not for freedom but for dinner. This, along with the prayer beads made of ivory, didn’t really fit into my understanding of the karmic balance.

There was a twist to the tale as during the drive to a lakeside restaurant the van suddenly swerved left to right in zigzags down the road before rolling to a slow stop on the verge. Yongshun stumbled out from the drivers seat holding a massive crab, which had managed to escape and run down the length of the van, then insert itself under the brake pedal, so that we were effectively without brakes (unless he braked very hard).

We arrived at the restaurant without further incident, and Yongshun told me (over steamed crab) that nowadays among the Nakhi people there are very few who believe in the old Dongba shamanistic tradition. Though increasing freedom has meant that interest in religion has grown, the majority tend to believe in the pick and mix faith: a bit of Tibetan Buddhism, a bit of Han Chinese Buddhism, a bit of local superstition, a bit of Daoism. Most people go along with whatever local practices have sprung up: it can’t hurt to throw your coin in the wishing well, just on the off-chance.

Tibetan Buddhism has become increasingly popular among a wide section of Yunnanese, especially for the 30-somethings. For many Chinese, Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism have the same grip on the imagination that they do in the West, a certain mysterious cachet that has grown over the last few years, partly because so many blatant abuses have been observed in monks of the Han Chinese Buddhism (not observing their own rules, taking a lot of money, in Kunming they’re even seen hailing taxis to go to the KTV). Then there is increased tourism and accessibility of Tibet, and its portrayal in popular culture such as through singer Han Hong [韩红] (whose popularity is a mystery in itself) and the best-selling novel Zang Ao [藏獒 "Tibetan Mastiff"].

1. tshethar 放生 fang4 sheng1Means literally “sparing a life” in both Tibetan and Chinese. I’d heard about this before, and was told that a red string is tied to the released creatures, so that fisherman who caught them would know they were tshethar and throw them back. I thought that was a touching story, but when I mentioned it I was met with derisive scoffs at my naivete.