This is my old buddy Jason Lees, in a photo taken a couple months ago when we stayed with him and his wife and daughter for a couple weeks at their house in Bali. We first met in 2005, right here in Zhongdien, China, after being introduced by another old friend, Eric Mortensen, about whom more later. Jason and I became friends after he graciously invited Hilary and me to join him and a group of his staff and friends on a several-week-long road trip through eastern Tibet, the focus of which was the horse festivals and nomad country way up north. That trip turned out to be one of my top life experiences, and it brought us back here to Zhongdien 13 years later.
J is one-of-a-kind. He’s a 6-foot-7 philosopher, an old-school Leftist, and an avid NBA fan. His London accent is so thick and mumbly he’s incomprehensible half the time, but the other half is interesting or hilarious or both, which makes you wonder about the half you missed. He’s spent his adult life exploring Asia, running different businesses here and there, and basically doing as he damn well pleases.
J, along with some local partners, owned the coolest bar I’ve ever been to – The Raven. It was in the heart of the web of narrow, winding, cobbled streets that is Old Town Zhongdien. Like all the buildings there, The Raven was in a couple-hundred-year old wooden Tibetan structure, with huge round timber posts and intricately carved wood. I walked in off the streets of Old Town into the Raven and saw a photo of Allen Iverson mounted on the wall and I thought, “Goddamnit, I’m home.” It was dark and smoky, and its regulars included expats, young locals, and an old-school Tibetan gangster who was famous for having killed a man who disrespected him during a political discussion on local TV. With a hatchet. To the skull. IN THE TV STUDIO. (There were no legal repercussions. Apparently it was a combination of the authorities a) thinking the dead guy should have known better, and b) having a discussion along the lines of, “You go arrest him!”… “Uh, fuck that! You go arrest him!” and so forth.) Sweijen, the honorable gangster, was a member of our road trip and wore his finest snow leopard pelts to the horse festivals, but recently died of cancer. The Raven (along with most of the rest of Old Town) burned down in 2013, but Old Town has been rebuilt, and, in proper Tibetan Buddhist fashion, The Raven has been reincarnated elsewhere – twice. As probably has Sweijen.
Also along with local partners, J runs an adventure travel company called Haiwei Trails. J’s travelled extensively throughout the plateau, often in the company of Tibetan friends who grew up as nomads herding yaks and sheep and goats through the mountains and grasslands of Kham and Amdo. So he is familiar with the physical geography of the region, and has a feel for the various local cultures and their customs. He told me this story of his first trip as a guide 20 years or so ago:
His first trip as a guide was up from Zhongdien into and through nomad country, road tripping and car camping. His first clients were Israelis, who are considered, in the “traveller” community for being, uh, how do I put this? Intense? Let’s say intense. One of these clients was a retired Special Forces guy who specialized in “intercepting” enemies of the state, and “a lovely guy”. As they came across nomads herding animals, the Israeli would ask Jason to ask the nomad if they could buy a sheep or something off him, and have him come to their campsite and cook it. J was amused at first, but dismissive, knowing that nomadic herders aren’t in the tourism business. They’re in the livestock “business”, if any, certainly not the service economy, and they are a proud, independent, and occassionally violent people. But the Israeli, unconcerned with matters of cultural sensitivity, would not let it go. Day after day, “Ask that guy if we can buy a goat. See if he’ll come up to our camp and roast it for us.” J declined again and again, explaining that the nomads would be baffled, if not offended, by such a request. Still the Israeli persisted, “ask that guy how much for one sheep.” Finally, after days and days of this, J is exasperated by the Israeli’s badgering, says Fine! I’ll go ask him! Just watch this, mate, so you understand what I’ve been trying to explain to you.
So J goes up to the nomad and somewhat sheepishly says something in Chinese along the lines of “excuse me, sir, sorry to bother you and I know this is ridiculous, but my friend over there really wants to know if we could buy a sheep off you…and if you would come to our campsite tonight and cook it for us?”
The nomad is like, “Sure, no problem. Where’s your camp?” J explains it to him, and sure enough, that night the guy comes out, slaughters a sheep, cooks that fucker up over a fire, and serves it to them all for dinner. His Israeli clients are very pleased.
There’s a lot of morals that could be taken away from that story. I can think of about three off the top of my head. But to J, the moral of the story was this: Don’t ever tell people they can’t do something. Because to J, that’s the moral to every story.
Earth to Ben 