Litang Revisited

Litang was a very interesting town, to give more insight in why it was so interesting, we will give a few observations that we made about Litang and its people. The first, when we talked to a few locals in the conversation seemed to turn to what nations was friendly to them. As opposed to the rest of China (where when they talk about Americans, they hit their fists together), in Litang they say that they are friends with Americans, Nepalis and Indian (noting that about 100 000 tibetans fled to India when China 'liberated' Tibet from feudalism, indeed many locals seem to have been born in India and came back to China). The friendship with the Americans we guess comes from the fact that the CIA supported the Khampa rebellion against the Chinese (for two years). The Khampa rebellion came to an end when the Chinese shelled Litang and killed 200 monks. This might explain why the town seems rebellious against China. We hope this information is accurate since it is difficult to have information about the subject in China on the internet. Therefore if you are interested you can cut and paste information in the comment section of this entry. Also, check out tibet.org, we couldn't access it from here but it
seems to have some insight into Kham province.

And now your questions and our answers (our guesses, not facts) :

How do these people make a living? Nomads and monks?
Nomads heard yaks and probably sell excess furs and meat in local town markets. We definetely saw what we thought were nomads roaming around town, they are definetely distinct from the townies. Monks are not state funded (they are in Thailand), they get money mainly from donations as far as we can tell.

They seem to have no facial hair. What do they think of Yann's beard? The children especially?
Hair = manliness

Is there TV in the tents? What's on? reruns of Baywatch and Dallas?
No TV but one lightbulb and radio powered by small solar panels.

What do the monks think of Baywatch?
No TV for nomads, but TV for monks. We've never seen an American TV show here, I wonder what 400 teenage boys would think about Baywatch? Hmmmmm .....

Or George W. Bush? Do they know he exists?
Haven't heard him mentioned, doubt the nomads know about him, probably don't care either.