Foxlily

We were in Lhasa for a blue moon–the second full moon that June.  We spent part of our Blue Moon Day in the Barkhor, and part of it in a restaurant with a pleasant open gallery overlooking one of the gigantic incense burners outside the Jokhang Temple. The view from there was wonderful, but the more modestly situated Snowlands restaurant had our vote for best of Lhasa, if only because its excellent curries were a pleasant change from the Chinese fare of which we had wearied, and the Tibetan dishes which were so often built around yak meat that we would not try them.  I tried a mango lhassi, hoping for a cool refreshment in the hot day, but it had a disappointing bovine undertaste that the mango juice didn’t quite disguise.

When the blue moon rose,  Hadley and I were exploring the streets near the Lhasa Hotel, west of the town center.  We found a multi-level supermarket, which to us was as interesting as any museum.  The unfamiliar food intrigued us, and our presence in the supermarket entertained other shoppers.  Leaving the grocery,  we passed bars and restaurants, pool halls (this must be a national obsession), people playing cards al fresco, and, bewilderingly, a number of narrow, shop front “emergency rooms.”  We assumed these were walk-in clinics, but never learned why there were so many of them in Lhasa.

On the sidewalk outside the high wall surrounding the Lhasa Hotel, dozens of street merchants displayed their wares on blankets.  These were all items for the tourist trade, some of them rather attractive faux antiques.  I stopped to look at one woman’s “antique” flint strikers,  made of old leather and with some old brass on them.  We’d seen lots of these in the Barkhor, and while they were cleverly made, many of them from old bits and pieces, the uniformity in their construction (and, in the case of the striker under discussion, the new tin on the inside and the obvious fakeness of the “turquoise” and “coral” on the flap) betrayed their recent origins.

Thinking that such an “antique” would nevertheless be an interesting souvenir, I asked the price. The vendor stated an exorbitant figure–900 RMB (yuan), about $120 U.S. I would happily have paid 90 yuan ($12), which would have been  a fair price, but this asking price showed me what I was to this vendor–not a customer, but prey. There was no misunderstanding as to the figure, because, as is common in Asia, the price had been quoted on a calculator.   I smiled, said I didn’t have that much money, and began to walk away. The vendor grabbed my arm, hung onto me as I tried to leave, and insisted that the flint striker, an obvious product of some instant antique flint striker factory in town, was “old, old, very very old,” and a rural family heirloom, too.  Her intensity and persistence grew alarming.

I was taller and stronger than this woman, and the hotel guard’s stand was nearby, but I didn’t want to make a scene.  Polite efforts to detach the vendor from my arm were ineffective.  Not an auspicious event for a Blue Moon Night.

As the vendor grew more hostile, hissing in my face and grasping harder, I pulled away firmly and walked off.  She shouted after me. From her tone, I assumed she was not calling down the blessings of Chenrezig upon my head.

Her behavior surprised me, as my understanding of bargaining etiquette in street markets the world over has been that asking and rejecting a starting price did not obligate the potential buyer, though engaging in negotiations very well might have done. I had never made a counteroffer, and was free to leave, or so I thought.

The situation’s unpleasantness was compounded by this vendor’s position as the first to the left of the Lhasa Hotel’s gates.  Every time I left or returned, she saw me, and every time, she’d cut me an angry look and hiss at me, as if she’d just seen a devil.

I did eventually buy two tinder pouches, though not from her, and not in Lhasa.  I still wonder what set her off.