S1E8 - China's Heaven & Hell: Mystic Tibet - Part 1

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A chance encounter with a devout Buddhist au pair changed everything about my understanding of spirituality. After watching her weep for crabs we cooked and eventually leave her family behind to become a monk, I found myself on an unexpected journey to the remote corners of Tibet – places where foreigners rarely venture and Chinese visitors are almost unheard of.

My invitation came from a high monk we called "LB" (Live Buddha), a young man whose wisdom belied his years. Despite my extensive reading on Buddhism, our initial meetings in Shanghai revealed how little I truly understood. When he invited me to his temple deep in the Gansu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture – a mountainous region sandwiched between Sichuan province and Tibet's capital – I couldn't resist becoming the first Chinese person to visit.

The journey itself was as transformative as the destination. After landing at Kangding Airport (the world's third-highest at 4,300 meters), altitude sickness hit me like a wall. "Your mind can still think, but your body doesn't react anymore," perfectly describes the disorienting experience. What followed was a harrowing 16-hour drive in a battered Toyota Highlander along muddy cliff-edge roads with no phone signal, passing through four seasons in a single day as we crossed mountain passes exceeding 5,000 meters.

The landscape revealed extraordinary sights: massive yaks moving sluggishly through snowstorms, stunted vegetation clinging to steep slopes, and most remarkably, small caves dotting mountainsides where monks meditated in isolation for years. These glimpses into extreme spiritual dedication began a profound shift in my own worldview, transforming me from someone raised Christian but largely nonreligious into a person deeply engaged with Taoist and Buddhist practices.

Have you ever wondered what lies beyond the tourist-approved regions of Tibet? Join me as I share more stories from my numerous visits to this breathtaking, otherworldly place in upcoming episodes – where ancient wisdom meets breathtaking isolation.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yo, what's up everyone.
Welcome back to yet another newsegment of Asian Uncle and I'm
your host, uncle Wong.
This topic, mysterious Tibet,is a stark contrast from what we
discussed before.
But like this segment topicsuggests heaven and hell, oh
Tibet.
Foreigners have not been therebefore.

(00:22):
Think it's an exotic place.
Indeed it is.
I've been there countless times.
I don't even remember how manytimes I had suffered from the
altitude sickness or how manyhours I've ended up sitting in a
car, for Parts of it are notaccessible to foreign citizens.
Pretty much.
If you're in Lhasa, the capitalcity to the west of that are

(00:45):
not accessible, so you wouldhave to visit with specific tour
groups and of course, theywould only take you to
designated areas.
You could take pictures, butyou're not allowed to go off
without the tour guide with you.
This was a result of the Tibetmovement years back and that
brought a lot of drama to thisonce peaceful group of people.

(01:07):
I had been raised a Christianfor the majority of my life, but
spending so much time in Chinadid in fact have an influence.
Being engaged in Taoism,understanding Buddhism, spending
a lot of time with the monks inTibet gradually changed me for
the better.
I was never a religious personeither, but the curiosity has

(01:30):
always been there.
I wrote my book before one ofthem.
There was an entire researchsection questioning our
religious beliefs.
It's not if God exists or not,but how human beings view higher
entities.
This is in no way derived frommy own opinion, but from pure

(01:51):
science and human psychology.
Even the great Albert Einsteinhad his own theory about why
humans believe in the entitiesthat they do, for instance the
mother and father, part of whatwe believe in, the Virgin Mary,
jesus, god, the Father, the Son,the Holy Spirit all these

(02:11):
things intertwine in a certainway.
Even in Buddhist religion wehave figures of mother and
father.
I even went as far as tointerview retired Catholic
priests.
They're under no morerestriction and I thought they
could speak more freely.
And as I researched this topicdeeper and deeper, the more

(02:34):
question it seemed to raise.
Like everybody else, I waseducated.
I went on my way, tried to makeas much money for my family as
possible.
I didn't think about religiontoo much at the time.
I was young.
All that changed when mydaughter was born.

(02:55):
We were interviewing au pairs atthe time and this jolly lady
from the north of China with athick accent came up and while
we're doing interview, she saidthat she's a devout Buddhist and
that this would be her last job.
When I asked her why, she saidafter this she would go become a

(03:16):
monk.
I was like, wow, that's prettycrazy.
I talked to my wife.
I'm like, look, there's no wayshe would hurt our daughter
because she's such a devoutBuddhist.
Let's just hire her.
So we did.
She was strange at first.
She didn't eat meat, shepreached a lot of Buddhist
teachings, but most of all, shewas the kindest woman I've ever

(03:40):
met, and sometimes when we areeating for instance, we're
eating crab you cook them alive.
She would be on the side, sortof weeping and praying for the
crab that we're about to kill.
And a year later, after sheleft our house, she did become a
monk.
She left her kids behind well,one kid her son behind and just

(04:05):
left.
I would visit her eventuallywhere she became a monk at
Lanronggar Buddhist Academy.
It was high up in the mountainsof Serta in Sichuan, china.
I know that was a long sentence.
I just said you don't have toremember it because I will go
into detail later in theepisodes of my visits there and,

(04:28):
like I said before, I made waytoo many visits there, so there
would be a lot of stories totell.
Let me bring you back on myfirst journey there.
My wife had just given birth tomy daughter and she had to take
care of the kids, so I decidedto go alone.
I had met this high monk throughmy au pair high monk through my

(04:51):
au pair.
I had to admit, when I firstmet this monk that came to my
house, my business mind kickedin.
I thought he may have been acheat.
There's many people in Chinathat wear monk's clothes,
tricking believers for money onthe streets.

(05:12):
To my surprise, it turned outto be the opposite.
We spent a short week inShanghai, mainly trying to
understand each other's culture.
He didn't speak too good ofMandarin Chinese and, of course,
I couldn't speak Tibetan.
He did bring with him atranslator.
I had thought I was somewhatfamiliar with Buddhist teachings

(05:35):
because I read a lot.
In the end, after talking tohim for that short duration, I
learned that I knew nothing.
This high monk that I speak ofwe would later call him LB for
short, not LeBron, but liveBuddha.
Him LB for short, not LeBron,but Live Buddha.

(05:58):
People in his culture believethat he is a reincarnated Buddha
here to help us.
So this is just for short, sowe don't keep calling him a high
monk.
He was only a couple years old,maybe two years, but the
maturity and wisdom that hedisplayed were astonishing.
We were both in our very early30s when we met, but it felt

(06:20):
like he understood everythingand he couldn't do nothing about
it.
I was so eager to take up hisinvite and visit him.
It would have been my firsttime there and he also told me
that no other Chinese person hasbeen there to his temple and I
would be the first.
I was thinking why?
Little did I know that I wouldtake an insane journey into the

(06:43):
depths of what was consideredold Tibet.
They split it up and part of itintegrated with the Sichuan
province.
The entire part east of Lhasaare actually inhibited by
Tibetans.
Lb's temple was located deepinside Gansu Tibetan Autonomous

(07:05):
Prefecture.
Like I said before, this iswest of Sichuan province but
east of capital city Tibet,stuck right in the middle, a
mountainous region.
I flew from Shanghai transferflight to Chengdu, sichuan.
From there, at overnightlayover, I took another flight

(07:25):
to Kangding airport the next day.
Next morning the elevation atthe airport was over 4,300
meters.
I believe it's the thirdhighest airport in the world.
Almost immediately after Ilanded, when the doors opened, I
could feel the thin air.
Altitude sickness kicked in.
Almost immediately.

(07:47):
I found myself dizzy.
If our listeners here don'tknow what altitude sickness
feels like, you're not onlydizzy, you feel disengaged from
your body.
Your mind can still kind ofthink, but your body does not
react anymore.
It's very scary, especiallyexperiencing it for the first
time just not even getting offthe plane.

(08:08):
Yet.
I didn't know at the time butlb's temple is far as shit and
is isolated as hell.
It was located deep inside theGansu Tibet Autonomous
Prefecture, as I mentionedbefore.
That is a mountainous regionstuck right in between Sichuan
Province and Tibet capital city.

(08:30):
They split it up after Tibetintegrated with China capital
city.
They split it up after Tibetintegrated with China.
But anyways, once I got offthere was no airport.
We just got off on the airportstrip.
It was, I believe, early May,but the airport was already
covered in snow.
He sent his older brother tocome pick me up.

(08:53):
The dude spoke no English anddrove a broken down Toyota
Highlander that looked like it'sbeen through a war.
Nothing worked on that car,except what was necessary.
There was no AC, no stereo,nothing.
But he was a lifesaver.

(09:14):
As soon as I saw him, he smiled, greeted me, gave me a hada,
which is kind of like a silkquilt that you put over your
neck it's the way Tibetans greetyou.
You've probably seen it allover the place and he handed me
a small oxygen bottle and smiled.
He knew that I probably wouldbe dizzy by now or at least LB

(09:38):
knew and told him to bring onefor me.
The plane ride there wasn't long, including layover, maybe eight
hours or so.
From Chengdu to Kangding it waslike 45 minutes.
It was barely even a ride.
But it was scary as hellbecause our plane was not a jet,
it had propellers, so flyinginto thin air it was getting

(09:58):
really wobbly.
When it landed it scared theshit out of me.
But the drive, on the otherhand, wasn't so pleasant.
There was barely any cementroads after we got out of
Kangding, maybe the first houror so.
So for the next 15-16 hours wetrotted in mostly mud and dirt

(10:20):
on the edge of cliffs, buteverything around me just looked
like paradise.
There was nobody in sight.
There was nobody in sight, oreven a car in sight for hours at
a time.
I brought a simple duffel bagwith me and a big camera.
I promised my wife that I wouldtake some great photos and of

(10:40):
course I did.
Along the way, because of thehigh elevation, you would see
four seasons, sometimes all inone day.
As you cross the caps of themountain, it would just be
blizzard.
When you come down, you wouldsee colorful trees as it fall,
and when you make your wayaround the other side of the

(11:00):
mountain, it would be sunny likesummer.
It's crazy.
It was just beautiful.
There was not many tall trees.
Everything was kind of shortand stumpy, even the grass and
the flowers.
It's probably due to the highaltitude.
I remember very clearly that wedrove over a mountain that was
around 5,000 meters high.

(11:22):
As we approached thatmountaintop, I could already
hear my ears buzzing.
I was huffing and puffing onthe oxygen and it began to
blizzard.
I saw huge yaks they look likebulls, but they're called yaks
Just chilling along the side ofthe road.
They moved terribly slow.
I was wondering if they getaltitude sickness, just like me,

(11:47):
and sometimes I'd be justshitting bricks when the driver
was just driving along the edgeof a mountain down a single lane
, muddy road.
We did not have a phone signaland there was nobody around us.
For hours I thought to myselfwhat if our car just broke down?

(12:07):
Not even dive down the mountain, what if it just broke down?
Thank God it didn't, but someof the landscapes I passed
really took my breath away.
Thank God it didn't, but someof the landscapes I passed
really took my breath away.
I couldn't stop taking picturesof everything I saw, and
sometimes I would pass by thismountain and it would be the
only mountain, for instance, notcovered in snow, and then I

(12:30):
would see little holes insidethe mountain.
Later on I would find out thatthere would be people meditating
in those holes for years at atime.
It's ridiculous, and one ofthese times that I visited, one
of my buddies actually climbedup.
It took him maybe 45 minutes toclimb up into the hole and he
did see a female monk inside thehole meditating and she gave

(12:53):
him some spiritual little pillsand he came down all happy.
So it was pretty cool.
I never wanted to climb it, nordo I have the urge now, but you
will see that a lot when you'redriving just along the road.