Hu Jian, a government official in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province, was pleasantly surprised when he took a taxi last month. It was his first time in Lhasa, capital of the Tibetan Autonomous Region.

 

"When I got into the taxi, the driver, Zhou Hong, greeted me in the Sichuan dialect. Zhou, from Dayi County in Sichuan, told me most taxi drivers in Lhasa come from Sichuan," Hu said.

 

"Since it takes about 45 hours to reach Lhasa from Chengdu by rail, I didn't expect to meet many Sichuan people in Lhasa," said Hu, 43.

 

Locals in Lhasa are not surprised to find Sichuan people running restaurants, peddling vegetables, selling shoes or jewelery and working at construction sites.

 

"There are so many Sichuan people in Lhasa that the Sichuan dialect is tantamount to Mandarin," said Qampa, 36, a local travel agency employee.

 

He said that an increasing number of people from outside Lhasa had arrived in the city since the opening of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway last year.

 

The world's highest railway extends 1,956 kilometers from Xining, capital of Qinghai Province, to Lhasa.

 

"There are about 100,000 Sichuan people doing business in Lhasa, accounting for nearly 80 percent of people from outside the city," he said. Lhasa has a population of 474,500.

 

"Sichuan people are usually hardworking, have a strong sense of business and will try out any field where they can make money," he added.

 

Jiang Xuhong, a 41-year-old Chengdu woman, has run a hotpot restaurant since 1993.

 

She arrived in Lhasa in 1991 to be with her husband, who was stationed there with the army.

 

When she first arrived, with little to do, Jiang would invite other Sichuan people to her home for hot pot.

 

Two years later, she opened a 10-square-meter hot-pot restaurant with only three tables in a busy commercial district in Lhasa.

 

With a thriving business, every day Jiang would ride her bicycle to the market to buy meat and vegetables. She would then do all the cooking herself. Her restaurant now covers 800 square meters and is considered one of the best in Lhasa.

 

With the opening of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, visitors have brought the concept of interior decoration to Lhasa.

 

Eyeing the huge market potential, Tang Ni, 32, manager of an interior decoration firm in Chengdu, visits Lhasa each month.

 

Since last year, Tang has designed the interior of a 300-square-meter drugstore in Lhasa and finished the design plans for the city's first apartment building equipped with elevators.

 

(China Daily August 3, 2007)