By Xinhua writer Zhou Yan
When I first arrived in Lhasa, I could not help wondering how the holy city had even been built in the craggy, snow-covered mountains.
After a dry and gloomy winter in Beijing, it was a pleasant surprise to bathe in Lhasa's sunshine, inhale some unusually moist air after three days of snow and see peach trees already budding along the streets. I even went up to make sure the buds were real, not the fake ones sometimes tied to lifeless twigs in Beijing to give the appearance of freshness. I was not disappointed.
Like all my friends in Beijing, I was curious about what was going on in Lhasa ahead of the first anniversary of the deadly violence and the 50th anniversary of the democratic reforms in Tibet, the end of feudal serfdom and the flight of the 14th Dalai Lama.
As I was resting and adapting to the high altitude, I wandered along Beijing Road, which links the Potala Palace, the Jokhang Temple and Porgor Street, Lhasa's most famous market street.
The stylish stores, selling casual wear, sunglasses and snacks, were similar to those of any other Chinese city. Most shop assistants are from the neighboring provinces of Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai. Some speak Tibetan, but nearly all speak Mandarin.
A three-story commercial building on a corner of Beijing Road still bore the scars of last year's violence. In the charred building, which used to house Lhasa's largest children's clothing retailer, clothes and sneakers are stacked untidily on an old counter.
"Renovation will start next month," a shop assistant said. "For the moment it's better to keep it running as it is."
In Lhasa, like all other Chinese cities, migrant workers make up the bulk of laborers, with Tibetan people from outside the regional capital and other Tibetan communities in the neighboring provinces of Qinghai, Sichuan and Gansu, as well as Han people from the inland provinces.
Many restaurants are run by people from Sichuan Province and as a result, the province's hot, peppery dishes are extremely popular here and Sichuan dialect has become the second language of Lhasa, after native Tibetan.
Foreign media criticism about the influx of Han people, the dominant Chinese ethnic group, is all too familiar to me. Are these "intruders" actually robbing the natives of their job opportunities? I kept asking myself that question as I strolled Lhasa's streets, bumping into as many Tibetans as Han people.
"You wake up every morning only to find out you're in the red," a taxi driver from Sichuan said about working in Lhasa. The "administration fee" to the taxi company is 250 yuan (36.6 U.S. dollars) a day and he must pay at least 100 yuan for fuel.
"When business is good, I can make 500 yuan a day and take home about 150 yuan."
The driver insists he is only doing something the natives are reluctant to do. "Except for those government employees, most people are staying home for the Tibetan new year," he said.
When I woke up at 3 a.m. one day and couldn't get back to sleep again, I peered out my hotel room window at the street below.