White Limbo: The Classic Story Of The First Australian Climb Of Everest

by Hall, Lincoln

  The C.M.A. encouraged us to keep busy. Its officials, too, appreciated how much there was to see in China. We made a day trip to the Great Wall. At one time the wall had stretched in a continuous length for 5000 kilometres. The first sections were built in the third century BC, though the part we visited had been restored to the extent of being totally rebuilt during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644).

  The wall itself was as it had been at our visit three years ago—and for centuries before that. Below, where the buses parked, the tourist facilities had multiplied tenfold. The wall snaked over the rugged and empty hills like a hollow Chinese dragon. For the couple of kilometres open and accessible to tourists, the dragon came to life as thousands crowded the ramparts. Most of the sightseers on the wall, choking the souvenir shops and filling the restaurants, were Chinese. The road as we drove back to Beijing was busy with buses. The tourist market had become big in China.

  Other things had changed since 1981, even to our blinkered eyes. Three years before, equality amongst the Chinese was shown by the universally worn blue uniforms of the Revolution. Now other clothes could be seen, some with more than a hint of fashion. Women in particular, or perhaps it was the women whom we noticed, wore clothes that actually flattered them. See-through blouses and skirts, though modestly cut, were a big step from shapeless blue trousers and square jackets and skirts. Such changes were evasively justified as logical developments of policy rather than being acknowledged as about-faces in attitude. The people had such faith in the Communist government that dramatic changes and improvements in lifestyle could be made quickly and without question. The government was not shackled by fear of the electorate’s reaction, nor by petty politicking against it.

  The highlight of our stay in Beijing was an acrobatic show. In an old hall opening onto a narrow street a team of fifteen gymnasts, jugglers and magicians kept us amazed with their flexibility, poise and showmanship. Though many Westerners were in the audience, the show was essentially entertainment for the Chinese. The applause of the old men in singlets and the young Chinese couples was as vigorous as ours. The dedication and discipline of the performers made us feel like amateurs. Yet, for the duration of our expedition, the climbing of Everest would rule our lives as completely as the nightly performances governed the acrobats. Though our fields of expertise were vastly different I found the show inspirational. Far from being relaxing, it fuelled my impatiently contained eagerness to reach the mountain.

  At other times we organised our own entertainment. Simply walking the streets watching the daily routine filled out our view of the giant city. Bicycles played such a large role in the lives of the people of Beijing that Mike decided he needed to film a cycling scene. With Mr Xia, the young English student who was our interpreter, we combed the backstreets near Tiananmen Square in search of a shop which hired bicycles. Eventually we found the place, only to be told that the bicycle owner had moved his premises. Since it was our last morning in Beijing we did not have time to hunt around other parts of the city. We encouraged Mr Xia to ask two young men eating ice-creams by their bicycles whether we could borrow their machines for ten minutes. When they agreed, we persuaded the ice-cream vendor to let us hire the tricycle-trolley he used to transport his stall. Howard pedalled the tricycle with Mike kneeling on the platform at the back while Tim and I rode behind. It must have been a curious sight, for some European tourists stepped out of their bus to take photos of us as we rode by. The Chinese were interested in our performance but not enough to be distracted from whatever they were doing for more than a few moments. Foreign tourists had become an accepted presence and their behaviour was expected to be peculiar. Travelling the flat streets by bicycle was an enjoyable way to see Beijing. Unlike other big Asian cities the roads were not ruled by the dual evils of anarchy and speed.

  From a subject’s point of view it was interesting to see the amount of work that Mike put into the film. He needed a great deal of co-operation from us in order to shoot the same scene from different angles. When filming, he became oblivious to the reactions of the people around him apart from those who featured in the footage. His concentration on the job made it easier for us to forget our embarrassment as we ran up and down the ramparts of the Great Wall in front of huge crowds, or made seemingly natural comments about the food at the C.M.A.’s banquet in Beijing, despite the bright lights, the camera, and Jim hovering in the background recording the conversation.

  The film added another dimension to our expedition. A group of twelve is naturally less cohesive than one of half that size. During our approach to the mountain our common aim was the film. Once we reached Base Camp the idea of the film would drop from the climbers’ minds as we concentrated on the enormous task of climbing the mountain. The intimacy of a small group working together would return. Above Advance Base Camp we would operate as two separate groups to allow each person to concentrate on his own special problems. There would be co-ordination of filming and climbing by radio and other areas of co-operation, but essentially we would be two independent teams. Meanwhile we made no distinction, only that those behind the cameras were busier than those in front of them. As we travelled through China there was a real sense of biding our time, of twiddling our thumbs until the action started. The twelve of us joked and carried on like a football team on end-of-season holiday. Once the climbing started there would be little energy to spare for frivolity.

  Our next stop was Chengdu. Instead of simply overnighting en route to Lhasa we spent a day there absorbing the atmosphere of another part of China. Though a large city, Chengdu had a definite provincial atmosphere. Built on the banks of the MinKiang, the climate was tropical. The thickly treed avenues and parkland running by the river, together with the vegetables in the markets, gave the city a lushness which stopped the heat and humidity from seeming out of place as they had in Beijing. There were many things to do and see—more than time allowed. Howard and I visited a massage clinic where all the masseurs were blind. In a country with a thousand million people to support no resources are ignored. The only people who would feel left out would be those who did not wish to conform. No such people were obvious to us.

  Away from the main roads the streets were narrow alleys. It was as if the broad avenues serviced by buses and trams were the city’s concession to the modern age. In the backstreets the houses seemed to tower above the cobblestones, only because the passageways were so tight. Here was the China of my imagination. An old man under a big straw hat waddled along the street, his legs bowed under the weight of two huge baskets of vegetables. Each basket dangled on four strings from the ends of the worn bamboo pole which lay across his shoulders. Leaning against a doorway was a grey-haired grandmother. The small black shoes upon her once-bound feet, together with the black legs of her trousers, suggested two exclamation marks; a contrast in emotion to her wrinkled yet expressionless face as she stared back at me.

  What changes those eyes have seen, I thought. How foreign China is to me. And how long it would take for me to begin to understand what these people thought. Their appreciation of the world would remain entirely theirs. The next day we would fly to Tibet, where the only Chinese were transient bureaucrats and soldiers tolerating hardship postings.

  Underneath us an ocean of clouds stretched from horizon to horizon. During the two-hour flight from Chengdu the few breaks in the cloud revealed hilly landscapes dramatic in their lack of habitation. And once, a tantalising glimpse of an ice-capped peak lying directly below, the dirty plastic windows distorting its shape. Then, again, endless clouds censoring our view of the unknown country.

  Suddenly the plane dipped its nose and we were plunging through whiteness to emerge, it seemed, in another world. Beneath was a huge riverbed flooded muddy brown from one bank to the other. The walls of the valley soared dramatically skyward from the water’s edge.

  Purple, red and yellow scree slopes rose steeply above the river, sometimes jumping vertically for hundreds of metres over darker cliffs. Bluffs f
ormed the summits of the barren mountains which flanked the valley in merciless monotony. Gentleness was found in neither the landforms nor our approach. The plane continued to drop rapidly so that soon the mountains towered above us, and the expanse of water below seemed uninvitingly close. Then, relief to the eye, greenness filling the floor of a major side valley. I spotted a village at its head, but even there the houses were cluttered together as if crowding helped combat the bleakness and immensity of Tibet.

  Just as it seemed inevitable that our touchdown would be in water the concrete runway appeared below. We hit the ground once … twice … three … four times. At 3500 metres, the thin air rushing the upturned flaps was slow in bringing us to a halt. Stairs were wheeled up and we stepped out into the cool sunshine of one of the world’s remotest airports.

  Over the mountain range to the north of the runway lay Lhasa, the city supposedly serviced by the airport. Six hours’ drive away, the capital of Tibet was built many centuries before accessibility by air was a consideration.

  Our luggage filled most of the aeroplane’s hold. We waited a couple of hours for it to be unloaded, firstly onto trucks, then into the small enclosure surrounded by mud and puddles which was the luggage claim area. There we transferred what we could into the comfortable bus which was to take us to Lhasa. The padded seats did little to compensate for the appalling state of the road.

  In comparison with tropical Chengdu, Tibet was desolate, yet in the bus we were close enough to notice what vegetation did exist. We passed through irrigated areas where fields were the green and brilliant yellow of ripe barley and mustard. Most of the countryside was of rock—pieces of all sizes from the huge cliffs to scree and gravel. A hospitable environment for lichens and a few small flowering bushes but very little else. The road followed the river the Tibetans called the Tsangpo; further downstream it is known as the Brahmaputra. In places the road was less than a metre above the muddy, swirling torrent. At other spots, side-streams had washed the road away so that our bus had to take the even rougher detour around the washout. At a small cluster of Chinese-style houses which could hardly be called a village, a long bridge crossed the river. From there we continued to follow the river until the road branched up the valley which held Lhasa.

  It was late afternoon by the time we approached the legendary city. Visible from the outskirts was the Potala Palace, perched on the summit of a rocky peak high above the city. Once the residence of the fourteenth Dalai Lama and his previous incarnations, the Potala stood in stark contrast to the solid but rough concrete factories, warehouses and barracks, built by the Chinese on the city limits. The broad modern streets were flanked by similar buildings. Functionality was the prime criterion for design. As we neared the centre of the old city the atmosphere changed. Long three-storey apartment blocks, obviously new, were built in Tibetan style. Large windows filled with a dozen smaller panes were surrounded by carved and brightly painted frames. The doorways were similarly decorated. It was refreshing to note, even as we arrived, that in the old part of the city the Chinese administration was complying with the broad, squat style of Tibetan architecture and its distinctive manner of decoration.

  One of the privileges of a mountaineering expedition was that we were able to stay in the Centre for Physical Culture and Sports. Though the facilities were basic it had the enormous advantage of being close to the middle of town. Most tourist groups were accommodated in a big hotel seven or eight kilometres from the city.

  The kitchen staff at the Centre had been expecting our arrival and as soon as we had unloaded the bus we were whisked off to the dining hall. The good food fuelled our appetite to see something of the city. As dusk approached we left the compound in groups of two and three. It was natural that we all ended up in the same place as the flow of people led in one direction. That was to the Jokhang Temple, the spiritual centre of Lhasa, and hence of Tibet. The main street was broad and guttered and uncrowded. Each side street we took became narrower and busier until we came to an intersection which made us stop and stare. Chinese had vanished from the crowds. Tibetan men and women in their heavy clothes of wool or sheepskin walked clockwise as if part of a procession. From the time I had spent in Nepal, I was familiar with the tradition of walking clockwise around Buddhist monuments. We were to discover that the object of veneration was the Jokhang Temple complex that dominated the block around which the people walked. We joined the crowd which thickened as we approached the Temple. Many of the Tibetans were from places a long distance from Lhasa and had never seen Westerners before. They stared and laughed and chatted to each other and to us. Their rough and weather-beaten toughness, as we were jostled in the crowd, made us glad that their reaction was one of amusement.

  Many of the men had long plaited hair wrapped around their heads with red cotton. Neatness was not a mark of fashion, except perhaps in a negative sense. Rough jewellery featured prominently. The men decorated themselves with ear-studs of turquoise. Sometimes a turquoise pebble was suspended from an ear by a short length of cotton. A red coral bead prevented the cotton from slipping through the pierced ear-lobe. Around their necks they wore two beads of coral and one of turquoise and, sometimes, a translucent agate bead appeared as well. The jewellery of the women was finer and more elaborate with many of the pieces set in silver. The turquoise stones were larger and less blemished, with amber and silver beads included amongst the coral and turquoise on their necklaces. Often smaller pieces were set in silver to form a pendant. Many of the Tibetan people are semi-nomadic herdsmen and, for them, jewellery is a logical way to carry their wealth. Other possessions are cumbersome, but jewellery can be sold or traded easily when money or goods are needed.

  The women seemed equal to the men. They joked and teased just as much, although less noticeably because they were fewer. Their long black hair was always worn in plaits, sometimes hanging down their backs, sometimes wrapped around their heads, but always neater than the men. At their waists, on top of their black ankle-length skirts, they wore finely woven, multicoloured aprons. The words “dress” and “skirt” suggest a fineness of cut that did not exist. Clothes for the harsh Tibetan climate were above all else practical—heavy yak or sheep woollens designed for warmth and protection from the weather.

  The crowd came to a virtual standstill outside the Jokhang. The evening light was diminished further by the clouds of juniper smoke from sacred fires. The courtyard of the temple was covered with people prostrated towards the entrance. It was not a matter of dropping to their knees, then walking away considering their religious service done. They lay full length on the ground, forehead touching stone and hands extended. Each person repeated the procedure dozens, sometimes hundreds, of times. The paving stones were worn smooth from centuries of this practice. Many people came with mats on which to lie and small hand-pads to slide forward. Others sat on the step by the road watching or repeating mantras with their malla beads. It was an extraordinary sight. We had come to Lhasa knowing of the Chinese suppression of Tibetan Buddhism during the Cultural Revolution twenty years before, and had expected the temples and the Potala to be stale museums of past glory. Our surprise was great, and we found the display of religious fervour uplifting.

  The next day we were allowed to see the interior of the Jokhang. The front gate opened into a courtyard surrounded by a covered walkway. Red wooden pillars supported the secondary storey. Where the pillars met the ceiling were elaborate carvings painted bright blues, yellows and greens. Similarly decorated pillars separated the second storey from the third. From the ground we could catch glimpses of sculpted, gilded roofs above. An old lama (priest) dressed in traditional scarlet robes hurried us inside. His face was expressionless and remained so for the two or three hours we spent exploring the temple.

  The splendour of the main hall outshone all other religious monuments I had seen anywhere in the world. A huge statue of Shakyamuni Buddha took pride of place. From the floor to the tip of his gold-and jewel-encrusted headdress was a full t
hree storeys. The whole bronze figure was plated with gold. The walls of the hall were painted with elaborate murals; each painting told a different story about the life of Buddha or his different reincarnations and manifestations.

  Opening directly from the main hall were a dozen rooms, each barely large enough to house a life-size image of one of the holy people associated with spreading Buddha’s teachings in Tibet. Each figure was bedecked in gold and jewels. Butter lamps and offerings of rice, scarves and money lay at their feet. Upstairs more statue-filled rooms opened onto the walkway surrounding the main hall. The skill of the artistry was consistently fine. The worth of the religious art was stupendous in monetary terms and its spiritual value impossible to assess.

  From the roof of the Jokhang we looked out over the buildings of Lhasa. Rather than isolated houses, the buildings were in big blocks, each with a central courtyard. The roofs were flat with low walls around the perimeter and were used as part of the living space—a place to dry grain, to store yak-dung for fuel, or to sit outside away from the dust and bustle of ground level.

  A few kilometres away was the Potala Palace, rising proud and aloof above the city as if to capture in its location and architecture the other-worldliness of the spiritual rulers who had lived there.