The army arranged a loan for him, he bought a car and now he's a taxi driver on the same streets he patrolled as a soldier. Signs of Chinese life predominate in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. Since 1950, the actual size of the city has expanded 17 times, with the Chinese sections of town growing the most, bringing some amenities and boxy Chinese architecture. When Xu Yongping, the deputy chief of Tibet's Office of Post and Telegram, was sent to Lhasa after graduating from a university in Beijing in the early 1980s, he said the city had only three barbershops and no vegetable markets. Today, it's a lot better.
Chinese traders control most of the food markets in the city.
Peaches, for instance, are brought in by Chinese from several counties in Sichuan. It's a complete monopoly. Old Han Chinese women from the neighboring province hawk the fuzzy fruit from wooden carts on Lhasa's back streets. In Lhasa, we are much better. I just wish Tibet's altitude wasn't so high. . . .