Ethnicity, Exoticness, Taste, Consumption

Last week we celebrated Devin’s birth. I thought of repeating Devin’s idea of releasing some fish into a river and birds into air when we celebrated her birthday two years ago in Hangzhou with my family, but Beijing is so large, I hardly see waters running through the city.Some taxi drivers told me there’re a few rivers crossing it, but honestly, I’m intimidated by this gigantic city with overwhelming traffic and poor service in most stores. So, we didn’t release fish and birds. My sister in Hangzhou did it and gave us some credit toward our merit.

Toward late afternoon last Thursday I thought of Makyi Ama, a Tibetan restaurant in Chaoyang District, which is about fifty-minute taxi ride from where we are in Haidian District. In the past my students and I had dinners and cultural events there. It is indeed a festive place for a birthday celebration. My assistant Jabeh quickly made reservation. By 5:00pm, Jabeh, his friends (our friends too), and we hopped into two taxis.

Makyi Ama is an upscale restaurant in Beijing. Its interior motif reflects the luxurious aspect of Tibetan cultural tradition: hardwood dining tables and chairs and the display of crafts of both religious and cultural significance. It is owned by a couple – the husband is a Tibetan and the wife is a Han Chinese. They started out successfully in Lhasa and now there are two more restaurants in Beijing. Most of Makyi Ama’s customers are North Americans, Western Europeans, and the new rich of China.

The phrase “Makyi Ama,” pronounced as “ma-ji-a-ma,” came from one of the fifth Dalai Lama’s poems. “Ma” means “not,” or “no” and “kyi” means “birthing” or “to give birth.” “Ama” means mother. So, it could be translated as “mother without giving birth.” Tsangyang Gyatso, the fifth Dalai Lama, was known for his love poetry. However, tantric practitioners and scholars contend with this claim by saying that his love poetry in essence conveys higher meanings of tantric practice, not just cheesy courtship verses. Anyway, Makyi Ama is a popular restaurant not just because of its food but also because of its Tibetan cultural contents. In fact it has become a window for local and foreign residents to experience Tibetan culture in a commercial environment.

So, we were consumers walking into this cultural window. Waiters and waitresses all dress in traditional attire with a Lhasa style. Jabeh reserved the best table for us, located in the center of the restaurant facing the stage where evening performance takes place each night at 8:00. Wendy, Devin, Merlin, and I arrived earlier. We took a slow tour in the restaurant. It has a small book/souvenir store. The jewelry displayed there is quite beautiful but expensive. It's probably twenty times more expensive than that I often saw in Qinghai and Gansu. The display of Tibetan kitchen wares in a corner particularly caught attention from Wendy and kids. Wendy began to take photos. One waitress told her photos were not allowed. The head waiter nearby then said to me, “You can take photos of yourself and kids but you can’t directly take photos of the displays in the restaurant…” He didn’t explain why customers could not take photos. One waitress standing next to him said, “Laoban (owners) said no photos allowed.” But I had taken one photo without people in it before we were told “No.”

Jabeh and our other friends, Gabeh and Sangdhe, arrived. They brought a Totoro Doll (a Japanese anime character) to Devin as her birthday gift. We began to order food. The menu is impressively composed with large photos and descriptions in both Chinese and English. Meat dishes are predominant choices. The owners have modified traditional Tibetan food because in general, Tibetans do not roast meat. Makyi Ama has assorted roast beef (yak) and lamb. Unlike the gamy texture of yak meat I have had in Qinghai, Sichuan, and Gansu, yak meat at Makyi Ama is soft to my teeth. What I like most at Makyi Ama is a type of thin pancakes made out of highland barley flour. The food was good so we quickly ate most of what we had ordered. I ordered an additional plate of yak meat, boiled not roasted. I knew Jabeh, Gabeh and Sangdhe all love meat.

Around 8:00, performance began. Dancers and singers mostly come from Kham and Amdo regions. Although I had seen the same performance quite a few times, I still very much enjoyed it especially the singing part because once in a while I fantasize myself as a folk singer. The performance is programmed to show customers different singing styles, choreography, and fashions from all regions of Tibet, namely, Lhasa area, Kham, and Amdo. There was a bi-lingual announcer on the stage who informed audience of the regional variations of Tibetan singing and dancing. Like previous times, my impression of Makyi Ama is colorful, expressive, and loud singing and dancing. This is what I see from Makyi Ama, as a window of Tibetan culture in Beijing.

Last semester I directed my students to make a video project on how tourists consume ethnic sites in Yunnan province. What we experience is similar to elsewhere in China – ethnic cultures are being turned into a type of commodity for consumption. I didn’t mean to kill the fun at Makyi Ama. Honestly, this type of fun is a one-time occasion. It does not sustain itself for the second time when you go. Tibet has a dichotomized public image in China. On one hand, its tradition, or what is referred to as “Old Tibet,” is portrayed by the Chinese state as a most barbarous society because of its feudalist system known as “serfdom;” thus, it “deserved” abolishment via revolution and reform. On the other hand, in the tourist industry of contemporary China, Tibet is being advertised as a place closest to the heavens. Images of Tibet as Shangri-la are well employed in Chinese tourist industry. So, Tibetans, somewhat resembling the image outsiders hold of Native Americans, are seen as “noble savages” – they have tantric Buddhism but they also carry swords and daggers wandering the highlands with their yaks and sheep.

This split image of Tibetans prevents non-Tibetans, especially in China, from seeing the humanness that is common to all of us, i.e. personal emotions, kindred relations, and the individualities of the young and old. At Makyi Ama, customers are physically close to the Tibetan waiters and waitresses, and the performers; however, they’re more than an ocean apart from each other. The sharp cleavage between tradition and modernity, and backwardness and progress is fully displayed at Makyi Ama. The divide between those on the stage and those off the stage making merry with their food and Tibetan performance, sets Tibetans apart from non-Tibetans, as if Tibetans were the presence of the past – a museum piece. Their colorfulness and expressiveness are to be looked upon but are too distant to be embraced.

I’m not saying that non-Tibetan consumers of Tibetan culture are the culprits who cornered Tibetans into this museum-like display. In many instances, they did, but Tibetans with resources, like anyone else, also take opportunities to make a better living in this age of economic globalization. In the meantime, Tibetans in China mostly rely on the means of the market economy to exercise their collective self-representation. For so long, Tibetan culture has been portrayed, in China, as the “darkest” social system on earth. So, why can’t Tibetans take opportunities to show the festive and glorious sides of their ancient civilization? Like anyone else in China, they also desire to be loved and cared for instead of being shunned because of their past. But, commercial channels are too narrow to let the river of Tibetan civilization display itself.

I haven’t been to all parts of Tibet. My association with Tibet is mostly with farmers and nomads in eastern Tibet, currently southern Gansu, western Sichuan, and most parts of Qinghai provinces. In these regions, I have never experienced the same luxurious gourmet that we find at Makyi Ama, but I have stayed with Tibetan families with integrity and dignity, who are not always in colorful and expensive outfits. I feel I’m experiencing multiple culture shocks in Beijing – the disparity between performed Tibet and lived Tibet, between the current China and the China I grew up with, and between the prescribed human destiny of modern progress and my own imagined utopia where differences give us stronger bonding and distances bring us kindred spirit.