Tibet's sunset, China's sunrise

LHASA, Tibet — I last traveled the Friendship Highway in 1999, reaching Lhasa after three days of bone-slamming and gut-wrenching dirt tracks divided by frozen streams.

Today, the drive can be done in one 12-hour push over a ribbon of seal-smooth blacktop. It traverses hundreds of miles of the most inhospitable terrain on earth.

These well-maintained roads will swiftly transfer goods and rapidly mobilize military units, which is what Beijing wants and needs. The highway, starting on the Nepal border in Zhangmu, heads toward the north slope of the Himalayas before cutting northeast toward Lhasa, Tibet's capital.

The expanding Chinese presence starts in Nepal. Chinese goods are more prevalent than ever in roadside shops along the Arniko section of the highway. Most towns along the highway to Lhasa feel new and different: Zhangmu has exploded in growth. Shigatse is barely recognizable as new Chinese-style buildings have supplanted Tibetan ones, save for the old market around the Tashi Lumpo Monastery. And Gyantse has resumed its early 20th century position as a trade point along the commercial corridor between China and India (via Lhasa and Sikkim).

One place that still feels Tibetan, however, is Tingri. Men drive horse-drawn carts ferrying villagers between market and home, women in faded homespun aprons bargain over butter prices and snot-nosed kids kick empty soda bottles along the edge of the streets. It is dusty and unswept, entirely devoid of white-tiled facades and blue-glass windows. I wonder why this little, old, crossroads trade-post hasn't experienced the Chinese change. Maybe because New Tingri, just down the road and now called Shekar, is more or less yet another unrecognizable, Sinofied town.

The Qinghai-Tibet railway that opened in July 2006 heralded a huge step toward modernity for the Tibetan Plateau. Each day, the train runs from six major Chinese cities, converging thousands of passengers — mainland laborers, Han tourists and, to a small extent, foreign travelers — on Lhasa.

Far less publicized are the many trains that run north from Lhasa back to the mainland, groaning with raw materials such as iron ore and old growth lumber to fuel China’s prodigious growth. Reports say added to those loads are uranium extracted from Tibet’s Chang Tang wilderness.

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