Patient wait for tourists

Spring should be the beginning of a busy season for 56-year-old Duoji and his family.

But the busy season hasn't arrived yet, even though snow is melting on mountain tops overlooking their home, pear trees are blossoming in the fields and other residents of Laoyulin village in Kangding, Ganzi Tibet prefecture, Sichuan province have begun their busy ploughing before sowing highland barley.

"Four foreign trekking groups would have stayed at my home between March 28 and April 3 had it not been for the recent riots in Lhasa and Aba," Duoji says. "But they all cancelled their tours because of safety concerns.

"I don't know why some idiots still refuse to make a peaceful life and are fooling around!"

Different from most of residents in the village about 12 km south of Kangding, tourism has been Duoji and his family's major source of income.

The son of a Kangding-Lhasa caravan's horseman, Duoji is now one of the leading trekking guides and tour organizers in the region.

He started his business in 1982, when a team of foreign mountaineers wanted to scale the Gongga Mountains, the highest peaks in Sichuan at 7,556 m above sea level.

"Our village is only a three-day-trek from the summit. I knew most of the trails leading into the mountains. I am also a good herdsman," Duoji says. "So people came for both my guiding service and my horses."

The stout man has gradually built up a good reputation among mountaineers and travelers from both home and abroad. "I had rarely charged visitors for staying and having simple meals at my place until last year," he says.

News of Duoji's hospitality saw his business grow over time and so he brought his family in to help.

"My son joined in the business, then my eldest daughter and her husband. Now almost half of the village's over-100 families provide guides and horses to my tours," he says.

He charged visitors 50 yuan ($7.1) per day for which they got a local guide and a horse. "I have charged one visitor 25 yuan per day for staying at my place and having three meals a day since last year," he says.

Last year, more than 1,000 travelers used his guide service. "They would usually stay one night at my place and I would organize guides and horses for them," Duoji says, in the Sichuan dialect.

Duoji had often been the leading guide till he lost sight in his left eye and hearing of his left ear from a fall while renovating his house. "Now I only organize the tours."

The visitors brought an income of more than 40,000 yuan to the family. "Over the years, I have harvested not only the money, but also friendships with the visitors. They have truly changed my life," Duoji says.

He quit drinking and smoking because he didn't want to "bungle the business". His Putonghua is better than most of his fellow villagers at Laoyulin.

In 2002, 10 friends from Shenzhen, Guangdong province, donated a total of more than 100,000 yuan for him to build his new house.

Located at the southern end of the village, by the well-paved road from Kangding to Luding and facing the snow-capped mountains, it is a compound with three Tibetan-style buildings and a white stupa. The construction of two of them, one for his elder daughter, son-in-law and their two kids and one for visitors, was finished last year.

"I gave my old house to my son, his wife and two kids," Duoji says. "The new house will mainly be used to provide lodging to visitors."

The friends even gave a name to his new house, Gongga Hostel, designed a name card for it and made 600 copies for the family.

"It looks nice. But it's a pity I don't know what's on it, because I'm illiterate," he says with a bitter smile. "That's also the reason why I actually can't remember these good friends' names."

A couple of his Shenzhen friends also sponsored his 21-year-old younger daughter to study in Sichuan Tourism School in Chengdu. "She can read and write and know who her benefactors are, which is better than I do," Duoji says.

In 2006, Duoji and his son-in-law were invited by an international conservation organization to visit Kunming, Dali, Lijiang and Shangri-la in Yunnan province to study the local communities' tourism development.

"They think our methods are good for the environment," he says.

Last summer, Duoji and his wife made a pilgrimage to Lhasa via train. "We visited the Potala Palace and many monasteries. My wife was excited."

The couple also visits monasteries in Kangding from time to time. For their daily worship, Duoji built the white stupa in his new home. "I paid more than 10,000 yuan for the stupa's construction. The other families of the village provided labor. Everybody can come to worship here," he says.

Duoji says that the development of Kangding's new city center only 4 km away from the village means that his four grandchildren will have access to better education and medical services.

"Everything is getting better," he says. "So when friends called me, I told them that this place is absolutely safe and here, no one wants the riots."

Believing that visitors will come soon, Duoji has plans to build a booth by a hot spring near his house. "With the booth to change their clothes, new visitors to my home can enjoy a free bath," he says.

(China Daily 04/15/2008 page18)