Learning the local way of life

Participants from the various provinces and regions who head to Tibet as part of the aid program can suffer profound culture shock, said Wu Haifeng, 39, a general practitioner from Heilongjiang province.

One day in a sickroom of the county hospital in Xigaze prefecture where he worked, Wu swatted a fly with a newspaper roll.

The doctor thought nothing of the act but he soon found local Tibetans staring at him in horror.