A riverside dream in Lhasa

A few friends riding bicycles and stopping to spend a long, sunny afternoon on a rocky beach along the Lhasa River is a sweet episode in life.

The Lhasa River remains a main subject of interest for me ever since I first saw it on our way from Gongga Airport to Lhasa city. The ragged, rocky mountains on each side cannot stop it from running through them and giving way into a wide, slowly declining valley.

And it is in this valley that trees grow, farmland is irrigated, yaks and sheep are raised, villages are set up, small, sweet indigenous watermelons are cultivated, and the roads on which we are riding are built.

Looking 300 meters above, one sees the lifeless image of the mountaintop where winds, illusionary lights and dry air are the main elements. The living, throbbing, pleasantly moist world below will convince even the slowest mind of the importance of water to life.

The Lhasa River runs for hundreds of kilometers and is one of the major tributaries of the Yarlung Zangbo River. It is also the mother river for countless cities, townships and villages.

It is along the Lhasa River, that we run through woods and green farmlands, passing by ranches and villages, and finally arriving in the holy, sunlit, city of Lhasa.

When everyone expressed a desire to remain a little longer near the mother river, we decided to stay there for a while.

We parked our bicycles beside a dike and descended onto the cobblestone beach.

The beach was once the riverbed, which surfaced periodically according to different water levels during various seasons. We therefore had to trudge over a few creeks that had been left after the main stream receded.

To save our shoes, many of us proceeded barefoot. We frowned and screamed as we moved on, as each step was painful whenever our tender feet sank into piles of loose, hard cobblestones.

But as we were screaming aloud enduring this natural, extra-powerful foot message from nature, we also laughed and found that the masks on our faces had instantly dissolved.

After we finally made it through and reached the river, we forgot all about the pain. We stared in awe at the rushing, whitish-green turbulence, the steep mountain in the background, and the occasional long-distance buses and trucks traveling along the Qinghai-Sichuan-Tibet road on the other side of the river.

The mountains were mixed colors of brown and green, as mounds of grass broke the ground—the first signs of summer. Prayer flags were tied on the mountain at unreachable heights, creating a colorful contrast to the mundane background.

After the initial shock, we recovered and started to enjoy some time beside the river. One of my colleagues and I began throwing stones into the river. Although his pleasure was to see the stones bouncing above the waves, mine was to hear the plunking sounds whenever I threw a very heavy stone into the center of the turbulence.

Throwing the stones and listening to their sounds proved my guess that the river was very deep where the water reflected a whitish-green color, despite the transparent, shallow part near the bank. Attempting to swim in such turbulent, deep and frigid water would have been suicidal.

My other two colleagues decided they would rather collect some stones from the water and the bank. They occasionally let out a scream of surprise, marveling at the unique patterns on the stones they picked up.

After playing around for a while, we were tired. We lay down like turtles to recharge our bodies in the sunlight.

I placed a giant egg-shaped stone -- a "jade pillow"-- under my neck to ease some pain, and I found it quite helpful. The stone was hard and hot, and its size suited my neck well. I closed my eyes to the sound of rushing water. Then a few lines of a song suddenly appeared in my head.

"River brings flat land, river brings fertile land.

River gives farmers crops, fishermen fish. She gives ballad singers rhythm, poets lyrics.

River gives us food, river gives us life..."

When I opened my eyes, I saw the porcelain-blue sky thousands feet above me and realized that there were so many things that I had yet to attempt or accomplish in this world.