Shangri-La to Deqin pt. 1

David and I leave Shangri-La in much the same way as we arrived – hitchhiking. The first driver is a bit of an odd fellow. He lets us hop into his truck, drives fifty metres up the road, pulls over and waits for his mate to pull up in a minivan. His mate offers the ride for five hundred yuan. Thanks but no thanks.

The second truck driver takes us a good five to ten kilometres. When he drops us off, we look out into the field and see these large deck chair looking contraptions and have no idea what they’re for.

Within ten minutes we flag down a minibus that’s heading in our general direction and unfortunately, we’ll have to pay for the lift.

Ten minutes into the trip, up one of the mountains just out of Shangri-La, all traffic has stopped and all the drivers have left their vehicles. Ours follows suit and thinking there’s been an accident, we also leave the bus. Around the corner we find the source of the traffic stoppage, a medium sized truck has crashed into a large truck around a blind corner and unfortunately the driver of the smaller truck is stuck in the driver’s seat, pinned by the front of his truck which has been jammed into his leg.

A group of men in the crowd of fifty onlookers gets to work freeing the man using rope, crowbars and spanners while we await the fire truck to arrive with the jaws of life. Fifteen minutes into the rescue attempt, the men succeed in freeing the man from the truck and carry him out of the vehicle with apparent disregard for his obviously broken legs. No firemen arrive.

As the crowd of onlookers, including several police officers, have no idea what to do, David and I step into action and pilfer our packs for what medical supplies we have. We clean the man’s wound with a sterile pad, and wrap the wounds in a bandage. The crowd assures us that the ambulance is on the way, though we are doubtful, most people have stopped caring about the accident and are in conversation or having a smoke.

We find a flat plank of wood to act as a stretcher in the back of one of the waiting trucks, load the man onto it and take him over to the Shangri-La side of the traffic jam, where again the crowd assures us that an ambulance is coming to take him to hospital. The police also casually mention this to us.

After a frustrating fifteen minute wait, we realise that the only people that actually care about this man’s health are the two of us, and we begin checking all of the stopped vehicles for one suitable for transporting the man to hospital. Most of the drivers don’t care to help and refuse to take the man to hospital. Eventually a daring driver decides he will overtake all the stopped vehicles to save time. We take this as the perfect opportunity, stop the man, order him to turn around, load the injured guy into the back (complete with makeshift stretcher and a responsible looking fellow to ensure a safe journey) and bid the car farewell.

The ambulance still has not arrived and probably does not exist, the police didn’t care enough to drive the man to hospital and now take on the task of clearing the road to ensure that the hour long deadlock is cleared. The first thing the police do is take measurements and draw lines in chalk, then they take more measurements. After they’ve measured some more, they all light up a cigarette and start chatting amongst themselves, oblivious to the waiting vehicles.

At this point we bump into Luning who, along with Hugo (who gave us a lift from Baishuitai to Shangri-La), is returning from Deqin (our current destination). We talk about the slow pace of the police and I ask the police if we can move the truck to the side of the road to let the traffic start moving. Luning translates this into Mandarin, only to be informed that there are important police matters at hand and that the truck will be moved in five minutes. Luning tells us that the injured man is very lucky to have found some caring foreigners who know basic first aid, and that we have half an hour to kill, so we walk up the road to find Hugo.

Hugo tells us that this is a typical pace for police proceedings in traffic accidents and that most people couldn’t care less about the accident. After some time, we hear the chants of Chinese counting to three, signalling that they are heave-ing and ho-ing the larger truck out of the way. We leave Hugo, pass the accident, note the police standing around watching, say our goodbyes to Luning and head back to our minivan.

The rest of the journey is rather uneventful except for the techno cd playing in the minivan and the breakneck speed of the driver as he overtakes cars on straight roads and blind corners, having forgotten the earlier accident.

Our stop is half way to Deqin and we decide to spend the evening here so as to not miss the scenery of the drive. In the evening, we head to a Tibetan bar where all the young locals head to party. Tibetans in costume are singing and dancing. Every time one of them sings a song, members of the crowd stand up, pick up a ribbon and place it around the singer’s neck to signal that they enjoy the song.

David and random girl adorning the Tibetan cowboy with praise ribbons.