In July 2005, I drove across China from Beijing to Lhasa, a trip covering over 2500 miles.  To put this in perspective, imagine driving from Orlando to Los Angeles, with some rather major differences:  Most drivers on the road are just learning how to drive.  Somewhere in Louisiana, a landslide has buried the road, and the only way through is to drive over top of it.  Expressway driving ends in the middle of Texas, and most of the remaining two-lane road is at an elevation of over 2½ miles, higher than any road in America.  Sheep and yak herds cross that road often.  The pass through the Rockies is 3¼ miles high, leaving the car’s engine and passengers gasping, because there’s only half as much air as at sea level.  The only place to spend the night in Arizona is a military base.  And Los Angeles, at an altitude of 2¼ miles, is over five hundred miles from the nearest beach.  All of that makes for an exciting trip!  This is the SUV I drove and its friendly passengers after arriving in Lhasa, ten days after the start of our journey from Beijing.

Our SUV was part of a fleet of fifty vehicles making the trip, all supplied by the Beijing Target Auto Club.  Each vehicle was numbered and covered with so many corporate sponsorship stickers, even on the glass, that it was difficult to see out the windows.  Two-way radios allowed us to stay in touch with one another on the road, with the trip’s organizers driving up front warning everyone of upcoming sharp turns or road work or people on the highway or gas stops; the radio chatter throughout the trip was constant.  Gas stops, each requiring nearly an hour to fill all our vehicles, provided much-needed breaks along the way.

The Beijing to Lhasa road trip was a charity effort organized by Lifeline Express, a Hong Kong-based eyesight charity that also operates as “Chinese Foundation for Lifeline Express” in Beijing.  Donating a sizeable sum to the organization reserved a car seat for the journey.  Most donations for the trip came from private companies, with seats filled by managers and representatives of those companies - hence the corporate sponsorship stickers on the vehicles.  Beyond doing good for a charitable organization, an incentive for companies to donate was the publicity they would gain from the widespread media coverage of the trip - like that shown here, at the engine-start ceremony in Beijing.

Lifeline Express is led by Nellie Fong, who is also Chairman of China Operations at PricewaterhouseCoopers.  She founded the organization in 1996 to provide free surgeries to blind cataract sufferers in China, specifically in the poorest regions of China where the problem is most acute and the victims most unable to pay.  By the start of this trip, the eyesight of more than 45,000 people had been restored through the efforts of her organization, which sends three trains - mobile hospitals with ophthalmologists from Beijing - throughout China to perform operations at villages along the way.  Here, she gives a speech at the engine-start ceremony just before joining the lead vehicle for our journey.

Most overnight stops during the trip were followed the next morning with a ceremony attended by local doctors, nurses, government officials, and performers celebrating our passing through.  This is one such event in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province.  These events formed part of the media campaign raising awareness and donations for Lifeline Express.  All the major national media outlets in China - CCTV, BTV, Xinhua News Agency, and more - covered the trip and even had a crew riding with us; occasionally we saw ourselves on television during the nightly news.

These events had a sameness about them as we drove through the country.  In the morning we would put on one of two shirts provided to us by the organizers - either red or blue, depending upon the color decided the night before.  Our vehicles would arrive at a city plaza to a cacophony of drums and cymbals, the performers already hard at work.  Once we lined up all our vehicles and gathered in groups, a long series of speeches by local officials and trip organizers would commence as the heat of the morning began to rise.  Media photographers would wander through, recording the event with digital and video cameras.  After the speeches, the performers would put on their formal presentation, all involving local people and usually involving local music and culture - the highlight of these events, and often the only way we could tell them apart from one city to the next.  These are performers in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province.

A lunchtime event, near the expressway on the drive between Taiyuan and Xi’an.  The first half of the journey through China was mostly along expressways, which is actually quite remarkable, given that China built its first modern highway less than fifteen years ago.  Today, its number of highway miles is second only to the United States and continues to grow, doubling over the past five years (and set to double again over the next twenty).  The number of cars on the road has tripled over the same period, to around twenty million.  And car clubs, like the Beijing Target Auto Club that supplied our vehicles, are becoming very popular.

Dancers at the event in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province.  Most of the nearly 170 participants in the trip were Chinese, either from Hong Kong or mainland China.  (Most of the original funding for Lifeline Express came from Hong Kong, as did Nellie Fong.)  Only a handful of foreigners - from Italy, Spain, and Australia - joined in, and I was the only American.  Fortunately, announcements from the trip organizers were always made in Mandarin, Cantonese, and English.

Drummers at the Xi’an event.  The reason I was able to drive this trip is because I hold a Chinese driver’s license, obtained just weeks earlier.  I already held a US license, so no road test was required, but an exam was.  Remarkably, China offers its driver’s license exams in many languages, including English, on computer, and studying an exam reference manual in advance makes passing the test a breeze.  Having the license made little difference on this trip, however: not once did I see a highway patrol car all the way across China, and goodness knows our group drove fast at times.

A nurse trainee watches a speech given at the Xi’an event.  So what is it like driving in China?  Consider this statistic I recently read: in 2002, the most recent year for which figures are available, China had 2.6 percent of the world’s vehicles and 21 percent of the world’s vehicle fatalities.  That was a few years ago; since then, many millions more Chinese who have never driven before have purchased automobiles and taken to the road.  So it was a good thing that one vehicle traveling with our group was a van of medical personnel - and it probably didn’t hurt that a group of nurses and doctors awaited us at each of these Lifeline Express events.  Though a couple of our vehicles had dings along the way, no one was hurt during the journey.

Nellie Fong gives an interview just after the Xi’an event, with a row of our vehicles behind her.  Despite the great work her organization has done, the problem of cataracts remains a massive one in China, with an estimated four million sufferers - and that number is growing as China’s population ages.  Lifeline Express has so far helped restore the sight of one percent of them.  To help alleviate the problem, Lifeline Express plans to set up ten centers over the next few years to provide professional training for local doctors in the poorest regions of China.

Lanzhou, in Gansu Province, held the one event on our trip where the music was “modern.”  It was also the first city where the morning event was easy to drive to from our hotel.  Traffic in eastern Chinese cities makes driving intense; traffic in central and western cities, where cars are not yet too abundant, is no problem.  In each city the local police helpfully cleared the road between our hotel and the event location for our fleet of vehicles, but even that was not enough to avoid traffic jams and overly aggressive drivers early on; often our fleet was split up into scattered groups on the way to events, with cars occasionally getting lost and radioing in for directions.  From Lanzhou west, city traffic was not an issue.

The Lifeline Express event in Xining, in eastern Qinghai Province - certainly the most colorful event we encountered, with its multiple troupes of traditional and modern performers.  In terms of distance, Xining was the halfway point of the trip, but this event would be the last one before reaching Lhasa.  That’s because only one small city, Golmud, exists along the 1250-mile stretch of road between Xining and Lhasa.  Xining was also the last city where we saw an expressway; the road would be two-lane the rest of the way.

A performer at the Xining event.  The road from Beijing westward climbs steadily, reaching nearly 1½ miles elevation in Xining; from this point on, altitude was a health concern.  We spent two nights at our next stop, Golmud, at 1¾ miles elevation, simply to get acclimated before the drive into even-higher Tibet; we also had a long meeting in Golmud to discuss the effects and warning signs of altitude sickness.  The precautions worked; though many suffered headaches and had a tough time on the two-day drive from Golmud over the Tanggula Pass into Lhasa, only one car had to turn back because of altitude effects.

A dancer in traditional dress takes a break from the heat at the Xining event.  Throughout the trip, we stayed in hotels ranked four stars on China’s five-star scale whenever we could.  No such place existed in the small city of Golmud, our next stop after Xining, but the three-star hotel there was perfectly fine.  Our only uncomfortable night of the entire trip took place between Golmud and Lhasa, in an extremely remote region high on the Tibetan Plateau where hotels simply do not exist.  That night, we stayed in the barracks of a Chinese military base in the mountains near the town of Amdo, in Tibet.  Everyone slept on metal bunk beds, feeling the effects of the three-mile elevation.  On China’s five-star scale, no stars.  On the other hand, how many Americans have had the opportunity to spend the night as a guest of a Chinese military base in Tibet?

As we moved westward through China, more and more of the event performers we saw came from the local minority population, such as this wonderful character at the Xining event.  Everybody wanted to have their picture taken with him.  With nearly a thousand miles to drive before reaching Tibet, the influence of its culture could already be felt here - no surprise, since in the past, the land of Tibet extended this far east.

A modern dance troupe at the Xining event in a performance brimming with energy but devoid of culture.  In Golmud, during our altitude awareness meeting, word spread of an Tibetan altitude sickness-prevention medication: start taking it a couple of days before heading to high altitudes, and you’ll be fine.  Trip participants rushed downstairs to the hotel pharmacy and bought out their entire supply; others ran into the city to find more.  This medicine sounded rather suspicious: from what I’d read, only acclimation prevents altitude sickness; and why would Tibetans have such a medication when they’re already acclimated?  I started referring to it as pink elephant medicine: take it, and you won’t see any pink elephants.  My carmates ignored me and took it anyway.  Sure enough, over the following days, I was the one in our vehicle feeling the best by far.

This stunning young Tibetan girl was one of the welcoming committee at our hotel in Lhasa.  On much of the two-day drive from Golmud to Lhasa, we drove alongside a new railway line, under construction, linking the two cities - the highest railway line in the world and a stunning feat of engineering.  (A year after our visit, in July 2006, that railway line opened to much fanfare in China and some rather soft-headed derision elsewhere.)  Lifeline Express already plans to expand its eyecare operations into the provinces of Qinghai and Tibet, two of China’s poorest, by bringing its mobile hospital trains along the new railway line.

The welcoming ceremony in Lhasa.  The group of children appearing here, and a second group appearing at the final Lifeline Express event the following day, were so attractive that the trip participants asked if each child had been specifically selected for the ceremonies.  No; each group was simply a primary school class from somewhere in the city.

Another striking young Tibetan girl at the final Lifeline Express event in Lhasa.  With this event, the journey officially came to an end.  Members of the Beijing Target Auto Club - the extra drivers and the car mechanics and medics who had accompanied us all along the way - drove the fifty vehicles back to Beijing over the coming days.  Most of the trip participants stayed in Lhasa for a couple of days of sightseeing before flying back home.

The Hyundai SUV I drove across China at its final stop in Lhasa.  Earlier I mentioned some of the differences between driving across America and China.  Another difference is that while driving from Orlando to Los Angeles, one does not see an ancient walled city, the Terracotta Warriors, the most polluted city in the world, a river raft made of inflated sheep skins, hundreds of miles of mountain ranges covered with snow during the summer, the Potala Palace, or Buddhism’s most important temple.  Half of the Beijing to Lhasa road trip was devoted to driving and to events for Lifeline Express.  The other half of the trip was devoted to seeing the sights along the way - as are the rest of these pages.