Chinese Cowboys & Indians (Tibetans & Muslims)

This evening I visited a remote mountain valley right on the border between the Muslim prefecture where I live and and the Tibetan prefecture that is located to the south of here.

I drove as far as the road would allow (large boulders strewn across rocky path effectively ended the road), then parked and began to walk farther up and in. I didn’t get very far before spotting a group of 5 or 6 men standing next to a tent in a field by the creek. This area is virtually uninhabited except for a few wandering sheep & yak herders, so I figured that that is who these guys were. As I got closer I saw that they were waving for me to come and join them. One of the reasons for me going to that valley was to meet people and try to share the Gospel so I readily accepted their invitation.

Although China is extremely safe crimewise, I was cautious as I trotted off the dirt path and into the field where they were standing. 1 of me versus 5 of them are not very good odds if they desired to do something to me. To make me even more nervous, basically the first thing they asked me was “Are you alone? Do you have any friends with you?” I thought to myself, “I wish I did have someone with me”, and I almost pointed in the direction of my home (30 miles away) and said, “Yeah, over there I have a bunch of friends”. But instead I just changed the subject and asked where they were from.

I expected them to point downstream in the direction that I had come and say that they were from one of the villages down that way, but instead to my surprise they pointed UPstream and said that they were Tibetans from across the mountains. As soon as they said so, I felt like an idiot. Although they weren’t dressed in traditional Tibetan clothing, it was easy to see by their faces that they were Tibetans.

So now I was excited. I love Tibetans and greatly desire to see them saved. But I was still a bit nervous about these guys. It wouldn’t take much for them to grab me, take my money, beat me up, and leave me for dead. As we are talking, one of the guys (probably the biggest, most shady looking fellow) grabs some rope and steps around behind me. I turn to see exactly what he is planning to do and look just in time to see him winding up his homemade slingshot and hurling a stone at his yak up on the hill! Whew!!! I am glad he is aiming at the yak! But man is he good with a slingshot. If David used one as good as this fellow, I can see why Goliath didn’t last but one stone in the forehead.

Anyways, I asked the guys if they were ones who had barricaded the road with boulders. They were. They said that they blocked the road off because the Muslims who lived downstream kept coming in at night in tractors and stealing their sheep. They said they had been having problems for quite some time with the Muslims over this very issue. Sounds like cowboy and indian stuff to me. Cattle rustlers, roaming natives, cooking outdoors over a fire.

Well, during our conversation that last maybe 30 minutes, they also asked me what nationality I was. I was obviously a foreigner and I had already told them that I was American, but what they meant more than anything was, “Which of the people groups in this region do you affiliate yourself with? The Muslims, Chinese, or the Tibetans?” I said none of them and that I was a Christian. It took them a minute to figure out what I meant by Christian but then they all got it and started saying the word follower of Christ in the Tibetan language … something like “Yishu Mushi”.

They were also eager to tell me that there is a community of about 1,000 Tibetan Christians in another nearby prefecture. I had heard about this group of believers, that they had converted nearly 100 years ago before the Communist Revolution, but this was interesting to hear directly from the mouths of other Tibetans in the region.

Well, praise God that nothing happened to me at the hands of these Tibetans. I left as a friend and with a promise to come back again for another visit. Please pray that these men would come to know Jesus and for the group of Tibetan believers that are obviously thriving somewhere in this region!