Train from Beijing to Tibet: So high that Pens and Foodpackets Burst Open!

An Engineering Miracle from the Chinese Govt.  Although it is an attempt at usurping the Tibetan land by the Chinese Govt., but it is upto the Tibetans as to how they would like to use this.  Sometimes it is better to just use the opportunities one has gotten to move ahead in life.  Utilizing the methods to prosper that can be available within China could benefit Tibetans too… in turn it can also destroy their culture and heritage because China is not known to be particularly kind to a spirituality based culture in any case!

China’s new train from Beijing to Tibet arrived in the ancient capital of Lhasa Monday, ending its maiden journey after climbing to elevations so high that ballpoint pens and packaged foods burst.

 Some passengers breathed oxygen from tubes — many just out of curiosity — as the pressurized train crossed a 16,640-foot pass in Tibet’s Tanggula Mountains, a height the Chinese government says makes the $4.2 billion railway the world’s highest.

Girls in track suits and traditional Tibetan robes draped white scarves, a customary greeting, on passengers arriving in Lhasa’s new railway station.

The $4.2 billion train is a new tool in China’s much-criticized push to bind its booming east to the Himalayan “roof of the world.”

Chinese leaders hope greater prosperity will help to still calls by Tibetans and other ethnic minorities for autonomy from the communist Beijing government. The line has prompted protests by activists who say it will fuel the influx of Chinese migrants to the isolated region, threatening its ecology and diluting its unique Buddhist culture.

One Tibetan passenger asked a Western reporter what the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, thought of the train. The man, who asked not to be identified by name, said that with China’s Internet monitoring, it was too dangerous for him to search news Web sites for the information himself.

Tibetan antelope and wild donkeys grazed beneath stunning vistas of snowcapped mountains and deep-blue skies as the train rolled through the treeless, sparsely populated area.

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