Editor's Note:

Xizang, a region known for its breathtaking landscapes and unique cultural traditions, has long become a target of Western smear campaigns and falsehoods about China. What is the truth? In the "Truth Seen in Xizang" series, the Global Times publishes conversations with and articles from scholars and observers from around the world who have visited the region, sharing their firsthand experience of traveling to Xizang and observing the daily lives of people there. Through their insights and experiences, we aim to present an authentic perspective on the Xizang Autonomous Region. This is the 10th piece of the series.

I lived in Beijing from 1977 to 1980 and I have visited China since then many times. But I never had a project to go to Xizang Autonomous Region. That changed when an old friend, an expat in Shanghai, told me about his cycling experiences in China. As a cyclist I was keen to hear about his extraordinary trip from Lhasa to Nepal. This idea inspired me.

In spring 2019 my wife and I decided to plan our personal Xizang bike tour for September 2019. Via a specialized travel agency based in Lhasa and Chengdu, we booked a guided eight-day trip from Lhasa to the Nepalese border along the highways via Gyangze, Xigaze, Lhaze and Gyirong. With accommodation partly in tents, partly in guesthouses and hotels.

At Lhasa railway station our passports and permits for Xizang were only briefly checked. Then we took a taxi ourselves to our hotel near Jokhang Temple. To get accustomed to the altitude, we stayed in Lhasa three nights. In Lhasa we were sometimes with a guide from the travel agency, but mostly on our own. In September 2019 the city with its highlights was full of both Chinese and foreign tourists. But later on our road trip through the loneliness of Xizang we met only a few foreigners.

After visiting the Potala Palace we strolled around through the surrounding parks and mingled with local dancing groups. At certain crossroads and around Jokhang Temple the police were present. But we noticed no police interference with the pilgrims and their religious customs.

On our first cycling day we passed the outskirts of Lhasa. Some villagers were operating harvesters to reap the ripened barley and pile them into neat stacks. The mechanized process reflected not only the gradual modernization of agriculture in Xizang but also local people's efforts to improve efficiency and reduce the burden of traditional manual labor. Our guide also told us that with the railway Xining-Lhasa and the highway to Sichuan Province, the prices of basic consumer items in Xizang had come down a lot.

After one or two hours out of Lhasa we were basically alone in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. We saw only a few trucks and, occasionally, some passenger cars with tourists from East and South China. We met those tourists later at selfie hotspots on the road.

The bike ride was exhausting, but we made it! The tarred surface of the roads was great, and we had to climb only three or four mountain passes on the way to the Nepalese border. All along our way the quality of the infrastructure like roads, electricity and 5G even in remote villages in Xizang was fantastic. The villages have been partly renovated and modernized with new houses, solar panels on the roofs. Obviously the Chinese government has spent incredible sums for the development of those remote, sparsely populated areas to give the people in Xizang equal opportunities and similar living conditions as in other parts of China. On the other hand, Xizang, including Mount Qomolangma (Mount Everest) area, is still unspoiled by the sort of adventure overtourism, which is a pain for other areas in the Himalayas.

To denounce those Chinese investments in Xizang as sort of colonialism as stipulated by Western media misses the point: Obviously the return on those investments takes a long time if at all. But the improvement of living conditions for the people in Xizang is now. Any comparison with the living standards and infrastructure in other, non-Chinese parts of the Himalayas is evidence of the success of China's development model. We communicated via WeChat with our guide and exchanged our exact locations as we had agreed to meet at certain crossroads or parking lots. That would still be impossible also in some remote parts of Germany without 4G or 5G coverage.

We met an incredible friendliness and hospitality in Xizang. For example, after the first stage of our road trip we were supposed to sleep in a tent. But in the afternoon it was raining. So our guide found a guest house still under construction. We were welcomed by the family with local food and had lively conversations in spite of the language problems. The next two nights we were camping, the guide and the driver preparing simple but tasty meals. In the mornings we woke up, our tent covered by ice and surrounded by yaks guarded by a friendly herdsman.

On October 1, which is China's National Day, we stopped at a motel along the highway to get a drink. At that moment our van with guide and driver was far away. A bus with youngsters, all festively dressed in Tibetan costumes probably for a performance, had just arrived. They greeted us, and we had a really nice time together. On that day we got another example of hospitality, and also of the flexibility of the authorities. That evening we arrived in a small town not far away from the border, but still high on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. We were keen to do the fantastic downhill ride from 4,000 meters to the border crossing at about 1,500 meters altitude the next day.

During our road trip, we visited many monasteries, most of which had been carefully restored. It's clear that China places importance on preserving the symbolic aspects of Tibetan Buddhism. We noticed no signs of repression of the religious habits described by Western media. Similarly strange is the preoccupation in some Western circles about the so-called repression of the Tibetan language. We didn't notice anything like that. For example: All traffic signs on the roads were written in Tibetan and Chinese script, and sometimes also in pinyin. On the other hand we also experienced many - mostly grown-up - people in Xizang who could barely speak Putonghua -standard Chinese.

We would very much like to come back to Xizang to track the development of this wonderful part of the world and the well-being of the people.