Comments on: Travel Ban (What About the Train?)

By: chriswaugh_bj

chriswaugh_bj — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:41:53 +0000

No surprise considering the upcoming anniversary- and not just the anniversary of last year’s “incident”. I’m thinking back to ’59 and expecting a fair bit of tension, to say the least, in that part of the country over the next month or two.

By: Josh

Josh — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 06:56:03 +0000

Ahh! I read this a bit incorrectly. Didn’t realize that “Tib areas” includes more than just Tib. Probably a very common mistake for those who don’t know Qinghai, Gansu, etc. very well.

By: jg

jg — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 05:02:32 +0000

Not sure Josh. The article, which was just pointed out to me, (tks WD) states: “Large swathes of Gansu, Sichuan and Qinghai provinces — home to large ethnic Tibetan communities — are now off limits to foreign travelers, local officials confirmed Thursday.” Are they spotting certain places in the Tib. cultural region? Very likely. And those places are probably the ones that have seen some serious (and often unreported) problems associated with last year’s ‘event.’

By: Josh

Josh — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 04:45:22 +0000

This must have been a VERY recent development, because my Australian friends who live here in Xinjiang with us just got back from a 2-week trip to Tibet. Not only did they get all their required paperwork to visit but they were surprised when they were never asked to show it.

They left from Lanzhou at the end of January, but they went through Qinghai on their way to Lhasa. According to what they’ve told me there were plenty of foreigners wandering the streets.

Is it possible this is just a way to keep people from trying to go? Or has this ban really been put in place yesterday?