Chang (wine made from highland barley)   bars in Lhasa

After fermenting for two days, the early morning is the time when the Chang (wine made from highland barley) of Tashi Tsering's house tastes best. The residents come to buy the Chang from the courtyards of Barkhor Street form an endless stream. Tashi Tsering is the son of a peasant family, and was a singing and dancing performer in the Kashag Aulic Troup when he was a boy. Then, he kept fighting against his fate, and became a scholar after studying in India and the U.S. After returning to Tibet he is engaged in helping the children of Tibet's poverty-stricken areas to go to school. His life is actually a literary work full of circuitous and beautiful stories.

In a small courtyard in Muruningba, to the east of the Jokhang Temple, the Chang in the old man Lobsang's house is just as mellow as Tashi Tsering's. The only regrettable difference is that the output of the old man's Chang is not large, and the Chang he produces everyday is usually sold out in the afternoon. I call the old man Lobsang the "last tap dancer of Lhasa," because he was an early student of the scholar from the Tibet University Sonam Dajie Shrukhang, as well as an inheritor of the "Dui Xie" tap dance. In Lhasa, a lot of people can perform the "Dui Xie" tap dance, but the old man is the only person who inherited all of the 120 varieties of tap dances.