Taking to the streets

In Shigatse, our task was to try to find out how many people use cell phones, text messaging, and the Internet. In other words, find out how "connected" people are. This information is not available anywhere on the web, so we decided to get these stats by 1) fishing them from the mobile companies (China Mobile or China Unicom), and 2) taking an informal survey of a wide demographic.

The first task did not prove fruitful at all, as I had somewhat expected. We pretended that we were interested in buying a cell phone and plan, ask them about their user base, etc. The sales people didn't know very much, and the language barrier proved to be too much.

As for the second option, I did not relish the idea of talking in broken Chinese to complete strangers. I really don't like talking to people unsolicited, let alone in a strange land, where too much attention might draw the attention of the military. Nonetheless, Mark encouraged me to talk, while he took notes.

The first few people we approached brushed us off quite quickly. We also managed to scare away some younger girls as well. However, we started having successes. I managed to talk to a group of Tibetan men and women, once we found someone in the group who could translate for us. Once we started conversing, we found that the people were generally quite friendly. Our hit rate was about 66%.

I can do the Asian squat as good as the rest of them!

We did come across some unfriendly people, such as a lady who told me "you can barely speak, and you're asking me to answer you?" Generally speaking though, I found the (mostly) Tibetan people willing to talk. Due to the commercial nature of the busy street in Shigatse, we ended up surveying about 30% Han Chinese as well, which is not necessarily a bad thing because there are many Han Chinese in Tibet. Due to the elevation, they also experience a high incidence of congenital heart disease.

The highlight of our experience came at the end, when we met a Chinese guy who ran a store in the area. As soon as he picked up my accent, he asked me "Eh?? Where are you guys from?" I told him we were from the States, and he got very excited. He asked to see US money, to which I hesitantly pulled out my smallest bill, a $20. After we asked him and his employees the survey questions, he asked to change my $20 for RMB. I looked up the exchange rate and changed it for him. He said he was excited to show his family back in Hebei, who has never seen foreign money.