Longtime readers may know that Carpetblogger and the Producer spent 2003 traveling
around the world. In fact, on this day five years ago, we hiked out of Tiger Leaping Gorge in northern Yunan Province to see a Chinese dude pointing his fingers like guns at us and "pew! pew! pew!"'ing with glee as a means of informing us the US had invaded Iraq that day.
About a week or two later, we were in Litang, a Tibetan city in far western Sichuan. In many ways, Western Sichuan is more Tibetan than Tibet (a characteristic it shares with Ladakh and northern Himachal Pradesh in India). I suppose it's too remote for the Chinese to fuck up too badly. Indeed, Litang is one of the highest cities in the world. I haven't been able to find any news reports about violence there, but apparently it...