Business gradually returns to normal in Lhasa

LHASA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Yau Wan Kong, a 30-year-old Lhasa cafe owner from Hong Kong, has been welcoming back a steady stream of regular customers since his business reopened two weeks ago.

Yau, who manages the 40-square-meter Spinn Cafeto with friends from Thailand, said it was closed for 11 days due to the unrest on March 14.

Previously, visitors to the cafe, with its bright red sofa and shelves lined with Tibetan books, had often been foreigners or Hong Kong people.

The cafe was then open from 10 a.m. to midnight, but after the riot, Yau shortened the hours to 2 p.m. till 11 p.m..

"Most shops on our block have been reopened. It's safe to do business here. I could rest easy," he said.

His income is steadily returning to its normal levels. "Most visitors these days are locals who came around 7 p.m.," he said.

Yau was confident business would improve as tourism recovered. He professes a love for Tibet and has recruited a Tibetan manager and four Tibetan staff.

Daily life was also returning to normal. He stayed in the cafe in the afternoons, and helped clean the storehouse or kitchen, learned some Tibetan language from his staff or taught them English, he said.

"Sometimes I go to the home of Sichuan friends to have hot pot. They are painters who are waiting for more tourists to return to Lhasa to continue their business," Yau said.

Losang, a 28-year-old man from Nepal, runs two restaurants in Lhasa, which, had to be shut down due to the riot. His Tibetan beefsteak restaurant has since reopened.

"Although visitors are fewer than before, business is recovering. I will continue my business here," said Losang in fluent Chinese.

Ursula Rechbach, from Slovenia, has worked more than eight years for the Lhasa-based Project for Strengthening Tibetan Traditional Medicine.

Rechbach, in her 50s, said she fell in love with the city when she came to Lhasa on a sightseeing tour in 1995.

She recalled she was having lunch with Tibetan colleagues on March 14, when the riot started. Her colleagues quickly accompanied her to her hotel.

"Our work has been restarted and life is quiet again," she said. She is busy with a program cooperating with the Red Cross Society of Tibet Autonomous Region to promote the Tibetan medicine in the region's rural areas.

A staff member at the Zhuofanlin Shop, which sells local traditional handcrafts to tourists, said the shop had begun to sell art on-line so as to explore market outside Lhasa.

The shop is run by the Tibet Poverty Alleviation Fund, a U.S. organization that helps poor Tibetans through training and financing.

According to the organization, the shop earned more than 2 million yuan (281,000 U.S. dollars) last year from selling Tibetan handicrafts.

The staff member predicted the market would return to normal in May when the region would officially reopen to tourists.