Tibet's Sharpa man gets rich via business

10:02, November 27, 2009

Sharpa people, meaning "men from the east" in the Tibetan language, used to lead a primitive life. Living primarily in Nepal, Indian, Bhutan and China's Tibet, they are also known as the "porters of the Himalayas" for their good physique, hard-working and tolerant of hardship.

Almost all the Sharpa people in Tibet's Zham Town, Xiagze Prefecture, southwestern Tibet on the Sino-Nepal border, are doing business.

Some of them are doing very well and even have bought houses in Lhasa, the capital city of Tibet, or neighboring Sichuan Province.

Sharpa, meaning "men from the east" in the Tibetan language, used to live a primitive life. (Chinatibetnews Photo)

In 2008, the annual income per capita reached 8,000 yuan (1,171.2 U.S. dollars) in this town which once again attracted the attention of the media.

Jiacan, one of the outstanding business men of Zham, goes by a Nepalese name Lalu known to all his business partners.

The 37-year-old began doing business 16 years ago with a small amount of money, but now he owns a transport agent and lives with his family in a four-storey delicate building at a cost of 700,000 yuan.

Back in 1965, there were only ten households in Zham Town, mostly living on animal husbandry. Then, in 1966, the Zham Port of Entry was opened up in town, but to lots of people, it was still a spot with simple wooden houses, dirty, messy and narrow streets and bared-foot residents traveling around bartering sheep skins for salt.

At that time, there was practically no border trade to speak of and the annual revenue from goods trade was only a couple of thousand yuan.

In 1983, the port was approved by the State Council as a national A-class trading port and border trade began to flourish.

As the town developed fast, more people came to live there and it had about 70 to 80 households. In 1990 the town had its first armored-concrete house.

In 1993, Canjia got 9,000 yuan in loan from the Agriculture Bank of China and opened a 50-sq m video shop playing movies in a simple wooden structure.

As few families owned TV sets and the locals did not have too many means of recreation, his video shop had a good luck. Most of the stuff he played were Kongfu or gunfight movies from Hong Kong; he only charged 0.5 yuan each person for each movie; his video shop became especially popular among young people.

Three years later, as there were more video shops in the town, it became hard for Jiacan to stay in the video business.

Jiacan then bought a truck with the money he made from the video shop and began to engage in transport services.

As Zham was developing fast and a lot of buildings needed to be built, Canjia got lots of business from transporting sands, stones and sometimes goods for his customs.

Six years passed, another turn came. Canjia sold his truck and bought a minibus, providing transport services to passengers as he could make more money from doing so.

It was about eight km from Zham Town to the Friendship Bridge leading to Nepal and he could ask for 50 yuan for each passenger. As there were not many minibuses then, Jiacan's business went well.

Besides passengers, he also transported goods once in a while. As more people asked him to transport goods, Jiacan was struck with the idea of acting as an agent for goods transport.

In 2005, Canjia opened an agency for goods transport. Now, Nepalese businessmen would often place orders with sellers in inland provinces and the goods would then be delivered to Jiacan's company at the Zham Port of Entry. After check-up, Jiacan, the agent, then pays transport companies to transport the goods to Nepal and later charges the Napalese businessmen for the fee.

Asked about his plan for the future, Jiacan said he was preparing to open agency offices not only in Zham, but will expand to south China's Guangzhou and other places to save the cost of freight service.

Source: Tibet Business