If you have ever set foot on Lhasa, you should know that only touring this place once in your life time is far from being enough. Lhasa is not the same as it used to be, though it is still mysterious. Besides words such as "holy" and "pure," words like "modern" and "fashionable" can also be used to describe the city. If you plan to experience Lhasa's slow pace of life, you should not ignore the following eight places.

1. Chang (wine made from highland barley) bars

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.

2. Sweet-tea houses

The varied tastes of sweet tea have enabled tea drinkers have their favorite tea houses. For example, a small tea house named "Zhaxixia," north of the circuit, is small in size but serves tasty sweet tea, so it has become a favorite place for businessmen on the street.

There is a sweet-tea house in an alley linking the Great Mosque with the Canggu Nunnery, and people passing by tend to neglect its existence. Several young girls are often seen busy working in the tea house and the tea they prepare is not very sweet but exceptionally aromatic.

The girls in the tea house seldom enter the rooms to interrupt guests there, and they instead like to stand at the gate of the tea house with smiles on their faces that are as sweet as the sweet tea. If guests want to drink sweet tea or check in, they just need to speak one word, a waiter will immediately appear beside you.

Not far from the nameless sweet tea house, another sweet tea house opened at the Canggu Nunnery the year before last. Nuns boil tea, tend the kitchen fire and collect money. Just as in a big tea house, clients must go to the kitchen to fetch a cup. Meanwhile, clients must first buy a ticket if they want to buy tea weighing more than two pounds. It is interesting to drink at this tea house.

3. "Miandi" haircare shop

"Miandi" is a kind of hair dyeing method. It is a leisure activity popular among Lhasa residents for nearly 100 years. After entering a Miandi shop, a professional will cover your hair with medicine. In the 1 or 2 hours while waiting for the medicine to take effect, you can read a magazine or listen to Indian or Nepalese music.

Miandi is quite different from ordinary hair care methods. In a Miandi shop, clients cannot have their hair cut. Instead, they can only receive hair dyeing or hair care services. At the request of clients, professionals from Nepal sometimes use a thin rope to clean clients' faces. Hair dyeing costs 70 yuan. You will not witness any obvious hair improvement if you only go to a Miandi shop once or twice. After going there 5 times, you will see the magic effects of Miandi.

Tips: Miandi originated from India. It uses the roots of a kind of plant named Henna to dye people's hair. In India and Nepal, this kind of plant is used to do tattoos (to draw pictures on hands or faces) and dye hair. Hair is usually colored black, brown, orange or red. Miandi is regarded as the safest way to dye hair and it will not harm clients' health.

4. Zhuofanlin Shop

Most foreign tourists consider the Zhuofanlin Shop as a place they must visit in Lhasa. They look for the store as they walk on Barkhor Street with books and brief introductions to the shop in foreign languages in hand. They will be welcomed by various surprises when they finally reach the shop. However, few Chinese, who are always shopping for products among mountains of items on Barkhor Street, seem to be aware of the shop.

Tashi Nyima serves as the manager of the Zhuofanlin Shop. He found the job when he was studying in the U.S. through his university's website. Zhuofanlin has remained silently on Barkhor Street for eight years. Tashi Nyima said that few Chinese know the shop, and all of the information about the shop was written in travel guides and pamphlets in foreign languages.

5. Nightclubs in Lhasa

The nightlife in Lhasa is no longer monotonous. Tourists with packs gather in pubs on Barkhor Street, while tourists organized by tourist groups are granted more choice. In an oxygen-rich theater, they can opt to watch acrobatics performances, situational dances or the performances of almost all folk customs in Tibet.

The Himalayas and the Happiness on the Road (two famous bars in Lhasa) feature the typical folk customs in almost all regions of Tibet so as to attract tourists with the performances most typical of Tibet.

"Rongzhongerjia," "Tanggulafeng" and "Meigao Club" are three fully-localized entertainment places. The first two are large-scale Langma halls that offer performances and entertainment and also serve as pubs, while the third is a pub that gives performances. Pubs on Barkhor Street are similar to that in Nanluoguxiang in Beijing, and the nightclubs, pubs and KTVs on South Deji Road are on a par with the ones in Shanghai's Xintiandi and Beijing Workers' Stadium West Road.

6. Go and listen to Tibetan Opera

The performance hall on the first floor of Himalayas Hotel is the only museum of Tibetan Opera left. The hotel, however, is locked and is not available for visitors most of the time, except when irregular performances are given there. When the Shoton Festival and Ongkor Festival are held, the opera troupe will be busy because they will perform in Norbulingka and several counties near Lhasa. Troupe leader Bianbasilun and actors in the opera troupe visit all the counties, and many people in these villages can hardly wait to watch the "Shoba Lhamo" performances, just like people in the mainland countryside waited for opera troupes eagerly in the past.

7. Enjoy Shambhala Café and yogurt cake

In the heat of the day, customers of the Tibet Summit Fine Art Café of the House of Shambhala sit behind shady windows hiding themselves from the scorching sun. The café sells a variety of coffees and it also has a coffee of the day. Cappuccinos and Lattes give off an inviting smell and have an authentic taste. It is really enjoyable to drink a cup of coffee during the noon break.

The owner of the Xueyu Restaurant across the street is Nepalese. I can always see him standing at the corner of the counter with a smile on his face watching the western customers fill his old western-style restaurant to the extent that there are no empty seats.

To the foreign visitors of this place, the yogurt cakes have a unique flavor, and the chocolate cakes are also among the very best in Lhasa.

8. Mansion Hotel: a private courtyard

Several years ago, Luo Hui came to Lhasa from Beijing and began to run a distinctive "Tibet Mansion" Hotel along Barkhor Street. According to her judgment, in recent years, many businessmen have come to invest in Tibet, so we can find many luxurious or Tibetan-style hotels in Lhasa, as well as youth hostels and guest houses, but we can rarely find a courtyard-style hotel with a private space with sunshine.

This kind of hotel can meet travelers' demands for living environments during their travel, and it also provides an interpretation of the temporary stay in Lhasa. The big walnut tree shields the courtyard from part of the sunshine. An old French man has stayed in the "Mansion" for three months.

That is what Lhasa is. It provides different people with various ways of hospitality, and the way of hospitality actually depends on the people's understanding of this city. Some people are captivated with the atmosphere of youth hostels; some prefer a quiet environment, reading a book or sitting in a daze in the sun; some are unwilling to leave the boisterous parties; others may have already departed before they take a fancy to this place.