It is a Lhasa shop-front, with bins full of t-shirts meant for tourists. Many of these are embroidered with the likeness of the Potala, the traditional palace of the Dalai Lama. A man is untying a sack containing a new consignment of t-shirts, these bear the message "Yak, Yak, Yak, Yak, Tibet" over four embroidered yaks.
The name of the Nepali-speaking merchant is Amar Bajracharya, also known by his Tibetan name, Tsering. He starts untying the bundle. The labels all read "Made in Tibet", but the shipment has just arrived by truck on a three-day overland journey across the Himalaya from Kathmandu. There, the cotton t-shirts were embroidered by Indian hands from Bihar, who have never seen a yak in their life.
Outside Amar's shop, directly facing the Jokhang, Tibet's holiest shrine, are stalls selling souvenirs, knick-knacks, clothing and other items. Two Chinese couples from Shanghai, on holiday in 'exotic' Tibet, examine the t-shirts, 'Tibetan' prayer-wheels, 'yak-bone' jewellery, and end up buying one of the shirts for 30 RMB, bargained down from 35 (a bit over USD 4.00).
The camera-toting Chinese tourists, like the hundreds of others who join the colourful Tibetan pilgrims circumambulating the Jokhang route known as the Barkhor Circuit, are blissfully unaware that most of the so-called 'Tibetan' trinkets are not made in the high plateau, which has little manufacturing and few cottage industries. Most come from Nepal or India. The prayer-wheels are crafted in Kathmandu, and the yak-bone jewelry actually originates in the lowland water buffalo.