Thubten lives near Barkhor Square in the heart of old Lhasa. Last month, before Tibet erupted with the most intense anti-Chinese riots in a decade, she led the way into a dark courtyard of residences where chunks of yak flesh festered with flies and women washed clothes in murky water.
The stairwell reeks of vomit and faeces but this doesn't seem to bother the residents, who say they live on a spiritual level above material squalor.
'These are prayer flags,' Thubten says, pointing to colourful swathes of fabric adorning the rooftops. 'They collect the prayers blowing in the wind and make peace for everyone.'
In Thubten's flat her grandmother is huddled in a corner. She is waiting for death and a sky burial, when vultures will consume her flesh and drop it on mountain tops. Thubten's parents offer me a soothing stew of carrots, potatoes and fungus.
Except for her eyes and ruddy cheeks, Thubten looks nothing like her parents. Her leather jacket and baggy jeans make her seem more like a New York hip-hopper than a farm girl originally from a 4,500-metre-high village three days' drive from Lhasa. Small and spunky, she was raised among herders and nomads to be direct, tough and mobile. Instead of marrying at 15 as her mother did, she studied in Dharamsala, India, home to 'His Holiness' the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile. When asked about the crusty cake of fuel in a stove warming a pot of yak butter tea, she replies in fluent English, 'It's yak s**t.'
Her father, with hair in disarray from Himalayan winds, seems more relaxed than her stern mother. Wearing the traditional vest and apron of a married woman, Thubten's mother is 40 but looks like a 70 year old. 'My mother is short-tempered,' says Thubten. 'She is not happy with me because I cut my hair. A Tibetan woman should have long hair.'
Their lifestyles are worlds apart. While Thubten spends her days online with her diaspora of exile classmates, her parents murmur mantras. While Thubten sleeps till noon, her parents join hundreds of pilgrims on morning Buddhist kora walks around the nearby Jokhang Temple, a 1,400-year-old World Heritage site. Her parents' hands clutch prayer beads and spinning prayer wheels; Thubten's hands never let go of her mobile phone. After eating, Thubten and her family relax in a room decorated like a chapel, with paintings, relics and photos of celebrated monks. Old pots containing yak butter and dried yak meat emit pungent odours from where they stand on a table surrounded by lush carpets and pillows that cover two benches. 'This is where we sleep,' Thubten says. 'I sleep here, between my siblings or parents, especially when it's cold.'
