What would be like to live in an area with 4500 meters high altitude? One of my colleagues has finished his work in Tibet for the last eight months. He took part in a project called Support Tibet which was initiated by our government. Last Friday, he came to my department and I was interested in his life in Tibet, and we had a short chat. Is it a beautiful place? Yes, it is. The sky there is very blue when the weather is nice. In the countryseat where he served was almost no industry, and only one Blanket Factory went bankrupt. But that is a terrible place to live in. Could you imagine living at the altitude of 4500 metes? Maybe there are some places lack of water or something else, but what you are lack of there is oxygen. When you walked on the street passing by a dog, the dog would lie on the ground and didn’t bother to open its eyes. When you want to do something as taking a bottle of water from the first floor to the second floor, you have to move slowly. You really have to watch carefully about spending your energy, doing a little things but taking a great time to recover. Even so, you will get a terrible headache for a few days when you first arrive. You can not easily fall asleep during your evenings because of lacking of oxygen…… Local people are very religious. They are poor, but they will still be willing to sell everything they have and donate all their money to temples. When they need to make any decision, they always go to temples to ask for an answer. For the monks who serve in temples, they are monthly paid by the government and they enjoy a high rank in the society. But you really can not read their minds and what they are thinking about. Tibetan people have their rules to settle things. For example, if you drive a car and hit someone to death unfortunately, your punishment more likely is required to work for the family for a year… My colleague can be regarded as a skillful surgeon working over there. And the local doctors who once trained in our hospital have already moved to a lower area and chosen to live in cities. Life at that altitude is harsh. When the government suggested financing people, who live more than 4500 meters altitude to move to a better place, they turned it down and they wanted to keep living on their ancestors’ land. The transportation was not good and only one bus travelled between my colleague’s working hospital and the nearby city. It was worth since it was a totally different experience, my colleague concluded. Now I keep wondering what would be like to live on the roof of the world and how difficult it could be by the shortage of oxygen. Life might be truly simple and serene and I just have to prove it by myself one day.