Bouncing Around Beijing: Journey to the West- Gansu and Qinghai province in China

I am copying most of what I wrote in my captain's log or journal during my travels throughout Western China. Here's a map of the Chinese provinces- the B on the Coast is Beijing and my group traveled all throughout the Gansu and Qinghai provinces. I wrote most of this on a bumpy bus on a dirt road-some of it on a train and in my respective hotel room. Some of its not chronological.
Regardless- here we go:

Friday, September 23rd, 2011
On the front cover of my journal it says : My whole life seemed to begin and end with you. No Darlings, this is not a love story involving a man or boy or anyone in particular. Rather a love story about the experiences that are gained and the knowledge that is learned through travel. I want to spend a lot of my twenties adventuring-exploring different cultures and really discovering who I am as a person.

Gansu Adventure:
Our Gansu adventure started with another train station nightmare. I have zero fond memories of train stations. I would literally put my train station experience in Shanghai as on the list of the ten worst experiences of my life. Two huge suitcases and two other duffle bags through narrow escalators and stairs on a hot, muggy Shanghai day. But as miserable as train stations are, I think I will look back at the other events of my 17 hour train ride. First of all, we are on a soft sleeper which fits four people. It's like an overnight bunk bed party haha. We boarded at 2:30 and the usual crew- Antoinette, Syd, Dave, Rudy,Jeremy, and I created our own Madlibs and filled them out. Our topics included Gansu train trips, Beijing nightlife adventures, Jeremy's Crazy Canadian...shenmede (etc in chinese).I am in a cabin with our program director Marketus and two absolutely delightful Chinese people.They were husband and wife. Muzili was a sociology professor at Langzhou University and his wife Zheng is a P.E. teacher. We talked with them for a while. Marketus translated the stuff that I did not understand. Muzili and I discussed the hukou sytem which is what I am writing my capstone project on . He discussed the inequality that the hukou system creates between rural and urban Chinese. These Chinese people were so lovely and friendly. Muzili told us the story of the frog in the well. He told Marketus and I that: There was once a frog that lived in a well and all he did was look up at the sky.He glorified the sky until one day a bird flew into the well. The bird told him that there was so much more to the world than what he saw. Chinese people say 坐井观天 zuòjǐngguāntiān when someone is being narrow-minded or arrogant which is roughly translated to sitting in the well view of the sky. Chinese people understand that it is in reference to the proverb. Well friends...I am definitely no longer sitting in the well. For nine days, I was off the grid. Google maps could not have found me if it tried. When we first left Beijing, we saw so much scenery-fields, mountains- lots of open space with no pollution. Living in Beijing with millions of people everywhere-cars in crazy traffic, polluted air in your lungs- open space and clean air is rather refreshing. Also- before I part- this server (fuwuyuan) on the train tried to swindle us- brought us the food we ordered and then also "accidentally" brought us two of the most expensive meals of the menu and then tried to make us pay for it. This is not uncommon in China and you get used to it after a while. Bargain for everything you buy and use as much Chinese as possible because a lot of Chinese people will try to rip you off or swindle you at any given opportunity. I don't hold a grudge against Chinese people for it- Chinese history exemplifies on several occasions why Chinese people should distrust foreigners. There's 100 years from the opium wars to the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) called the century of humiliation because for a century China was occupied by foreign powers and torn apart by imperialism. Chinese people throughout the last 70 or so years have gained back their pride, but there are still many Chinese people who look down upon foreigners.
On a less serious note- our train ride included the writing of several ridiculous haikus- here are some of the ones that were written:

Rudy sleeps above
Her hair like J-Horror Hangs
Sydney is afraid

Write Madlibs all day
On the Gansu crazy train
What is an adverb?

Canada breeds love
Jeremy does not realize
This bitch is crazy

Chuar So Cheap and Good
How can drunk me possibly
Resist to indulge

Train station nightmare
Too hot to trot or to sit
too many renmen ( Chinese for people)

Many of these are based on inside jokes

I digress onto Day 2

Day 2 September 24th, 2011

Gansu Haiku:

Mountains and Old Mosques
Beauty and Poverty Mix
Bittersweet Gansu

Toto, We are not in Beijing anymore.

Today, we rode all throughout the Gansu province. Mountainous terrain all the way through. The scenery was amazing, but it was evident that the living standards were no where near the conditions of coastal China. I noticed how dilapidated and run-down everything was. Globalization had not yet touched the many miles of villages we passed today. After a month in Shanghai and a month in Beijing, I literally felt like I was driving through a different third world country. We needed to use the restroom, but there was nothing in sight for miles so we stopped on the side of the road and relieved ourselves under a muddy bridge. It was a magical Western Chinese experience to say the least.

We went to see this beautiful mosque in Linxia, Gansu province, but we could not go into because we are not Muslims. Linxia has a prominent Hui minority population. Huis are Chinese speaking Muslims and all throughout the city, you could see elements of Islamic culture. Right outside of the mosque, there were two Hui men and two male children. One of the men was holding his holding. They were so picturesque. To me, they represented Hui culture. I got a strong sense of family just from their composure. They would not let me take a picture, but the image is ingrained in my mind when I think of Linxia. On our way from Linxia to Xiahe- another town in Gansu, we saw a bunch of donkies walking down the street on the road. Random-yes. Rural-definitely.

Xiahe

We have arrived in Xiahe. We are staying at this beautiful Tibetan hotel. In typical Chinese bathroom style, the shower and toilet are connected. Unfortunately for us, there is no shower curtain either. The luke warm or “hot” water is only from 8-12 pm. Our rooms are not heated and at 3,000 m above sea level- the temperature gets rather cold. Regardless of my complaints, our room is beautifully decorated. There is golden wallpaper and a beautiful tapestry for the ceiling. I am still acclimating to the elevation and I have a pretty serious headache. Marketus instructed us to be in the hotel by 8pm tonight. Before 8pm, we walked around and shopped. I bought a really pretty scarf and Dave and Jeremy bought furs. These furs smelled terrible (but Jeremy left all of the furs and his soccer ball at the airport!). We ate dinner at a Chinese restaurant and as we walked back to the hotel-the whole city began to shut down. Lights turned off and businesses closed. The city became eerie and I realized the reason that we were given such an early curfew. Xiahe was no place for foreigners to be wondering around at night.

In retrospective: Xiahe was probably the purest form of Tibetan and Chinese culture that we saw on our trip. There were monks in purple and maroon robes walking around everywhere. It was not westernized and it was a true example of rural, developing China. Most of the buildings were written in Chinese and Tibetan, while in Beijing- if something’s bilingual-it’s in English and Chinese. There were no fast food chains like KFC or Mickey Dees. Houses on the poorer part of town were made of cement and mud. I will go into Xiahe a lot more on Day 3-5.