The rest of my Western China Journey

Day 5
September 27th, 2011
Today we are going shopping and going to yet another monastary... Oh the adventures that await- We got breakfast and then we went to a monastery in Tongren. It was a very cloudy and chilly day. I scarfed up.We walked all the way to the top of the monastery and the view was beautiful. I took a lot of fantastic pictures.

 Tibetan Women

After we visited the monastery,we went to a Tibetan families' home and they prepared an absolutely fantastic dinner for us. There were these noodles in a delicious tomato salsa-like sauce that was real clutch. I sat with Lydia, Jin-ah, and their whole group. I needed to get away from the "family" for a second. We all spend quite a bit of time together and space is nice sometimes. After we ate lunch-we went to this white stupa and took lots of pictures. There were these little monk children putting firecrackers in the incense burner-it was great. No matter where you are- in middle class suburbia or rural children- boys will be boys.

Buddhist prayer wheels

After we went to the "place" to get thangkas. I bought a thangka with the Buddha of compassion. I could not decide between the tantric sex buddha or the compassion buddha. Rudy and Nicole convinced me that the purpose of the Buddha was to pray for something to that Buddha. Hypothetically- I would rather pray for compassion. Great sex will come. I really need to be more compassionate and I need to be more selfless and helpful to others.The thangka place was filled with beautifully colored and handcrafted thangkas. There was a whole room of them.

After we bought Thangkas, we went to a Tibetan school and gave little Tibetan 5th graders an english lesson-We were separated into groups of 4 and it was me, Jeremy, Katie, and Ian. We taught them tall and short, the days of the week. Example Xinggiyi shi Monday. We sang head, shoulders, knees, and toes. It was precious. After we taught them some english, we went outside and played with them. We jumped rope, played basketball, soccer, and socialized with the kids. Dave kept on shooting the basketball and saying "Wo shi Yaoming, Wo shi Yaoming ( I am yaoming, I am yaoming)."It was real precious. The children were adorable and it was a real cool experience. We are all going to hangout in Dave's room.

Onto Day 6
September 28th, 2011

We went to Kambula National Park. It was quite chilly and windy in Qinghai. The park was really beautiful and scenic, but the bus ride was probably the bumpiest one throughout the trip. We had to go an alternative route because there was a rockslide. We stopped at four checkpoints to take picture. The views were breathtaking and it was hard to imagine that these places were real. There were canyons, a bright blue lake, and steep hills. After we stopped at the four checkpoints to take picture we went on an hour and a half hike through the national park. We passed this village on our hike in which all the houses were made of brick and mud. They were carefully nessled in the mountains.
Sidebar- As we were driving through rural China on a rickety ass bus, Sydney was reading out loud Chelsea Handler's My Horizontal Life. It's a detailed description of some of her more interesting sexual encounters and experiences. A lot of my memories of our fun bus rides are intertwined with Chelsea Handler's scandalous sex life.
 All these pictures are from Kambula national park.

I think one of the most important concepts or a theme of our trip was to really understand the different living conditions, culture, and demographics of rural, Western China. As Chinese language and culture students, we need to understand China as a whole country. From Tibetan farmers and shepherds to Beijing high rollers partying in Sanlituar ( Beijing’s bar street). This is a country so culturally diverse that it is hard to fully grasp what China is. I am trying day by day to put all the pieces together.

First of all, before I say anything. I love America- the idea of America- the dream, civil liberties, freedom, and individuality and many other aspects of American culture....but cultural imperalism breaks my heart. I know it's a result of globalization, but when there's a KFC and/or Pizza hut on every corner in Beijing-it's disheartening. American culture has a lot of positive elemnts to it, but I feel like in some ways Chinese Culture is americanizing. China's traditional culture is long gone, but it's beginning to be a mixture of Chinese and Western culture. Xiahe was one of the purest versions of Chinese-Tibetan culture that we saw on the trip-with little to no western influence.  (Present Day-we were talking about contemporary chinese culture in my sociology class. A few of us made the comment that china does not really have a modern culture- our prof quickly addressed the issue. He said it's kind of wrong on a lot of different anthropological and social levels to say that China has no Modern culture- but I understand what you mean what you say that- China does not have a lot of clearly defined elements of contemporary culture.) Xiahe also had poor infrastructure and was relatively impoverished. Does western/american influence correlate do the more modern social and economic development? I have to say yes for the most part. Globalization enables the introduction of different aspects of different cultures throughout the world. China cannot be America's most important trading partner without some aspects of American culture to seep through-not mention worldwide mass communication( internet, cellphones).

On to Day 7-
September 29th, 2011
We went to the Qinghai museum which was of course extremely politically correct especially in reference to ethnic minorities. There was a lot of beautiful artifacts and paintings.We went to a nightmarket which had lots of food-fruit, vegetables, hanging meats, pig heads, chips-the works. We went into a Chinese restaurant to eat and there was dead mouse in the fountain. None of us were really bothered by it...a sign that I've been living in China for two months. A lot of the restaurants that we went to throughout our western China trip had C-grade health reports ( not the one with the mouse though!) Dave made an interesting comment about it. He said "I would not pay too much attention to it. They probably bribed their way out of it." So true. Corruption in China is certainly not unheard- in fact it's mostly who you know. We returned to our hotel in Xining- the capital city on Qinghai province. This was a relatively modern city. Our rooms had not only a shower that was not connected to the rest of the bathroom, but a bathtub. In celebration of this fine advancement and upgrade in hygiene, we all partied in Dave's room in our bathrobes. Marketus told us to meet in the lobby of the hotel at 7:45 for a surprise where we then headed onto Karaoke or "KTV". We had some good laughs and sang some songs. I started to feel congested and felt even worse on Day 8.

Day 8
September 30th, 2011
On day 8, we headed to Qinghai lake. The largest saltwater lake in the China and second in the world. There is no swimming in this lake because not only in the lake extremely important for Tibetan Buddhism, but many Tibetans send the dead into the lake. This is one way that Tibetans say goodbye to the dead. I may or may not have talked about sky burials-so if I did I am sorry for repeating myself. Tibetan Sky burials are when they leave bodies on top of mountains and leave the body for the birds to pick. The reasoning behind this is that you come into the world with nothing and you leave with nothing. Moving on- we took a three hour bus  ride there and we rode bicycles 16km around Qinghai lake. It was a very cold day at Qinghai Lake, but it was also very beautiful. The sky was bright blue with a backdrop of snow white mountaintops and pasture. I had my I-pod and just rocked out and biked.

We ate lunch near the lake and we saw two Tibetans riding horses.

Sidebar-there is a book called Dreaming in Chinese by Deborah Fallows. It's an abomination and a complete misreading and misunderstanding of Chinese culture. Throughout our 9-day trip, Syd, Jeremy, Dave,Rudy, and Antoinette read this literary train wreck. Point Blank- Do not try to oversimplify a culture and not everything is as it appears.

Day 9

October 1st, 2011

On our final day in Western China, we earned our food. We picked potatos and put them in bags. It was hard work and I had a runny nose. The family cooked us dinner. Ironically this family made baijiu-white liquor and various members of our group did shots with the family. I did not because of the condition of my health. We flew back to Beijing that night for Ross's 21st birthday. On our way back he called us to tell us that he was having a bad birthday. So being the great friends that we are, we went up to his room to cheer him. As it goes-he had only his shorts on and a lady friends in the room. Can you say awkward?

But two weeks later I am back and Beijing. Glad to be back. I will write another post soon updating you on the last two weeks. I have written a lot today and need to give my brain a second to rest.

Love you all!

Day 4

Day 4

September 26^th, 2011

We just took pictures on top on this beautiful grassland. One thing about photography is that it can’t always capture the beauty of nature. Throughout the trip, I have taken many many pictures, but they don’t encompass everything that we saw and felt when the pictures were taken. You see the green grasslands and the scenic mountains, but being there was so much more than that. There I was standing on top of a huge hill overlooking mountains, villages, and a perfectly blue skyline. The air circulating through was my veins was as clean and fresh as air gets and the light breeze lighting blowing against my skin. It was a good moment. Truly beautiful. It’s the same thing with how steep the hills and mountains that we’ve climbed are.

Right now, we are on another rocky bus ride through rural Gansu. The houses are made of brick and mud and there are single rows of “houses” from time to time. It’s so beautiful, but the living standards are really low…Regardless- I feel like these people are probally really happy in the lives they live. They most likely enjoy their simple, peaceful, and serene lifestyle-not to mention it’s all they have ever known.  This whole area is wildly underdeveloped. Obviously- their lives would be improved by more modern infrastructure-social and medical advancements, ,but I wonder if more western modern development would be considered an infringement of their culture. I know that minorities in China strive to maintain their culture and differentiate it from Han Chinese culture. Dave made a comment that it’s not like anyone in Gansu wishes they were sitting in a Starbucks in Beijing.We just missed a rock slide on a cliff by about 20 minutes- that would have been bad news bears. We went from the Grasslands to the Bon monastery. We sat down in this classroom-while a living Buddha spoke Chinese and marketus kind of translated.I understood some of it-but  some of the things he said really stuck out. The living Buddha told us that it is the monks mission to have a clear and clean mind without vices and to live tomorrow better than you lived today-that is to constantly be improving yourself. He told us that philosophy students study philosophy for 13 years and then after studying philoshy they study tantra.Tantra (as described by Jeremy) is the physical application of Buddhism. Basically like- controlling your body as a means of controlling your soul. An important aspect of Buddhism is that Buddhism must be learned from someone else. You can read all the Buddhist texts in the world, but until you study under a llama, master, or monk- you are just a Buddhist noob. We walked around and then ate lunch- our bags and bags of snacks-on top on a mountain. There were several occasions where we needed to buy snacks in advance for our lunch on our trip. The mountaintop view was breathtaking.

After lunch, we climbed yet another steep hill. This mountain was the steepest and I was wearing my Chinese knockoff Ugg boots. It was one of the scarier experiences of my life. We were all climbing vertically at one point and I was seriously afraid that I was going to fall off the mountain.

Day 3

Day 3- Xiahe

We started our day with breakfast at the hotel- bread, butter, watery honey. We then walked 15 minutes until we got to the LeBrang Monastery. As we walked the conditions of the building began to deteriorate. The road turned into a dirt road and the houses were made of cement. Everything was much more muddier and dirtier. We went to several different temples in the LeBrang monastery with our Buddhist monk tour guide- who was strangely attractive with great teeth. He was the only one in the monastery that spoke English. As you may know- I am typing up everything from my journal/ captain's log onto this blog. When I was writing this journal, most of the time...I was riding through rural China on a rickety bus on some steep hill and mountain sides. My handwriting in this journal is truly terrible...worse than usual. At the monastery, our tour guide filled us in with little nuggets of Buddhist knowledge. For example, in Buddhism- there are 1000 different Buddhas. Four Present Buddhas. There is Compassion Buddha, Tantra Buddha, Beauty Buddha..etc. People pray to different Buddhas for different things. In the LeBrang Monastery, there are 2,000 monks. 1,000 different Monks study inthe different colleges and have passed the Buddhist exam. The other 1,000 did not pass the Buddhist exam and put in their 5-6 years before they can enter the college. Most students study philosophy , but some study medicine. There are three ways to categorize people at the monastery- most people living at  the monastery are monks...then you have masters then llamas- llamas are chosen by the masters as early as 3 years old. They are then brought up in the monastery.
I could only take pictures in one of the temples, but I took lots of pictures outside of the temples. I will provide a brief description of what it's like to be in a Buddhist temple.
Here we go.
There are huge copper statues of Buddha everywhere and in the center there is a at least two story tall golden- but copper- statue of Buddha. The whole temple is smoky and hazy because of all the incenses and candles. The incenses are predominately coming out of two incense burners which is on a table with a donation box. There are thangkas on the walls with pictures of Buddha and protectionist guards-(A "Thangka," also known as "Tangka", "Thanka" or "Tanka" is a Tibetan silk painting with embroidery, usually depicting a Buddhist deity, famous scene, or mandala of some sort. The thankga is not a flat creation like an oil painting or acrylic painting. Rather, it consists of a picture panel which is painted or embroidered, over which a textile is mounted, and then over which is laid a cover, usually silk.) A protectionist guard looks something like this: (I really wanted to buy it, but it was wicked expensive).

We went to the Philopshy college/temple. It was also very smoky from the incense and it was a little difficult to breathe-but it's super sacroreligious to cough. There was rows of mats-type seats for the monks to pray on. We passed one room that they were beating gongs and drums and chanting, but we were not allowed to go in.Xiahe was definitely my favorite city on the trip.

After the monastery, we all went to Lunch. I bought hiking boots and Dave bought this rather sexy black capri pants because there was a big gaping hole in his jeans near his special region. I put these hiking boots to good use. We climbed this big hill/mountain type deal and got a beautiful view of the city. It was our third day in Xiahe and the elevation was quite high- 9,512 ft above sea level and the air is much thinner. This climb was  much more difficult than it normally would have been say in Georgia- I was breathing heavily, my heart was pounding, and my adreline was racing. When we finally reached the top, it was worth it.

After some hiking, we all went horseback riding. The scenary was breathtaking- blue skies and rolling hills. At first, Tibetan women led us and then eventually me, Katie, and Dave were let go to ride the horse by ourselves. Syd and Nicole were mad because they actually had riding experience. Eventually Syd got to ride a horse by herself.

Then we met up with the Xian group and had dinner on the grasslands. We all danced around a fire and roasted marshmellows with Tibetans. The best part of the night was our singing contest. We kicked the Xi’an group’s ass. We started off singing the circle of life-led by our Resident Music major Henry. Oh it was great. We also sang Silent Night, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Star Spangled Banner. Also-when you are off the grid in Western China- the stars are breathtaking. It’s most definitely the most beautiful sky I have ever seen. We drank in Spencer and Elias’s room with a bunch of the Xi’an people.

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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.

Beautiful Xiahe-perfectly nestled in the mountains

Our hotel

Buddhist Monks in Xiahe- there were lots of them

Peppers being sold on the street along with Cinnamon down below