Friday, January 31, 2003
Monday, January 27, 2003
The Road More Travelled
I have now completed my loop (circumbobulous perfection, one could say) in China and am now back in Shanghai. My last note was I believe from Kashgar. After Kashgar I took the train (which is a pretty nice train, really) back to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang and incidentally, the farthest city in the world from any ocean. Furthest. Most far. Whatever. Why anybody bothered to figure that out I'm not sure - it was probably someone from CITS (China International Travel Service) which throws into grave doubt the accuracy of the figures, but anyway.
From there I wanted to take the train to Beijing. The train ticket office in the hotel didn't actually have any train tickets, (they should just call it "office") so I went back to the station. After pushing in line (one doesn't actually wait in line here in China, one pushes) for 45 minutes, I am told to come back at a later time to buy this ticket which I do; another 45 minutes, I am told to go to another ticket office to buy the ticket, which I do; I am told there are no tickets for the next four days; so the next day I go to the above-mentioned CITS.
I first went to a CITS office in Turpan, where they were closed for the winter, and second in Kashgar, where they told me that it was impossible to reserve a ticket in Kashgar from Urumqi to Beijing and that it would be no problem to buy it in Urumqi… So here they told me that if I couldn't get a ticket at the ticket office they certainly couldn't either. What did I think this was, a travel agency or something?!
So I went next door to the Holiday Inn Business Center where a quite nice person tried for a long time (on the phone, like travel agents are supposed to) to get me a ticket, and in the end got me an airplane ticket (that was all of four hours before the plane left) at almost four times the cost of a train ticket. But, it was like three hours instead of two days and something. And that allowed me to get to the Vietnam embassy in Beijing in time to give them my passport for the weekend to chew on and give back to me Monday, which was all good.
Other than that, Urumqi was just cold, that is about all that I remember: another hotel without a shower head, another hotel front desk lady who wanted to know how to say "luggage room" in orally legible English, a Chinese fast food place called "Best Food" which wasn't best but was complete with the red sign and golden arches serving hot instant orange juice with the value meal, a bakery where the girl who got me my coffee was so excited that a waiguoren came in that she was literally dancing to the music behind the counter, but still too shy to say anything in English or Chinese, and more Chinese concrete highrises... OK, so I did remember some things!
The funny thing in the Beijing airport, after arriving there at ten pm or so, was the guy trying to sell me a hotel room. I asked about a place listed in my guidebook that sounded nice, and he said "bu hao" (not good) I asked why, but he couldn't come up with anything better than that. I asked if his hotel had dorm rooms, and he told me, with a perfectly straight face, apparently expecting me to believe him, that dorm rooms were really quite dangerous and that I should avoid them. Frankly, breathing the air in China (outside of Tibet and Xinjiang) is more dangerous than any dorm room I've ever been in, and I had to laugh at him. Then he gave up on selling me anything and attached himself to some other hapless tourist...
First I went to the embassy to get my Vietnam visa process underway, then I bought a train ticket to Vietnam (which took the rest of the day) and tried to buy a ticket to Shanghai at the same office (which involved waiting three hours while somebody's brother sat in traffic inching toward the west train station with a ticket that turned out to be for the wrong day...) And went to the other train station to the "foreigner ticket office" which was packed with chinese (hmmm) where I bought a soft sleeper ticket because I was too tired to think about spending the next day searching for creative ways to get a hard sleeper ticket.
Instead, I spent the next day searching for creative ways to get money - the 1st ATM was broken, the 2nd ATM was not happy with my card, the 3rd ATM seemed happy enough but said I should contact my bank, the whole idea of getting a credit card cash advance while my passport was not physically on me, but in an embassy, (making me a non-person), made everybody laugh. Actually, the bank manager said I could come back next week when some other office was open and fill out a form to do it. So after the taxi back from the bank, and paying for the hotel until 'next week' I had literally fifty quai in my pocket ($6.20?) and two days to explore Beijing...
The next day, (after eating raisins from Turpan, a leftover banana that was a parting gift from my friend in Kashgar, and a seven quai bowl of chicken and cucumbers which was very good,) the ATM worked. The same one I tried first. I don't know why. And there are no internet cafe's in Beijing. They closed them because last summer there was a fire in one of them and twenty some young people were killed. I'm waiting for someone to set fire to the PSB office to see if they close all of those down too...
Anyway, in Beijing I went to a teahouse/bookstore place to drink tea (this place was really cool) and listen to Chinese classical music - an erhu, a pipa and a 'flute' (I don't remember what they call those in Chinese) player. That was fun. It was also slightly unnerving because there were only a couple Chinese people there, too many foreigners! But still fun, and I was among the only waiguoren who knew how to say anything other than "xiexie" (that is Thank You - with a Louisiana accent).
And I went to the Great Wall (that was my last 200 quai) which involved about five hours of preliminary exercises like a Jade factory and Ming tombs and a Chinese traditional medicine
"yourliverhastoomuchheat-youneedtobuysomeherbs-heretheseareonlythreehundredquai-yesyoucanpayinAmericandollars-thisisthechinesesecrettolongevity-thankyouverymuch-ohyoudon'twantthem?!?!" kind of place.
Lunch was funny, I was at the table with all the other foreigners on the tour (there was some people from Beijing and some Taiwan Chinese), an American, French, and an Egyptian couple - none of whom could really eat anything with chopsticks. It has been a long time since I met a foreigner so foreign that they couldn't eat with chopsticks! We did eventually get to the Great Wall, which was a good place to exercise the lungs. I had a good time climbing for awhile, left most of the other people behind so I had a bit of solitude, and it was really cold so there was not all that many people there.
The next day, after getting my visa, I sat in Starbucks in a happy daze - mostly from my visa and the sudden realization of how soon I am going to be in Vietnam (I have not yet lost my love of going new places, just as long as I don't have to first push through a line for an hour to buy a ticket, and then sit on a hard seat or sleeper bus to get there) and also from the general warmth, the coffee, and the completely unreal atmosphere that places like Starbuck's have in Beijing. Then I walked around Tiananmen Square, and through the Forbidden City, had fun practicing my Chinese with more people who never see foreigners talking Chinese.
The train back to Shanghai was, well, soft sleepers are not worth the money. They have TV, and actual compartments with doors, and only four beds instead of six, but soft sleeper people are snobby... The funny thing is that they aren't really any softer than hard sleeper, just a little wider. And it is good to be back in Shanghai, kind of funny to be done travelling, back 'home' but not home...
From there I wanted to take the train to Beijing. The train ticket office in the hotel didn't actually have any train tickets, (they should just call it "office") so I went back to the station. After pushing in line (one doesn't actually wait in line here in China, one pushes) for 45 minutes, I am told to come back at a later time to buy this ticket which I do; another 45 minutes, I am told to go to another ticket office to buy the ticket, which I do; I am told there are no tickets for the next four days; so the next day I go to the above-mentioned CITS.
I first went to a CITS office in Turpan, where they were closed for the winter, and second in Kashgar, where they told me that it was impossible to reserve a ticket in Kashgar from Urumqi to Beijing and that it would be no problem to buy it in Urumqi… So here they told me that if I couldn't get a ticket at the ticket office they certainly couldn't either. What did I think this was, a travel agency or something?!
So I went next door to the Holiday Inn Business Center where a quite nice person tried for a long time (on the phone, like travel agents are supposed to) to get me a ticket, and in the end got me an airplane ticket (that was all of four hours before the plane left) at almost four times the cost of a train ticket. But, it was like three hours instead of two days and something. And that allowed me to get to the Vietnam embassy in Beijing in time to give them my passport for the weekend to chew on and give back to me Monday, which was all good.
Other than that, Urumqi was just cold, that is about all that I remember: another hotel without a shower head, another hotel front desk lady who wanted to know how to say "luggage room" in orally legible English, a Chinese fast food place called "Best Food" which wasn't best but was complete with the red sign and golden arches serving hot instant orange juice with the value meal, a bakery where the girl who got me my coffee was so excited that a waiguoren came in that she was literally dancing to the music behind the counter, but still too shy to say anything in English or Chinese, and more Chinese concrete highrises... OK, so I did remember some things!
The funny thing in the Beijing airport, after arriving there at ten pm or so, was the guy trying to sell me a hotel room. I asked about a place listed in my guidebook that sounded nice, and he said "bu hao" (not good) I asked why, but he couldn't come up with anything better than that. I asked if his hotel had dorm rooms, and he told me, with a perfectly straight face, apparently expecting me to believe him, that dorm rooms were really quite dangerous and that I should avoid them. Frankly, breathing the air in China (outside of Tibet and Xinjiang) is more dangerous than any dorm room I've ever been in, and I had to laugh at him. Then he gave up on selling me anything and attached himself to some other hapless tourist...
First I went to the embassy to get my Vietnam visa process underway, then I bought a train ticket to Vietnam (which took the rest of the day) and tried to buy a ticket to Shanghai at the same office (which involved waiting three hours while somebody's brother sat in traffic inching toward the west train station with a ticket that turned out to be for the wrong day...) And went to the other train station to the "foreigner ticket office" which was packed with chinese (hmmm) where I bought a soft sleeper ticket because I was too tired to think about spending the next day searching for creative ways to get a hard sleeper ticket.
Instead, I spent the next day searching for creative ways to get money - the 1st ATM was broken, the 2nd ATM was not happy with my card, the 3rd ATM seemed happy enough but said I should contact my bank, the whole idea of getting a credit card cash advance while my passport was not physically on me, but in an embassy, (making me a non-person), made everybody laugh. Actually, the bank manager said I could come back next week when some other office was open and fill out a form to do it. So after the taxi back from the bank, and paying for the hotel until 'next week' I had literally fifty quai in my pocket ($6.20?) and two days to explore Beijing...
The next day, (after eating raisins from Turpan, a leftover banana that was a parting gift from my friend in Kashgar, and a seven quai bowl of chicken and cucumbers which was very good,) the ATM worked. The same one I tried first. I don't know why. And there are no internet cafe's in Beijing. They closed them because last summer there was a fire in one of them and twenty some young people were killed. I'm waiting for someone to set fire to the PSB office to see if they close all of those down too...
Anyway, in Beijing I went to a teahouse/bookstore place to drink tea (this place was really cool) and listen to Chinese classical music - an erhu, a pipa and a 'flute' (I don't remember what they call those in Chinese) player. That was fun. It was also slightly unnerving because there were only a couple Chinese people there, too many foreigners! But still fun, and I was among the only waiguoren who knew how to say anything other than "xiexie" (that is Thank You - with a Louisiana accent).
And I went to the Great Wall (that was my last 200 quai) which involved about five hours of preliminary exercises like a Jade factory and Ming tombs and a Chinese traditional medicine
"yourliverhastoomuchheat-youneedtobuysomeherbs-heretheseareonlythreehundredquai-yesyoucanpayinAmericandollars-thisisthechinesesecrettolongevity-thankyouverymuch-ohyoudon'twantthem?!?!" kind of place.
Lunch was funny, I was at the table with all the other foreigners on the tour (there was some people from Beijing and some Taiwan Chinese), an American, French, and an Egyptian couple - none of whom could really eat anything with chopsticks. It has been a long time since I met a foreigner so foreign that they couldn't eat with chopsticks! We did eventually get to the Great Wall, which was a good place to exercise the lungs. I had a good time climbing for awhile, left most of the other people behind so I had a bit of solitude, and it was really cold so there was not all that many people there.
The next day, after getting my visa, I sat in Starbucks in a happy daze - mostly from my visa and the sudden realization of how soon I am going to be in Vietnam (I have not yet lost my love of going new places, just as long as I don't have to first push through a line for an hour to buy a ticket, and then sit on a hard seat or sleeper bus to get there) and also from the general warmth, the coffee, and the completely unreal atmosphere that places like Starbuck's have in Beijing. Then I walked around Tiananmen Square, and through the Forbidden City, had fun practicing my Chinese with more people who never see foreigners talking Chinese.
The train back to Shanghai was, well, soft sleepers are not worth the money. They have TV, and actual compartments with doors, and only four beds instead of six, but soft sleeper people are snobby... The funny thing is that they aren't really any softer than hard sleeper, just a little wider. And it is good to be back in Shanghai, kind of funny to be done travelling, back 'home' but not home...
Saturday, January 25, 2003
and looking down...
Tuesday, January 21, 2003
Qini Bagh Report
I am in Kashgar, staying in the Qini Bagh Hotel, which was, in days of yore, the British consulate. The primary purpose of the British consulate, I am told, was to spy on the Russian consulate down the street, and vice versa. I guess there was not much else to do in Kashgar! Anyway, at the moment, days of yore are over and the place offers some overpriced hotel rooms as well as really nice 'dorm' rooms for 40 quai - that would be a round 5 dollars a night.
On the train here from Turpan, I met a group of four Uighur students who study in Urumqi, coming back to Kashgar for the New Year’s break. They spoke English pretty well (and Chinese better than the two Hunanese PLA guys who were my hard-sleeper bunk-mates) and were very friendly, and had a guitar with them on the train... Well, that was a good precursor to this place.
After I checked into my hotel, cleaned up and was ready to go out exploring the town, I meet someone right outside my room door who, after a bit of conversation, offers to take me down the street to a Uighur restaurant for lunch, and proceeds to become essentially my tour guide for the last three days. Her English was better than my Chinese, but I still tried to use my language, as well as the three words of Uighur I've learned (I don't know how to spell them though!)
Saturday I walked around, past the Id Kah mosque, allegedly the second largest mosque ever, although I think that is an exaggeration, maybe the 2nd largest in China... And to People's Square, where you find the second largest (and this one I believe) statue of the great helmsman himself - makes me wonder if Chairman Mao ever even came way out here.
Sunday I went to the 'famous' Sunday Market, which was really cool. Big, crowded, I think about a five block radius was totally packed with people, bikes, donkey carts (yes they use those a lot here), and random sellers of dried lizards, sheep heads, and everything else under the sun (mostly not that startling, but always amusing). The place was, well, really photogenic, hopefully my pictures will come out. They sell every kind of dried fruit imaginable, and hats - the Russian kind with ear flaps (everybody wears them around here) along with lots of other varieties, mostly with fleece (real sheep fur) on the inside and mink or something on the outside, and various disappearing species furs hanging all over the place. One enterprising salesman jumped out from his booth, snatched off my nice warm cotton/thinsulate hat and plopped some hairy white/red thing on my head. I have to say that I have never looked so white - frighteningly Siberian (!) - in my life as when I looked in the mirror then, a big furry fox hat with ear flaps and my (currently rather straggly) goatee, with a few stray sheep hairs sticking out here and there! The cloth section of the place was amazing - a lot of silk and so many brilliant colors, it just made you kind of dizzy that so many rich looking things could be sold in a place that on the surface strikes one as so dilapidated and dusty. Plus they had some red cloth up to block the sun, which made all the colors super vibrant. I kind of breezed through the carpet section pretty quickly, having not enough money to buy anything there and not enough umph to carry anything like that anywhere. Also Sunday I went into the Id Kah Mosque, and had kind of a tour which was really cool and interesting, again the guide, who spoke only Uighur and Chinese, made the experience what it was with boundless friendliness that over-rode my bad Chinese.
Saturday night, my friend's friend invited me to her house for dinner, which was incredible. This is back about forty seven little alleys just big enough for a motorcycle, and we go into this room off of a little courtyard that looks like it is straight out of Lawrence of Arabia or something (me not actually having read that, I have to rely on, well, Hollywood or something to fill in the details) with silk hanging on the walls, the floor is of course carpeted (those things were amazing), a big cabinet on one side with ornate woodcarving and inlaid stuff all over it, a very cozy small stove, and piles of food in the middle to sit around and eat. Unfortunately, that experience was kind of cut off in the bud when we had to leave soon after getting there for reasons which I am still kind of unsure about, but in any case I got to see the inside of a Muslim Uighur house, which I am sure that not many travelers have, and it was amazing. I'm not sure how to better describe it, but it deserves a lot more than I can give it here.
Today I went to yet another museum that had to be opened just for me, and the ticket guy followed me around very scrupulously, I guess to make sure that I didn't steal any of the cultural relics (they were mostly all broken anyway) or take any pictures. The only thing that deserved a picture was the three pots they had that were not broken, and were just sitting on the floor, I would say about 800 gallon capacity or so! I wanted to jump inside one and stick my head out and have a picture of that, but, well, since I couldn't very well fit one in my daypack, and the "no photo" sign was right in front of them, well, it didn't work out! And I went to a couple tombs of famous guys, and another mosque - fun places to visit with my friend more for the sake of using (up) my Chinese and her English than for the places themselves.
Kashgar will be well-remembered as a truly interesting travel spot, as well as the place of numerous incredibly friendly people that I have met here. Ironically, my severely limited Chinese is more impressive here, where most people know Chinese as a second language, than it is in China. The rest of China, I mean. Also, English students here appear to learn English way faster than most Chinese students do, I will not ponder the reasons for that, but it seems to be true (based on my, what, three days here...).
Tomorrow I am on the train to Urumuqi, and still don't have a ticket the rest of the way to Beijing, which I expect to prove a really big problem in Urumuqi, since it is New Year’s here, when everybody and their brother (that would be about 1.4 billion people) are trying to get on trains to go places..., but there is nothing I can do about it now, so I'll try to get some sleep instead!
On the train here from Turpan, I met a group of four Uighur students who study in Urumqi, coming back to Kashgar for the New Year’s break. They spoke English pretty well (and Chinese better than the two Hunanese PLA guys who were my hard-sleeper bunk-mates) and were very friendly, and had a guitar with them on the train... Well, that was a good precursor to this place.
After I checked into my hotel, cleaned up and was ready to go out exploring the town, I meet someone right outside my room door who, after a bit of conversation, offers to take me down the street to a Uighur restaurant for lunch, and proceeds to become essentially my tour guide for the last three days. Her English was better than my Chinese, but I still tried to use my language, as well as the three words of Uighur I've learned (I don't know how to spell them though!)
Saturday I walked around, past the Id Kah mosque, allegedly the second largest mosque ever, although I think that is an exaggeration, maybe the 2nd largest in China... And to People's Square, where you find the second largest (and this one I believe) statue of the great helmsman himself - makes me wonder if Chairman Mao ever even came way out here.
Sunday I went to the 'famous' Sunday Market, which was really cool. Big, crowded, I think about a five block radius was totally packed with people, bikes, donkey carts (yes they use those a lot here), and random sellers of dried lizards, sheep heads, and everything else under the sun (mostly not that startling, but always amusing). The place was, well, really photogenic, hopefully my pictures will come out. They sell every kind of dried fruit imaginable, and hats - the Russian kind with ear flaps (everybody wears them around here) along with lots of other varieties, mostly with fleece (real sheep fur) on the inside and mink or something on the outside, and various disappearing species furs hanging all over the place. One enterprising salesman jumped out from his booth, snatched off my nice warm cotton/thinsulate hat and plopped some hairy white/red thing on my head. I have to say that I have never looked so white - frighteningly Siberian (!) - in my life as when I looked in the mirror then, a big furry fox hat with ear flaps and my (currently rather straggly) goatee, with a few stray sheep hairs sticking out here and there! The cloth section of the place was amazing - a lot of silk and so many brilliant colors, it just made you kind of dizzy that so many rich looking things could be sold in a place that on the surface strikes one as so dilapidated and dusty. Plus they had some red cloth up to block the sun, which made all the colors super vibrant. I kind of breezed through the carpet section pretty quickly, having not enough money to buy anything there and not enough umph to carry anything like that anywhere. Also Sunday I went into the Id Kah Mosque, and had kind of a tour which was really cool and interesting, again the guide, who spoke only Uighur and Chinese, made the experience what it was with boundless friendliness that over-rode my bad Chinese.
Saturday night, my friend's friend invited me to her house for dinner, which was incredible. This is back about forty seven little alleys just big enough for a motorcycle, and we go into this room off of a little courtyard that looks like it is straight out of Lawrence of Arabia or something (me not actually having read that, I have to rely on, well, Hollywood or something to fill in the details) with silk hanging on the walls, the floor is of course carpeted (those things were amazing), a big cabinet on one side with ornate woodcarving and inlaid stuff all over it, a very cozy small stove, and piles of food in the middle to sit around and eat. Unfortunately, that experience was kind of cut off in the bud when we had to leave soon after getting there for reasons which I am still kind of unsure about, but in any case I got to see the inside of a Muslim Uighur house, which I am sure that not many travelers have, and it was amazing. I'm not sure how to better describe it, but it deserves a lot more than I can give it here.
Today I went to yet another museum that had to be opened just for me, and the ticket guy followed me around very scrupulously, I guess to make sure that I didn't steal any of the cultural relics (they were mostly all broken anyway) or take any pictures. The only thing that deserved a picture was the three pots they had that were not broken, and were just sitting on the floor, I would say about 800 gallon capacity or so! I wanted to jump inside one and stick my head out and have a picture of that, but, well, since I couldn't very well fit one in my daypack, and the "no photo" sign was right in front of them, well, it didn't work out! And I went to a couple tombs of famous guys, and another mosque - fun places to visit with my friend more for the sake of using (up) my Chinese and her English than for the places themselves.
Kashgar will be well-remembered as a truly interesting travel spot, as well as the place of numerous incredibly friendly people that I have met here. Ironically, my severely limited Chinese is more impressive here, where most people know Chinese as a second language, than it is in China. The rest of China, I mean. Also, English students here appear to learn English way faster than most Chinese students do, I will not ponder the reasons for that, but it seems to be true (based on my, what, three days here...).
Tomorrow I am on the train to Urumuqi, and still don't have a ticket the rest of the way to Beijing, which I expect to prove a really big problem in Urumuqi, since it is New Year’s here, when everybody and their brother (that would be about 1.4 billion people) are trying to get on trains to go places..., but there is nothing I can do about it now, so I'll try to get some sleep instead!
Monday, January 20, 2003
Xinjiang - Kashgar
Kashgar has some truly friendly people
A famous and vibrant bazaar
A famous and vibrant bazaar
And a colossal statue of Mao Zi Dong
Saturday, January 18, 2003
Negative Altitude… ahhh
For those of you still wondering, the last leg of my trip to Turpan was quite nice, uneventful in plain words, and truly luxurious comparatively speaking. I got a meal yesterday on my really nice train here to Turpan. I asked the guy for rice, and egg & tomato stuff (just pointed to it actually) but, him being tired, I guess, he refused to speak Chinese to me. I say 'Wo yao yi wan mi fan hai you yi wan nage ji dan', (I want some rice and some of this chicken). He points at some greasy chicken parts and says 'cockadoodledoo' in Chinese and starts acting like a chicken in case I couldn't figure out what a chicken leg looked like, then gives me a plate with a scoop of everything on it, most of which I did not want and did not eat. Anyway, that was the nice train, why don't I not ruin it for myself? I saw a lot of yaks from that bus (before my eyes got full of smoke) and a lot of sheep and donkeys from yesterday’s train.
There was a Chinese lady on that bus from Lhasa that was sleeping on her 'bed' with some kind of steer or yak skull (one of those with big horns, like the kind they put on pick-up truck hoods in Texas) wrapped up in newspaper. Yes, I think Tibet is the Texas of China, a lot of Tibetans wore cowboy hats, which were actually a lot more useful there than I think they are in Texas.
Turpan has been good. Let me preface this with the following comment - in Lanzhou I was in a 'dorm room' with three beds, but there was only me. On the train here I was in a hard sleeper with six beds to a compartment, but there was only me. Here, I am in a huge, sort of Mediterranean style (if you can picture that in China) hotel, my room has five beds, but there is only me. In fact, last night I asked the friendly lady who unlocks my door for me, and she confirmed my suspicions that there was indeed no on else on the third floor! This is the dorm floor, you have to go outside and walk like a block (yes, literally) to the public showers, (open 3-9 pm, (that is Beijing time - which by the sun is two or three hours ahead here, but we are in China and Beijing IS the sun...), except when they aren't, when I had to track down some staff to ask them to unlock the door the other day, and the lady sits there on a barbershop chair knitting, waiting for me to get done in the shower so she can go back inside to hotel and knit there), I guess no one else wanted to put up with that...
Turpan is cold. My guidebook says 'zui ri de difang zai Zhongguo' but in my limited experience Turpan is not the hottest, but rather the coldest place in China! Summertime here is hot, (supposedly 121 F is the record!) Turpan is in the second lowest depression on earth, (only above the Dead Sea) the lowest spot is 154 meters below sea level - no wonder it took me so long to get here from Lhasa, lets see, from that one pass I dropped 5,330 meters, hmm. And they grow grapes here, on trellises hanging over the tourist streets, no cars allowed, and I think it would be really neat in the summer. Not bad now either, but there are no grapes, no music, no dancing in the streets...
I went to two ancient city ruins, some grave/mummy sites, a mosque with a big minaret that I wasn't allowed to climb, and some other places. Saw a Karez museum - these are the underground tunnels that they dig from the mountains (where there is water) to here (where there is no water) in order to water the grapes, and drink, and to live in general, pretty interesting. They do this also in Afghanistan, Iran, etc. And the old cities were really fascinating - unlike how I would picture such a thing being presented in America, these things are just there - you just buy a ticket then you can go walk around and climb on whatever you want. Felt sort of funny, I touch something and my gloves get dirty and I feel guilty for destroying relics... They get like no rain here at all, which is I guess the only way that these sorts of things have lasted for so long. They are huge, mostly just walls left, with doorways here and there, and wells that you don't want to fall into. Both places had leftovers of Buddhist Temples (these were from 3rd Century BC, and 5-7th Century AD - before Islam came here along the Silk Road).
In the one place you could rent a 'donkey taxi' (the preferred form of tourist transportation in this place) and go racing along to the monastery leftovers - allegedly six kilometers away. I told them I wanted to walk (there was no one else there and there was about ten donkey cart guys with nothing to do) so I walked (it wasn't anywhere near six kilometers) and had a nice time exploring in the silence, then heard some shouting and somebody came racing out the road in a cart to convince me to have a ride back, which he gave me for free after realizing that I really would just walk right beside his cart the whole way back unless he told me to ride for free... That was funny.
My guide/driver for two days of excursions was called Ilham - another 28 yr old guy who I had a lot of fun talking to. His Chinese was definitely better than mine, but still limited to a second language. Most people here speak Uighur, and depending on what kind of school they went to, also learn Chinese and English a bit. Uighur is closely related to Turkish. This ethnic tie is why the occasionally violent separatist group (in Xinjiang in general, probably not Turpan) is called the "East Turkestan Movement".
Today I went to a museum. I had to search out the lady selling tickets. Then she takes a flashlight and leads me into this big dark room and runs off to find a light switch, which when she does find it and turn it on, I see that I am standing underneath a dinosaur. So the museum had dinosaurs, mummies, and various cultural relics. I was the only person there. My tour was also much more interesting (and more expensive) because I was driven around in a van, but there was just me and the driver.
If anybody gets the impression that there are no other tourists in Turpan, you're right. I did see one group of apparently American travelers at the bus station the other day, and one old Japanese guy with a personal translator whom we ran into about three times, but that was it. The fancy hotel, with the decent restaurant (not the one I am staying at, the one I eat at!) has a post office, but it is closed; and a CITS (travel agency) office, but it is closed; three quarters of the stuff on the menu they don't have; but the staff is nice - I learned how to say squid in Chinese.
So that was Turpan, and I am leaving this afternoon for Kashgar - assuming that I can buy a ticket. In a strange bid to draw tourists, the Turpan Train Station is actually in Daheyan - a very bumpy 60 some kilometers away from actual Turpan. So anyway, assuming that the train to Kashar is as empty as the train here was, buying a ticket should not be a problem!
I just had dinner in a coffee shop - the Oasis Hotel, ate some kind of ham and egg sandwich that was designated as "Muslim" - I don't know if that meant the chicken, or the pig, or whoever ate it, or what but there it was: Ham (Muslim) and egg Sandwich...
For those of you in places with less character than this - enjoy your flush toilets. I long ago decided that I could live with squatty potties if I had to, but that was in a warm place. Somehow that thirty or thirty five degrees (C) makes a big difference!
There was a Chinese lady on that bus from Lhasa that was sleeping on her 'bed' with some kind of steer or yak skull (one of those with big horns, like the kind they put on pick-up truck hoods in Texas) wrapped up in newspaper. Yes, I think Tibet is the Texas of China, a lot of Tibetans wore cowboy hats, which were actually a lot more useful there than I think they are in Texas.
Turpan has been good. Let me preface this with the following comment - in Lanzhou I was in a 'dorm room' with three beds, but there was only me. On the train here I was in a hard sleeper with six beds to a compartment, but there was only me. Here, I am in a huge, sort of Mediterranean style (if you can picture that in China) hotel, my room has five beds, but there is only me. In fact, last night I asked the friendly lady who unlocks my door for me, and she confirmed my suspicions that there was indeed no on else on the third floor! This is the dorm floor, you have to go outside and walk like a block (yes, literally) to the public showers, (open 3-9 pm, (that is Beijing time - which by the sun is two or three hours ahead here, but we are in China and Beijing IS the sun...), except when they aren't, when I had to track down some staff to ask them to unlock the door the other day, and the lady sits there on a barbershop chair knitting, waiting for me to get done in the shower so she can go back inside to hotel and knit there), I guess no one else wanted to put up with that...
Turpan is cold. My guidebook says 'zui ri de difang zai Zhongguo' but in my limited experience Turpan is not the hottest, but rather the coldest place in China! Summertime here is hot, (supposedly 121 F is the record!) Turpan is in the second lowest depression on earth, (only above the Dead Sea) the lowest spot is 154 meters below sea level - no wonder it took me so long to get here from Lhasa, lets see, from that one pass I dropped 5,330 meters, hmm. And they grow grapes here, on trellises hanging over the tourist streets, no cars allowed, and I think it would be really neat in the summer. Not bad now either, but there are no grapes, no music, no dancing in the streets...
I went to two ancient city ruins, some grave/mummy sites, a mosque with a big minaret that I wasn't allowed to climb, and some other places. Saw a Karez museum - these are the underground tunnels that they dig from the mountains (where there is water) to here (where there is no water) in order to water the grapes, and drink, and to live in general, pretty interesting. They do this also in Afghanistan, Iran, etc. And the old cities were really fascinating - unlike how I would picture such a thing being presented in America, these things are just there - you just buy a ticket then you can go walk around and climb on whatever you want. Felt sort of funny, I touch something and my gloves get dirty and I feel guilty for destroying relics... They get like no rain here at all, which is I guess the only way that these sorts of things have lasted for so long. They are huge, mostly just walls left, with doorways here and there, and wells that you don't want to fall into. Both places had leftovers of Buddhist Temples (these were from 3rd Century BC, and 5-7th Century AD - before Islam came here along the Silk Road).
In the one place you could rent a 'donkey taxi' (the preferred form of tourist transportation in this place) and go racing along to the monastery leftovers - allegedly six kilometers away. I told them I wanted to walk (there was no one else there and there was about ten donkey cart guys with nothing to do) so I walked (it wasn't anywhere near six kilometers) and had a nice time exploring in the silence, then heard some shouting and somebody came racing out the road in a cart to convince me to have a ride back, which he gave me for free after realizing that I really would just walk right beside his cart the whole way back unless he told me to ride for free... That was funny.
My guide/driver for two days of excursions was called Ilham - another 28 yr old guy who I had a lot of fun talking to. His Chinese was definitely better than mine, but still limited to a second language. Most people here speak Uighur, and depending on what kind of school they went to, also learn Chinese and English a bit. Uighur is closely related to Turkish. This ethnic tie is why the occasionally violent separatist group (in Xinjiang in general, probably not Turpan) is called the "East Turkestan Movement".
Today I went to a museum. I had to search out the lady selling tickets. Then she takes a flashlight and leads me into this big dark room and runs off to find a light switch, which when she does find it and turn it on, I see that I am standing underneath a dinosaur. So the museum had dinosaurs, mummies, and various cultural relics. I was the only person there. My tour was also much more interesting (and more expensive) because I was driven around in a van, but there was just me and the driver.
If anybody gets the impression that there are no other tourists in Turpan, you're right. I did see one group of apparently American travelers at the bus station the other day, and one old Japanese guy with a personal translator whom we ran into about three times, but that was it. The fancy hotel, with the decent restaurant (not the one I am staying at, the one I eat at!) has a post office, but it is closed; and a CITS (travel agency) office, but it is closed; three quarters of the stuff on the menu they don't have; but the staff is nice - I learned how to say squid in Chinese.
So that was Turpan, and I am leaving this afternoon for Kashgar - assuming that I can buy a ticket. In a strange bid to draw tourists, the Turpan Train Station is actually in Daheyan - a very bumpy 60 some kilometers away from actual Turpan. So anyway, assuming that the train to Kashar is as empty as the train here was, buying a ticket should not be a problem!
I just had dinner in a coffee shop - the Oasis Hotel, ate some kind of ham and egg sandwich that was designated as "Muslim" - I don't know if that meant the chicken, or the pig, or whoever ate it, or what but there it was: Ham (Muslim) and egg Sandwich...
For those of you in places with less character than this - enjoy your flush toilets. I long ago decided that I could live with squatty potties if I had to, but that was in a warm place. Somehow that thirty or thirty five degrees (C) makes a big difference!
Thursday, January 16, 2003
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
The road less traveled… and here’s why
Notes on the pickles one finds oneself in when, having completed a semester in Shanghai and having mastered at least eleven Chinese words, one decides to go to Tibet.
So there I was, trying to get out of Tibet.
First, I thought I would fly out, since the only other way is some crazy bus... But my judgement was unusually over-optimistic after my best night of sleep ever in Tibet. Altitude sickness is generally worse at night, resulting in long periods of blackness, breathlessness, and the unexpectedly psychedelic Tibetan design on the ceiling of my rented room doing unexpected things. Did I mention that you can't sleep? So I decide to buy a bus ticket.
Sleeper bus from Lhasa, Tibet to Golmud, in the Qinghai province of China, whose only claim to fame is that it is where you get the bus to Tibet. A sleeper bus, for anyone fortunate enough not to know, is kind of a misnomer to begin with, but I guess the idea is good. You have three rows of beds, two high, in the bus. I was on top, in the middle row, and at the front of the bus. The bed is wide enough for me to lie down on and hang my arms down both sides, not wide enough in plain words. And long enough for me lie flat in if I skipped my head and neck, which is to say, not long enough. What holds you on (since I was in the top bunk) is two little steel bar loops that stick up beside my knees. Which might work if my knees were flat on the bed, which they aren't because I have a head and a neck that take precedence over my knees. So hanging on is a bit like snowboarding blindfolded - all work and no fun.
Anyway, this bus was kind of amusing for a couple hours. I practiced my Chinese a little with the few Mandarin speakers on the bus. Then we stop at a fairly scenic spot for lunch. Lunch over, the bus doesn't start. So they play with it, spraying starter fluid in the engine which is right in front of my ‘bed.’ Crowds of curious and helpful people stand around watching them spray starter fluid (flammable) and smoking cigarettes (great idea!) So the bus smells not only like cigarettes, but like gasoline and starter fluid as well.
The bus still doesn't start, and we are towed by a little overgrown pickup truck and try to kick-start it. Yes really. That doesn't work either, so this guy tows the bus 20 miles or something to the next town where there is a garage. The pit crew tears a carburetor (I think it was a carburetor, but I'm not sure - it was too cold for me to tell) off an old truck sitting beside the road, and installs it in our bus. It still doesn't start. So somebody has to come out from Lhasa with more bus parts, which takes awhile.
In the absence of anything better to do, we all go to sleep in this bus that smells like various unpalatable highly flammable fluids and cigarette smoke. This was January. In Tibet. January in Tibet. I had on three pairs of socks, two pairs of pants, a shirt, a sweatshirt, a fleece, my North Face coat, and my hat, plus a nice big blanket that came with the bus. I was not too cold, except for my feet, which I kept waking up without. The scarf that I was breathing through had ice on it when I woke up and my water bottle was frozen. Eventually the bus was fixed, and at three AM after about twelve hours of no motion, we began to move again.
The worst part about the bus trip was not the altitude, although we were up to almost 17000 feet. It's not as if there was anything to do except lie there, so I could concentrate on maintaining the oxygen level in my brain. The worst part was the smoke. How ironic that in this barren and beautiful part of the world where they probably have some of the best air quality on earth, I was stuck for 36 hours in a bus full of people endlessly smoking cigarettes. When I opened the windows for some fresh air, things didn’t go so well.
"It's too cold!"
"Yes, but can I open it a little when it is smoky in here?"
"No, smoking is good, open windows are bad." (That, by the way, is a direct translation from some Chinese that I knew.)
"Actually, open windows are bad, and smoking is bad too..."
Well, I left it at that, and usually left the windows closed and tried to breathe through something to filter out the chunks of nicotine floating around.
Probably half the road, or at least half our time on the road, was in "construction," which just means there is no road. It would have been amusing in a jeep, but hanging on to my perch while four-wheeling was a bit of a challenge, never mind trying to sleep. Some of the scenery was truly amazing, but most of it was overshadowed by my green face and wire-brushed throat.
After 36 hours of that we get to Golmud. At about midnight I find myself in a motel with a nice flat bed, but no shower. It's Golmud, what did I expect? The next day at the train station, still feeling decidedly green inside and a bit like a burnt piece of popcorn, I buy a hard sleeper ticket to Lanzhou – not a place where I want to be, but where I have to go to get the train to Turpan. After waiting in the station a couple hours, I get on the train and discover why my ticket was even cheaper than usual. It is actually a hard seat ticket, not the hard sleeper ticket I wanted. Yes, I suppose the lady at the ticket counter told me that but she didn't do a very good job of making it clear. I am told I can probably upgrade my ticket after the train leaves Golmud, so against my better judgement, I stay on the train. After waiting by the conductor’s office for an hour or two, I give up and slither back to my hard seat.
Chinese trains are always interesting. There was one guy who, at random intervals, would shout "HELLO" in my direction, apparently just to make sure his one word of English worked. At first I reply ‘Hello’ then, 'hi, wa’s up’ and ‘hows it hangin’ etc etc. Eventually I respond by saying something like, “In 15 years half of China will be dying of lung cancer while jabbering incessantly on cell phones and still won’t be able to vote, and you want me to keep parroting ‘hello’ to you?!” That's when I realized that I needed something like a real bed, a hot meal, or just a couple seconds with nobody staring at me.
Seventeen hours, overnight, on that train. No sleep. The seats are actually hard, but the problem is really that they are not like seats; they are like the two unfriendly sides of a right triangle. I amused myself playing with the little kid next to me, who was fun although he did take up more room than the spot on his mother's lap allotted for him. Anyway, this morning I got here to Lanzhou, which I never heard of before yesterday. Had a shower, a lovely hot lunch of some nameless variety of tofu and fried stuff, and lots of good Chinese tea, and I get an actual night of sleep tonight before leaving on a REAL hard sleeper (I double checked this one) to Turpan.
That's all of six days from Lhasa to Turpan. Well, it was definitely cheap! And I have a new appreciation for wool socks, and the hot water they give you in restaurants here, and Tibetan mechanics, and little kids whose fascination with oranges is a refreshing break from my own foul humour, and Chinese farmers who DON'T spit all over the train floor (most of them do) and people who open the window now and then to let in a rare breathe of real (albeit frigid and oxygen-deprived) air, and the lady in the train station here who actually made sure that I understood her when I was buying tomorrow's ticket in spite of the 47 people pushing behind me, and the guy at the restaurant who, when I asked where an internet café was, got so happy that I could say “internet café” in Chinese that he just took off from his job and walked me like four blocks away to the cheapest one around... People are the same everywhere, they are all different!
So there I was, trying to get out of Tibet.
First, I thought I would fly out, since the only other way is some crazy bus... But my judgement was unusually over-optimistic after my best night of sleep ever in Tibet. Altitude sickness is generally worse at night, resulting in long periods of blackness, breathlessness, and the unexpectedly psychedelic Tibetan design on the ceiling of my rented room doing unexpected things. Did I mention that you can't sleep? So I decide to buy a bus ticket.
Sleeper bus from Lhasa, Tibet to Golmud, in the Qinghai province of China, whose only claim to fame is that it is where you get the bus to Tibet. A sleeper bus, for anyone fortunate enough not to know, is kind of a misnomer to begin with, but I guess the idea is good. You have three rows of beds, two high, in the bus. I was on top, in the middle row, and at the front of the bus. The bed is wide enough for me to lie down on and hang my arms down both sides, not wide enough in plain words. And long enough for me lie flat in if I skipped my head and neck, which is to say, not long enough. What holds you on (since I was in the top bunk) is two little steel bar loops that stick up beside my knees. Which might work if my knees were flat on the bed, which they aren't because I have a head and a neck that take precedence over my knees. So hanging on is a bit like snowboarding blindfolded - all work and no fun.
Anyway, this bus was kind of amusing for a couple hours. I practiced my Chinese a little with the few Mandarin speakers on the bus. Then we stop at a fairly scenic spot for lunch. Lunch over, the bus doesn't start. So they play with it, spraying starter fluid in the engine which is right in front of my ‘bed.’ Crowds of curious and helpful people stand around watching them spray starter fluid (flammable) and smoking cigarettes (great idea!) So the bus smells not only like cigarettes, but like gasoline and starter fluid as well.
The bus still doesn't start, and we are towed by a little overgrown pickup truck and try to kick-start it. Yes really. That doesn't work either, so this guy tows the bus 20 miles or something to the next town where there is a garage. The pit crew tears a carburetor (I think it was a carburetor, but I'm not sure - it was too cold for me to tell) off an old truck sitting beside the road, and installs it in our bus. It still doesn't start. So somebody has to come out from Lhasa with more bus parts, which takes awhile.
In the absence of anything better to do, we all go to sleep in this bus that smells like various unpalatable highly flammable fluids and cigarette smoke. This was January. In Tibet. January in Tibet. I had on three pairs of socks, two pairs of pants, a shirt, a sweatshirt, a fleece, my North Face coat, and my hat, plus a nice big blanket that came with the bus. I was not too cold, except for my feet, which I kept waking up without. The scarf that I was breathing through had ice on it when I woke up and my water bottle was frozen. Eventually the bus was fixed, and at three AM after about twelve hours of no motion, we began to move again.
The worst part about the bus trip was not the altitude, although we were up to almost 17000 feet. It's not as if there was anything to do except lie there, so I could concentrate on maintaining the oxygen level in my brain. The worst part was the smoke. How ironic that in this barren and beautiful part of the world where they probably have some of the best air quality on earth, I was stuck for 36 hours in a bus full of people endlessly smoking cigarettes. When I opened the windows for some fresh air, things didn’t go so well.
"It's too cold!"
"Yes, but can I open it a little when it is smoky in here?"
"No, smoking is good, open windows are bad." (That, by the way, is a direct translation from some Chinese that I knew.)
"Actually, open windows are bad, and smoking is bad too..."
Well, I left it at that, and usually left the windows closed and tried to breathe through something to filter out the chunks of nicotine floating around.
Probably half the road, or at least half our time on the road, was in "construction," which just means there is no road. It would have been amusing in a jeep, but hanging on to my perch while four-wheeling was a bit of a challenge, never mind trying to sleep. Some of the scenery was truly amazing, but most of it was overshadowed by my green face and wire-brushed throat.
After 36 hours of that we get to Golmud. At about midnight I find myself in a motel with a nice flat bed, but no shower. It's Golmud, what did I expect? The next day at the train station, still feeling decidedly green inside and a bit like a burnt piece of popcorn, I buy a hard sleeper ticket to Lanzhou – not a place where I want to be, but where I have to go to get the train to Turpan. After waiting in the station a couple hours, I get on the train and discover why my ticket was even cheaper than usual. It is actually a hard seat ticket, not the hard sleeper ticket I wanted. Yes, I suppose the lady at the ticket counter told me that but she didn't do a very good job of making it clear. I am told I can probably upgrade my ticket after the train leaves Golmud, so against my better judgement, I stay on the train. After waiting by the conductor’s office for an hour or two, I give up and slither back to my hard seat.
Chinese trains are always interesting. There was one guy who, at random intervals, would shout "HELLO" in my direction, apparently just to make sure his one word of English worked. At first I reply ‘Hello’ then, 'hi, wa’s up’ and ‘hows it hangin’ etc etc. Eventually I respond by saying something like, “In 15 years half of China will be dying of lung cancer while jabbering incessantly on cell phones and still won’t be able to vote, and you want me to keep parroting ‘hello’ to you?!” That's when I realized that I needed something like a real bed, a hot meal, or just a couple seconds with nobody staring at me.
Seventeen hours, overnight, on that train. No sleep. The seats are actually hard, but the problem is really that they are not like seats; they are like the two unfriendly sides of a right triangle. I amused myself playing with the little kid next to me, who was fun although he did take up more room than the spot on his mother's lap allotted for him. Anyway, this morning I got here to Lanzhou, which I never heard of before yesterday. Had a shower, a lovely hot lunch of some nameless variety of tofu and fried stuff, and lots of good Chinese tea, and I get an actual night of sleep tonight before leaving on a REAL hard sleeper (I double checked this one) to Turpan.
That's all of six days from Lhasa to Turpan. Well, it was definitely cheap! And I have a new appreciation for wool socks, and the hot water they give you in restaurants here, and Tibetan mechanics, and little kids whose fascination with oranges is a refreshing break from my own foul humour, and Chinese farmers who DON'T spit all over the train floor (most of them do) and people who open the window now and then to let in a rare breathe of real (albeit frigid and oxygen-deprived) air, and the lady in the train station here who actually made sure that I understood her when I was buying tomorrow's ticket in spite of the 47 people pushing behind me, and the guy at the restaurant who, when I asked where an internet café was, got so happy that I could say “internet café” in Chinese that he just took off from his job and walked me like four blocks away to the cheapest one around... People are the same everywhere, they are all different!
Wednesday, January 08, 2003
Tibet Archives
Lhasa
Drepung Monestary
Jokhang Temple in Lhasa
Drepung Monestary
Jokhang Temple in Lhasa
Looking over Barkhor Square from the roof of Jokhang
The Potala
On the road from Lhasa to Golmud, Qinhai Province
The Potala
On the road from Lhasa to Golmud, Qinhai Province
Monday, January 06, 2003
Bonjour from Lhasa
I've been here for four days now and I still can't remember how to say hello in Tibetan - I guess my language learner is on vacation too! After flying here, I spent the first afternoon gasping on a chair explaining who I was to the tour place, then lying in bed wondering how long it takes to get used to this kind of altitude. After awhile I felt a bit better and went out to eat, talked to a very interesting Tibetan guy who was born and raised in Nepal, and just recently moved 'back' to Tibet due to the instability in Nepal - he spoke pretty good English (with a distinctly Indian accent) and Tibetan, but not Chinese.
My first day with the tour guide we went through the Norbulinka (I am not responsible for the spelling of that) where the summer palaces of the Dalai Lamas are - they built several of them. Also to the Sera Monastery which was interesting, we saw a big group of monks 'debating' in a way unique to Tibetan Buddhism, naturally, not understanding them kind of limited my appreciation for their logic, but fun anyway. The next day we (this day it was just the guide and I, so much for the "you must have a group tour to go to Tibet" policy...) went to the Potala Palace, which was amazing. The stupas there contain the remains of the past Dalai Lamas. These things were really huge - the biggest one, for the 5th Dalai Lama, had like 3000 something kg of gold and who knows how much other valuable stuff in/on it. And the city is full of beggars... Well, I guess as an outsider I hardly qualify to make any comment on that but there it is.
Also went through the Jokhang Temple in the middle of Lhasa, which is really the center of it all, and kind of the main focus of all the pilgrims that come here to walk around (circumbobulate – there has to be a perfect sentence somewhere to use that word in) holy sites and stand in front of them all day prostrating themselves over and over. I have a movie about the current Dalai Lama called 'Kundun' at home in a box - I saw a lot of stuff that was in (or actually, well reproduced) in the movie, like the cars that the 13th Dalai Lama got from India, a couple old radios, the main hall in Sera Monestary where the monks would gather, and lots of stuff in the Potala. Anyway, so that was that for the tour guide part of Tibet.
Today I met a friend and went to visit a family here, which was really interesting. They were Amdo, from northeastern Tibet and part of what is now Qinghai Province. We had yak butter tea and tsampa (barley flour, yak butter, sugar and something else I don't remember, maybe salt?) which was OK, just kind of dough... And they got all dressed up in their fancy outfits for New Year’s (Tibetan New Years is in March I think) and I got some pictures of me in funny clothes... amusing I am sure!
I don't know how long I'll be here. To do a trip to Shigatse/Gyantse on my own would be like $400 US which is ridiculous, I might still consider it if I meet some other people who want to do the same thing, but that's not likely. The whole altitude adjustment process is getting better, but still I feel like a fish out of water when I go up too many stairs. Yes, look at a picture of the Potala, I climbed all the way up that, and it took me like four hours to get rid of the headache and to catch my breathe after that!
It is really cold here (you notice a shocking difference going from the sun to the shade), but I guess I came well enough prepared for that because it has been the lack of oxygen, not the cold, that has bothered me most! Apparently they sell oxygen at my hotel. I haven't figured out if you get your own pressurized tank of it or how it comes, I've not gotten quite that desperate yet, but I thought it was amusing to see the sign 'stamps, hot & cold drinks, snack food and oxygen available at the front desk'. Maybe they have an oxygen plant somewhere in this town, I don't know!
Breathe for me!
My first day with the tour guide we went through the Norbulinka (I am not responsible for the spelling of that) where the summer palaces of the Dalai Lamas are - they built several of them. Also to the Sera Monastery which was interesting, we saw a big group of monks 'debating' in a way unique to Tibetan Buddhism, naturally, not understanding them kind of limited my appreciation for their logic, but fun anyway. The next day we (this day it was just the guide and I, so much for the "you must have a group tour to go to Tibet" policy...) went to the Potala Palace, which was amazing. The stupas there contain the remains of the past Dalai Lamas. These things were really huge - the biggest one, for the 5th Dalai Lama, had like 3000 something kg of gold and who knows how much other valuable stuff in/on it. And the city is full of beggars... Well, I guess as an outsider I hardly qualify to make any comment on that but there it is.
Also went through the Jokhang Temple in the middle of Lhasa, which is really the center of it all, and kind of the main focus of all the pilgrims that come here to walk around (circumbobulate – there has to be a perfect sentence somewhere to use that word in) holy sites and stand in front of them all day prostrating themselves over and over. I have a movie about the current Dalai Lama called 'Kundun' at home in a box - I saw a lot of stuff that was in (or actually, well reproduced) in the movie, like the cars that the 13th Dalai Lama got from India, a couple old radios, the main hall in Sera Monestary where the monks would gather, and lots of stuff in the Potala. Anyway, so that was that for the tour guide part of Tibet.
Today I met a friend and went to visit a family here, which was really interesting. They were Amdo, from northeastern Tibet and part of what is now Qinghai Province. We had yak butter tea and tsampa (barley flour, yak butter, sugar and something else I don't remember, maybe salt?) which was OK, just kind of dough... And they got all dressed up in their fancy outfits for New Year’s (Tibetan New Years is in March I think) and I got some pictures of me in funny clothes... amusing I am sure!
I don't know how long I'll be here. To do a trip to Shigatse/Gyantse on my own would be like $400 US which is ridiculous, I might still consider it if I meet some other people who want to do the same thing, but that's not likely. The whole altitude adjustment process is getting better, but still I feel like a fish out of water when I go up too many stairs. Yes, look at a picture of the Potala, I climbed all the way up that, and it took me like four hours to get rid of the headache and to catch my breathe after that!
It is really cold here (you notice a shocking difference going from the sun to the shade), but I guess I came well enough prepared for that because it has been the lack of oxygen, not the cold, that has bothered me most! Apparently they sell oxygen at my hotel. I haven't figured out if you get your own pressurized tank of it or how it comes, I've not gotten quite that desperate yet, but I thought it was amusing to see the sign 'stamps, hot & cold drinks, snack food and oxygen available at the front desk'. Maybe they have an oxygen plant somewhere in this town, I don't know!
Breathe for me!
Friday, January 03, 2003
Going West
Xian - Terracotta Warriors
and this funny horse...
Chengdu - home of daxiongmao (I don't know why I remember that in Chinese, and it's probably wrong, but there it is)
Also home of Sichuan Opera
and this funny horse...
Chengdu - home of daxiongmao (I don't know why I remember that in Chinese, and it's probably wrong, but there it is)
Also home of Sichuan Opera
Thursday, January 02, 2003
Chengdu Hotpot
I still have a bit of a cough left over from Shanghai, but it is slowly going away. Tonight, I am switching from the 'dorm' room in the motel ($3.20 - shower down the hall without heat, sometimes without hot water, always kind of dirty, and there is no showerhead, just a pipe - but I met some really cool people) to a single room across the hall with my own shower and heater, where I will stay really warm tonight and take a long hot shower and read a book (for $15 - after a long process of impressing the hotel staff with my Chinese language ability and calling some other actual (expensive) hotels near the airport, the price for this room came down from 220 RMB to 120 RMB… hmm I think there are no tourists here now).
They are actually building a rail line into Tibet, through Qinghai province which is to the northeast of Tibet, north of where I am now, but it won't be done ‘til I think 2007. You can take a bus out of Tibet that direction, but it is like two days or something of miserable roads and cold and I don't know if I'm up for that - maybe if I'm feeling really healthy I'll try it, but probably not. I'm not as cheap as I used to be!! The trains here are really not bad - I usually take 'hard sleeper' which is like six people to a 'room' (although they aren't really rooms, it is all open which is nicer) and they are hard but I can sleep fine and I get to practice my Chinese with people :)
Let me tell you the story of my day yesterday. I spent the morning sleeping late and talking to my roommates - a Japanese-American guy from LA who was, as a child, in an 'internment camp' in California during WWII, and is retired now, has travelled a lot - like the trans-Siberian railway, etc. Another roommate is a lady from New Zealand who is in charge of an adult literacy program there and has lots of contacts in China through her work and is here visiting those people. Fun people!
Then I go for a walk to find a post office, and get waylaid by a businessman (Chinese) who works for an American company promoting development in western China through contact between Chinese and American businesses, and he wanted me to proofread (to make sure it was "American English") a couple letters, one of which was an invitation to a Chinese Company to visit a chemical company in York PA of all places, so I talked to him awhile about that and about development in western China which was part of what I wrote my economics paper on in Shanghai.
Then, (the post office is closed by this time) I keep on walking, meet this other guy who, when I ask him where I can find a tea shop, offers to take me to one. So we walk awhile and go to this tiny little place on a back alley - not a nice foreigner sort of teashop but a real Chinese neighborhood sort of place, and we talked a lot (in Chinese and English - his English was much better than my Chinese) and the daughter of the shop's owner is a freshman in high school and came out for awhile to practice her English, that was fun. Then he invites me to dinner, and we go to another tiny little place that I probably normally wouldn't go to, but it was cool. Sichuan province, Chengdu in particular is known for its 'hotpot' which is when you have this burner in the middle of the table with a wok full of some seriously spicy oil stuff with peppers floating all over the place, and you buy little kebab sticks with bits of meat and veggies stuck on them, and you just stick them in the pot, then you get them out one at a time and roll them around in a kind of sesame oil/garlic/salt/pepper sauce, then when they have that on them you can drop them in another bowl of peppers and dry sesame (I think, or was it peanut maybe?) then you eat! It doesn't really take as long to eat as it does to explain it, but let's just say that it is really hot and lots of fun. So we eat there, and he starts telling me about his life here in Chengdu.
This is what he told me, and after having talked to him for like five hours straight, I think he was telling the truth. His grandfather lived here in this town and owned a factory or something. After the 1949 revolution he was killed because that is what they did with rich people, basically (not quite that simple of course, but still sort of true). His father was for obvious reasons not happy with the system, and eventually he got into trouble with the government and was put into prison (I think this was the 're-education through labor' thing) where he was for the first 12 years of this guys life - so he meets his father for the first time when he is like 13 years old. After things start opening up, this guy gets into college and becomes an English teacher, marries and has a son. Then 1989, Tiananmen Square protests happen. There were protests all over China then, not just in Beijing, and this guy offers to translate for some of the protesting students when they talked to foreign journalists about what they were protesting. And after the crackdown, he gets into trouble for this and is in jail for seven months or so, after that he can't get an official job because of his political record. He can't make any money and his wife divorces him, later on he remarries. So now he tutors English to students, but still apparently can't get an actual steady job. And his house was just foreclosed on by the bank because he couldn't keep up the 'rent' (you can't own property here so you pay a pretty cheap 'rent' based on a lease sort of thing that is usually like 50 yrs or something) so he and his wife and son now live in a room someplace, his wife is sick, his son is hungry.
And can I loan him some money?
Well, so I thought about that for the night and this morning, and decided that no, I couldn't, based, I guess, on some kind of idealistic idea that loaning people money does not actually help them in the long run. (Don't take that literally, Dad!) So I called him back and told him that. Idealism is so harsh sometimes! I gave him the 30 quai in my wallet last night, more from appreciation for all the fun and intelligent conversation than as a loan or gift or whatever. And he said he still wanted to meet me again when I come back to Chengdu after Tibet (assuming that I do come back to Chengdu). I believe the guy and wish there was something I could do to help him get a job or something, which I'm not so sure that money would do. Anyway, that was my day - sometimes being able to speak a little Chinese makes life really complicated!
All part of the invigorating and sometimes frustrating experience of being a "rich" American in a politically controlled and economically divided country I guess.
They are actually building a rail line into Tibet, through Qinghai province which is to the northeast of Tibet, north of where I am now, but it won't be done ‘til I think 2007. You can take a bus out of Tibet that direction, but it is like two days or something of miserable roads and cold and I don't know if I'm up for that - maybe if I'm feeling really healthy I'll try it, but probably not. I'm not as cheap as I used to be!! The trains here are really not bad - I usually take 'hard sleeper' which is like six people to a 'room' (although they aren't really rooms, it is all open which is nicer) and they are hard but I can sleep fine and I get to practice my Chinese with people :)
Let me tell you the story of my day yesterday. I spent the morning sleeping late and talking to my roommates - a Japanese-American guy from LA who was, as a child, in an 'internment camp' in California during WWII, and is retired now, has travelled a lot - like the trans-Siberian railway, etc. Another roommate is a lady from New Zealand who is in charge of an adult literacy program there and has lots of contacts in China through her work and is here visiting those people. Fun people!
Then I go for a walk to find a post office, and get waylaid by a businessman (Chinese) who works for an American company promoting development in western China through contact between Chinese and American businesses, and he wanted me to proofread (to make sure it was "American English") a couple letters, one of which was an invitation to a Chinese Company to visit a chemical company in York PA of all places, so I talked to him awhile about that and about development in western China which was part of what I wrote my economics paper on in Shanghai.
Then, (the post office is closed by this time) I keep on walking, meet this other guy who, when I ask him where I can find a tea shop, offers to take me to one. So we walk awhile and go to this tiny little place on a back alley - not a nice foreigner sort of teashop but a real Chinese neighborhood sort of place, and we talked a lot (in Chinese and English - his English was much better than my Chinese) and the daughter of the shop's owner is a freshman in high school and came out for awhile to practice her English, that was fun. Then he invites me to dinner, and we go to another tiny little place that I probably normally wouldn't go to, but it was cool. Sichuan province, Chengdu in particular is known for its 'hotpot' which is when you have this burner in the middle of the table with a wok full of some seriously spicy oil stuff with peppers floating all over the place, and you buy little kebab sticks with bits of meat and veggies stuck on them, and you just stick them in the pot, then you get them out one at a time and roll them around in a kind of sesame oil/garlic/salt/pepper sauce, then when they have that on them you can drop them in another bowl of peppers and dry sesame (I think, or was it peanut maybe?) then you eat! It doesn't really take as long to eat as it does to explain it, but let's just say that it is really hot and lots of fun. So we eat there, and he starts telling me about his life here in Chengdu.
This is what he told me, and after having talked to him for like five hours straight, I think he was telling the truth. His grandfather lived here in this town and owned a factory or something. After the 1949 revolution he was killed because that is what they did with rich people, basically (not quite that simple of course, but still sort of true). His father was for obvious reasons not happy with the system, and eventually he got into trouble with the government and was put into prison (I think this was the 're-education through labor' thing) where he was for the first 12 years of this guys life - so he meets his father for the first time when he is like 13 years old. After things start opening up, this guy gets into college and becomes an English teacher, marries and has a son. Then 1989, Tiananmen Square protests happen. There were protests all over China then, not just in Beijing, and this guy offers to translate for some of the protesting students when they talked to foreign journalists about what they were protesting. And after the crackdown, he gets into trouble for this and is in jail for seven months or so, after that he can't get an official job because of his political record. He can't make any money and his wife divorces him, later on he remarries. So now he tutors English to students, but still apparently can't get an actual steady job. And his house was just foreclosed on by the bank because he couldn't keep up the 'rent' (you can't own property here so you pay a pretty cheap 'rent' based on a lease sort of thing that is usually like 50 yrs or something) so he and his wife and son now live in a room someplace, his wife is sick, his son is hungry.
And can I loan him some money?
Well, so I thought about that for the night and this morning, and decided that no, I couldn't, based, I guess, on some kind of idealistic idea that loaning people money does not actually help them in the long run. (Don't take that literally, Dad!) So I called him back and told him that. Idealism is so harsh sometimes! I gave him the 30 quai in my wallet last night, more from appreciation for all the fun and intelligent conversation than as a loan or gift or whatever. And he said he still wanted to meet me again when I come back to Chengdu after Tibet (assuming that I do come back to Chengdu). I believe the guy and wish there was something I could do to help him get a job or something, which I'm not so sure that money would do. Anyway, that was my day - sometimes being able to speak a little Chinese makes life really complicated!
All part of the invigorating and sometimes frustrating experience of being a "rich" American in a politically controlled and economically divided country I guess.
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