Our National Day trip began yesterday with a princely ride to Hongqiao airport in a specially ordered private car. Miles had had such trouble finding taxis for his trip to and from Fudan the day before — a day of seeming endless rain which seemed to dissolve all the taxis of Shanghai — that we definitely thought better of just trusting that we could find a taxi on the morning of National Day. In the end, I'm pretty sure we never needed the precaution. Certainly we've never seen the Shanghai traffic so light as it was yesterday morning. But if the population of taxis was proportionally reduced we might well have been out of luck.
Anyhow, we got to Hongqiao in good time, made it through the check-in and security queues with relatively little trouble, and spent the next 2½ hours while waiting for our flight's departure watching the "festivities" as broadcast from Beijing on the airport's TV monitors — and nearly turned to stone from sheer boredom. Nearly all of the coverage sent a single message — namely, that China is a strong power militarily. Miles observed that the contrast between the "New China" 60th anniversary yesterday and the Obama inauguration last January couldn't have been more marked. There was absolutely nothing spontaneous, and not much that was joyful about yesterday's observances. Compare that to that January day when America made history that the whole world seemed so happy to see. I do have to report that when the Chinese National Anthem was sung during the broadcast, most of the Chinese in the terminal rose up and stood in respect, some saluting the flag on the monitor, some not, some singing along, some not. It was a strange sort of passionless, unfervent patriotism, but it was patriotism nonetheless.
After an uneventful flight to Lanzhou, we collected our luggage, and met our tour guide (Lilly Li) and driver (Mr. Zhao) who will be with us for the next eight days. Most of the rest of yesterday was spent driving to our first stop — the city of Xiahe. On the road, we passed by an area populated by Chinese Muslims — members of the Hui nationality — and had a very tasty dinner of Hui food. The hallmark of this cuisine is lamb, and the preparation is quite spicy. We had a look at the terraces that form the basis of the local agriculture. Pictures from this drive (day 1) are here.
When we finally reached Xiahe and our hotel (I confess to having fallen asleep in the car for the last part of the journey), we were absolutely stunned at how cold it was. And at how we had somehow travelled back a century or so in terms of creature comforts since we had left Shanghai and arrived in Xiahe. Our hotel looks like it should be comfy. Then you realize that the hot water is limited to 4 hours in the evening, and that there is simply no heating. Well, the hot water was hot. We took hot showers to try to warm up, and got right to bed at about 9:30 pm. I slept fitfully, Miles not even so well. When we broached the subject with our tour guide this morning at breakfast we discovered that extra bed covers had been secreted someplace in our room we did not think to look (in a cabinet below the TV). As I write this, we've had our full second of touring and have settled down — again, about 9:30 pm, but this time more warmly — but perhaps we're getting used to it being 50 degrees indoors (it's quite a bit colder outdoors).
For our touring today, we took in the Labrang monastery in the morning and had a too-quick glance at the Ganjia grasslands in the afternoon (but we will get another look at them tomorrow).
The Labrang Monastery isn't very old (built in 1709, it's celebrating its tercentenary this year), but it is very, very important to Tibetan Buddhism. It's also very, very beautiful, but I'll let the pictures speak to that. We had a monk who spoke good, if highly accented, English as our guide during the monastery tour, so we got quite a grounding in various aspects of Tibetan Buddhist beliefs and practices.
The brevity of our glance at the Ganjia grasslands was of a piece with our tour guide's sudden "abandonment" of us at about 2:30 this afternoon — leaving us to make our way about the town and find our own dinner. This and another annoyance — an unscheduled stop at what should have been the atelier of a noted Tibetan Buddhist artist, but turned out to be an opportunity to buy the work of the artist rather than to see him creating his art (he was not even present) — prompted us to make a tiny little phone call of complaint to our travel agent back in Shanghai. We are told that these sorts of thing are indeed below the standard and should not recur. Time will tell.
Pictures from today's touring (day 2) are here.
Well, we did in fact find our way about in Xiahe, although we had to do it twice. There is so much dust on the streets (or I should really say, street, as there really is just one) that we both had to come back to the room so that Miles could remove his contact lenses while I seriously entertained the thought of removing my eyeballs, but in the end, forebore. (To call this stuff "dust" really doesn't do justice to how sharp the particles are.) We set out again, and again walked the several kilometers to the interesting end of the town, found the "Nomad Restaurant" recommended by our trusted Lonely Planet Guide, and had a nice meal of Tibetan food. Tibetan food centers on yak beef. It's simple, but tasty. I had a huge bowl of soup with yak beef and vegetables. Miles had a similarly sized bowl of a simpler soup, and a plate of dumplings filled with — you guessed it — ground yak beef.
I would not do justice to Xiahe in this post if I did not mention a couple of things:
- The town square of Xiahe is nearly deserted all day long, except for Chinese paramilitary riot police squad. They sit on little wooden benches. About 20 meters away, their riot gear — helmets and shields — sits to the ready, but just lies there, inanimate, in perfect matrix formation, on the ground. It's two, two, two messages in one! "We're here to intimidate anybody who, like some who tried it here some time back, might demonstrate about Tibetan issues; but we're not really that scary, just look, we're only sitting on benches, not really doing anything." If you want to see what these police look like (I didn't dare photograph any of them) when they aren't just sitting on a bench 20 meters away from their gear, you can start at the wikipedia page for Labrang here, and explore various links from there to coverage of the troubles in Xiahe in 2008.
- While we were walking back to our hotel (for the last time) after dinner, and heard what I thought might be firecrackers, and hoped were not gunshots, what we were actually hearing was fireworks, as a glance back proved to us. These were a pretty pathetic specimen of the breed, but they were fireworks. We were the only ones on the street even to glance at them. Others, especially those who were evidently Tibetan or Hui, seemed not even to notice them. The Han Chinese majority didn't seem to care about them either.
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