We've seen a lot of beauty, and been well and truly accounted for by the local police — but I'm getting ahead of my story.
We began yesterday by saying goodbye to Xiahe, and getting a second look at the Ganjia grasslands. There were two major sites we hadn't gotten to the day before. We began with a tour of the "Ancient City" Bajiao — in fact a 2000 year old city, that was once the seat of powerful dynasties, and now is home to just a few humble citizens. The outer walls of the town are largely intact, and form the shape of a cross (like the familiar red cross). Two of the outer corners on the cross have the remains of defensive towers. An ethnic mix of people live inside these walls today — Tibetans, Hui, and Han Chinese.
After the 2000 year old city, we made a brief visit to the Tseway monastery, just a few kilometers from Bajiao out in the grasslands.
Then we visited Tarzang Lake, a beautiful high mountain lake of special importance to Tibetans. We were there on October 3rd, the day of a special full moon, chosen as the beginning of the 3-day "Autumn Festival" (which overlaps with the National Day week this year). We saw some Tibetans performing their rituals at the lake — blowing conch shells, and scattering tiny pieces of paper, each bearing a Buddhist prayer. As we were walking from the lake back to our car, the weather began to turn, and we got some precipitation in the form of sleet. If it seems strange that we had sleet so early in October, it may help to explain it to note that the lake is at about 11,500 feet.
Finally it was time to head for the home base for our next two days — a town called Luqu.
We would much rather have stayed in another town called Langmusi — the one we visited today — but because of all the holidays, and so many Chinese tourists, the only good hotel in Langmusi was fully booked (or perhaps just cleared out for the use of party elite). So Luqu it had to be.
Luqu has nearly nothing going for it. For a start, it is as muddy as Xiahe was dusty. There is an unbelievably grand theater which has been built, and which is garishly lit up at night. Sadly, the theater appears not to be open yet, and it is really hard to imagine who in the world will ever sit in the grandeur of its stalls and loges. The townspeople are very small-townish indeed. By now, Miles and I have walked about quite a lot in China, and this town was the first place where we were made to feel like aliens from the planet of the Aryan and Blonde.
We were also made to feel quite unwelcome — at least by the police. As we drove into the town, our tour guide was made to fill in the standard police forms foreigners usually have to complete whenever they check into a hotel or take an apartment — even before we had even found our hotel. After we had settled into our hotel, made our way over to, and back from, a rather mediocre evening meal at the town's only decent restaurant, and had then retired for the night, the police were back, knocking on our hotel room door, waking us up, and taking down, once again, all of the same information they always take down. Spooky? Irritating? Well, both, really.
After our police "visit" we got what sleep we could. It was once again, very cold in our hotel room (palatial, and otherwise well-appointed, but again totally unheated).
This morning, we got up and drove to Langmusi. This town straddles two provinces — Gansu, where our trip has been spent until now, and Sichuan where we go tomorrow and stay through the rest of our trip. There are two major Buddhist temple complexes here — Sertri on the Gansu side and Ketri on the Sichuan side. We got a good look at both of them, with a visit to a gorge filled with grottoes sacred to Tibetans well before the advent of Buddhism, and a free ramble out on the grasslands above Langmusi thrown in for good measure. We also got to meet an elderly widow (probably in her 70s) who showed us her tidy home, with an entire room devoted to her Buddha worship.
One "high point" of our visit to Sertri was a walk up to the sky burial site. Sky burial is a type of burial that entails having the body ritually dismembered to be devoured and scattered by vultures. It is considered the "best" form of burial by Tibetans, but is very costly, so out of the reach of all but a very few. We also got to see two monks play a pair of Tibetan trumpets.
Ketri is a few centuries older than Sertri and, while both temples may have suffered during the Cultural Revolution, it seems that the effort to rebuild Sertri is further along, while Ketri is still much loved as a "working" temple for devout Buddhists.
Langmusi is a very beautiful place. We could easily have spent more time there. But tomorrow we are on to new territory. Tomorrow won't be much of a sightseeing day, as we need to spend the entire day covering the ground between Luqu and Songpan, our home for the next three days, and the final stop on our trip. After spending the past three nights (and tonight as well) without heat, our digs in Songpan promise to be much more posh (five stars, or so we've been told).
Time to close and nurse our well-earned sunburns!
Oh, but before I forget, here are the pictures from yesterday (day 3) and today (day 4).
And here's another one of those special signs — this from Langmusi. I hope you can read it despite the bad control of light in the photo. If you can't — it says "The moon teahouse in ditch."
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