Two Tibetan Mishaps

I am going to tell you the story of my two possible ends on the Tibetan plateau.  Because symbols and dialectics are a poet’s fetish, I might say that one was by fire and one was by ice.  (They involved, respectively, cooking and a frozen lake.)  Evidently, I did not die, and to spare you histrionics, I was not actually close to it.  These were rare times, though, when I realized that, alone in another country, I had the ability to lead myself to a naïve doom.  (And for your benefit, one of them was scenic!)

Bird Island

My guidebook tells me that Xining is a common home base for travelers to Bird Island, a breathtaking (apparently) avian sanctuary on the west end of Qinghai Lake.  Qinghai means “clear ocean,” and is thus an interesting misnomer for a vast, dry, mountainous province.  Except if you take into account this huge lake, which is both the province’s identifying feature and its prominent aberration.

Fate—a messenger of concrete, wind, and gasoline—did not want me to go to Bird Island.  It was a long tussle between the two of us, but eventually Fate, like a parent the child must admit knows better, shook its head and nudged me back toward the safety of my hostel.

The first sign was failing to book a group tour.  My guidebook recommended cheap tours run by the Post Hotel on Fuzhu Road.  It gave the address—138 Fuzhu Road—but not the Chinese name of the hotel.  I walked to and along Fuzhu Road, only to discover that, at a certain point, construction made continuing impossible.  Literally, the road deteriorated into piles of concrete rubble, and the shops that were still standing were deserted.  Because most of the shops have no marked address, I could not locate 138 Fuzhu Road exactly, but am pretty sure it was beyond the threshold of destruction.

What I am pretty sure is the former address of the Post Hotel.

I gave up and hailed a taxi to the North Monastery, which was nearby.  The driver let me know that in March, there is not enough interest in Bird Island, and no such group tours exist this time of year.  May and June are the popular months.  He offered to drive me himself, though, for 200 yuan.  I parsimoniously declined.

While casually glancing at my map, I noticed the coach bus schedule.  And, lo, every day a bus ran to Bird Island to “tour the scenery.”  I left my hostel the next day at 6:45 a.m. to make the hour-long walk and just catch the 7:45 a.m. bus.  Again, Fate told me something was wrong.  There was only one other person in the bus with me, who said, “I guess it’s just the two of us.”  (With the driver, the perfect number of characters to start a road-trip horror flick.)  When pulling out of the parking space, the driver immediately ran into a barrier.  Fate was angry.  As was the driver’s boss, who came and chewed him out when he surveyed the damage, as I could see going on in the rear-view mirror.

(The ominous atmosphere is not helped by the fact that we’re studying the composer Ligeti for the music FSP, and I’m listening to “Lontano” as I write this.  Like from The Shining.)

Half an hour later we were on our way at last into the countryside.  The mood of the bus became more cheerful as I learned people on the side of the road can hail the bus, hop on, and pay the driver the amount a ticket would have been.  We stopped at another bus station, where two men came on board selling tea eggs, corn-on-the-cob, or big scallion pancakes.  One of them obliged my ridiculous attempt to buy a 3-yuan pancake with a 100-yuan bill, and gave me the proper change.  The sun was lifting, and with it, my outlook on the day ahead.

The Open Road

I had estimated the 200 miles to Bird Island would take about three hours.  But by that time, we were not even half-way there.  I began to wonder what was meant by a bus trip to “tour the scenery,” and whether it would include a return trip, as I had assumed.  As the other lady who started out on the chatted with the driver, I heard, “Yeah, I work out there.”  I began to doubt whether she was going to Bird Island at all, or just somewhere on the way.  One purpose of this trip, though, was to see the scenery, and so I did not mind spending long hours looking out the bus window.  Though in the summer, the grasslands are apparently green and splendid, not uniform tan of dormancy I experienced.

I saw flocks of sheep roaming the grass, which reminded me of New Zealand.  The herders and their yaks, less familiar.

An early portent.  A reservoir lake which was frozen over.  Living in New Zealand, I had forgotten it was winter elsewhere.  I figured, Qinghai Lake is big...maybe it's not entirely ice!

There were many small roadside settlements, or those a bit off from the main road.  I am compelled by abandoned buildings, and somewhat accustomed to them from rural northern Minnesota.  But there’s a special aura to a concrete shell of a building, or a building standing alone among bare, expansive hills.  Even buildings still in use that rise up out of a field have a sense of not belonging, of being temporary.  As if eventually, the must be abandoned.

Some villages were surprisingly energy-conscious, with solar panels and windmills.  This one reminds me of another, newer-looking one I saw, consisting entirely of identical yellow houses, each with a solar panel and windmill.

We'll just pretend the bus was going vertically at this point.  Sad un-tech-savvy truth: I cannot make this picture (only this one!) not turn on its side when it uploads.

An impressive mosque near Duoba that reminded me of The Thief and the Cobbler.

In the distance, a village with more traditional architecture.

One day, horizontality will overcome.

This abandoned fuel station gives me chills.  But, oddly, good chills.  I wanted to get off the bus and run around in it.  I wanted make love in it.  I wanted to embody it.

After almost five hours, we had made it to a comparatively large town called Gangca, complete with its own bus station (meaning a parking lot with adjacent ticket office).  According to the regional map I kept checking, this was about 2/3 of the way to Bird Island.  It appeared to be the de facto end of the line, seeing as everyone got off but me.  Just as I was about to ask the driver if he was going back to Xining that day, he leaned toward me himself and asked, "Do you really want to go to Bird Island?"  He told me that the lake is, indeed, still frozen over.  I asked him if there were any buses running from there back to the city.  He told me not today.

It was at that point that I realized that I actually could end up getting myself killed.  Especially had I known no Chinese, and as a result ignored any advice given me.  Bird Island, by nature of being a tourist attraction, means a bus line runs there as a final destination.  Unlike, assumably, most other bus destinations, which are towns that can offer emergency accomodation.  Where you're supposed to buy a return ticket from Bird Island itself, and why the bus line still runs all the way there in March are mysteries to me.

I asked the driver if buses were running to Xining from Gangca, and it turned out yes, in just an hour and a half.  I decided to walk around, grab a bite to eat, and then have a pleasant five-hour return journey seeing the scenery on the other side of the road.

Prayer flags over the highway coming into Gangca.

The Tibetan Buddhist mantra ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པ་དྨེ་ཧཱུྃ ("om mani padme hum").  This is linguistically interesting because the syllables come from Sanskrit, not Tibetan.  To account for retroflex stops and word-final nasals, the scribes made up backwards letters and circles to put above others.  As a result, the most common thing you'll see written in Tibetan includes non-original Tibetan letters.

Tantalizingly close...

Another ominous sign leading into Gangca.

Gangca itself was simple, but charming.  There were two roads like main streets, lined with restaurants and stores.  A market with cheap goods ran between them.  There was also a large public square, with no one in it that I saw, and some other unnotable buildings.  My most interesting, almost eerie, impression was how the town dissolved into the countryside.  Near the edges, the buildings were falling apart or abandoned, as if the emptiness were slowly encroaching.  I felt almost like a non-person, five hours from the closest center of civilization, which was still more remote from anything I'd ever known.  Gangca felt like an Asian Brigadoon I might enter and be spirited away into, having not been witnessed for days by anyone who could identify me.

A initial view down the road from the bus.

An engaging statue "downtown."

A view of bread vendors at the market.

The alley that was home to the market.

You could tell by the bilingual signage that Tibetans were the prominent ethnic group here.

Contrast with this sign (not in Gangca, but back in Xining) which exhibits a special Chinese-character font used to express exotic Tibetanness.

You can tell I was trying to be furtive as I took photos, to not look ignorant or rude.  The one I think I took behind my back.

Inside the Tibetan restaurant I ate at, sharing a table with an older Tibetan couple who were quite friendly.  Then for some reason they were moved and I got businessmen instead who didn't talk to me.  Anyway, the picture is blurry because I felt like everyone was watching me and took the picture furtively, backward through my armpit.  When uploading the photo, I saw that yes, they were indeed looking at me.

An empty-feeling alley near the town's periphery.

Toward the vanishing point.  These all used to be storefronts.  Their bold colors make them all the more wistful under the dust.

But, as you see, from this place of vanishing, which felt like another dimension, or the surface of another planet, I have returned.  To do more dumb shit.


Blood Sausage

I should not have eaten the blood sausage.

From the first time I saw it on the menu, I was aware that it was a local dish.  I recognized it at a Muslim market, but was too shy and germ-conscious (I know, me) to buy it there.  I tried to order it at the restaurant in Gangca, but they did not have any at the moment.  I was on a mission, though, as I get with food conquests.  I was going to lose my blood sausage virginity.  (Which, incidentally, has to be the most unsettling innuendo I've ever made.)

I found a Tibetan restaurant on the north side of Xining.  After shyly being shown my table with room for six or more, I made my bold order: milk tea, meat pastry, and blood sausage.

The g(l)ory!

The waitress brought it to the table, wiped off the knife, and handed it to me.  Sagely, she asked if I knew how to prepare it, and of course not.  She expertly sliced off the ends, then cut off two chopstickable sections and placed them in a dish for me.  I knew the dish was made of blood, of course, but had expected it to be cooked to a uniform consistency, or for the blood to be congealed.  No, this was a flamboyantly bloody dish.  It dripped out the middle when cut, onto the plate, the knife, the chopsticks.  This struck me as hilarious, for how gruesomely realistic it was, how it confronted you with the blatant death involved in its preparation.  It was also hilarious how eager I had been to reach this cringe-worthy moment.  When I cut into it, some blood squirted onto my pants and I chuckled.

I ate the two pieces the waitress had cut for me.  The flavor was distinctly sausage-like.  (I had thought "sausage" was perhaps a convenient euphemism, describing the carnivorous and cylindrical quality of the food rather than its consistency.)  There was something else, too.  Not the metallic twinge of blood in the mouth, but an earthy undertone.  Not bad, I thought.

And then it hit me like a 110-degree fever.  In an instant, I was filled with a dense nausea, spreading from my stomach to my head.  I had to sit sideways on the bench, resting on the decorative pillow.  My brain felt swollen.  My ears began to hurt.  When I opened my eyes, there was the impression of the restaurant, but clouded by a field of white and frenetic specks, like the disorientation of walking into a dark room from bright sunlight.  I noticed I was sweating profusely.  In seconds it was dripping off me, and I padded it away with the tissues they had given me to wipe the blood off my hands as I ate the sausage.  It was like every pore in my body was crazed to eject what I had put into it.  I realized that I might end up throwing up over the table, then throwing two hundred-yuan notes at the waitstaff as I ran out of the restaurant in embarrassment.

For a while I wondered if I had eaten something toxic, a possibility for a weak American constitution eating something made of blood in the middle of China.  But then I reasoned that few poisons act within seconds.  No, the reaction was psychological.  While my conscious found the experience novel and even humorous, my subconscious revolted.  It was as if I had done something that, by all standards of biology and morality, was anathema.

I realized how deep culture and habit run.  I can practice and embrace open-mindedness, but my organs and conscience have been trained differently.  As much as Mitchell the person wants to eat everything new, Mitchell the body is vocal about its limits.

After a mortifying eternity, my nausea calmed down mostly, and I could move freely again.  (I was not poisoned!)  I tried, feebly, to call for the the waitress, explaining that I was sorry, but I could not finish the sausage.  She seemed not to hear me.  Instead, I pushed the blood sausage to the corner of the table and focused on the meat pastry which seemed to have apparated during the time I could only half-see.

There.  A proper dish.  A civilized dish.

I ate this warm and delicious dish while sipping my warm and delicious milk tea.  I tried not to think about the monster in the corner.  But the better I felt eating the other food, the more my rebellion kicked back in.  I had been confronted with the stark inalterability of my physicality and my heritage.  And I wanted to do one better.  I wanted to prove my body wrong.  I wanted to trust that the mind could triumph.

I weighed the intelligence of the decision.  After all, I had only a short while ago suffered the most sudden and severe bodily reaction of my life by eating this blood sausage.  But hell, I have only so much time left where "young and reckless" is an excuse.

I ate more than half of what was left of the blood sausage.  Bite by bite, concentrating on the flavor rather than the sight of it.  When I was finished, I could say I was finished because I was full, not because I was disgusted.  (I was full, too.  I had eaten that whole pastry.  Look at that thing.)

For dinner, I was not in the mood for mutton sausage noodles, as it was too reminiscent of lunch.  I was determined not to lose my lunch later in the day, as that would indicate a failure of sorts.  Instead I opted for the purest foods I could think of.  Bread and fruit.  A meal of aesthetics.  A meal of ablution.

Nothing in these sumptuous swirls could hurt me.

Dragonfruit, mangosteen, and mango.  The first two both new flavors for me.

The dragonfruit has a surprising white flesh, with the consistency of kiwi.

The mangosteen rind is distasteful--inedible in fact.  But the creamy white sections, one of which contains the pit, have a luscious, flowery flavor.

While my palette was cleansed by the fruit, I smelled blood sausage on myself for the rest of the day.  How, I wondered, was this possible?  Then I noticed it was not a novel smell.  It was a long-familiar smell--the spiced, slightly greasy-smoky scent of the city itself.  The foreign smell that had contributed to my initial stomach-sick homesickness.  Now I had truly--viscerally--internalized it, and conquered.  And I was exuding it myself.

City of Dust

Qinghai Province is thought of as the Siberia of China.  A central sprawl of grasslands, mountains, and few people roaming them—a vague and bare region in the Chinese imagination.  Except, since this is China, there is also a city of over a million residents: Xining.  The name means “Western Peaceful,” so perhaps the city has outgrown this meaning.

If you haven't heard of it, that's okay.  I hadn't either until I was booking my flight.

Upon my arrival, my guide, a Tibetan named Wendekhar (and a prospective Dartmouth ’17!), immediately apologized for the weather.  Having frolicked in New Zealand summerland for the past term, I had forgotten that I would be flying into the tail end of China’s winter.  I was wearing both the long-sleeved shirts I had brought, and there was still a chill.  My lips ached for Mistress Chapstick.  The sky was white and low, what I was afraid was perpetual smog, but which cleared up by late morning.  The real shame, though, is that the plantlife has not returned to its usual vim.  Qinghai in the summer, I am told, is spectacular.

The winter town is not the town of summer lost in snow.  It is another thing, a different thing.

The peak months for tourism are May and June, though even then it is no hot spot.  My guidebook assures me “most travelers don’t come to see Xining” as well as “Xining isn’t known for its cuisine.”  I am a foreigner in an off-time for an off-place.  In every gaze from a local I imagine an implicit question: “Why are you here?”  Even “tourist” is a form of legitimacy, but a label I find hard to justify.

Go home, kid.  Go home, you're drunk.

I am determined, though.  I will enjoy this place and what makes it unique, even if it doesn’t have a tourist stamp of approval.  I came here to glimpse Tibetan culture and because I knew I would have a friend of a friend to show me around.  It turns out Xining is bigger than I had guessed and is first and foremost a Chinese city, though it does weave minority culture into the urban fabric.  It’s not what I expected, but that’s the thrill of travel—nothing ever is.  And if it is, why go?

And when it is what you expected, how disappointing that, when you were expecting it to be unexpected, it--contrary to expectations--turned out to be as expected after all.

A blog with vivid pictures and mulled-over prose is a great way to build a persona of fearless traveler, amateur photojournalist.  But I admit, I am not this admirable persona.  My first day here was filled with awe and excitement, but also a gnawing unease in my stomach.  It was as if, in some vague and unpredictable way, the city itself was going to destroy me.

Though swimming here might indeed destroy me in a vague and unpredictable way.

From a Western aesthetic point of view, everything in the city is, well, super sketchy.  Sidewalk tiles are cracked and missing, pieces of characters are missing from signs, paint is peeling off of everything, and glass panes are cracked.  But most of all, the surfaces are covered with some amount of the ubiquitous dust.  Denser, though, like sand, or blown-off dirt.  In the mornings, women in fluorescent vests can be seen dusting off the walkways with big straw brooms.  The air itself is slightly peppered with it, and a scent of smoke. 

Almost every building, including the banks and museums, has either cloth or plastic flaps like this over the doorway.  They took a little getting used to.

A common style of apartment.

This isn’t sketchiness, though.  It’s the city’s take on practicality.  They take “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” one step further, “If it’s broke but it does its job, why bother?”  These aren’t shady characters living in squalor, buying drugs, and revelling in the fact that they are surrounded by ruined things that mirror their ruined souls.  They’re just people who can’t afford, or don’t need to afford, to keep up arbitrary external appearances.  And I really can’t fault Xining for the dust.  It is literally nestled among sandstone cliffs to all sides, during a dry and windy winter at that.  The door flaps which make a store seem dirty from the outside in fact mean that the dust is being kept out, and that the interior is more likely to be tidy.


Though I have no explanation for why the trunks of most trees are painted like this.  So people don't run into them at night?

Old pipes used both decoratively and to discourage cars from entering.

Only one bullet hole in the entrance to my hostel building!  (Okay, I concede, this one is sketchy.)

I feel like I tend to personify large geographic structures.  The mountains around Xining feel like aged guardians.

This long mound of earth acts as a median on Kunlun Road.

There’s a flow to the way people move, especially in regards to traffic.  My favorite thing (besides eating) is crossing the street.  People just inch their way across, lane by lane, whenever they have enough room before the next car comes.  I say lane, though, as if the drivers care about them.  It’s just a vague swarm of vehicles that usually contains itself between the curbs.  Honking means not so much “You’re doing something wrong” as “I’m here, so be aware I’m coming through.”  People can feel decently safe waiting between lanes of traffic because they know drivers are watching for this.  Drivers can eschew lanes and blast perpendicularly across traffic to turn because they know everyone else is expecting antics like this.  So crossing the street, I feel like I’ve gotten a knack for this particular piece of culture, like I belong to the way people naturally move.

These are the green taxicabs that are everywhere.  Some of them batshit.

This isn’t to say, though, that the system is foolproof.  On my second day, I got into a green taxicab and we immediately passed the scene of a traffic accident.  The entire front end of the car was crumpled.  It was a green taxicab.  Still, in every taxi, the back seat belts are wedged in behind the seat so you couldn’t use them if you wanted.  When I sat in the front and buckled up, the driver told me, “You don’t have to use that if you don’t want to.  Or is it just a habit?”  I said it was a habit, and not the truer answer: “I would like to go through my day and not a windshield.”  Though a different driver talked about how frantic Chinese traffic is and that he always drives moderately.

I was also put off at first by the constant construction.  One problem with construction is that it looks like a type of disrepair.  (This was a lingering impression in Christchurch, too.)  And it’s inconvenient.  Many construction sites have signs saying, “Help Xining Develop” or “Toward Our Future.”  This gives me the sense that the local people need a little push not to be frustrated.

"Speed up the old city's pace of transformation, establish the central district as a modernized core commerce district with a modern developed service industry, enriched and prosperous trade, fair allocation of space, improved urban functions, and a beautiful environment and ecology, suitable for industry and for living."

Skyscrapers like this, I assume, will become residential units.

Oh hey there, rubble.

Pretty much the entirety of Qilian Road and the eastern part of Fuzhu Road are torn up behind that blue barrier.  This became a problem when I was trying to schedule a bus tour organized by the Station Hotel, via guidebook recommendation, only to find out its physical location is now a pile of concrete.

This is part of a mural called "A Spring Story," which seems to depict Xining's development.  In this panel, construction becomes almost a sacred process.

It wasn’t until I ate the food, though, that I felt at ease here.  Perhaps the tremor in my stomach was just hunger?  In any case, food can represent the physical internalizing of a place, of processing it and therefore belonging in it.  This sounds meta-analytical, but I think our bodies often do function on a symbolic level.

Yang chang mian, meaning "mutton sausage noodles."  The Muslim population is very fond of mutton.  This dish had a unique spice, with that special sheep flavor.  I felt not only full but filled with warmth in a way I haven't with other spices.

The wonderfully hole-in-the-wall place where I got the yang chang mian.

Surprisingly, this may be a step up from the first noodle place I ate at.  It had a health inspection rating posted.  It got a C.  Probably typical.  But this wasn't any old C.  That had it turned 180 degrees by accident, like Ɔ.  Ling people, that's right.  I ate at a restaurant with a hygiene rating of open-o.

Shou zhua yangrou, meaning "hand-grab mutton," with a side of homemade yogurt.

Mutton on the bone like this is a Tibetan herder favorite.  A little pricey, but worth it.  The meat is chewy, tender, savory, and flavorful.  And see the whitish-yellowish stuff?  That is fat, but either because it’s naturally tasty or because they cook it a certain way, it doesn’t taste bland like you would expect pure fat to.  So when my mom tells me I don’t get enough calories, I will show her this and say, “Look, I’m eating pure sheep fat.  And it was fucking delicious.”

Niang pi, made from flour and baking soda.  Soft, chewy, not super flavorful itself, but it soaks up the spicy broth.

Tian pei, or "sweet grains," a simple sweet soup with barley. 

Zasui tang, or "entrail soup," with lamb innards and a filling broth often used to warm up on a cold morning.  The other people eating it didn't let go of the bread with their left hand as they sipped from the rim of the bowl.

Inside the straightforwardly named "Mutton Sausage Noodle Mutton Entrail Soup."

Kun guo, which you can find at little bakery stands for about twenty cents.  Not too flavorful, but it has a chewy, bready (I know, right) texture.

A little bread stand near my hostel.  The characters say mo mo pu, "bread bread shop."

If I can find it, Gou Jiao Niao, or Dog Poured Piss, a type of baked good which, if I read the Chinese description correctly, used to be made with dog piss.  With Wendekhar, I also had Tsampa, the Tibetan staple food, consisting of butter melted with milk tea, then mixed with barley flour by the left hand to form a doughy substance.  Eaten either plain or with sugar, yogurt, or pepper spice.

Even outside the realm of food, the city is not without its charms.  At a few big intersections, where you can’t cross the road, you go underground instead. 

The space has been turned into an extensive, plus-shaped underground mall.

The open public spaces are, one might say, bustling centers of leisure.  In the morning there are women doing exercises together, people playing games at tables with interested onlookers, and generally just people walking around all over the place.  Sometimes even backward, though I haven’t figured that one out yet.

A colorful display at the intersection of Xida Road and Changjiang Road.

Banners, pennants, and flowers along an upper-scale commercial road.  Not the monks shopping.

A public square where people were dancing and flying kites.

Descending a bridge going over a major road.  Along the bridge people were selling things from mats.

Games at the park.

Snazzy exercise equipment along Kunlun Road.

These things, everywhere.  They must be too cool for America.

 

One of the English-learning places you see around.  "Crazy English" is actually an apt translation of the Chinese, though I don't know who would want to speak Crazy English.

A stand at a local market.

What a pleasant euphemism.  This "Husband and Wife Products" store, as I predicted, is a sex toy shop.

Xining’s population is not just the usual Han Chinese that dominate the country.  Tibetan (Zang), Mongol (Menggu), Hui, and Tu minorities make up large proportions of the demographics.  A museum I visited noted how they live in harmony in Qinghai.  I don’t know how much that is actually the case, but you do see all of these people walking around and sometimes eating one another’s food.  Minority status seems very touchy in the US, but in China it can be a matter of pride, or simply a casual piece of information.  The situation differs also in that all the minorities are endemic to the area, whereas American minorities besides Native Americans are as much immigrants as the white majority.  The minorities here can also be harder to tell apart.

I eavesdropped this conversation with a taxi driver:

Driver: “I can tell you’re a minority.  Which one are you?”

Wendekhar: “Tibetan.”

Driver: “I knew it!”

Wendekhar: “What about you, then?”

Driver: “Oh, I’m Hui.”

Wendekhar: “Hm, I wouldn't guess without the hat.” 

The Hui people are Muslim.  The men usually wear a white hat, like these men in the foreground are.

Hui women wear a head scarf over the hair.  Typically black, though potentially any color, including pink with rhinestones.  Or, in one case, a makeshift scarf out of plastic bags...

Capitalism seems to play itself out differently here from in the US.  Or maybe it’s like this in all big cities.  I notice multiple shops in a row with the same service.  I would usually assume that they would be in fierce competition, but when prices aren’t explicitly marked and there are enough people to support them all, I guess this model makes sense.  If you’re in the market for flowers and fresh fruit, head to the corner where there are ten shops selling.  Need your car washed?  Drive to the street in town that has, no kidding, over two dozen cleaning garages in a row.  There’s a window cluster, a lighting cluster, even a hospital cluster in town.

Three Muslim butcheries with identical signage.

These are my impressions as I travel from one other side of the world to another.  I hope I can bring texture, a faint flavor, to a void in your picture of the world, just as I am doing the same for myself.  I hope to add two more entries on Xining: one on the monasteries I've visited and one either on Othering (yay anthropology buzzwords) or on how I almost got myself stranded six hours from the city to die of exposure beside a frozen lake.  Details to follow.