mccullochblog

Lhasa - Home of the Tibetans

Where to begin? This is an amazing place. Spiritual home of the Tibetan people. Former home of the Dalai Lama. Despite being 'liberated' and colonised by the Chinese over the past four decades, Lhasa still has a pretty unique charm.

For the Tibetan buddhists, this is 'Mecca'. Thousands of pilgrims come here from all over Tibet to worship at the Jokhang Temple, prostrating themselves for literally hundreds of miles to get here in some cases. (In case you're not sure what that means, as I wasn't, I've provided a picture!)

With its temples, monks and crowded medieval-type market streets, you can imagine that Lhasa really grows on you quickly. I've passed quite a few hours already just sitting in Barkhor Square - in front of the Jokhang - just watching the pilgrims follow the Cora - the circular path - that surrounds the temple. I had a lesson in Tibetan last night, which helped break the ice, although not as much as my camera. The zoom lense appears to be the easiest way for me to meet the locals! I let them look through the lense, they gasp a bit, and before I know it we're discussing the relative merits of the 4-4-2 football formation...well, you know, we're at least talking!

As if that wasn't enough, I had yet another once-in-a-lifetime experience today. We all went up to the Sera monastery this afternoon to watch the monks during their debating and teaching session. It's hard to explain quite what a scene it was. What we saw was 120 cross-legged monks strewn in small groups around a courtyard shouting questions and answers at eachother and jesticulating wildly in the name of education. The monks asking the questions moved a little like boxing referees giving a count of 10! As they ask their questions of their students they slapped their hands together hard, almost daring the understudy monks to answer incorrectly. Multiply that slapping sound and those noisy questions by 20 or 30 and you can imagine what a unique sight it was!! I only wish I'd had a video camera....

Anyway, I'm here for 5 days and I dare say there'll be much more to report. Off to the Potala Palace tomorrow, the huge, imposing former home of the Dalai Lama that oversees all of Lhasa. Should be great.

Sechuan - more than just spicy food.

On Thursday we continued our long drive south to Chengdu through some of the most spectacular (and dangerous) scenery I've ever seen. Northern Sechuan province is where the high altitude grasslands drop suddently and steeply away into huge river gorges and the lush forrested mountains that are the home of the Giant Panda.

For hours we wound our way carefully down improbably steep mountain roads with just a few bushes between our us and a massive drop into a river gorge below. To make matters even more scary (and believe me, that road was scary) we soon descended into clouds of mist, giving us a visibility of less than 20 metres and a warning time of about 3 seconds for oncoming vehicles. I suspect the seat in front of me will have the shape of my grabbing fingerprints embedded in it forever!

Incredibly, there were people driving like maniacs on those ledges and it wasn't long before we saw a nasty accident - a truck carrying bricks had obviously rounded a hairpin bend too quickly and shed its load all over a small home by the roadside. Frankly, it was a minor miracle we didn't see more of the same.

From there the river and road wound down almost three vertical miles and 200km towards the city of Chengdu taking us on a somewhat depressing journey not disimilar to China's own rapid development.

High up the riverside was scattered with small utopian farming communities and beautiful dry-walled houses reminiscent of Swiss Alp chalets but further down the small communes gave way to old industrial warehouses and factories - deserted for decades by the looks of them.

By the time we reached the valley floor, the sky had turned grey, the river a filthy brown, the air smelled of car fumes and the roads were choked with trucks blaring their horns. Chengdu was an urban hell compared with what we'd left behind almost 8 hours earlier - its main road punctuated with the symbols of the New China: auto dealerships, a Motorola office building, numerous Chinese pharmaceutical manufacturing sites, more auto dealerships....this is the new China that the West's going so crazy over.

The funny thing is that most of China doesn't live in this new capitalist world. In fact, China has fewer people living in cities than any developed country. The global average is 50%. 70% in the world's most developed economies. In China, 70% of people still live in the countryside. Frankly, given the smog cloud that hangs over most of the Chinese cities we've seen - I'd stay in the countryside too!

Yak tea and tsampa with the Zombas

Those memorable experiences keep on coming! Not content with meeting the Nomads of the grasslands in Langmusi and playing them at basketball, on Wednesday we travelled across the grasslands themselves (between Langmusi and Honghuen in Gansu province) and stopped in at a Zomba Nomad group settlement.

Without the help of our guide Atisha, who knew the head of the family we visited, this would have been impossible. First, the roads are so atrocious or non-existent that very few people ever travel out to the grasslands. Second, the Zomba protect their Yak herds, horses and homes with a breed of dog so fierce, they make Rottweilers look like Poodles. If you imagine a cross-breed of a bear and a wolf, you're getting close!

Anyway, with Atisha ensuring the dogs were kept at more than arms length we walked the half mile from the road to a small cluster of dark brown woollen tents, each the size of a garage and surrounded by grazing yaks and horses. I don't think any of us knew exactly what to expect - a warm welcome or to be chased back to our van? In the event, our welcome couldn't have been warmer, despite the fact this was the first time this family had ever welcomed foreigners into their home.

Like any mother, the matriarch of the family fussed about the lack of crockery for so many people (the only crockery Nomads have is small rice bowls), shied away from having her picture taken when she was dressed in her work clothes and immediately set her children to work making tea for us all. Inside the tent we met a family of five: the mother, two sons, a baby daughter and another mother from a neighboring tent. As seems common in Nomad life, the men of the family were nowhere to be seen.

The family tent was floorless. We sat on animal skins as we waited for the small stove to become hot enough to boil the Yak milk tea. In the far corner was a pile of dried Yak dung (fuel for the fire). At the rear of the tent was the milk churn - the Nomads' tool for separating Yak milk into 'skimmed' milk and cream for making butter. To our right eight or more sacks of ground barley were piled up - barley is the Nomads main source of food. They trade Yak products with local farmers for it. To our left was the family's sleeping mats and blankets. This one tent was everything - kitchen, fuel shed, bedroom, dining room; winter, spring, summer or fall. It was a barely believable a sight. There we were, seven foreigners and five Nomads having lunch together.

For the record, lunch was Tsampa. Tsampa is ground barley mixed with yak milk, yak butter and a little sugar. It has the consistency of cookie dough and the Nomads eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It actually tastes surprisingly good - although I suspect 21 rations each week might just be a bit much.

Incredibly, this is pretty much the way life has been for centuries in the grasslands. The only innovations Atisha highlighted to us were the milk churn, solar panels and motorcycles. We saw no sign of the panels, but apparently some Nomads use them for light. As for the motorbikes, we saw plenty of men riding them (every single one a Honda) in the towns, but none at the settlement.

Anyway, an hour or so after we'd arrived, we trounced back across the field accompanied by the eldest boy riding bareback on one of family's horses. After posing for a group photo we piled back onto the bus, all of us wondering at how surreal the whole experience had been. Cool eh?

Yaks, Nomads and Basketball

If I told you I spent this afternoon playing basketball against Tibetan Nomads with an audience of Buddhist Monks, I suspect you might not believe me. Nevertheless, that's exactly how another day on this incredible journey was spent!!

Our group spent the last two days travelling across the Tibetan grasslands where the only inhabitants are Yaks and the Tibetan Nomad people who surive on the milk, meat and skin the those self same Yaks. The main road between Xiahe and Langmusi was closed (or possibly not built yet) and so our journey across the grasslands was on a dirt track, which given that it has rained in this area for much of the past week, was at times nothing more than...well, dirt, mud and large puddles. Our Iveco minibus clearly wasn't designed for such efforts, so frankly we were glad to make it out without spending a night amongst the Nomads and their particularly vicious lookings guard dogs.

Last night we arrived in Langmusi, the home town of our former-Nomad guide Attisha. It's actually a tiny village. The roads are mud of dirt, the only inhabitants are peasants or visiting Nomad people, or the monks who live in the two monasteries around which the village was built. Though it may be primitive, it's a beautiful place. Langmusi lies surrounded by stunning mountains and grasslands in which we hiked for four hours today. It's also the source of the White Dragon river, a very holy river for the Tibetans, hence the monasteries being located here.

And so to that basketball match! Well, it all came about after we ate in a place called 'Leisha's Cafe'. Leisha's husband turned out to be a former basketball player of some repute and so it was during the course of a round of enormous Yak sandwiches that we managed to challenge the locals to a basketball match. As it happens, we did quite well, despite the fact that the game was played at an altitude of 3,900 meters!!!! And better still, we shared quite a few beers with our Nomad rivals after the match, just to make sure there were no hard feelings!

Tomorrow we're back out in the grasslands, where we hope to meet Attisha's family and dine on Yak again in their tents. Should be another unique experience.

There's something you don't see every day

Did you ever see Seven Years in Tibet? Well, it feels like I'm living that movie at the moment, except that things have moved on a bit since the '50s. I watched the 3rd/4th place play-off of the Copa America with a buddhist monk today. He'd evidently come in to watch a bit of boxing on TV in the restaurant where I was having dumplings for lunch, but the big match between Uraguay and Colombia came on instead. We were clearly both pretty pleased with a footy fix - even though the only common word we could find to express our pleasure was "Ronaldo".

So there I sat, watching football with a buddhist monk dressed in a traditional burgundy and scarlet robes. Crazy eh?

Even crazier was the four hour hike our group took this afternoon in the company of our guide Attisha, himself a former monk of some 11 years. (Apparently it's ok to stop being a monk) Attisha took us around the amazing Labrang Monastery and then into the mountains that surround this quiet little town. It was his plan to show us a sky burial site - where Buddhists take their dead and leave them in the open, high up in the hills, to be eaten by vultures and eagles. As all 'burials' take place in the early morning, we weren't expecting to see much more than prayer flags. Rather disturbingly, that's not how it turned out.

As we approached the site in the mountains, we could see from a distance that vultures and eagles were still dining on whomever had been dispatched to heaven earlier today. It's a bit difficult to know what to say or do when you see something like that, so naturally we all walked in silence for a good while until we came very close to the site. Once Attisha had explained the religious background to this quite gruesome sight, it actually become quite a moving experience, but yes....not quite what had been expected.

Then again, every day seems to be bringing surprises at the moment...

The Furious Mr Xiang (A Hostage Saga)

I suppose you can't expect to come to the middle of deepest, darkest China and not expect a few things to go wrong now and then. Today things went spectacularly wrong when our tour group managed to become embroiled in a dispute between two Xi'an businessmen, one of whom happened to be the provider of our transportation to the town of Xiahe. To cut a long story short, we rented our bus from Mr Ziang, who apparently owed money to Mr Xiang. At the beginning of the day (when we knew nothing of the dispute) Mr Ziang's driver was suddenly replaced at the last moment by Mr Xiang's driver.

We knew that wasn't going to be a good thing for us when the new driver persisted in driving insanely dangerously around the mountain roads that lead to Xiahe. Things were clearly taking a turn for the worst when the driver (who had picked up Mr Xiang as a passenger along the way) then refused to follow our guide's instructions to stop at Lintong for lunch. In fact, when she more vocally asked for a lunch stop the driver and Mr Xiang become verbally abusive, stopped the bus and started demanding money from us.

Somehow, we managed to at least calm the situation and agree to not make a lunch stop but things got decidedly worse when we got to Xiahe and Mr Xiang refused to let us get off the bus without settling his debt with Mr Ziang. What the stupid ass failed to realise was that we had nothing to do with Mr Ziang - we'd simply rented his bus. He wasn't particularly interested in our side of the story. At this point, the vibe on the bus was not good, with one of our girls getting somewhat hysterical at the (worryingly realistic) prospect of getting held hostage.

Fortunately (almost miraculously) for us, the manager of our intended hotel saw that we were trapped inside the bus outside his hotel (opposite a rival hotel owned by Mr Xiang), and came to our aid. After some fairly nasty shouting and pushing, we saw our opportunity and forcibly exited the bus, dragging our bags with us as the bus driver attempted to stop us doing exactly that. Suffice to say, it wasn't just the 10,000 feet altitude that got our pulses racing today.

In the end, we checked into our hotel, the bad guys have presumably gone back to Xi'an to rough up Mr Ziang and we're hoping for a quieter day tomorrow at Labrang Monastery. I guess that's why they call it 'adventure travel'...

Dangers and Annoyances

If you've ever bought a Lonely Planet book you'll know that the section titled "dangers and annoyances" is always incredibly obvious. You know the sort of thing they tell you: "Don't go out at night with all of your money taped to your shirt" etc.. Anyway, given that Xi'an seems to possess some fantastically dangerous attractions (and given that I'm trying to extend my time in this lovely air-conditioned Webcafe), I thought I'd have a go at re-writing such a section for the Lonely Planet China. Here goes...

Top 5 Xi'an Dangers and Annoyances

5. Parasols
It is almost impossible to buy sunscreen in China. I suspect this has something to do with an agreement betweeb the pharmacists and the trade union that makes parasols, for EVERY lady in Xi'an seems to carry the damned things. Why are they dangerous? Easy! The average Chinese lady is under 5 feet high, which means the average umbrella point attacks me at about eye-level. Given that every street is packed...well, enough said!

4. Traffic
Ok, so traffic is insane just about anywhere in the developing world, but Xi'an's drivers have a particularly impressive abandon about them. Unlike most cities, tooting of the horn is banned in Xi'an, which means drivers here virtually rely on contact to let them know when to make a left or a right turn. Given that pedestrian crossings are also voluntary (it seems), the city is full of amazing scenes of pedestrians and motorists weaving around eachother in a strange, silent, high speed dance. Chilling stuff!

3. The Involuntary Photograph
Most Chinese haven't seen more than a few Westerners in their lives. As a result, they like to pose for photographs with you. This is fine when you're posing for them, but becomes quite fantastically amusing when you're trying to ask a Chinese to take a photo of you, as they invariably insist that they, or a family member, should also appear in the photo. I'm resigned to the fact that my photo album will be full of picture of me posing alongside complete strangers!

2. The Public Security Bureau
Chinese will tell you they can vote in elections now, that life is better since China become more open to the West and that they are free to do whatever they like with their lives. Of course, that's not entirely true. It's virtually impossible, for example, for most Chinese to leave China. They're also banned from viewing foreign media, unless it's been sanitized first. In fact, they can't even move from one city to another without getting permission from the PSB first. Oh, and in this Internet cafe, they also insist that staff are employed to stand behind me (as i type this) to make sure I haven't found some way to view the BBC Web site. Ah yes, the PSB. However, the winner is...

1. Knee high blast furnaces
Amazing but true, the kerbside chef's of Xi'an's Muslim Quarter all use ovens shaped rather like huge milk cans, the top of which is the stove, and the inside of which is the fire. Incredibly, to allow plentiful oxygen supply to the fire the front side of these cooker is completely open and usually faces the street at knee height. Given that the quarter is also full of other distractions, this makes these cookers almost invisible to the eye of most tourists and I'm sure results in many a nicely roasted calf and shin.

Xi'an: Home of Monkey!

Yes, it is true (apologies to non-British readers to whom this will mean nothing) but I have arrived in Xi'an and discovered it to be the home of the star of every British teenagers' TV memories - Monkey!! It seems that the Money King was an assistant to the buddhist monk Xuan Zang, who carried sacred scrolls from Xi'an to India. That is, it seems, was what the TV program was all about. (Did that only mean something to me??)

Monkey aside, Xi'an is a great place, much nicer than Beijing on first impressions. For starters it's a much less crowded place, and with many more open spaces and greenery. For example, i went to a great temple this afternoon, the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, which was surrounded by a huge shallow pool and fountain that was crammed with people of all ages splashing about. Compare that to the deliberate solemnity of Tianenmen Square, and you'll get a sense of how Beijing and Xi'an are different.

Xi'an is also home to China's largest Muslim population, which adds another cool twist to the city's cultural attractions. I spent this morning strolling around China's largest mosque, which neatly blended Chinese-style architecture with the traditions of Islam. Very nice it was too.

In today's shopping news, I managed to buy a leather pillow/safe, a box in which folks stashed their money, and then rested their heads to protect it. This item fit my purchasing criteria perfectly, in that it is both small and cheap.

On the subject of cheap, my lunch cost my a huge 50cents today, including a glass of Jianlibao, a sort of honey-flavored soft drink, which I thought was tea. If its after-effects do kill me before my next post, I can at least say it was very tasty stuff....

"That sure is a great wall"

Apparently President Richard Nixon really did say that upon his visit to the Great Wall a few decades ago. Stupid as he may have sounded then, I can confirm - having walked along a 20km stretch of the Great Wall at a place called Simatai, near Beijing yesterday - that it is indeed a Great Wall.

Great, except for the fact that the temperatures in Beijing are so incredibly hot at the moment that I imagine a simple slap in the face would have been enough to repel the marrauding Mongols if they'd chosen to attack Beijing in the summer. To say that I am wringing out my clothes at the end of every day is not an exaggeration. (Lovely mental picture, eh?)

Anyway, the wall was amazing. We walked on what was apparently the steepest section of the wall in all of China (ideal choice for a day of 105 degrees!). To stand on the wall and be able to watch miles of it stretching out into the distance, lining the tops of the jungle-like hills around me was quite an experience.

Today, I enjoyed a similarly spectacular sight - the Forbidden City, the ancient heart of Beijing that was home to the Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties for several centuries. That was until Mao Zedong and chums hounded out the last emperor to Taiwan (apparently he took hundreds of crates of Chinese treasures with him to Taiwan and the Chinese are none too happy about that). Today, it's a stunning mini-city replete with exactly what you'd expect from China - gold-roofed temples, gigantic ornate doorways, a stunning imperial garden, vast open squares - cracking stuff.

Sadly, today was my last day in Beijing. I won't miss the sweltering heat, but I will miss its incredible pace, friendly, inquisitive people and the best Chinese food I've ever tasted!! On to Xi'an next where I believe we're going to a home improvement area to look at a bit of terra cotta.

Chairman Mao - "A Great Man"?

I enjoyed a day today that no travel company could have even tried to arrange. It all began when I was wandering across Tianenmen Square, trying to find Mao's mausoleum, so that I could have a face-to-face meeting with the old (and very dead and apparently slightly smelly) Chairman himself. As things turned out, Mao's tomb was closed today, and as I stood puzzling over what to do next, Ligai and Yang Hui (two teachers from Beijing) introduced themselves to me and started having a chat.

Within a few minutes, I'd explained that I'd set aside the morning to meet Mao and was now at a loss at what to do. Moments later Ligai and Yang Hui had persuaded me that what I should do was accompany them to an old quarter of Beijing - translated as 'antique street' - where I would be in for a treat. And so it turned out!!

For the next four hours, the two teachers took me to the most fascinating of places. I met Yang Hui's brother - an artist - and had my name carved in Chinese into a printing block (which I now own!). We went to a traditional medicine shop and saw 90-year-old Ginseng with a price tag of 1 million Yuan (about $120,000) - guaranteed to cure all known ills!!! We went into a shoemakers store renowned throughout Beijing for making shoes for the politburu, including Chairman Mao himself, and to top it all off we had a fantastic three course lunch including several beers and some Beijing Duck!!

As if that wasn't enough Ligai insisted on accompanying me to the Temple of Heaven in the afternoon where we saw some of Beijing's most revered temples together.

It was an amazing day, not least because of the conversation we enjoyed in broken English (and a bit of utterly terrible Chinese from me) for several hours. As it turned out Yang Hui was a Chinese History teacher, which made for some fascinating discussion. Imagine, for example, my reaction to discovering that Yang Hui had no idea (or at least did not believe) that China had invaded Tibet in 1950. So far as Yang was concerned, the historical moment I was referring to was known in China as the "reunion" of Tibet and China. This history teacher certainly wasn't telling his kids about any violent invasion.

And on the subject of Chairman Mao (widely recognized as a leader on a par with Hitler and Stalin) Ligai was even more effusive. "Mao did very much for bringing equality to China", said she, a 25-year-old woman. "He also made China richer, and more open to international opportunities", she added. "He was a great man", added Yang.

Hmmm....maybe it's us Westerners who've been lied to all these years? Or maybe not.