my heart's desire: grasslands, at long last!

Continuing my promise from the last, oh-so-long-ago post, Xiahe. Because I want to indulge in nostalgia, and anything to procrastinate from the business of moving.

Nomads, Tibetans and travelers alike, come to Xiahe, which perhaps may be why it's surprising that it's still a one-street town. Ten years ago there was only a dirt road, and dirt houses. One year from now, there will be an airport.

Xiahe's Labrang Monastery is the largest center of Tibetan Buddhism outside of Tibet proper. (The majority of Tibetans have historically lived outside of the actual region of Tibet. They're scattered through all of western China.) The town is a curious mix of the pious, who walk for miles from the neighboring grasslands, the world-hungry, most of whom come from outside China, and the business-savvy, who see Xiahe's potential as a destination — the more accessible Tibet, one of the last holy places to evade Han influence.

Labrang is grand and glorious. Much of this I didn't photograph, because it wouldn't have come out anyway. And you can sense the "terrifying beauty" from the sky, too. I didn't also want to be the traveler who sees everything as his chance for the perfect shot, the perfect picture.

It's hard to say whether the monks were victims or beneficiaries of tourism. Certainly a bit of both. Interest in Tibetan Buddhism, revenue, a slice of the outside world come into this remote valley, versus having people come and look at them everyday, snapping their photos without permission. Anyway. Some of them seemed to be cool with it. Some seemed...bemused, or downright disapproving. They're also supposed to be quite well off.

Surrounding Xiahe are expanses of grasslands, and mountains, and cliffs. If you go south, you reach the lovely highland forests of Sichuan, and to the west, the more desolate plains of Qinghai.

Prayer flags in the wind, atop the mountain pass. Qinghai beckons in the distance.

I would like to be under the great sky, says Rilke. Shelley is overjoyed at her first grasslands. And sheep.

We met her and her friend along the road. She's 28 years old, and married, with a 12 year old son already. She wanted to know if we were married, and surprised to hear we were 22 and single. They were very curious about our cameras, so I took some photos and showed them. Later we took a picture together.

Our driver was an easy-going guy about our age. His name meant "Bright Pearl of the Qilian Mountains", somewhat girly I'm afraid. He also wore sunglasses that gave him an odd insectoid appearnce. He offered to take us to Ba Jiao Cheng, an ancient city from the AD 200s, once a site of strategic importance back when the Han fought the Uighurs fought the Tibetans fought whatever Central Asians that decided to maraud down that day.

DRIVER: Let me take you to Ba Jiao Cheng!
WE: What's there?
DRIVER:
A wall.
We: ... What's so cool about the wall?
DRIVER: It's really
thick.
WE: ...
Anything else?
DRIVER: No, not really.
WE: You make a very convincing argument. Lead the way! But first let's sit
here on the road for 30min. so you'll drop the price by 10 RMB.

And so we did sit, and so he did lower the price. But it turns out that the Ancient City was far more interesting than its "really thick" wall, because of the crowd of Tibetan children who turned up when we arrived.

I suspect they're there regularly, actually, because appparently Chinese tourists give them sweets and snacks. I didn't know this, but after some moments of awkward ni hao's and smiles and how old are you questions, I thought chocolate would be a nice interlude. It turned out that that they were mildly suspicious of the chocolate, which I broke off from a larger bar, so I had to eat a few pieces to demonstrate.

They were eating it silently (were they enjoying it??) when a second car came up. Out leaped a Chinese man, who immediately began flinging mad, mad handfuls of fake-Oreos to the kids. My fear that they didn't like sweets was unfounded afterall: a flurry of plastic wrappers went up into the air. Conclusion? Fake oreos will get you farther than Belgian milk chocolate.

So we spent most of the time hanging out with the kids, watching their mothers do laundry. Their mandarin was elementary (they were about 10-13 years in age and were attending the nearby school), so we got by on very limited conversation. Their mothers spoke only Tibetan, but seemed equally amused by us.

It was hard to leave though, because this village was so remote, hidden from the rest of the world by cliffs and grasslands, with only a narrow dirt road tying it to Xiahe. We are so transient - visitors come and go all the time - bringing in pieces of the world out there, but in such small, disjointed fragments - how can they grasp all this in the context of their own lives?

Travel boggles the mind, sometimes.