I spent my last morning in Lijiang speaking to a high school English class. It's always nice to be able to talk up a blue streak in the mother tongue, and I do like to teach. At the request of the teacher, my classmate George and I did a little lecture on tips and tricks for learning and pronouncing English, and I did a little spiel on etymology. The class dynamic is kind of funny. First of all, around ninety percent of the students were not Han, but Naxi. Second of all, the teacher's English left a bit to be desired. Finally, an interesting and insane note about the way the Chinese learn English. They do not actually learn to sound out words, but instead learn pronunciation through the IPA, and then try to learn how to spell. And then they wonder why spelling is so hard for them. I actually had to explain the concept of sounding out words, and even did a short impression of the Electric Company.
They also asked us general questions about America. I held forth on the world financial crisis in America, and then about Obama. Also, when there was a request for me to sing a pop song, I delivered a great rendition of the chorus of "Billie Jean". China, man, damn.
My classmates Sarah and Michelle, who spent the weekend in Shangri-La with me, thankfully convinced me to buy my tickets early. The bus system in Yunnan is more like the train system elsewhere, because the mountains in northern Yunnan make train travel very difficult. So the bus station is very done up, and the buses run on a set schedule, so my plan of just jumping a bus definitely wouldn't have worked. My bus, however, was as rickety a piece of junk as I had ever seen. They tied our bags to the roof and the engine sounded like a lawnmower.
The trip there was incredibly gorgeous though. The highway to Zhongdian runs along the first leg of the Yangtze (called the Jinsha River here), and the incredible gorges it cuts through the mountains. The whole thing was really an amazing drive.
Halfway through the drive, however, the lawnmower engine finally stopped put-putting and we pulled along the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere Yunnan, next to a bewildered farmer and her goats. To my surprise and laughter, the driver popped open a hatch in the middle of the van to reveal the engine, and grabbed a set of tools and spare parts from the back of the van. As we watched, he swapped out a fuel lead (is what it looked like) and replaced it with a new one. From the way the passengers didn't blink an eye, I guessed that this must happen all the time.
The metal tank behind the driver's seat is actually the radiator, and we made a couple of pit-stops to fill it with a hose.
A traditional Tibetan house on the road to Zhongdian. As we went farther into Tibetan cultural territory, we saw more and more of these houses and Tibetan chorten (Tibetan buddhist stupas), all framed by the beginnings of the snowcapped Himalayas. This area really does just feel like a special place, just from the geographic extremity of it. I felt like I was traveling to the end of the earth.
Three days, three old towns, three cultures. This weekend was spent entirely in Shangri-La, which originally was named Zhongdian in Chinese. Both names are kind of irrelevant, actually, because this city is really the Tibetan town of Gyeltang. Zhongdian really doesn't feel like China at all. I feel like I'm in a totally different country here. And actually, that kind of makes sense, because until 1949, Gyeltang really was part of Tibet. I didn't know this before coming here, but before 1949, Tibet was actually much larger than the Tibet Autonomous Region, including parts of Yunnan and Sichuan. Of the three old towns I've seen this week, I liked Zhongdian the best by far. It's really tourist oriented, but it's not as crowded as the other cities, and it still feels like a real town, where people live and work, and Tibetan grandmas hang out on street corners. It's got a real peaceful air to it, and I kind of wouldn't mind spending a lot more time here.
Tibetans dancing in the main square of the old city.
That first night in Zhongdian, we had maybe the best meal I've had in all China. Juicy yak meat (think a cross between venison and beef) on a hot plate under bread, mutton skewers, yak roast beef, and Tibetan flatbread. I ate like a pig, and it was incredible (although a bit too salty), with the best quality meat I've had in China by far. I will say, however, that having had two or three experiences with salty yak butter tea, I don't really need to have it like, ever again
The old town is towered over by a small temple with a giant prayer wheel that's lit at night.
My room here is really nice, a bit more expensive than other hotels here (though still only twenty bucks a night). The weather up here is loopy. It gets frigid here at nights (especially in my room, where there's no heat), but it's blazing during the day. I also had a funny experience here. I figured out my room with the front desk guy in Mandarin. He was very excited that I could speak mandarin, and spoke it himself somewhat awkwardly, and said that my Mandarin is better than his. I asked if he was Han, and he replied, no, I'm Naxi. It's a funny thing about Yunnan that I discussed with my classmate Max the other day. It wasn't too long ago that Mandarin seemed like the most exotic language there is. Now, I'm relieved if someone can speak good Mandarin as opposed to Yunnan dialect, not to mention Naxi, Bai, or Tibetan.
I woke up a bit early, but not too early, and took pictures of the old town during the day. Here's a stupa near the center of town.
The temple during the day.
Tibetans chatting it up. I caught that guy in mid gesture, he's not covering his face. Note the Tibetan hats. The Tibetans are a hat people, just like the Jews. Another reason to like them. Quite seriously, the Tibetans are great, very warm and friendly, and pretty good looking too.
That morning, we took the bus out to the Ganden Sumtseling Gompa monastery, a huge complex north of town that is home to six hundred monks. It was a stunning place, with overwhelming views of the mountains and ornate, surreal Tibetan painting work on the inside, with jaw-droppingly huge golden idols. It's nuts to see a community of faith that is so big and so active.
A stupa type thing in a lake that the monastery overlooks
The monastery from below.
The gate to the monastery, decorated with Tibetan paintings of the 4 heavenly kings.
Close ups of the kings.
The steps to the monastery. Try climbing that in the hot sun, with thin Himalayan air.
Prayer wheels.
A large idol building.
The view from the main Monastery complex.
Another angle on the complex.
A very common motif at Tibetan holy sites. This is the wheel of Dharma, basically, an illustration of all the things that can happen to you after you die, from hell at the bottom to heaven at the top.
View from the top of one of the buildings.
The name of the monastery written in Chinese and Tibetan on a hillside.
More temple!
We took a nice long walk along the wetlands the monastery overlooks. Here are some shots from there.
Michelle looking real goofy.
After we got back to town, we scarfed down a big bowl of bibimbob (yes, even in Arcadia goes Korean food...), and then we headed to the temple that overlooks the old town. Here's the big prayer wheel, during the day.
Since the wheel was pretty much always moving when I was in the town, I assumed it was motorized. Nope, it's just almost always constantly driven by the Tibetan faithful. Here are some old ladies pushing it, and let me add, having pushed it, it's not light.
View of the town from the temple.
The tourist influx has left the Zhongdian government flush with cash. We visited, out of curiosity, a brand new museum dedicated to the part of the Long March that went through here, and beyond that, dedicated to lying about the Communist Party's relationship with the Tibetans. But hey, sweet dioramas!
The kind of lies you'll see in a party museum.
Monks and comrades, bff.
We were also shepherded by a very enthusiastic Tibetan into a yet unfinished museum on the ethnic groups of Yunnan. The museum is really nice, and he literally unlocked the main halls in order to show us around. So this development stuff is really a double edged sword. The Communist party gets to lie, but the Tibetans also get a museum. And the Tibetans seem pretty damn happy about it to.
That night, we did Yak hotpot for dinner. I have to say, I'm not very fond of the hot pot. I don't like things where you cook your own food, and the boiling hot pot just tends to blanch the flavor out of food. We ate till we burst, however.
We arranged a tour the next day of the neighboring wetlands, and a flower meadow, complete with horseriding. Early that morning, a Tibetan from a nearby village drove us to his village, a few kilometers away. The drive was great because it was over the worst roads I had ever seen (roads they were literally still building). The guy had a CD full of songs about Shangri-La that he played on repeat, and he also friendly-honked every tractor and car full of Tibetans that passed us, since they were all from our village (neat note about the Tibetans: they often stick their tongues out to say hello). We sat at his house for a little bit, a big wooden place with no bathroom but still more square footage than my house in Brooklyn. Here's what ghetto fabulous Tibetan-style looks like.
We spent the morning hiking up to this gorge. The views were beautiful, but the trail was barely a trail, full of rocks and hard to climb. I'm not much of a hiker, and Michelle definitely isn't, so we had to turn back a bit early.
In the afternoon, we rode horses in the wetland. There wasn't much to see, since the lake dries up in the spring and summer (it's home to the endangered black capped crane in winter). The Tibetans let their livestock (pigs, cows, horses, yaks) graze freely in the wetlands, and claim that they can always find which ones are theirs, and that they come when called. Except, somewhat comically, they couldn't find one of the horses we were going to ride, so we just had two horses and switched off. I rode a little pony for the first time since I was six.
I ended the night with another visit to the monastery. This is really a special place, and one day, I hope to visit real Tibet. I wish I could stay longer a bit, but tomorrow I fly out to Xi'an. By the way, today's my birthday. I'm 21.
you are very cute on a pony. also, yak tea is not that gross. also, you sound like you are having more fun in these very lovely places and that is great.
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