China

Heading back to the southern part of Gansu, we woke up early to take a bus at 9:40am, arriving at 5:30pm. It’s as if we’ve spent office hours riding on a bus!

Our original plan was to head out about 30km from town and into a village at the foot of the “Juggernaut”迦尕那 mountains (I made the name up, as the pronunciation sounds about the same hehe) and stay with a local Tibetan family which was recommended by Lonely Planet. We contacted them and got everything setup in the morning, and they seemed extremely hospitable over the phone! When we got into the Diebu town and tried contacting the family, their phones were turned off!!!!! So without any other alternatives, we looked around local hotels.

I don’t know how this works, but this place has some RIDICULOUSLY nice and clean hotels. For a town without much of a tourism industry (locals gave us a lot of surprised looks with our backpacks), the hotels are probably the nicest (and cheapest!) we’ve seen so far. The streets are also very clean and modern, like the whole city was built within the past 3 years!

Our current location!

Visiting the Gansu State Museum, we were rewarded spectacularly with the last leg of a country-wide tour of Li Zijian (李自健）’s masterpieces. Never heard of this artist before? Neither have I, but I swear this guy can draw so well, he may have overtaken Monet in drawing emotions from the viewers. The pictures are purposely taken with the frame in view, otherwise you would totally believe these are actually perfectly constructed pictures.

One on spectrum, he captures the perfect moment between mother and daughter, and the other he captures the rugged features of everybody he draws. From the perfectly captured light, face of each person, to the realistic draping of cloth and most importantly to the eyes that can tell a story on its own. His paintings can be categorized into themes, and he captures the human element in a true and raw form, generating emotions in the viewer like a strong photograph. The problem is, I don’t think you can even take pictures as nice as these…..

The museum was definitely one of the better ones we’ve seen so far, and definitely one of my personal favorites worldwide! To make the experience even better, extremely knowledgeable VOLUNTEERS were there to walk through each and every piece. Highly recommended!!

The rest of the day was spent shopping for first world necessities to ready us for the rural escapade up ahead! We’re heading back into the hills of mother nature next.
And for dinner? K F C babyyyy!!! Taking a much needed break from Szechuan and Halal foods….

During our desert camping escapade, an unfortunate combination of sand and camera resulted in a faulty point & shoot camera. The ONLY licensed place in the whole province to repair the camera was back in Lanzhou, so we took a bus at 7am and arrived at 4pm. We were in a rush and lunch was a can of instant congee….at 2pm! We’re running out of games on iPhone and books to read. Anyone got any recommendations for good games?

We managed to find a cantonese-style restaurant and had some dim sum! No disrespect to the local flavours, but sometimes you just miss what you’re used to eating… We also watched a movie, and we were the ONLY ones in the theatre. It isn’t surprising, as the tickets cost $70 RMB, and for a place where the average monthly income is <$2000 RMB, you can understand why nobody watches films in the theatre! The movie was People Mountain People Sea (人山人海), a stripped down, no-nonsense film about some harsh realities of life.

Now to the good, our hostel is pretty cool! Located inside an old factory area, this whole place is now converted into a ‘creative park’, housing dance theatres, advertising firms, and the hostel! Right now, you can hear the faint sounds of guitar playing and singing in the background as I sit here chilling with a beer.

 Waking up to the sounds of monks chanting and prayer wheels clicking…..not. That was what I imagined, but in fact it was more like motorcycles vrooming and locals yelling at each other. We headed over to that nice little cafe again for some pancakes! Mmmm.

We met a few American tourists yesterday, and bumped into them again at the hostel. When we saw them they asked around and were able to find some monks that were able to take them to sleep in the monastery! It’s good to be a Westerner in China, especially if you can speak a bit of Mandarin! We tried to do the same and asked some random monks in the street “Can we stay at your house tonight?”, but we were politely refused along with a condescending smile, as if “What the fck are you guys thinking?”

Apparently those guys got the wrong message too, probably a mis-communication on their part too haha so that’s why we met them at the hostel.

We took the tourist tour of the Labrang monastery, and get to see inside all the halls. Although this is still early in the trip, but Stendhal syndrome is kicking in with all the tonkas and statues. The monastery is situated between two rolling mountains, and very picturesque with gold spires and interesting style of architecture.

Our hosts woke up at 6am, made breakfast, packed up fruits and cake for us to take on the road… we continued to sleep on the bus and arrived at Xiahe by noon. This city is home to one of the main Buddhist monastery, the Labrang Monastery (if anyone remembers, we also went to one of the important ones in Xining), and pretty much the whole city revolves around it and the tourists it brings.

We found a neat little hotel and got a room which overlooks the Labrang monastery.

One particular feature of this monastery is the fact that it is surrounded by 3km of prayer wheels. The small ones you turn once, while the larger ones you turn 7 times. A continuous stream of locals make their way around the monastery constantly all day. The most devoted ones would do the full body prayer, where you’d walk a step, and then kneel down and proceed to lean forward with your hands until your forehead touches the ground. Every step. 3 kilometers. Some people are so frail they can barely walk, and a lot of these old ladies have backs severely hurt and walk with a 60degree hunch….. but they still continue to do it….

Note:  It is a very common for Tibetan people to “round” things, like walk around the monastery, walk around a stupa (white tower), even walking around mountains!!!

We walked around the town and surprisingly there was an “American owned, Peruvian breakfast, Mexican food.”. Pretty awkward set of combinations, but we went and had some good french toast!! They even have syrup!!!!!!! I’m beginning to miss 鬼佬 food.

The night was spent watching Olympics!