Xining is an adorable city. However, it served only as a stopover so that we could get used to the altitude before Lhasa. The elevation in Xining is 7,464 feet, which is two thousand more than the highest city in America, Denver. It is on the edge of, and is the biggest city of the Tibetan Plateau. Once we got to Xining after Luoyang and Xi’an, it really started to hit us that we were going to Tibet.
Even though our guidebook and program director told us that Xining was boring, I wanted to make the most of my time there. Laurence once told me that her family loved to just spend a day walking around the city, and I decided I would spend an afternoon walking around and exploring, and hopefully I could find some fun things to write home about. Fortunately, I had a successful day! I walked through the Xining central finance district, and I saw another laowai (foreigner). However, he wasn’t just any tourist. He looked like he was plucked from Wall Street and plopped in Xining like he hadn’t noticed. It was jarring and hilarious for me. Later, one of my friends speculated that he could have been prospecting for potential investments in Xining, which I thought was weird, but to each their own, I guess. Later, I saw a woman carrying a still-live pheasant down the street, and it was clucking and pecking people. I walked down an alley as an elementary school let out, and kids were singing songs. I recognized one of the songs as the Chinese national anthem, from the “起来！起来！” (“March on! March on!”) the children were belting out. At a street corner, two young kids passed me and stopped to wait. One did a double take, and then shouted “外国人！” (by now, you should just be able to guess what this means!). The next morning, before our train ride to Lhasa, I went to an outdoor market to buy some fruit. There, I saw a butcher selling his meat. A little old lady stopped to haggle for some meat, and after a while, I realized she was haggling for the cow head that he had next to a pile of meat. I wanted to stay and see how such a tiny little lady could bring home something that was half her size, but I got weird stares from them and felt like it was time to leave.
The last morning we spent in Xining, we headed over to Ta’er Monastery. It started to snow. That, plus being the only foreigners amongst a bunch of Tibetan pilgrims (I’ll bite, sometimes it’s nice being the only foreigner in a place!), made for a great experience. The temple is the top Tibetan Buddhist site outside of Tibet, and it is one of those sites with just many different temples and stupas added on in different periods of times. They’re all full of the shiny golden Buddhist statues and painted with the typical earthy-bright colors that Tibetans are so inclined towards. We also got our first experience with the full body bows that Tibetans are famous for. The way it goes is they start with their hands put together, then touch their forehead, and then their heart as they kneel and then stretch out, face-down on the ground. It’s complicated to write it out, but it was equally as different-feeling as seeing Muslims bow in their shops and restaurants in Turkey. The entire experience really was a highlight of the trip, even if Xining wasn’t a special city. The etherealness of the snow, the anticipation and electricity was in the air, and fascination with the double-foreign culture of the Tibetans flowed between us.
Even if Xining was just a short stop on our trip (We didn’t even spend a full 24 hours there!), I think it represented a lot of the anticipation that we were feeling. It was that short teaser clip you see of the next episode of your favorite TV show, and you catch a glimpse of something great happening. Tomorrow, I write about Lhasa, and obviously, I’ll have to be very careful about what I post. I really don’t want the Chinese government to start a file on me just because I mentioned some stupid little thing!
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