Tales from the Tibetan Plateau Part IV: The Tree House

9.28.2010

In the morning we bussed into the rural mountains beyond the city of Xining. At one point towards the end of the one and a half hour ride the bus full of white people stopped in a village, everyone got out to piss on the side of the road and we all left. Climbing deeper into the mountains we finally arrived at the village of Youningsi and stopped at the monastery there.
It was cold and raining outside and I had the faint hope that the gate place of worship would offer some warmer salvation. Entering the monastery the world seemed to explode with color, blues, reds, oranges of all shades decorated the sacred buildings on the outside. On the inside, giant Buddhas were handsomely decorated and well kept. The monastery was build in 1400 A.D. and I could really tell if anything had changed. I was shivering as cold rain drops pounded the top of the colorful monastery roof. The guide gave us a clockwise tour of what was inside the monastery pointing out what the ceremonial Thangkas meant and the meanings of the Buddhist scripture behind them. The place smelled of yak butter candles, which vaguely has the odor of fermented milk.
The group followed our Tibetan guide to other shrines and points of interest inside the monastery. We did a lot of standing outside in the cold rain while learning about Tibetan Buddhism. In the background the rolling clouds brushed against the mountain tops. I couldn’t hear much as the rain drops on my parka forbade me from hearing the lecture in front of me.
The monastery was partly situated on a hill and we climbed to the part which perched itself on the rocky hill side. We walked up a trail that reminded me of my mountain biking roads in Nor Cal and ended up at a shrine where a monk was praying while beating a drum. People took photos and we descended back down again.
After the monastery the entire group walked into town to have lunch at a very small restaurant. We had dirty noodles with sheep broth and meat with Tibetan salt tea. People were so hungry and cold that they didn’t care that the tea was uncomfortably salty.
After lunch the group bussed uphill 2 km past the alpine tree line on a small road. We ended up at a point of no return where the bus had to back up about a half mile in order to get out. There we were given the choice of walking up the road more or using the older trail. I chose to walk the older dirt trail and even though it was only a few hundred meters it was a tough climb at such an intense altitude. Winded I reached a collection of buildings—shrines and farm sheds—with a perfect vista of the valley bellow. Had the clouds not been there it would have been easier to see that the mountain top monastery continued up into the heavens—or at least to the top of the mountain. The quiet and harmonious spot was now being invaded with rowdy American students. I was overwhelmingly intrigued and I snapped photos of everything that caught my eye. With each step I climbed higher on the monastery’s grounds the world became a little more interesting. There was a shrine carved into a cave and above that a intricate maze of foot trails and ladders, everything leading up to a beautiful prayer house built six hundred years ago. At the top I saw Kevin who was conversing in mandarin with a monk dressed in orange robes. Kevin turned to me and said “this is the most incredible place I have ever been.”
Exploring the tree house had to come to an end and with a group of my friends we headed back down to the bus. In the process we crossed paths with a few flocks of sheep and the clouds cleared on the sacred mountain to give us a perfect glimpse of where we had just been.
Back in the city of Xining we headed to dinner at an upscale hot pot restaurant where our guests were Tibetan students. At my table I sat with a handful of American students and two painfully shy Tibetan students. They spoke very good English because an Australian professor had been helping them pass Western college entrance exams for their entire college careers. We were desperate for conversation but every question turned into a one word answer. Somehow I was able to understand that Tibetans are a people within a people. They are Chinese in a national sense but culturally they are definitely Tibetan. The two students we spoke claimed not to be able to speak Chinese and communicated easily with their family and people in Qinghai in Tibetan.
Once the steamy pots of meat and vegetables had been drained I headed with some friends to Bill’s Bar. There I was watching a taped American football game with some buddies when a Chinese guy came over to me and put his arm around me “Pengyou!” (friend). After some bad communicating I realized that he was inviting me to his table upstairs. I joined my newly acquired belligerent friend at a table of respectable looking business types in the corner. I laughed and smiled at the phrases I didn’t understand—which was almost everything—until finally Bill (the owner of the bar) came over. I thought Bill had come to translate but he had really showed up to cheer me on; “these guys are high party officials, they are some very important people. So keep up the schmoozing.” Beers kept appearing in my hand, gifts from my CCP friends and finally Kevin and some other friends came up to see what happened to me. With Kevin’s Chinese skills it became far easier to understand what was going on. For the next hour or two we sat upstairs and cracked jokes by this time my Chinese friend was far gone. After making a huge mess and not paying for any of it the officials packed up and left the place winded. All of our colleagues came over to ask us what just happened and we laughed about our new found friends for about an hour before heading home.