Leon's World: Travel Log 21

The train journey to Xining although the most expensive was also the most luxurious thus far as I was in a compartment with three middle aged men and a nice comfortable bed with electricity to charge my phone and laptop and hot water to drink tea and heat noodles. Wonderful, I had a very good sleep and arrived in Xining quite relaxed.

The couchsurfer I was supposed to stay with put me in touch with Clark, an American guy who has lived in China for a couple of years. Although a little bit disappointed I wasn’t going to be staying with an American guy rather than a cute Chinese girl it turned out that Clark was one of the best hosts I have had as he was very knowledgeable about China and went out of his way to make sure I had interesting stuff to do. Clark is an English teacher and when he was working he hooked me up with some of his friends which he thought might be able to help me out. The first a nice Chinese girl helped me to buy my train ticket to Xi’an the second a Tibetan girl showed me around the Tibetan Medical museum and then took me to the park where she herself took part in the crazy dancing – it is not really a crazy dance just a traditional dance like Morris dancing but the idea that lots of people go and dance badly in the park all day long is crazy – and most of the dancers are pretty bad and old. Well actually in Xining it seemed that rather than it just being the older people that danced in the park here lots of younger people joined in both male and female. In the evening we joined Clark at a club that showed traditional Tibetan dance and singing. At first the three of us got a table by ourselves and tried to order some drinks but unfortunately we had to order a minimum of £20 worth and thought that this was too much beer for two people to drink (Chukqi didn’t drink) and decided to leave however just outside we bumped into one of Chukqi’s old friends from her home town and he invited us to join him as he was out celebrating with his friends. So we joined them and has a wonderful night drinking and I learnt a lot about the drinking and celebratory customs of Chinese and Tibetans and saw some professional traditional dancers which I were a lot better than those you see in the park.

Xining is in the Qinghai province (where the earthquake hit recently) and since the problems with the minority people there; China and enforced the rule that you have to register yourself to the police when you arrive and if you don’t then you can get arrested and the people you are staying with can get into trouble. Registering took me a whole day as you have to take all sorts of forms to one police station get them to stamp it and then take it to another police station and give the stamped form to them. At the first station the woman clearly didn’t want to deal with someone that couldn’t speak Chinese and first of all said come back tomorrow. I told her that that would be pointless as I leave the day after tomorrow, she then said I need three photo copies of the documents and not two and that they didn’t have a photocopier so I would have to go somewhere and get the copies. So of I went to find a print shop. Luckily there was one nearby and the lady in the police station reluctantly gave me the all important stamp. I then had to find the other police station, the enter and exit police station, and I had to do this without a map and only a vague idea of where it was. Unfortunately the bus Clark had told me to get didn’t go past the one land mark I knew and so I got lost on the public buses ending up at the edge of town. I finally made it to the police station 15 minutes before it closed having been going around town for about 2 hours on the buses. The next day after climbing the hill in the centre of town I met up with Clark as that evening we had arranged to take the Tibetans out for dinner in order to repay them for the night they treated us to. Unfortunately they cancelled on us at the last minute and instead we and a few others treated ourselves to a nice Tibetan dinner. On the final day I went to see the biggest Tibetan monastery in China. It had quite different feel from the Chinese temples and the monks of course where all of Tibetan origin.

Oh and Clark invited me to talk to his English class about my travels so before I left I a really nice experience talking to the Tibetan and Chinese people about my travels. It was a really nice experience.