...which is hello in tibetan. we spent a long 3 weeks in the chinese province of tibet and it was some tough traveling. good, but physically draining. we spent several days in lhasa before heading across the country to mt kailash. backing up a little bit, though we took the "genocide express" up into lhasa from xining and our friend emily cautioned us that she got really sick and was puking in the bathroom due to altitude sickness...c and i, however, slept through the night and woke up expecting to go over 16,000 feet passes, but we had already been over them and had no affects. hooray! once in lhasa we were tired and our room on the 4th floor took the wind out of us every time we had to climb the steps, but after a couple days that subsided, too. lhasa is so interesting. of course, the chinese are shipping han chinese as fast as they can into the region and they now outnumber the tibetans by over 2 to 1. they've built roads, railroads, nice infrastructure, a nice airport and have "chinafied" everything they could in that gaudy neon lights and chinese pagoda style entrances as much as possible. for example, outside THE most tibetan building ever, the potala palace, which is all crimson and white with some black accents, they have added a green and yellow pagoda entrance way and big chinese lion statues on either side. it looks so out of place. and, across the street, there is a huge, phallic like military monument to the "peaceful takeover of tibet" that has to be guarded 24 hours a day to eliminate vandalism...go figure. everywhere we went along the trip east to kailash where tourists would stop (are allowed to stop) there was a similar monument across from the monasteries. there's so much to say about this trip...the tibetan buddhist faith seems to be alive and well despite the constant armed military presence in lhasa and all of the many, many checkpoints along the roads. every day there were hundreds of pilgrims doing prostrations in front of every buddhist monument/monastery (most of which were rebuilt after being destroyed in the cultural revolution...luckily they spared the potala palace) and everywhere in lhasa there were buddhists circumambulating whatever they could whilst spinning prayer wheels. smoldering incense and juniper could be smelt throughout the city and a constant humming of chants/mantras by people moving around you, heard. the visuals are spectacular...minus the chinese tour groups snapping photos of tibetans despite their attempts to shield their faces. it was obvious the chinese and tibetans don't get along so well and the chinese shop keepers are just trying to make a living, but have been given many incentives by the government to relocate there. such as, they get tax breaks, licenses to open businesses, a relaxed 1 child policy, relocation allowances and more...why wouldn't they want to make a better life for themselves...they do not know the whole truth, that's for sure. so the tibetans boycott the chinese shops and i did my best to do the same, but because the chinese outnumber the tibetans, it's difficult. another lovely fact is that the chinese have instilled a mandarin or cantonese only policy at the tibetan universities. no classes or degrees can be done in the tibetan language so they make it difficult for the tibetans who want a higher education...especially since they don't speak the chinese language (mandarin) in the first place. ugh.
kailash was another story. being up in the mountains at such high altitude was tough. we were both really tired and struggled up drolma la (tara's pass) it was 15,800 plus feet and i was suckin wind the entire way up. the crazy thing is that people...really dedicated people...do the entire trek in prostrations, like an inchworm crawling their way along the rocky, and sometimes marshy, path. we at least had to go faster than them, but at times that was even hard!! we both had trouble sleeping at such heights and had really wild, vivid dreams, but little other side effects of ams other than slight headaches. we did well physically, but were just sooooo tired. also, we were soooooo tired of eating instant noodles cause that's about all they had to eat in such remote areas. nepal sure has their trekking routes stocked for tourists. this was much different. 52 kilometers in 3 days...usually at least 8 hours a day...plus, 3 days of looooong driving across the country to get there through crazy, washed out roads. the chinese are paving a lot of the stretch, but it was intermittent with poor roads in between. we had a great driver in an old 4x4 land cruiser who carefully guided us through some of the worst road i've ever encountered! we have some video and i'll try to post it soon...along with pics.
so, needless to say, upon returning back to lhasa, our final 3 days were spent chilling at a great coffee shop owned by a guy from ohio, sipping lovely cafe drinks and eating delightful pastries...we are only human and need some westernization every so often! : )
oh, one other great point to mention...so, the dalai lama is forbidden in tibet...no pictures, no mention in any of his buddhist sect of monasteries or in his potala palace...nothing. also, no tibetan flags are allowed anywhere. but with the dalai lama, christy has a video of him teaching on her ipod. one night she was talking with our tour guide, tenzen, who is a devout buddhist and a really sweet, gomer pyle like, 32 year old man. we felt safe with him and didn't worry about the spies or being turned in by him, so she asked if he'd ever seen his holiness on video or heard him speaking. of course he said no and his eyes lit up. she set him up on the foot of our bed with the ipod (which i bet he'd never seen in the first place) and he watched the 10 minute video riveted...still as a statue, except for the tears rolling down his cheeks. at the end, he took the headphones out and gave the ipod back to christy. i asked him if he liked it and he said, of course! it was such a beautiful sight to watch him watching his spiritual leader...the feeling that overcame me was so overwhelming and inspiring and what tenzen felt certainly dwarfs that...truly one of the highlights of my trip.
another day, christy went to pabonka monastery, but i stayed back in town for some mental health. she had about 7 small photos of the dalai lama in her wallet and put them on the altars and as donations...which is illegal, but she thought the monks could hide them and keep them safe. for the rest of our time in tibet she was nervous the authorities were going to come and get her...convinced the hidden video cameras had caught her in the act! she made it out, though, unscathed, and now we're in bangkok doing spa and medical stuff...oh, and 3 movies! it's certainly down time before we head to delhi to meet up with an old peace corps friend of mine who's flying in from albuquerque to meet us for a trek up in sikkim. after this trek though, it's sun and beach city from here on out...relaxing and scuba diving and imbibing the ocean breeze and all it has to offer!
lots of love; hope to hear from you...xo, j
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
heading to tibet
...now there's a place i really never thought i would go, but then again, every where in asia i've been so far i never imagined visiting, so what the heck! we've had to acquire special visas to cross into the province and most chinese tell us it's a 'dangerous' place to go due to the news their fed, but actually i'm excited to be back in the high desert. the train alone should be a trip. our host in xining, emily--a friend of christy's from ann arbor who's living here, took the train and wound up puking in the bathroom due to such high altitude. it crosses a couple 16,000 ft passes en route to the 12,000 ft capital, lhasa. it'll take us 27 hours by train and apparently it's a shorter train due to the weight restrictions on the permafrost and demands on the engine. tickets are tough to get this time of year because many chinese students are traveling as it's their summer break and it's tibet's high season. i just can't imagine there will be as many people there as there have been in other chinese cities...packed every where you turn! i've added a 'link of interest' on the train and it's easy to research, but it's the highest train and goes through the highest tunnel in the world. it was an architectural wonder just to build the thing in such extreme conditions and isn't open all year round. since the olympics they've opened a 5 star, luxury train as well. ...we won't be taking that one! : ) we will be up there for 20 days though and covering a lot of ground despite the long sounding length of our trip...i think we'll be in the car a lot again, but thanks to the chinese and unlike the russians in mongolia, the roads are paved...whew! we've come to xining because christy's friend emily is here and to help acclimatize slowly. it will be the highest either one of us has ever been and we expect to feel some symptoms of altitude sickness but are doing the best we can to prep ourselves with homeopathic herbs, water and time. emily has lived here for a year and loves it. she's working with a ministry organization trying to help prostitute tibetan women rehabilitate into other professions. she wants to open a half way house and do many other wonderfully loving things. she has the heart of mount everest and has always been drawn to the tibetan culture and people. she's now studying chinese. last night we went out for a traditional hot pot meal, which is a big cauldron of oil divided in two: spicy and non, where you add veggies and meats to cook and then scoop it out with chopsticks being careful not to scald anyone at the table with flying drops of oil. good stuff. we leave for the train station in about a half hour and hopefully will be there by 2 or 3 pm tomorrow (thurs). i have lots of stories to tell, but so little time! another place we'll be seeing and attempting to circumambulate, is mt. kailash. it's another nice place to research...the history and spirituality is unprecedented. i wish all of you well and hope to have a good trip. Be in touch...i'll be back blogging from bangkok early the second week of september. love, j p.s. my sister vickie's getting married on the 28th! congratulations to her and mike! ...and sorry i won't be there.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
hong kong and beyond
our last day in hong kong and we'll spend the next two nights on trains en route to xian to see the terra cotta warriors...yes, we suck, james! : ) i'm excited to see them and know i'll be enthralled with the whole place. and now, we have a contact there who'll meet us...a friend of our new friends in mongolia! hooray! but, hong kong has been a great reprieve from censored life in china. it's funny cause all the book stores have tons of books on china that are banned in mainland china. we bought a few and hope to read them before going through immigration in beijing... we'll have to ditch our buddhist/dalai lama stuff before heading into tibet, too. but alas, it has been nice discovering hong kong...it's really a fabulous city with tons to do and see and ...buy! ee gads...we were looking for a small pocket computer where we could word process blog entries and connect to wireless cafes, but it was all too confusing so we opted out. i did get a nifty double lens attachment to my current lens though. just screwing one on makes it more of a wide angle lens and by putting both on turns it into more of a macro...pretty cool, so i'll have fun playing with that! christy's out buying snacks and food for the upcoming train rides as our 24 hour trip here we were sadly under prepared and resorted to eating train food. now we're gonna rock it out... : ) yesterday we took a ferry over to macau to see the island. we only had about half a day there, but walked around, went to a museum and saw some local sights. there was this interesting phenomenon of "sheet meat" as christy calls it...i guess it's just a huge, piece of paper size, sheet of beef/chicken/pork jerky. they were offering samples and of course we got sucked in. but they also made lovely cookies and ginger candies, etc. really fun to sample things and we wound up buying some as a host gift for our friend in xian, and, of course, for ourselves to enjoy on the long train ride. we're leaving soon and heading back into china though for another 3 weeks....including tibet, so i'm not sure how much contact i'll have via internet. i hope you're all well and everyone's looking forward to the school year starting! for me, it's weird not to be at an in-service sooomewhere...but i'm adjusting... : ) lots of love, j
china makes me feel creepy
...and i don't know why, but perhaps it's that i just finished teaching (and learning...just ahead of the kids) about the cultural revolution, the long march, the 5 year plan, and the fact that mao killed more of his own people during that time than all the casualties lost during world war ii, combined from all countries involved! ...some 40 million are the estimates. but, all that aside, i've never been in a country that censors its people. i had never been blocked from facebook and my blog before, but now know what it must have felt like...albeit on a grander scale...when the journalists were being blocked during last year's olympics. the city of beijing is beautiful, but it's all so new and fresh and clean that it felt artificial. i can't say enough niceties about the people, however and that's what gave me the best feeling. people were friendly, polite, hospitable and unobtrusive. a friend i made while working in nepal...wenddy house elementary school...now lives in beijing. her name is miao...like the cat sound...and her fiance, well, we never did figure out his name, so just called him 'yo' and later gave him the english name of 'jackson'. but they came to our hotel 2 different nights to pick us up and take us out. the first night we ate at a local joint and the first thing plopped on the table was tripe...eww, but i ate some anyways and with the sauce it wasn't bad...reminded me of namibia and the goat 'parts' i was 'honored' to sample for my birthday. we had delightful conversation and once you get them out of public ear shot, they will tell you that they would like a democracy and more freedoms. people from one province cannot travel to another province without great difficulty. even miao...she lived in the province beijing is in and she had to get special permission to come into the city. seriously... i guess it's to try and control everyone flocking to the cities and creating kathmandus all over the place, but still. for her to have gone to nepal is a really big deal...most chinese never leave their district. the second night they researched and took us to a beijing duck place. peking style food which was delicious. we enjoyed our time with them, but it was short cause she just got a new job and works till past 6. she has an hour and a half bus ride to and from work every day so we didn't want to keep her out late, but she made such a nice effort getting together with us. she is really a sweetheart and we adore her fiance...very cute. i wish i could post photos, but am having trouble condensing my files. while in beijing, we also did a lot of sight seeing. beautiful architecture from the ming dynasty was fun to imbibe, but once again, the creep factor rolled in with tiananmen square and mao's mausoleum. we walked forever just to get in the line to see his corpse lying in state...i'd say a few miles by the time we followed the hordes around the building and through the well roped off and watched area. people were like fanatics pushing and running ahead any chance they got. it was crazy like a rock concert...but it shows how the people revere mao and there's still such a cult following as china continues to progress at the expense of some of its people and environment. everywhere you went there were souvenirs of the place, but also tons of mao items. don't get me wrong, i'm not naive and understand the u.s. is no angel either and has its past...trust me... eventually though, we headed out of china and are now in hong kong for a few days. it's refreshing and alive and enjoyable. hope your days are too. gotta run. love, j
Saturday, August 1, 2009
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