Wednesday, March 14, 2007

blogger is working in China again!!! yeah!!!
Well a little late than never.
Heres the update....
We got on the train to Tibet. 36 hour ride! Its a really great train, Nice new beds, carpeting, and for a Chinese train carpeting is huge!! Its so amazing to see the scenery change all over China. There are amazing Rice paddies, farms, many of them just lining mountains. Then the scenery goes from bamboos forests to huge desert like mountains. The cool thing about the mountains is that you can see all the sheep and yak that stand at the very highest peeks just grazing. We also saw many nomads just living off the land, some of them started running at the train wearing ski masks at first I was a little freaked out, but then they just started smiling and waved.
The train was really great, we had our bunk right near the water so we could get up, go to the bathroom and get our water for noodles without going far. The train even drove through clouds! The train also had oxygen mask hook ups, we didn't use them though they said it would be worse if we did when we finally reached Lhasa. You can defiantly feel it though. I couldn't sleep the second night on the train, the trains doctor came and started talking to me Its really great to know that there so caring enough to put a doctor on the train. Something I didn't expect. Well as we got closer you could see the scenery change even more. There was a huge lake that was just frozen over.It seemed like the waves on the beach just froze still one minute. Really strange.
Well when we arrived our guide met us and put a white scarf around us. Its a custom to bring health and good luck. Then we went to our hotel. Being in Lhasa is a totally different world. Its not China. In Lhasa there are many Chinese , but there is still such a huge pilgrim population that when you look around you see many more Tibetans. When we looked around most of the people were on there pilgrimage because at the time of our visit was the Tibetan new year. They also celebrate the lunar calender. Men dressed up in huge silk coats, women carrying prayer beads and some even with turquoise in their hair. I saw one women with so much turquoise on her body I wondered if she was some kind of royalty. There are different types of people all coming to pray in Lhasa. You could see a women like that or just an average women wearing the long long sleeve robe and carrying a prayer wheel. The later is more common. So many people just walking the streets and praying. When you shop in the markets the sellers will sometimes be just as close to you as you can stand and you can hear them chanting or humming words. Its really odd. At first I wondered are you praying that I buy something?? but then I noticed everyone is really doing it regardless where you are. We visited The Potala Palace, which is so high up!! When we walked up the stairs it felt like my heart was going to come out of my chest!. We met a guy from Korea who said he had just arrived and right when he got there he decided to climb potala palace. after he came down he passed out on a bus and the police took him to the emergency room. He woke up and the nurses took him right away to buy a plane ticket!! Altitude sickness is defiently not something to mess with! Luckily after we got to Lhasa we had 2 days to get used to the altitude. We both got bad cases. After speaking with other foreigners and even our guide, they say that everyone gets a little. We had headaches almost the entire time we were there, insomnia ( which wasn't helped by the mouse that lived in the ceiling in our hotel room, we asked for a different room and they replied but there are mice in every room!), we also had a hard time eating. Luckily it would trade off on us. If I didn't feel like eating then Joe was fine and he would force me, and vice versus. It actually felt better once you did eat anyway. We had our choice of some really great food too! They had Tibetan food and western food, so when we were feeling really bad at least we could eat something normal. We tried yak butter tea, and sweet tea. Its really salty and kinda feels like a meal. We also had dried yak cheese, kinda tasted like it should come from France, Stinky and a little strong tasting. Potala is pretty interesting, but not the most beautiful temple in my opinion. I believe it to be more of a meeting place for monks to discuss issues then for praying. It is sectioned off into two parts. One is for the red and one is for the white. Our guide said one was controlled mostly by the government, but I don't know what true about that.There are stupas of previous lamas that hold 8,000 tons of gold around each one. and ancient scripts line the walls. There are also huge mosaics dating back centuries, but the monks say they don't know what any of them means because during the revolution so many of the documents were destroyed.
We visited the Barkor Street which surrounds one of the temples ( Jokhang temple). There was a women there that was on her pilgrimages and saw Joe, she grabbed his hand, he thought she was going to shake it, but she then touched it to her face. She'd never seen any foreigner in her life. Its pretty amazing! Jokhang temple is a sight to see as well. The temples in Lhasa are placed in a certain way that the city resembles a body. The Palace is the head, and the Jokhang temple is the heart. Lhasa was first called Rasa which means goat. Before the temple was built there was a lake in its spot. The leader of the land at the time cast a pebble into the air and said where ever this lands I will build the temple, so it fell where this lake is. They then had a goat carry the temple construction materials all the way and place them on the lake ( this is the story from our over priced guide, so don't quote anything!!) Underneath this temple is still a well, which everyone claims is the lake. Inside this temple is the buddah that was from the Dowry of the Chinese princess. See this is why Tibet is such a touchy subject, A Tibetan prince married a Chinese princess so the land is still brought up in arguments, amongst other things. This was the first temple we got to see while in Lhasa. It was really amazing, Huge yak butter vessels burning, Monks chanting, and beautiful murals along the walls. We were also lucky enough to see the changing of robes. Every year at new year time the buddahs get there robe changed. Its a very spiritual ceremony. At almost every temple we were able to witness this practice. In the temple there are just huge buddahs and statues of past lamas , so amazing. There are also huge stupas containing 100 lbs of gold. and gem stones. Jokhang temple is also the place where the monks argue over which buddahs are best to pray to. There are many forms of buddah. Buddah manifests in many ways they say. There is the protector buddah,wisdom buddah, and compassion buddah. there is past, present and also future buddah. SO you can imagine all the statues we saw! All covered in gold and huge turquoise stones. I found out while walking in the temple and talking to our guide that in Tibetan culture the characteristic of a man are compassion and the women is the one with the wisdom.... hmmmm interesting! As you walk out and onto the Barkor street there are pilgrims everywhere. They often cut card board squares and place ribbons around them and attach them to there hands and knees, then the hold there hands in prayer to the sky , then there chest, and then they drop down to there knees and then all the way laying on the ground, then back up again. They repeat this for days. It was really an experience to watch all these things happen around me, all while thousands of people are circling the temple ( you must walk counter clock wise, in the temple and around the temple) People are holding there prayer wheels and there are people selling everything you ever wanted on Barkor street. Silver bowls, jewelry, etc., but you never really know whats real, They will tell you... oh turquoise only from Tibet, but its probably a spray painted rock.
We also visited Sera Monastary in Lhasa, founded in 1419. Outside there were long lines of pilgrims. Its really weird to be in a place of worship, when its not your religion. You can be as respectful as possible, but when you have the whitest skin and obviously different clothes people look at you and know your not there to pray. We felt at the same time it was really interesting and amazing to be experiencing all of this, but we also felt like intruders. Very uncomfortable.
The people all waiting in line were going to receive a blessing from a high monk and a statue. Let me tell you the stairs to these places are steep they mostly consist of rotten boards covered with metal. Dangerous, but you see grandmas and great grandmas, climbing up and down on these things. I cant believe how strong the old people are here. There families too, sometimes the son would hold granny on his back and try his hardest not to fall down the stairs. The blessing given to children involves a black ash mark directly placed on the tip of your nose. It was strange because at first I thought all the kids just had horrible frost bite.
The buddah that will forever stick out in my mind about Tibet is the protector buddah. He is like no buddah I have ever seen. Not like the fat Chinese buddah or the skinny Tibetan one. He is kinda like a strong warrior type man with huge mean eyes and skulls on his head. More like a privative war lord. In this temple there was a separate temple just for him. Joe likes him because he rides a tiger , like He man and steps on people.
The mountain near the temple is fascinating there is a small building you can see up there and our guide told us that it is where the monks go to live forever. They decide to divorce them selves from all ordinary life and they choose the life of solitude and prayer.
The next day we moved onto Yamdrok lake, (4800m) It is one of the holy lakes in Tibet. Recently the Chinese government ran water pipes out from it, causing a huge up roar. The Tibetan people are very upset because this water is said to be holy, but the government claims it will help thousands of villages get electricity. The lake has turquoise color water, although when we went there it was almost all frozen over. People were walking across from a near by village. While driving through all the rough terrain it was amazing how bright the snow is up there. The light of the sun reflects so harshly even your sunglasses cant help. We stopped along the way and saw a holy stupa. There were people there begging for money or food. One thing in Tibet that you see often. These people looked exactly like all the other beggars, just so poor , frost bitten to no end and babies so skinny you could see there bones. We gave the kids small oranges and some small notebooks we bought. I don't think they new what to do with paper even. But the baby got really happy about the orange. There are people like this everywhere, just begging for anything they can get. The road is long and hard to navigate there are switch backs all over the mountains, one side will have heavy snow and the next will be dry dirt. The ride was bumpy and uneven, yet at the same time we didn't notice because being kids from the Midwest we were too amazed by the mountain scenery. We even made it to Kambala pass ( altitude 5010m), After a long day od driving, we finally arrived in Shigatse. In Shigatse there are less pilgrims, and more every day life. We visited a monastery that had the largest buddah ever constructed inside a monastary. It was really a site to see. The bright blue hair above a body of gold that towered over us. Truly amazing! We then continued our travel to Tingri/ Dingri.
Dingri is a town far from anyone. There are two roads, one going north to south, which leads to other villages and one going west to east, which only goes as far as a block. Tingri is where we spent the night and one day. Its the last stop before everest and where we have decided that God gave us an idea about life. God's idea I'll tell you had to do with never exactly getting what you want, but no matter what always keep trying.
In Tingri we got a little bored. Our guide was tired and went to bed, but our driver, A hilarious non English speaker agreed to walk around with us. We walked around the town one night and just tried our best to speak Chinese. Even when we knew he was Tibetan and didn't really even understand mandarin. However mandarin was our only common language so as we walked we tried our best at communication. See on our journey he was kind enough to play all the mix tapes he had in the land rover. Some with the most ridiculous Indian music you've ever heard! , but he tried and he even tried to sing along with the music, even the high notes!!!! It was fabulous! The town was very small and even worse the people there only made money off the tourists that passed through. There was no electricity after sun down and no water in the hotel. We had to flush the toilet with a bucket of ice water! Cold I know! Nevertheless we survived and even met a gang of boys. The boys were throwing rocks outside our hotel at a sign. They just like to hear the sound of the aluminum bounce. As we walked toward them they of course in the Tibetan child way saw our white faces and said " hello, money!!" So we decided to talk to them instead and make them have a cultural eye opening. The boys must have only been about 7, but we played and had fun with them anyway, trying to speak with them as much as possible. The dialect or language is so different from mandarin, and we don't know Tibetan, so we did a lot of miming. We decided to run in and get some notebooks we brought to give them, ( our tour guide suggested bring pencils and paper for the kids because they are too poor to afford even paper!) So we grabbed it and went outside to give it to them. When we arrived back they were gone. SO we decided to search for them. As we rounded the corner we saw them, but they had two more boys with them. We said "hey" and they came back quickly. We then gave the boys the books and pencils, but as each minute passed we could see we were being surrounded by two more kids per second. In the end there must have been 20 kids all laughing and just want to touch our faces and feel my hair. Any color then black hair just floored these kids. They all got excited when we gave them the books and pencils,There was a girl that only wore one turquoise earring. I had run out by then. but as she shook my hand she felt my arm and felt a hair rubber band. She seemed intrigued so I grabbed it off my wrist and gave it to her. It is so strange the thing children seem to love. She was so happy she put her hair up right then. The thing that startled us about these kids was that they were so disheveled. The boys had unwashed hair, one so bad it looked like dreadlocks, and all the children had horrible frost bite. Black dots all over there faces and there ears were raw with open wounds. Im surprised there ears didnt fall off.
These kids were so amazing, I taught them how to take a picture with my camera, they loved it, they loved just pointing and shooting. (You can see photos on our picture website)
More stories from tibet , chengdu and more in the next post!

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