yak! yak!

An early morning bus left the station in Kanding and started its climb up the mountains. By the time the sun was rising, we were surrounded by the most amazing scenery of snowy mountains. And in a little while, as we climbed higher and higher, we passed the line of snow ourselves and were travelling through winter wonderland. Majestetic, beautiful - but very very cold when you are travelling on a bus with no heating!! The whole way we were travelling in a high altitude, a sign by the roadside declared that at that point we were at 4300 m! The road took us through Tibetan villages, mountains and grasslands.

After about 3 hours on the bus, we arrirrived in the small Tibetan village of Tagong. It's truly like a different country here, with different environment, different houses, a completely different culture, people look different... and no use of my Chinese skills here, only a very few people in the village could speak a few words of Chinese, otherwise it was Tibetan all over.

The village consisted of the main street, some side alleys and a big lamasery at the end of the street. Behind it opened wide grasslands, with snowy mountains in the horizon. And the best way to get around in the grasslands: horses. And so we, too, climbed on a couple of horses, and took a little tour of the area. Which I can still feel as I sit down here in the chair...ummm...

Later on, when the sun was blazing and had transformed the frozen climate into a rather hot one, we went for a little walk on the hills near the village. It's funny how the altitude affects you, even after just a minute of climbing uphill, our hearts were pounding - thum, thum, thum.

Up on the hillside, a few tents were pitched, housing some Tibetan families. Their dogs announced our arrival, and a woman wearing traditional clothes stepped out from the nearest tent. I went over to say hello, and she beckoned to me, inviting us inside. So we went, and sat on little cushions on the floor, while she was busy tending to her big iron pot over the fire. In it, some yak milk was heating up, which we had the pleasure of waching her turn into fresh yak milk cheese in just a few minutes' time. And we got the first tasters ;) mmmm

Her son, 14, also came in, and could speak a little Chinese. So there we sat, nice and warm by the blazing fire, drinking yak butter milk tea, only changing a few simple words.

Later on in the village, after visiting the lamasery and spinning a couple of hundred prayer wheels, we must have walked the main street up and down several times, as there wasn't much else to do. The local men were mostly true cowboys, bug and stong and wearing real cowboy hats and cool shades. I also experienced some of their cowboy mentality, as I was propositioned to in a..ummm...rude way, which definitely required no shared language. Ehm.

Originally we were planning on staying the night in the village, sleeping in one of the villagers' homes, but we made a spur-of-the-moment decision to get back to Kanding, as we really weren't prepared for a night in freezing temperatures with no heating in the house. Unfortunately, this decision was made after all the minibuses and buses had already gone for the day. But we managed to get a ride in a car with a monk, which was supposed to take us to the next village just in time for the last bus to Kanding.

But things don't always go as you plan, and so after a half an hour's drive, our tire went flat and we were stuck pretty much in the middle of nowhere. The men in our car very in a very masculine manner proceded to replace the flat tire with the spare that we luckily had - until they found out that the spare was flat, too. And no decent pump to be found anywhere nearby. After a lot of hullabaloo, we managed to get a ride in a van, but arrived in the village miserably late, having missed the bus. By this time, it was getting dark and the drivers hanging around with their cars were not too happy to take us for the normal prices. We hgad shared the first ride with a young cowboy guy (hat and all), who had been to Tagong to sell some yaks. Now he was determined to find a decent-priced ride for us, otherwise we'd stay the night there, at his friend's house. But in the end we got a ride, for just 10 yuan over the normal price, and arrived in Kanding not all that late. However, we passed the cowboy's offer for a night out dancing in Kanding (however interesting that might have been), and here we are again at the little inn, with the idea to head out of the Tibetan areas today...

And, yaks, yaks everywhere!

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Spring time

Hot, hot, hot!

Springs, that is. After freezing in the cold, cold weather, and a little excursion on a windy mountain top, we agreed on a 20 yuan price for a taxi driver to take us out of town to some hot springs, which we heard of from the staff at our little hotel.

And true enough, there in the middle of nowhere, just a couple of farm houses around, and beneath some majestetic snowy mountain tops, was a little place with a big pool outside, full of hot steamy water. And nobody else :) So, in the cold air, we dived into the hot pool and a sea of steam... luvely, luvely :)

Coming back, we were faced with the probability of having to walk back for an hour and a half, as there were no taxis or such around. But we managed to flag down a passing truck, and got a hassle-free ride back.

Have also seen lots of yak, but haven't yet tasted yak milk or such...

Early tomorrow morning, we are heading out erven further into the 'wilderness', to a little village a few hours from here.

I'm loving this :)
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Wild Wild West

After a week spent in the big city of Chengdu, I now find myself in a small town surrounded by mountains, sitting in a cold little hostel with a Tibetan monastery right next door - I can hear them playing those big horns...

Chendu was good fun and a nice stop for a week. Hanging out with some Chinese friends of my parents' friends (confusing enough?), did wonderful Chinese-style karaoke in a posh little private room until out throats were practically bleeding, went bowling, saw some Sichuanese opera-style show, had tea in teahouses, visited a flower show in the park, looked for plastic dinosaurs in vain, bought some hilarious clothes, had lots of custrad tarts, visited the university, ate hotpot for dinner, walked for hours, saw pandas (both live and stuffed... just to mention some of the things ;)

But now, after an 8-hour bus ride through some amazing mountain/valley/river/gorge scenery and some frighteningly bad roads, the setting for tonight is the small town of Kanding. (Still travelling with Ben, btw.) Supposedly, this is the starting point of the Sichuanese 'Wild West'... And indeed, it is a big change from the modern Chengdu, which could be just about anywhere in China. Here, it's already very much Tibetan influenced, with people with very different facial features from the Han Chinese wearing traditional Tibetan style clothes, Tibetan monasteries and prayer flags around...

We haven't seen much yet, just went for a walk in town to get some gloves and socks, as it is FREEZING. It's funny how different it is from the heat of Wuhan a couple of weeks ago, to this cold, cold mountain climate.

But no complaints, it's gorgeous, the autumn colours look stunning on the mountains. It's somehow also very different from the mountains I saw in Anhui and Zhejiang, this is much more majestetic, and maybe bare somehow. Just bigger. None of that pretty Chinese painting scenery, but just very very impressive, high mountains and deep gorges, with ther rivers rushing past fastfastfast.

Wow :)

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Finally: PICTURES!!

Finally, I've managed to upload pictures from the past motnh.

However, they are on a new site, as I can't access the old one. So, check them out here:

http://www.imagehost.biz/ims/album.php?u_id=214749GYX
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Convenience

In Wuhan, in the early afternoon, in the middle of a busy shopping street stood a man in his silk pyjamas, holding a plastic bag from one of the nearby shops in one hand while talking on his mobile phone.

Did he live nearby and could not be bothered to change for just going down to buy a few things?

Was all his luggage stolen from his hotel room and he had to go out in his pyjamas to buy some new clothes?

Did someone spill something into his suitcase, and he had to have all his clothes washed, and go out to get something to wear for the meeting that afternoon?
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Two days on the boat, way too many peanuts and quite a few games of rummy later, here we are in Chongqing. The boat, although being the most run-down one in the port when we boarded it, wasn't all that bad in the end. We shared a cabin with a nice Chinese couple, and a suspiciously quiet young bloke in very hippy hip Chinese-style fashion jeans.

The weather wasn't all that great, however. Supposedly we were travelling between two of the three 'furnaces' of China, Wuhan and ChongQing, but this time those furnaces seemed to be out of order (which seems to happen in China to various things). The first night we spent out on the deck, wearing all the items of clothing we could find in our backpacks, and huddled up under Ben's sleeping bag. But since we'd paid a full 10 yuan for the rental of each of our chairs, we had to make the most out of it and enjoy our night on the Yangtze.

The next day it was raining, so we saw a lot more of our cabin, though the boat stopped for three hours in a city called WanZhou (or some such thing), where we had a little walk up and down the river banks (stairs, stairs!) and came across a very surreal looking massive ufo-type of building, which turned out to be a brand new very expensive looking basketball stadium, in stark contrast to all the crumbling concrete buildings arround it. Bizarre.

Yesterday we spent a day in ChongQing, some highlights of which included ice-skating in a very posh shopping centre, watching a man having a full pedicure in the street, Chinese dice games, watching sleezy Americans on the dance floor, and another visit to a hairdressers' (no cut for me this time!!). And more, we took an old, old rusty cable-car across the river -- a ride with 'highly amusable value' according to a note posted on the wall.

Still trying to find a way to upload pictures... soon, soon...
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Long River

I'm writing once again, in the hope that it'll get through. I don't know why but it just seems that just about all the websites I regularly use are not working from here anymore, apart from my Lycos mail... I'm grateful for that, anyway!!

I left the temple a couple of days ago, although the place was absolutely lovely and the master and everyone else treated me wonderfully, things in general were getting quite rough.

The master was launching into longer and longer speeches on what side of the table to walk from and how to treat him and how to put our soup bowls and so on and so on, and getting really upset if someone did the least thing 'wrong'.

On my last night at the temple, after the evening prayers, he made one of the women kneel down in the middle, in front of all of us and say she is sorry for her mistakes (such as drinking water while the master was speaking) - she had really been making him mad for a couple of days, just laughing at his threats and then crying for a whole days.

He wasn't very pleased with the sincerity of her confession, so suddenly he just got up, slapped her hard across the face, and kicked her straight in the stomach, so that she flew back into the altar table. It was really horrid. But she was ok after that, she just marched into her room and slammed the door. Later that night, she still tried to send text messages on a mobile phone to the master upstairs, I don't know what happened afterwards as I left early the next morning...

Anyway, it was a big change of scenery, coming from the peaceful mountain and the rural southern Anhui into the big city of Wuhan in Hubei province. I stayed one night in another skanky hotel, in another windowless box - but it was cheap ;)

And yesterday, while walking down the street in central Wuhan, i met another lone laowai traveller, a bloke called Ben from the UK, with whom I spent the rest of the day walking around, ferrying across the Yangze river, exploring the night market...

And as I had no real and concrete plans as to where to head next, we decided to stick together for a bit, and so here we find ourselves in Yichang, still in Hubei, after a wonderfully luxurious bus journey for a change, with a cheap hotel room in a good hotel (they do exist, apparently), waiting to catch a ferry up the Yangtze river (which the Chinese just call Chang Jiang, 'the long river') to Chongqing, where we are supposed to be arriving after a 3 days' journey.

It might be 3 days locked on a stinky public ferry, with nothing else to do but to wait to get off again, or it might turn out to be really nice. In any case, it'll be another Chinese adventure and I'm looking forward to it.

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Explosions

So, here's the 'real' message for today, in case these are going through.

Two days ago, we had 7 visitors come over to the temple, important guests
of the master. So we all worked pretty hard, getting things in shape,
preparing the meals etc. So yesterday, we slept in, took it easy all
morning and the master announced that we'll have three days 'off', and
just go exploring the mountains instead of staying at the temple. So we
started in the afternoon yesterday, heading out with almost everyone (old
Ru Yuan and another girl, Wen Jue, stayed behind). It was a nice walk, the
weather was gorgeous, and everyone was pretty much happy, although we got
back a little late, trying to find our way in the darkm, tired and hungry.
But we just ate the dinner and skipped the evening prayers and had a good
sleep.

This morning, we were supposed to head out for the whole day, to go even
further, to the temple on the highest peak. But it didn't work out that
way. The 'down' side of the master's double personality came out again,
and instead of the funny, friendly guy who took us out yesterday, today we
were faced with a raging ego-maniac. He gave us a good shouting already
before lunch, about this and that little thing. One guy got up late and
missed the beginning of the prayers, another touched the masters rice bowl
when she was serving him food, and had laughed too much yesterday when we
had walked in the village, another had gone out of her room too late last
night (though it turned out she went to give old Ru Yuan a massage, which
the master had asked her to do... not having a reason to pick on her for
that, he said that at least you shouldn't have talked while you did it and
I heard you talking). And so on and so on. Half I didn't understand and a
lot I just let go straight past me. All the while sitting there with my
hands joined.

So he made one of the girls stay knelt down throughout the meal in the
middle, as she is not very submissive, instead she just keeps laughing and
doesn't give in to admitting that she has been wrong, or when she does she
does it with a smile (whereas others cry!!).

And it went on for another hour after we finished eating.

The result was that two people who came just a few days ago anyway, were
sent away from the temple. Another, the sweetest, nicest, happiest just
about all-capable girl of all of us, decided to go with them, which I
think pissed the master off, as she really is an angel and therefore a
favourite. But they decided to go back to their old temple where I suppose
the life resembles a little more the harmonius Buddhist life with no ONE
person lording over it.

Another, the smiling stubborn girl, was told to go packing, as she was
still smiling when she apologised at lunch, really not too serious about
the whole thing. As I left to come down here, I don't know if she is
really going, too.

But all in all, it's kinda gotten out of hand and a third of the people
are gone now. I'll probably stick around for another couple of days, but
then I'm off, too. Although I'm not really involved in any of this, as I'm
not a nun etc. and still a guest, and I'll be sorry to leave this gorgeous
place, I think it'll be healthier to get out of the way... Anyway, I have
other plans for the next few weeks... the adventure goes on! :)

Monks eat mooncakes, too (Take 2!!)

Once again I'm trying to send something to the blog, now using a different
email address. I also resent what I wrote before, although the couple of
first messages from the mountain I didn't save so they are gone...

Maybe I'll write a little message here first to recap something from those
messages.

First of all, THANK YOU, KIITOS, MERCI and XIEXIE to everyone who sent me
all those lovely birthday wishes and messages, it really means a lot to me
to know that all of you are out there, I'm truly grateful to have you in
my life :)

So, I have been back on Jiuhua Shan in Anhui province for the past couple
of weeks, staying in a little Buddhist temple. The place itself is
absolutely beautiful, probably the most beautiful place where I have ever
lived. The temple sits on a cliff on the mountain, overlooking a beautiful
valley and rows of maountain behind it, usually blue in a curtain of
clouds.

From the edge, just behind the temple, or even through the window of our
room, you can see the most amazing sunsets over the valley, with the sun
burning red and colouring all the clouds and the whole sky.

At night, you can see a million stars in the clear sky, or to walk outside
by the moonlight...

At the temple, there are just a few of us, 10 or 12 in the past couple of
days. Most of the people arrived on the same day as I did, so it has all
been a pretty new thing, trying to establish a regular temple life instead
just a couple of people living there. So the master has been busy laying
out rules, this and that, and trying to organise everything. In the
process he has been shouting his head off more than once for people making
silly little 'mistakes'. Especially hard, when he keeps changing the rules
and breaking them himself, it's hard to keep track!!

As for me, I am mostly treated as a guest, although the master calls me
his 'disciple', too. But when he outlined everyone's responsibilities at
the temple, mine came down to studying Chinese and learning about Chinese
culture. So my time has been often spent reading my Chinese books, talking
to people, and walking on the mountain. Also, I've spent lots of time in
the kitchen, helping out and trying to learn from our cook Bao Yu (who
gets paid only 400RMb, worth 40 euros, a month and is thinking of
leaving!), she knows what she is doing.

My birthday also went by nicely. Although nobody at the temple knew it was
my birthday, we had a celebration as the Chinese mid-autumn festival
happened to fall on the same day this year. So, after the evening prayers,
we put a big table outside in the moonlight, covered in cakes, fruit, nuts
and all kinds of goodies. And so we sat out, eating and watching the
bright moon, listening to old Ru Yuan tell stories of when she used to
live alone in the temple, and how she came there in the first place, when
there was nothing there.

And yes, mooncakes!!! mmm :)

Three bowls and a pair of chopsticks each

This post was originally sent on Sun, 03 Oct 2004

------

Wow, I heard from my mum that the two posts that I blogged last
wednesday never showed up (at least not by the time she wrote to me).
Let me know if they really never did and I'll repost some of the
stuff I wrote then, as I can't seem to access even the page for
editing my own blog from here so I can't see what's actually there, I
have to do all this by email.

But for now, let me tell you something about the life at the temple
here on Jiuhua mountain.

The day at our little temple begins at 4:30 when one of the girls
starts banging two pieces of wood rhythmically together to let all of
us know it's time to wake up. And so we do, get out of bed, put on
our clothes, wash up and put on the dark temple robes.

At 5 a.m., the 9 of us have all taken our places in the temple room,
each having a prayer cushion in front of us for kneeling and bowing
down. And so the morning prayers and chanting begin, with one of the
boys beginning the rhythm with a little bell, and the other
percussion instruments soon join in, and the song and chant begins.
Needless to say, I can't do any of it, nor do I understand anything.
But I do my best to keep up with the kneeling and turning and joining
my hands...

The prayers finish around 6 a.m., after which we quietly walk into
the next room, neatly in a line, to eat breakfast, which one of the
women has by now laid out on the tables. so we sit down, at three
tables, each seating 3 people, the 3 men on one side, and the two
tables of the women facing them. The food is served by one of the
girls, who will give each of us some rice porridge in one bowl, and
different kinds of salty vegetables in another, and maybe some bread.
She will then stand by during the whole meal to give people more food
or water, as they want it. There is a little prayer before eating,
and some of the rice is offered to the buddha on the altar, before we
tuck in. The Master begins first, of course, and the rest of us
follow suite. the whole meal is eaten in total silence.

After the meal, the master will talk to us about different things,
mostly about practical stuff as everything is still in its very
beginning as the life at the temple is concerned. In the lst post
(which might never have appeared) i wrote about how he has been
really angry a lot, and not just talking but shouting and even
hitting people, with some of people begging on the knees and crying
and apologising for doing some little silly things in a
"wrong" way. But this has changed in the past couple of
days, now he is actually talking and teaching people nicely... makes
everyone a lot happier, too! But, people are still on their toes,
trying to avoid making 'mistakes', such as putting the chopsticks in
the wring position or serving the vegetables in the wrong manner...
hmmm

After breakfast, everyone does all kinds of work, there seems to be a
lot to do as it's all so new still. But I really don't know what to
do myself! I keep asking everyone what can i do, but they keep
thelling me there's nothing I can do. And then the master tells me to
try to help out and so something... But as I said before, I'm mainly
supposed to be studying and learning about Chinese culture, so I've
been spending a lot of time with my Chinese books.

And as the mountain is so so beautiful, it's lovely to walk around
the little footpaths...

This week it's the holiday week for the national holiday, and it can
be seen even in our little temple, though it's pretty much out of the
way from any of the main temples, and it doesn't even appear on any
of the temple maps. But still, we have had quite a few visitors in
the past couple of days. They seem to come in two makes:
First, there are huges groups of people, mostly from the 'lower'
classes (it's funny how clearly the classes show in the socialist
society!!!). They all come wearing their tour group hats and carry
their pilgrim bags, and they rush in in a huge wave, sticking insence
everywhere, throwing money on the altars and the boxes, kneeling down
just about everywhere and throwing the insence boxes and wrappers all
over the place. They even come in during the morning and evening
prayers, just doing their thing right in the middle of all of us in
our robes!! And then they are out just as fast as they came in.

Then there are the other kind of visitors, who come in smaller
groups, and seem to be mostly from the middle and upper classes. They
come in more slowly, look around, talk to us, pray and offer some
insence and generally are much more quiet and take their time.

So so much to tell about the life here, but I have to get back again.
I still don't have time to answer those emails but i'll try to get to
it soonish. And next time I will continue the story of the day at the
temple...

Hope this works this time...

Three bowls and a pair of chopsticks each

Wow, I heard from my mum that the two posts that I blogged last wednesday never showed up (at least not by the time she wrote to me). Let me know if they really never did and I'll repost some of the stuff I wrote then, as I can't seem to access even the page for editing my own blog from here so I can't see what's actually there, I have to do all this by email.

But for now, let me tell you something about the life at the temple here on Jiuhua mountain.

The day at our little temple begins at 4:30 when one of the girls starts banging two pieces of wood rhythmically together to let all of us know it's time to wake up. And so we do, get out of bed, put on our clothes, wash up and put on the dark temple robes.

At 5 a.m., the 9 of us have all taken our places in the temple room, each having a prayer cushion in front of us for kneeling and bowing down. And so the morning prayers and chanting begin, with one of the boys beginning the rhythm with a little bell, and the other percussion instruments soon join in, and the song and chant begins. Needless to say, I can't do any of it, nor do I understand anything. But I do my best to keep up with the kneeling and turning and joining my hands...

The prayers finish around 6 a.m., after which we quietly walk into the next room, neatly in a line, to eat breakfast, which one of the women has by now laid out on the tables. so we sit down, at three tables, each seating 3 people, the 3 men on one side, and the two tables of the women facing them. The food is served by one of the girls, who will give each of us some rice porridge in one bowl, and different kinds of salty vegetables in another, and maybe some bread. She will then stand by during the whole meal to give people more food or water, as they want it. There is a little prayer before eating, and some of the rice is offered to the buddha on the altar, before we tuck in. The Master begins first, of course, and the rest of us follow suite. the whole meal is eaten in total silence.

After the meal, the master will talk to us about different things, mostly about practical stuff as everything is still in its very beginning as the life at the temple is concerned. In the lst post (which might never have appeared) i wrote about how he has been really angry a lot, and not just talking but shouting and even hitting people, with some of people begging on the knees and crying and apologising for doing some little silly things in a "wrong" way. But this has changed in the past couple of days, now he is actually talking and teaching people nicely... makes everyone a lot happier, too! But, people are still on their toes, trying to avoid making 'mistakes', such as putting the chopsticks in the wring position or serving the vegetables in the wrong manner... hmmm

After breakfast, everyone does all kinds of work, there seems to be a lot to do as it's all so new still. But I really don't know what to do myself! I keep asking everyone what can i do, but they keep thelling me there's nothing I can do. And then the master tells me to try to help out and so something... But as I said before, I'm mainly supposed to be studying and learning about Chinese culture, so I've been spending a lot of time with my Chinese books.

And as the mountain is so so beautiful, it's lovely to walk around the little footpaths...

This week it's the holiday week for the national holiday, and it can be seen even in our little temple, though it's pretty much out of the way from any of the main temples, and it doesn't even appear on any of the temple maps. But still, we have had quite a few visitors in the past couple of days. They seem to come in two makes:
First, there are huges groups of people, mostly from the 'lower' classes (it's funny how clearly the classes show in the socialist society!!!). They all come wearing their tour group hats and carry their pilgrim bags, and they rush in in a huge wave, sticking insence everywhere, throwing money on the altars and the boxes, kneeling down just about everywhere and throwing the insence boxes and wrappers all over the place. They even come in during the morning and evening prayers, just doing their thing right in the middle of all of us in our robes!! And then they are out just as fast as they came in.

Then there are the other kind of visitors, who come in smaller groups, and seem to be mostly from the middle and upper classes. They come in more slowly, look around, talk to us, pray and offer some insence and generally are much more quiet and take their time.

So so much to tell about the life here, but I have to get back again. I still don't have time to answer those emails but i'll try to get to it soonish. And next time I will continue the story of the day at the temple...

Hope this works this time...






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