Prayer Wheels and Motorbikes

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I watched as she spotted the small black strand of hair camouflaging itself as a noodle, shrugged her shoulders as she fished it out and continued to delicately manipulate another chopstick portion to her mouth. I wanted to dance but decided against it, this bowl was hard-earned. And this trip was for her.

We set out from Xining on an overnight bus and I vacillated between uncontrollable giggles and exasperated sighs at my next-door bed neighbor, but not for long as he and a companion were nothing less than kicked off the bus at 4 in the morning after found to be traveling without the right papers. I wish I could say I missed him. On bathroom breaks, we bared out butts to the icy northern winds only twice, after the sun rose the next morning there were simply no hideouts for a lady to squat so I practiced my "hold it" ability in the chance ten years from now it will aid pregnancy. Banma was a one-road frontier town, I had the distinct feeling of stepping into an old western classic, only replacing steeds with motorbikes, cowboys with leathery Tibetans, dustballs with... well dustballs, and poker with pool. I loved it, truly, and I found myself in a white 4-wheeler with ladies of undetermined profession wearing get-ups strangely reminiscient of those of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and my grandmother as a young Southern belle. They dropped me a mile or two away from town with the feeling of having done their duty to promote foreigners' awareness of Tibetan culture, and I walked alone in the gusty wind through dancing prayer flags understanding where legends come from. It was beautiful.

From Banma to Aba was quite an affair, catching a ride with the most resourceful of chaps who in the end turned out to be a truly hospitable, kind person. I served as the head rest for the two sleeping on my right and held my abused bladder full for a record 8 hours. We had the bright idea to explore a temple we saw on the way in to town and took off walking, picked up by a pair of motorcyclists only to be deposited in a desolate field five minutes before a hail storm. I froze, we laughed, and yes, this is a highlight. The second highlight occurred in Ma'erkang as a watched my sister gobble down Tibetan dance steps with the local group who gathers every evening. "Is that your sister?" They ask me. "Yes," I reply proudly. "She's so tall!" They say. Then moments of observation and consideration, "And she dances so well!"

Kangding, thankfully, was not the pit I initially thought when we first arrived, and turned out to be quite a well-balanced mix of Han Chinese and Tibetan people, atheism and Buddhism, commercialism with tradition. Chengdu, I admit, for all its construction and new-found wealth and boom, had its charm too, and Jolie and I finished our last few days in laid-back company. In trying to sneak pictures of the construction site directly beneath our third-floor hostel room, I was spotted and soon had 25+ phone cameras pointed in my direction. Sigh. Oh, China.

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