Tibet reunion Beijing to Labrang

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In 2006 I travelled across China into Tibet and over the border into Nepal, on a truck along with 23 other people, two crew members, a Chinese translator and then in Tibet, a Tibetan translator.
Since then, I’ve sporadically kept in touch with Dave and Nola from Canada, who were on that same trip and next week we’re meeting up in London - after nearly five years. The six week trip across 2 countries (if you count Tibet as China’s) was the start of my major wander lust which I’ve never lost. And, whilst in my dad’s garage yesterday, I dug through my boxes to find my diary from that trip. At the same time as traveling, I was in love with a boy and we kept in touch whilst he was cycling across Europe and because I couldn’t write or text what I saw, I wrote to him in a book - here are a few extracts from those diary notes – relevant today because of a reunion five years later and a continual yearning to return to Lhasa.

31 July

We landed in Beijing in a monsoon storm the likes I’ve never seen or knew existed either on land or in the air. The plane circled over the city for an hour and a half in a severe thunder storm and lashing rain. The plane was constantly being tossed around. Seemingly, towards the end of time, there was a decision announced that if we couldn’t land within the next ten minutes, we would have to fly to Chengdu to land because we were almost out of fuel. The plane was still being tossed around – there was deadly silence inside, alternating with the odd muffled scream when the plane repeatedly plummeted and lifted. I fanned myself furiously trying to abate being sick but to no avail – I puked and this is how I first ever set foot in China – most likely smelling faintly of puke.

When I arrived, my prebooked taxi wasn’t at the airport waiting because I was about three hours late but there was a visible tidal line of where the rain had flooded the place. Amazingly, there was still a colleague’s taxi driver patiently waiting for him with a piece of cardboard with his name on. I’d been in touch with Steve briefly as we were given everyone’s contact details before the trip. The taxi driver had waited four hours with this name showing because all flights were delayed. I decided to wait with that taxi driver for Steve who I gathered was on the next flight to land.

These are some of the notes from the diary:

The driver is called Liu, he’s lovely, he’s agreed to take me to Beijing too, he bought me a coke and after 24 hours traveling and only 2 hours of sleep, I fall asleep on the airport floor at his feet. Steve arrives, almost looking refreshed. We certainly haven’t had the same horrifying journey. I explain and we follow Liu for almost an hour carrying everything to his parked taxi outside the monsoon flood area. It is sweltering, dry heat.
After an hour road journey to the hostel, the receptionist greets me in the hutong lane – I am passed from one pair of safe hands to another. I hand Liu a crisp 10 dollar note for his son who is called Big Heaven and also pay him over the odds. Whilst the receptionist helps me carry the bags, I asked where I can eat. She says she’ll show me later because the restaurant attached to the hutong hostel is expensive. My room is small but perfect, a lattice window is looking onto the back court yard filled with bamboo. It was once a great house – now just for me and other visitors. After 10 minutes of being in the room, there’s a knock on the door. It’s the receptionist. She’s washed and changed into jeans, brought her friend with her and they’ve come to take me out to show me where to eat. She’s called Chu chun li – English name – Sunday, 19 years old, very sweet and gracious. We all go to the corner of the street to a noodle shop, which is my first ever experience of eating in China and I can’t understand and feel self conscious. They are leaving so I ask where they are going – to the market – can I come too? We head to the market and I become their new play thing. I’m the only white person and everyone stares.

Looking back after all my travels in China, I think that in 2006, China was very different to now – pre Olympics, pre freedom to roam, pre freedom to choose a hotel so, in 2006 it would have been a strange occurrence for a white woman to be in the hutong night markets with two Chinese girls.

It’s a beautiful, crazy, haphazard free for all. Chu chun li explains the meats, fish, teas and vegetables – most of which I’ve never seen before in my life. I buy teas – and feel strangely liberated walking with these girls that I know and understand nothing about. On the street, the older ladies are all sitting on old wooden chairs on the dusty pavements, talking and laughing and then, in turn, standing and slapping their thighs and arms. I want to join in – slap therapy looks good for the soul to me. When we get back, the girls bring tins from the kitchen for my teas. I want to give them presents but my bag is bursting with survival basics for the all weather trip to Tibet.

2nd August - Overnight sleeper – Beijing to Xi’an

A lovely, sad Chinese lady is crying by the window saying goodbye to her young son who is on the platform with his elderly grandparents. She breaks down on the sleeper couch as the train pulls out of the station. I sit by her side and hold her, speak to her in a language she cannot understand but feel and she answers back telling me a story of sadness and I pick through the story from intonation only.
The boys, whom I have just met, from our preliminary tour group of 6, bounce around the top bunks in the sleeper cabin in excitement at the journey, the woman crying below goes unnoticed. I change the group around so that she can share with me, Erica and a quiet man. Her name is Ma Wei – horse. I show her photos on my phone of my kids and home and lover. The militaria style female train attendant softens her officious guard and wants to look. She looks at the kids, my house, the cat – then asks ‘No Husband?’ – no husband, I say but this is my boyfriend to which they all scream at the picture of the boy with the tattoo. It gets the guard on our side which can only be good.

Tuesday.

In Xian we meet the rest of the group, our tour leaders and our truck. We all pack the bags into the hold at the back, truck chores are given to everyone and we board.

8th august

Our Journey from Lanzhou to Xiahe is stunning. Such amazing scenery and sights of people working in the fields, sweeping the roads, driving vehicles, living high on the mountain passes makes me emotional. The mountain range, called a hill around here, is over 40km of climbing up and up and weaving around hair pin bends, then down and up again, through the terraces that look ancient. I never dreamed this sight existed, it’s all new. We drive through mountain villages where the threshed corn is laid across the road for vehicles to drive over to help separate it. We stop. Kids arrive from nowhere on the mountain road side, they look bewildered by the truck and us. We offer them peanuts and chocolate but they don’t speak or smile or move. And later, the city we enter with seemingly 100,000 people gathered for their 50th anniversary festival is something we can’t understand.

But the best, the best ever, is the town of XiaHe. It is small town with the largest Tibetan population outside of Tibet. There is one spindly half mile long main street running the length of the town, flanked on either side by shops selling food and beautiful silk Tibetan robes. At the end of the road is the start of 1,000 brass prayer wheels that circle the Labrang temple. I run to the edge of the temple wall full of brass wheels and look at the stupa at the top of the hill – the whole thing is being circumnavigated by what seems to be the entire population of the town and they’re all wearing amazing clothes. The blind are led by family members, the people that can’t walk are carried on other’s backs and there are people prostrating with paddles on their hands. The air is full of the sound of prayer. I will wait to do the walk properly.

When I enter the dress maker’s shop, I’m so taken by the piles and piles of coloured silk brocades and pure wool pashminas that I try on clothes that neither suit nor fit me and I want them. The colours entice me. I try two things on – a turquoise silk brocade wrap around dress and a fuschia wrap coat, lined in checked wool and edged in fake fur held together with an orange sash – I buy both for 430yuan. I have no idea how to get them in the bag but they’re coming back with me. I also buy a solid silver bangle studded with turquoise stones.

Thursday 10th August

I wake at 5.45am to meet Bronwyn. We join the 6am circumnavigation of the temple. Everyone in the town is walking the 3km or so, spinning every prayer wheel that they pass. Every day at sunrise and sunset thousands of Tibetans walk this walk ending with walking around the stupa at the top of the hill either 3, 18 or 109 times. They have walked for lifetimes and lifetimes. Bronwyn and I join the devoted. The sheer physical energy to turn the wheels takes a dedicated strength, especially if you’re at the front of the line. As everyone walks, they turn every wheel and pray. Our concentration levels are high as we have to time the turn of the wheel with our stride. We take time to do it right whilst trying not to be invasive. I try to think about what all this means. This life time of total dedication to a god.

Throughout the walk we are often overtaken and then people warm towards us and start to talk to us – mostly women and mostly one word – hello.
Bron and I walk side by side with these accepting people and I feel an unknown inner strength and calm – I think it is happiness. I am turned inside out by feeling deeply alive. On the side of the hill, I feel at home, we turn to watch the sun rise over Labrang and I feel privileged to be here, to feel how big and meaningful it is to these hundreds of people who do this every morning or evening or who have come on pilgrimage to get to this place - it is very humbling. I am gradually leaving behind all that I know to connect with this journey. Along the way, on the hillside, are monk’s huts that look like sheds. I don’t know what they are for except, I gather, to become more enlightened through isolation. We stop for green tea which is being served along the way from someone’s house. It’s served in plastic beakers and somehow tastes really good.

We return to the hostel for breakfast. The hostel is simple, built in a quadrangle style - the rooms with twin beds, tin bowls, a flask of hot water, a small table and chair, a painted ceiling and nothing more. The toilets are becoming more and more extreme. Here, there are two for men and one for the women – all three squatters are green enamel with low walls and doors that don’t close. They’re shared by the entire contents of the hostel except those lucky enough to have an ensuite squatter. The place where we wash our hands and clean our teeth and the cleaner hangs the mop across the sink taps, is also in this open toilet area. My stomach is settling but not when I look at the mop – we are only 9 days into this six week trip.


After breakfast, Bron, Jason, Peter and I hire bikes and cycle out towards the hills. We see an eagle sitting on the fence post and the distant tents of the nomads encased in fluttering prayer flags. We cycle towards the nomadic tents, past people working in the fields – they wave. We cycle over the corn that is laid across the road and I pick up and crown of blue flowers. About 13 miles outside of XiaHe, we come across a nomadic Tibetan tented community. We sit with the nomadic families and I take instax photographs of them all. My favourite is a woman who has never been photographed before and she cannot believe what she can see emerge from the instax. Her face is electric. I cannot believe the true beauty I can see laughing in front of me. I am asked by an English speaking Tibetan teacher to say and watch the horse festival and the folk dancing and singing but the rest want to go back for the 3.15 monastery tour. I want to stay but I’m too nervous to stay alone with these people I don’t know so I reluctantly leave.

When we return to town and the hostel, there is a seated man machine sewing the tarp from the truck. He’s absolutely ancient and gorgeous.

At dusk, Bron and I are gonna walk the wheels again

I’ll make a wish about a boy – not a prayer

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Photos

the tarp mender
with his hand sewing machine

Comments

[Tracey]

Thanks for your blogs.
Hi Tracey, I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoy reading your blogs. I 'found'you right at the end of your trip and am really glad that you're still writing. You have a special way of looking at the world, that resonates with me. Take care, Tracey.

[Bob Carlsen]

Labrang
Thanks for going back to write about your trip to China, Tibet and Nepal. My parents were married in Labrang on January 11, 1949. I wanted to take my 88 year old mother (my father having passed away) back to Labrang in May 2009, but it was closed to foreigners at the time. Instead I took her, my sister, and son to Lanzhou and then to Minxian, just east of Labrang where my parents lived until May 1949 when they had to evacuate ahead of the Red Army. I wrote about the trip on my travelblog. When my Dad was still alive, he started visiting the Tibetan communities in Djarleeing, Nepal, and Ladahk (and even Switzerland) and made many friends. He even met with the Dali Lama. He was able to visit Lhasa in 1984 (overland from Nepal) and 1986 (overland from Beijing), before he passed away in 1988. I will be blogging about their time in China and our subsequent travels as soon as I dig out the pictures and slides from boxes in the garage...which is freezing cold right now, but spring is just around the corner.