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Published: August 10th 2006
Me and tibetans women and kids on the bus
They liked it when we showed them the picture except the woman by the window which was probably unhappy that we caught her with the mouth open.Friday July 28th
Few words about Zhongdian and this part of China. It is often named Shangri-la in reference to the fabled mountain kingdom of the "Lost Horizon" book written by James Hilton. It is at 3200m of altitude and is the northeast edge of the tibetan world. Tibet you say? Why do you claim to still be in Yunnan then? Well this is because when China decided to create "Tibet", they took away large chunk of it and put it in the neighbouring province. This way northwestern Yunnan, Western Sichuan, Gansu and pretty much all Qinghai (except maybe Xining area) is in fact Tibet. Mao had learned from the best (european imperialist and his buddy Stalin). He knew that if at some point China would ever be forced to give up Tibet for whatever reason, they would just have to give the province while they could keep all the other part of real Tibet in the other provinces. Smart. Evil but smart. Anyway only a few lunatic rock star now believe that Tibet will ever be freed. Everywhere that there were tibetans the chinese authority encouraged chinese immigration so as to crush any independance movement. They've been highly succesful and
Zhongdian temple
View from the front near the bus stop. now Tibetans are the minority everywhere except in the countryside (the cities are heavily chinese all over Tibet but the countryside is tibetan). The city of Zhongdian is on the tourist trail but it is about an order of magnitude smaller than Lijiang so it doesn't feel oppressively touristy.
I woke up at around 9AM and went to eat breakfast with the russian girl (I don't remember her name but I'll call her Olga) who was leaving for Dali and Xishuangbana in a few hours. We went to this Tibetan place called Puppet that she had been to. I got the Tibetan breakfast which consist of Yak Butter Tea, tsompa and fried cheese with butter. This shouldn't tell you much so I'll try to describe it a little bit. Yak Butter Tea is fairly easy to imagine, you could even have something at home that would taste quite like it. Buy 35% cream and add butter to it. Put it in the microwave until it is hot. If it doesn't look like it is too fatty to be drunk then add more butter. When it looks like you'll die of a heart attack just by sipping it then it
Zhongdian temple 2
From the rear. Where me and my evil accomplice totally illegaly entered the temple complex. We haven't been arrested yet. is perfect. Tsompa is some sort of barley flour that you mix with a little bit of yak butter tea in a bowl which makes some sort of barley balls that taste decent. Finally fried cheese with butter is exactly what it sounds like. Nothing to decrease the fat content of the breakfast. I'm more of a sugar person when it comes to breakfast. I've never been into this eggs and bacon thing I'm more of a toast person so this was way too much fat for me. I finished my fried cheese but only finished half of my yak butter tea which probably saved me an heart attack. I understand why tibetans like it, they live in cold hard environment and high fat makes it easier to get by.
Olga was wiser and she took some cheese balls which came with honey. I had 2 of her balls and they were pretty decent. I said goodbye to her as she was leaving for Dali and made my way to the hotel. I forgot to ask for her email as it would've been nice to keep in touch. She's one of those leftist anthropology major intellectual and it was
Zhongdian temple 3
From the top of the stairs. The houses are where the monks live. nice to talk with someone like that who's also interested in other cultures and with whom you can have a good intellectual conversation over some balls.
Me and Amit decided to go to the monastery near Zhongdian which has several hundreds active tibetan monks. We took the bus which goes directly there. At one of the bus stop we saw the first monk of the day. He looked so not like what you imagine a tibetan monk to look like. He has a beard like the singer of System of a Down, is very tall, has expansive looking sunglasses (fake probably) and was talking on his cellphone while taking the bus to work in the monastery. This is another example of cultures merging which I find totally interesting. Tibetans are evolving like every other people on the planet and they love modern technology. When we got to the entrance we learned that there was a fee of 30RMB. I didn't particularly care about paying it but we figured we could just walk around as the neighbourhood seemed interesting as it housed the monks. The place was interesting and at some point we saw a back entrance to the temple
Tibetan and Naxi dancing in the main square
People of all age and dressstyle go to this dance every night. Old women in traditional clothes, young women in tight jeans and little kids. and we just entered. The temple was interesting and had some funny painting. You can see that lots of it is very recent and that the temple was heavily damaged during the Cultural Revolution. Some of the statues are clearly made of fiberglass (you can see that they were made as several parts and then assembled together) and the colors in the paint are too bright to be old. We couldn't go inside the main temple as they check the ticket there but you can see pretty much everything you need to see in the side temples which are many.
We left the monastery and went looking at the souvenir shops but didn't find anything interesting. We tried to find a vegetarian restaurant in the monastery since Amit could eat there but didn't find anything. I had decided to stop being shy about photographing locals. Sometimes I want to take pictures of locals but I get shy and don't take my camera but then I see people who do take pictures and the locals seems to like it so I decided I'd do the same. I took a picture of me and a few locals in the bus back
Tibetan and Naxi dancing in the main square 2
Some tourists went in the middle of the circle to take picture. to the hostel. They seemed to like it when I showed them the pictures.
Amit had received news that the 2 israelis girls were in town along with 3 more israeli girls and they were preparing a big Friday night meal (just before Sabbath where they can't do anything for the day) and best of all I was invited. They also wanted to do some trekking in Yading Nature Reserve which was what me and Amit had in mind. We were not too sure how to get there because it is outside the Lonely Planet and the beaten track but we had heard some good things about it, mostly on www.chinabackpacker.com but also from the 3 tourists who helped me find Dongba Guesthouse in Lijiang. We figured we could try getting a van there so we went to a travel agency who quoted us 800RMB for the 2 days route. It was a bit too much for us so we tried Tibet Cafe who also have some service like that and we were quoted the ridiculous price of 2400RMB just to get there. I heard this before from other travellers and this has been my feeling all the time
I've been in Zhongdian: Tibet Cafe is a piece of crap. The rooms are overpriced, their internet is 4 times the rate of the local place 1 minute of walk away even though their computers are worse, the food is bad, there is karaoke being played until the little hours of morning if you stay there that will keep you up all night and if you ask for their travel service agency they'll ask you for 3 times the price other agency give. Only go if you like paying a lot for crappy service and food. This, like Lisa's in Yangshuo is clearly the case of a guidebook overly talking about a certain place which then makes the given place increase its price and not care about standard because they know that people will come there just because it is mentioned in the guidebook. I'll definately make sure to report them to Lonely Planet. At this point I went back to Puppet to get a very tasty yak meat spaghetti. I like the restaurant since they have good service, good food and most importantly very interesting National Geographic magazines.
We decided to buy the bus ticket to Daocheng first
and once we get there get a van to Yading. We bought the ticket but not before Amit said they were too expansive (101RMB) and tried again get us to bargain with taxi driver for a ride to Yading. The problem is that not speaking chinese makes it a bit harder to bargain or even get our point accross. Travelling in China without speaking chinese is possible and even easy. But if you want to do anything special it becomes harder. So we had to buy the tickets and hope getting a van in Daocheng would be easier. On the way back to the Guesthouse I stopped at an ATM to withdraw some money as I was quickly running out. For some reason my card and PIN got accepted but when I withdrew the money nothing came (except my card). I freaked out because I had heard horror stories of ATM not giving you money but still taking money from your account. I was really pissed off when I came back to the Guesthouse and I checked on internet to make sure that it didn't take money from my account. I was in a pretty bad mood by that point.
Sunset over Zhongdian
Old city in the foreground. Back at the guesthouse I talked with Jen, a girl from Vermont who recognized me because of my McGill t-shirt. We talked about going to some lakes tomorrow together so I told her it would be a good idea but didn't make any plans as I needed to find a way to get money out somewhere before comitting to anything although this would have to wait for tomorrow. Amit had told me about the dancing in the main square at 7:30 so I decided to give it a shot just to change my mind. I was not expecting much but I was pleasantly surprised. The music is good, it doesn't sound totally traditional but a bit of a techno-tibetan mix which is pretty interesting. The dancing doesn't seems fake and I don't think the locals are paid to go there like in Lijiang. The older people have traditional clothes but most of them wear western clothes and you can see many of them just left work to go dance a bit before heading home. It is a very lovely atmosphere and put me in a better mood. I then walked a bit around the Old Town and took a few pictures from a hill with a huge praying wheel.
I came back to the Guesthouse and after a while we had dinner with the israeli girls. I can't remember the name of all of them but the 2 that would come to Daocheng with us are Kerelit and Ayelet (sp?). They were nice and made some effort to speak in english to me although it was clearly obvious that they prefered to speak in Hebrew. The meal was delicious with some really good homemade bread with onions in it, cucumber/tomato/lettuce salad, soup, rice and some cauliflower in a sauce that makes cauliflower actually good tasting, something which I didn't think was possible.
I thanked them for the meal, went to check on the internet one last time to make sure the transaction wasn't recorded on my account and went to bed.
Saturday July 29th
I spent the whole morning going around town trying to find a place to either get a cash advance from my credit card or my debit card. The Agricultural Bank of China which according to the LP can get you cash advance on international credit card was closed for that service. Chinese could still come and get service but they told me to come back Monday, which isn't an option since I have a ticket leaving Sunday morning. I went to all the banks looked for ATM but didn't find anything in 3 hours that could get me money out. I was in a very bad mood by that point when I came back to the hostel.
Once again my McGill t-shirt sold me out as a canadian and a fellow french-canadian named Alexandre started speaking to me. He is from Ulaval and has spent 2 months in Tsientsin learning chinese and is doing a little trip around China before going back to Quebec to start his last university year. It turns out he is in the same situation as me, he is going to western Sichuan where there are no way to get money out and he is almost out of money. He was quite unhappy about my news that there was no way to get money out here. Right after I met him I stumbled upon Sylvain and Nathalie, 2 other quebecers. They are from the same neighbourhood in Gatineau (where I lived before going to study in Montreal), went to the same high school as me and also went to study in Montreal. They've been on a summer trip accross China and Mongolia and have just arrived in Zhongdian. We talked for a while but me and Alex were hungry so we decided to go to Puppet to have a meal.
At my suggestion he had spaghetti with yak meat while I had a delicious club sandwhich (much better than what you get at home). We talked about life in China for foreigners and chinese girls. He lived in Tsientsin with 30 other quebecers from Ulaval who were taking chinese lessons. From those 2 months together they reached some very profound conclusions. The base system for relationship used mostly in North America is inadequate to describe relationships with a normal chinese girls. Thus, they developped a new system called the "Chinese Base System" which goes like this: 1st base holding hands, 2nd base arm over the shoulder, 3rd base kiss (on the cheek!) and 4th base marriage, of course. He did tell me however that thankfully there are some more westernized chinese girls around.
After this lovely lunch we set off to explore the wonderful banks of the city to try to find a way to get money. Alexandre didn't have my bad experience so he was full of hope whereas I was skeptical and was already making plan about staying here until Monday. We looked around again, used some scary looking ATM which ate Alex's card (he got it back since the bank was open) and in the end we did find an ATM with Visa, Visaelectron and Plus signs which was an encouraging signs. We both managed to get money out of that machine which was a huge sign of relief for me. I was a bit skeptical because I'm on Mastercard/Cirrus network so I didn't think this Visa ATM would work for me but it did, thankfully.
I told Amit that I'd be able to go to Daochen in the end and went on an internet cafe where I also confirmed with my father that yesterday's transaction hadn't passed which was a huge relief. Alex went to the bus station to buy a bus ticket either to Daochen or Xiancheng. He wanted to go to Litang so he'd just chose the one that would bring him there the fastest. It was getting close to 7:30 so I went to the Central Square to watch the dance. There I met Sylvain and Nathalie whom I had told about this. The dance wasn't started yet so I told them I'd go buy a cowboy hat and be back. A cowboy hat? In China? It might sounds wierd but tibetans love everything related to cowboys and cowboys hats are for sale everywhere in the Old Town. It might be because they're a tradionally nomadic people who live off yaks, a subtype of cow. I thought they were funny and I need a hat for my trekking so I figured I'd buy one. The prices are so low, the girl began bargaining at 20RMB (3$) for a hat. I said 15RMB, she said no so I started walking away and she said yes. I guess I didn't get enough attention as a mere westerner. Now I'll be a westerner in a cowboy hat, that should get me some stares. I walked back to the square with the quebecers and we caught the beginning and after a while a local girl told us we could go up on a balcony to take pictures so we did. We stayed more than an hour there just listening at the music and watching the people. I really liked everything about this dance thing. The music, the surroundings, the people who dance and even the tourists don't bother me. Sylvain and Nath were leaving the day after so we exchanged emails and said goodbye. I'll probably go walk to their house and say hi to them when I visit my parents when I come back.
I went back to the hostel and talked with Alex for a while and said goodbye as he was not taking the same bus as me tomorrow. We also exchanged emails. I also met Jen who I said I was sorry about not being able to go with her to visit around Zhongdian because of my banking problem. She was all excited because she was flying to Lhasa tomorrow so she didn't care too deeply. We said goodbye and good luck and exchanged emails. After that I took a shower and went to sleep, happy that everything worked out in the end.
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Kevin
non-member comment
"Tibet you say? Why do you claim to still be in Yunnan then? Well this is because when China decided to create "Tibet", they took away large chunk of it and put it in the neighbouring province. This way northwestern Yunnan, Western Sichuan, Gansu and pretty much all Qinghai (except maybe Xining area) is in fact Tibet. Mao had learned from the best (european imperialist and his buddy Stalin). " Before making this non-sense, please take an hour or two to read Chinese history!!! And we all know how Canadian government has treated native Indians throughout the history. Please do not spoil the trip with your white-man superiority complex. Thank you!