Gansu - Qinghai October 2003

Moonwalking in Dunhuang
In the train from Turpan to Dunhuang I meet with Canadian Neil and French Charlotte. We explore the famous singing sand dunes of Dunhuang together. Dunhuang, as flat as a pancake, is bordered by enormous rolling sand dunes which soar up to an amazing 1,700m at their highest point and stretch into the Taklamakan desert. Of course this natural wonder is turned into a mini tourist trap with entrance fee, the obligatory camel ride, sand sledding and surfing of the sand hills closes to the city. But foreign devils would not be foreign devils is they didn't know a route around the entrance gate and get in for free. It was a bit of a hike trudging through the sand but eventually we are in the midst of the rolling dunes and enjoy the quiet. It is easy to imagine that caravans can get lost and just perish maybe only a few hundred meters away from an oasis. We take the short route home and 'ski' on our bare feet down the steep high slopes. It will take weeks before I have removed the last grains of sand from my clothes.

The next day I visit the famous Mogao caves and they are every bit as impressive as I imagined although some of the caves we were shown were probably not among the most refined. Opening your wallet here means opening up specific caves (the Japanese are apparently especially into the Tantric erotic ones). But as I am a bit cash strapped and do not have enough knowledge of the treasures hiding behind the doors to the caves, I leave it at the 10 caves that are part of the tour. The tour guide makes a real effort to explain the murals and statues in English. But questions result in blank stares.

In the meantime the temperature has dropped to below freezing. The hotel does not have heating and the hot shower doesn't work. I am out of this place! The next morning I get a ticket on a sleeper bus that will deliver me in Xining, Qinghai Province, in 24 hours. Exit Dunhuang, temporarily exit Gansu.

Politically Correct Ta'er Si
The reason why I came to Xining is to visit the Ta'er Si, or the Kumbum Monastery in Tibetan. (deleted sentence here) The Kumbum Monastery is one of the six main Tibetan monasteries. So the next day I head towards Huang Zhong, the location of the monastery. As I walk through the gates I am being the offered the guiding services of Friday, or Ibrahim as his real name is. Ibrahim is one of the official guides for the monastery. Strangely enough he himself is a Hui Muslim who has studied Arabic languages in Saudi Arabia. The other official guides look none too Tibetan either.

In the university of the monastery where once up to 6000 monks studied, I see a passport size photo of the Dalai Lama. According to Ibrahim this picture gets taken away when officials come to visit. The predominant picture in this monastery and most other monasteries I have visited since is that of the 10th Panchen Lama. This second highest religious leader in Tibetan Buddhism, as a victim of the Cultural Revolution, died in 1989 a married man with one daughter and had not been performing any religious duties for a while before he died. But that's a whole different story.
His Chinese appointed successor, the 11th Panchen Lama, lives in Beijing says Ibrahim. This in contrast to the successor appointed by the Dalai Lama who no one knows the fate of. (deleted something here) The Panchen Lama living in Beijing is 13 years old now and comes to the Kumbum Monastery once every three years. When he turns 20 he can choose where to live, Beijing or in Huang Zhong. Last time he visited he apparently let it slip that he doesn't like the Kumbum much. Brainwash succeeded.

I am lucky. Today is a special day because a harvest ceremony is being held in the monastery's courtyard with many Tibetans having come to witness the ceremony. Monks with ceremonial dress and masks perform mysterious dances. They are protector gods, scaring away evil spirits. The Tibetans try to touch the monks dressed as protector gods for good luck, try to offer them kata's and money, but there are 'crowd control' monks who chase away the believers who try to touch the performers. But they still manage to reach them and are being cheered on by the crowd. Ibrahim proves his value as a guide to me when we join ceremony in the courtyard and he helps me to communicate with some of the pilgrims that have travelled from far with their families to witness the religious dances. I talk to Tenzingje and her family who have travelled 500 km especially to attend today's ceremony.

After the ceremony Ibrahim takes me to the 'Trulku' or Living Buddha who on this special day receives visitors. I buy two katas (ceremonial scarf) to offer to the Living Buddha. I'm a little bit nervous. How do you behave when speaking to a Living Buddha? Before me are a bunch of government officials. Although I'm being told not to take any photographs I see the flash of the official's cameras go off. When I come into the room of the Living Buddha their donation is still lying on the chairs. They were generous. The katas are very long and I get entangled with one foot in the fringe. Oh oops, not so elegant.
The Living Buddha is a boy of between eight and ten years old. I offer him the katas and after blessing me he puts them back around my neck. He starts elaborate prayers on my behalf, snorting loudly in between the sentences. When he is done he asks me if I have any questions for him. Oh no, I didn't prepare for any questions! Quickly I make up a lame one, "Will my travels be successful?" I get a very vague answer, "They will be if you think they are". We retreat and I don't know it's the blessing or not, but that whole day and the day after I felt positively glowing and rosy!

Ibrahim is performing his guiding duties gallantly, but his real sentiments come to the surface when he pulls me away from an older man who pushes past me to get a better view earlier of the ceremony. Ibrahim thinks the Tibetans are dirty. When we part later he tells me that all Tibetan Buddhist monasteries are the same so after this one I won't need to visit another one after this. Little does he know that this is only the beginning!

The next day the ceremony starts early. By the time I arrive there are already many people present in the central square in the vast monastery grounds. The crowd control is in the hands three young boys. I wonder who has given them authority while they even beat people with their sticks into submission. But the crowd is in a good mood and listens to the boys telling them to sit down. At least for the moment, because as soon as the boys have moved on the people get up again. The dances continue the whole day and people sit patiently in the biting cold. The crowd gives generously to the monks collecting money.

The dances symbolise the collecting of evil in one central place, a mock skull. In the afternoon the crowd gathers near a stupa where a procession carries the skull on a long stick onto a small square where it is set on fire symbolising the destruction of evil. People afterwards walk around the still smouldering fire, spit and jeer at it.

I stay in a simple Tibetan style guesthouse. The beds on the top floor cost Y25, the floor below has beds for Y15 and the courtyard room beds go for Y10. This is where the Tibetans stay, but one room holds many more Tibetan guests than beds. There are only 3 showers for the whole hotel with hot water only a couple of hours each night, but there never seem to be any lines. As I also discover later on my travels, the Tibetans travel from low budget to no budget and care but little for comfort.
The next day I'm being led around the vast monastery grounds by a monk speaking reasonably English. I would like to know more about certain aspects of Buddhism but unfortunately my guide is not very interested in explaining much more than the usual tour routine. The Labrang monastery has six large monastery universities and used to house no less than 4,000 monks. But was before the Cultural Revolution. Not much was left of the monastery after the Red Guards were finished with it. But today, many of the buildings have been rebuilt completely according to the old designs and the monastery seems full with life with as many as 1200 monks populating the place.
The monks seem to be living a good life, toting the newest mobile phone and playing video games in the local Internet cafe. The lay Tibetan seems very devoted to the Tibetan Buddhist faith, performing jobs for the monks and monasteries and generously contributing in donations. I can't help having some understanding for what the communists must have seen as an exploitative feudal relationship between the monasteries and the lay Tibetans. But the Tibetans seem to bear their fate with unsurpassed gregariousness and cheerfulness, making the celebration of their faith a contagiously happy one.

Xiahe is mainly a monastery town. The Chinese town at one end is the product of the Han Chinese expansion policy, but the fun is happening at the Tibetan end of town. The Labrang monastery belongs to the dominant Gelukpa sect, but further out is also a more modest monastery of the Nyimapa sect with the monks distinguishing themselves from the Gelukpa monks in robe and hair style. There is also an extensive nunnery and my two German travel companions in Xiahe, Elke and Una, and I were invited into one nun's home while we were on our way up the hill behind the monastery following one of the routes for circumambulation of the monastery grounds. Sonam Dolma like most monks and nuns had been in the monastery since she was 8 years old. With our and her limited Chinese language abilities we managed to exchange only limited information. Fortunately, Elke was so clever to bring some photographs of home. And together with my Rough Guide phrasebook and Una's Russian - Chinese phrasebook we still spent some pleasant moments in her lovely little cottage on the hill overlooking the valley with the Tibetan village.

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