High Road to Qinghai 大路到青海

Occupy Wall Street - NYC, October 2011

2012-01-15T17:58:00.001-08:00

Under Construction

Xiamen, China, September 2011

2012-01-15T16:28:00.000-08:00

under construction

Big Ger & Little Brad

2011-04-10T10:42:00.000-07:00

The cover of my master's thesis, Big Ger and Little Brad: Their Adventures in China, written for the Department of Landscape Architecture, Graduate College of Design, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC (1988). My thesis was an anthro-ethno-geographical study about the environmental and human forces observed along the Great Wall frontier during my bicycle journey with my best friend, Gerry Mowry, from Beijing to Urumqi in 1986, as we attempted to retrace the route taken by the two main characters in Fritz Mühlenweg's classic book, Big Tiger and Christian: Their Adventures in Mongolia.

Swiss publisher Ekkehard Faude is establishing the Fritz Mühlenweg Museum in Konstanz, Germany, and looking for examples of work by others around the world who have been influenced by the German artist and writer Fritz Mühlenweg. After reading one of my stories, Mr. Faude requested to review my thesis for consideration into the museum's permanent collection. Fritz Mühlenweg's, Big Tiger and Christian: Their Adventures in Mongolia led me on a journey that changed the course of my life.

As I read Big Tiger and Christian for the first time in graduate school during the mid-1980’s, I became absorbed and enthralled and consumed. I was consumed not only with their adventure, but with my ignorance. My ignorance of not only myself but of the world. I needed to understand. Experience. See the world around me and write about it. I wanted to discover myself and make sense of the world. Like Mühlenweg, I also wanted to be able to write a good story well. But I knew that I knew next to nothing about writing. I felt I had to learn more before graduating. Therefore, I entertained the thought of deviating from the typical expectations regarding landscape architecture final projects and instead write something up. I felt I should learn it by doing it. However, as much as I felt compelled to learn more about writing, I also worried that I might lose interest in strictly a writing project. The last thing I wanted was to be like so many last-semester graduate students slaving over projects that thoroughly bored them to death. I desired a project that would bring me to life. I addressed this design problem by integrating my many interests and aspirations into a project that would surely hold my attention. Fan my enthusiasms. Ignite my passions. I decided to retrace Big Tiger and Christian’s journey from Beijing to Urumqi through the Gobi Desert along China’s Great Wall frontier by bicycle while drawing, writing, and photographing the landscape and people observed and encountered along the way ... provided I could get support from the College of Design. This, I felt, would require a radical committee.

Since one could not get more radical than Dr. Denis Wood, and because it was Dr. Wood who had lent me his copy of Big Tiger and Christian in the first place, and because he was a writer whom I wanted to study under, I started with him. I asked Dr. Wood to not only serve on my graduate committee but to chair it. With utter-enthusiasm and über-delight, he agreed -- but required my thesis be at least 200 pages. As intimidating as this requirement was at the time, I agreed. Although I had no idea how I would write much beyond 20 pages let alone fill 200, but that was a problem for another day ... another year. Meanwhile, I still needed two more supporting professors to serve on my committee. I wanted both a powerful committee and one that got along well together. I wanted to bring people together who wanted to be together. So I went to the top and approached Department Head Art Sullivan and then Professor Dick Wilkinson. They agreed. With such a strong committee I knew that I would get pushed and that things would get done. Meanwhile, I had things to get done and I was soon off studying under Dr. Wood (and auditing a Chinese class nearby), planning and preparing on my own, training in Pennsylvania, and then, finally, traveling in China with my best friend Gerry Mowry. Altogether, it was a hell of a lot of work. Merely traveling through China was a lot of work! But after I returned home I discovered that the work had just begun.

I spent two semesters laboring over my thesis fulltime (and not for any credit whatsoever). After wrestling through seven drafts of every page before submitting each one to Dr. Wood, he then went over every submission with me in person at least twice during the weekends at his home in Boylan Heights (all on his own time). This experience was more than just about writing. It was about reflection. Deep thinking. Struggling. Philosophy. I had no idea what I was in for when I first proposed this idea. It changed me. It was, at the time, by far the most profound, intense, transformational experience of my life. I had no idea writing could be so grueling and yet so fulfilling and it led me away from landscape architecture and back to our family business, a summer wrestling camp. At the camp, I would continue to write for years. Writing, to me, was as much wrestling as wrestling was writing.

Once my thesis was written, copied, and bound, of the 25 or so copies I had made, only a couple remain in my possession today. This copy of Big Ger and Little Brad was the one I presented to my parents when I returned home from graduate school in 1988. Thanks to my mother, it is in excellent condition and might be the best preserved of any copy left.

Maps of the route Big Ger and Little Brad took in 1986 through the Gobi Desert along China's Great Wall frontier as they attempted to retrace Big Tiger and Christian's route through Inner Mongolia, Gansu, and Xinjiang (Chinese Turkestan).

Qinghai Movie Clips

2010-12-01T06:53:00.000-08:00

The following are 13 short movie clips from the Amdo region of Greater Tibet in Qinghai Province. I used a Fujifilm Finepix F70 EXR digital camera and was most pleased (especially with the photos taken in low light). Meanwhile, Sander is working on his own short film of our journey ... due out before the end of the academic year.

Movie Clip #1: XINING BUS STATION
A 360 degree view of Sander waiting one minute at the Xining Bus Station. Note: The men in maroon (robes, tunics, chubas) are Buddhist monks; those wearing white skull caps are Hui (one of China's Muslim Minorities).

Movie Clip #2: BUS RIDE FROM XINING TO TONGREN -- ROAD THRESHING
Farmers making use of traffic to thresh their hay.

Movie Clip #3: SANDER ON BRIDGE IN TONGREN
While walking from our hotel to the intersection across the bridge to wait for a bus to our next destination, we stop to look around.

Movie Clip #4: TONGREN INTERSECTION
As others have noted, an intrusion of sound can be an assertion of power. After walking over the bridge in Tongren, Sander and I stop at an intersection of time, cultures, and change. It was at this intersection, under a tree on the southwest corner, that Sander and I waited hours in good company for the bus to Henan to arrive. Finally it did. And off we rode into the mountains and onto the steppe.

Movie Clip #5: INSIDE BUS DURING RIDE FROM TONGREN TO HENAN MONGOLIAN AUTONOMOUS COUNTY
Buses can be crowded and ours from Tongren to Henan was no exception. The front and seats were packed as well as the aisle.

Movie Clip #6: QINGHAI STEPPE
Grasslands and rolling hills above the tree line where yaks, sheep, goats, and horses grazed among Tibetan Tents and Mongolian yurts.

Movie Clip #7: ZEKU -- FESTIVAL AND HORSE TRADING
When the bus stopped in Zeku to drop off a passenger, I stepped off to capture a moment of Tibetan horse trading during a festival.

Movie Clip #8: SANDER BUDGETING FROM HOTEL BED IN HENAN MONGOLIAN AUTONOMOUS COUNTY
After racing to the provincial wilds (and dramatic lower costs of living and traveling) in the Amdo region of Greater Tibet, Qinghai Province, Sander takes over our budget. As Sander works the numbers, I peek out the window for a view of the street in Henan Mongolian Autonomous County. The sign on the bus and the edge of town, that I saw, called this place Henan. But other sources called it Yougan Ningzhen. The elevation was around 11,000 feet and Sander and I were experiencing some of the effects of altitude sickness.

Movie Clip #9: HENAN MONGOLIAN AUTONOMOUS COUNTY -- TIBETAN JEWELRY-MAKING
Although the jewelry-makers working on Tibetan pieces seemed a little uncomfortable with our filming, they had granted us permission.

Movie Clip #10: HERISI - TERTON CHOGAR GONPA - CHANTING AND DRUMMING MONKS, Part I
Sander and I thoroughly enjoyed our visit to this monastery near Heri (Hor), west of Zeku and Henan, Qinghai Province, P.R. of China. After following the sounds of chanting and drumming to this inner sanctum, a monk outside gave us permission to visit and film inside. It was amazing! Unfortunately, I stopped right before a monk walked by spreading smoke. Part II, which follows, captured a little of the smoke.

Movie Clip #11: HERISI - TERTON CHOGAR GONPA - CHANTING AND DRUMMING MONKS, Part II
Buddhist monks chanting and drumming as Sander and I watch and film.

Women of Amdo on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

2010-09-03T02:05:00.000-07:00

Photo: The two young women in Zeku who walked over from the tar-choks and flirted with Sander (August, 2010).

We had more difficulties photographing women than men. But here are a few. Photos now, comments later:

A Belated Thank You and Credit

2010-08-31T10:02:00.000-07:00

When Sander and first talked about taking a journey together, he expressed an interest in Tibet and Mongolia. Without any financial restrictions, we began mapping out our ideal journey.

Our initial plans started out by flying to Amsterdam, then heading to Finland, before landing in St. Petersburg by boat and in Moscow by rail. From Moscow, we planned to take the Trans-Siberian Railway to Ulan Bator, Mongolia. After a week or so in Mongolia, we planned to take the railway to Beijing and on to Lhasa, Tibet. But then the financial realities set in and we had to make hard decisions.

While looking for options, I stumbled upon two websites designed and maintained by Losang. Losang is from the United States but has been living in Greater Tibet with his wife and their two children for the past eight years. He has carved out an absolutely fascinating living for himself through research, contributions to notable publishing houses and television shows, and leading tours.

When I shared Losang's websites with my son, he pored over the pages and photographs (I've also recommended these two sites to my former colleagues interested in this part of the world). Shortly after Sander began exploring Losang's pages, he enthusiastically expressed an interest to go to the Amdo Region of Greater Tibet (located in Qinghai Province, China) to see the Tibetans and Mongolians who live there. This change of plans made our journey financially possible. It also made Sander more excited than ever for our journey (and our journey turned out to be everything he expected and more).

Now, we can't wait to go back!

Losang's two websites can be found here:

Land of Snows
http://landofsnows.com/los/Home.html

Life on the Tibetan Plateau
http://kekexili.typepad.com/

It was from these pages that I discovered two of the five books I took along (Mapping the Tibetan World and Footprint: Tibet Handbook).

So I must give my belated thanks to Losang for all we learned from his websites, photographs, and book recommendations.

Final Note Before Return Journey

2010-08-13T06:39:00.000-07:00

Photo: Sander receiving an invitation to visit a yurt or tent on the steppe in the Henan Mongol Autonomous County, Amdo Region of Greater Tibet, Qinghai Pronvince, P.R. of China (August, 2010).

Many thanks to Daryl and Courtenay Houk for their support and assistance on so many essential fronts!

And special thanks to Courtenay Houk for reading, editing, and posting my blog entries (sites like blogspot, facebook, and others are blocked in China). I will elaborate on my current submissions, and add more, in addition to many photographs -- and film clips -- following our return home.

We will begin our journey home tomorrow.

Brad

Photo: Sander shot this photo of me outside of Guide's Jiaotong Luguan as we were heading back to Xining.

Letter to Daryl

2010-08-12T14:14:00.000-07:00

Photo: After traveling from Xining to Hong Kong in one long day, a late-night-exhausted-blurry-view of lively Hong Kong Harbor from the amphitheater of the Youth Hostel on Mount Davis, Kennedy Town, Victoria, Hong Kong Island, August, 2010.

Hey Honey,

Yes, Sander and I arrived in Hong Kong last night. Our journey went like this:

We took a taxi yesterday morning from our hotel in Xining to the airport about 20 miles east. We boarded the plane around 1:35 pm and took off 30 minutes later. To our surprise, after only a couple hours, we were landing. This was too soon to be Guangzhou. People started to get ready to disembark. This stop was not explained to me when I purchased our tickets and it was certainly not printed on our tickets. I don't know if we were the only ones who were clueless though. When the stewardess announced what was going on I could neither understand her Chinese nor her English. Minutes later, with a lot of lateral movement by the plane (which we have noticed a lot of during our domestic flights in China, making the flights more wild than a roller coaster since roller coasters don't move that way [at least the ones that stay on the tracks]), we abruptly landed in Changsha!

Changsha?

Once off the plane and in the terminal, and after being told to wait at the wrong gate at the wrong time by a woman at the Changsha information counter, we ended up on the right plane at the right time and assured by a more reliable source that our luggage was on our plane.

We arrived in Guangzhou around 6:00 pm and were soon in a taxi for the Guangzhou East Train Station.

We went through Chinese customs and caught the Express train to Hong Kong with 20-30 minutes to spare. On the train, knowing the hostel closes its gates at night and locks them but unsure of the time (I was thinking possibly 9:00 pm but more likely 10:00 pm, but that was 24 years ago and tonight it was already after 9:00 and going on 10:00.) I told Sander that it's a killer hill up to the hostel and were it closed we would either be camping out or paying for a hotel that would in one night cost more than the hostel costs in three.

I asked Sander, "You need to ask yourself a question: 'Do you feel lucky?'"

Sander replied with an emphatic: "Yes!"

We arrived in Hong Kong where we went through their customs and were in a taxi for the youth hostel by 10:30 pm via the Harbor Tunnel and then through Central and Kennedy Town in Victoria on the north shore of Hong Kong Island. At it's western point he took a hard left and drove up to the top of Mount Davis approaching the hostel just below the summit. It's quite a summit.

Photo: Impressionistic view of Hong Kong Harbor at night from youth hostel, August, 2010.

As the taxi pulled to a stop, we saw that the gate was still open! We hopped out, Sander paid the cabby, and we grabbed our gear reading the sign on the gate as we entered: GATE CLOSES AT 11:00 PM AND WILL NOT OPEN UNTIL 7:00 AM. We made it inside by 12 minutes! Twelve minutes!

Can you believe it!

Ours was an incredible sprint across China. To have covered all that distance -- in China -- in one day, through all those different methods of travel, and then to get inside where we had reservations with minutes to spare was incredibly lucky. I told Sander, "I'm traveling with luck," as I looked at him. He replied, "I'm traveling with luck," as he looked at me.

We were both lucky and totally exhausted!

We still are.

Right now we're in Kowloon, on the north side of Hong Kong Harbor and north of Hong Kong Island.

After scouting out how we were going to get to the airport the day after tomorrow, we decided to take the Star Ferry across the Harbor just for the fun of it. To enjoy the ride. To enjoy the sights of Hong Kong and Kowloon and the harbor itself. It's a beautiful harbor and a gorgeous day.

Photo: The famous Star Ferry, which we used daily to travel back and forth between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island.

Having hardly eated yesterday, we pigged out on some Hong Kong pasteries this morning and then sat down and had a real meal for a change from yesterday. For tonight we're entertaining the thought of picking up a Beijing Duck and taking it back to the hostel with us where we will wash clothes, write up our journals, and just relax. Maybe we'll view the harbor from the summit of Mount Davis just above our hostel too.

Anyway, thank you for writing and just wanted you to know where we were and how we got here. We'll soon be on our way home.

I love and miss you too!

Brad

Sander the Yak

2010-08-10T17:42:00.000-07:00

Photo: Yaks walking the street of Zeku, Qinghai Province, August, 2010.

We were in the market near our hotel in the Tibetan Quarter of Xining today. The Tibetans, like the Chinese, are not the most hairiest of people and body hair often interests them. Two Tibetans observed Sander buying a sling before commenting on his hairiness. Of course, yaks are really hairy too. In fact, they seem hairier in real life. The yaks we saw looked like they were wearing great beards, or skirts, sweeping against the ground by their hooves as they grazed. Sander and I, like the Tibetans, love yaks and feel, as Basho might have said, that they are deserving of their Chinese name: MAONIU (hairy ox). Meanwhile, the Tibetans, were scrutinizing Sander's hairy face, arms, and legs, and inquired if he was buying a sling shot to use for yak herding back in America. Impulsively, I made horns with my forefingers and placed them pointing skyward on either side of Sander's head while telling them that Sander was a MAONIU. They laughed and laughed! And so did we in the market, here in Xining, in the Tibetan Quarter.

Photo: Sander, in the market trying on boots, after buying a sling and conversing with two Tibetans.

Guide

2010-08-09T16:57:00.000-07:00

Photo: Sander on the ancient city wall surrounding the old part of Guide, August, 2010.

Following our drive from the steppe town of Tongde to the oasis town of Guide (pronounced: Gwee de), I am more confused about the physiography of Amdo, Qinghai province, than ever. Wherever we've traveled in Qinghai we seem to have been encircled by mountains. When we rode onto mountains, there were always higher ones in the distance. When we got to those, there were still more. Mountains were everywhere and there were different types. In the oasis of Guide, we were encircled by rugged, dry, hot, barren mountains. Below the moutains, even the water was hot. Some of the hotels fed off the hotsprings.

Upon entering Guide, our bus passed the Wenquan Binguan, a new, three-story, hotel that looked both inviting and way beyond our price range. (Sander and I had a very low price-range.) When we stepped off the bus, we walked through the station and out to the street where we looked for the Jiaotong Luguan - the Traffic Hotel (Traffic hotels provide the basics. Best of all, they are cheap. We like cheap).

We scanned the Chinese characters on signs and found it instantly right next door. We entered, asked if they had any rooms and the price for the two of us. They had rooms and would make them available to us. Sometimes foreigners aren't permitted to stay in places like this and are instead directed to more expensive facilities where they are also taxed.) The price for our room was 60 Yuan Renminbi (less than $10 total for a two-bed room). We liked the price and asked to see the room (a common practice). The attendant walked us upstairs, down the hall, and opened a door. We stepped inside and looked around.

Sander and I were absolutely delighted to have our own toilet to say nothing of the shower with 24-hour hot water (maybe this hotel also tapped into the hotsprings below). Without looking any further, we said we'd take it for two days.

We spent the next two days exploring the remains of the old city wall. In fact, it was the old city wall that Sander wanted to see most in Guide (it was the reason we came here). Over the past few weeks, I'd mentioned Xian's old city wall, in Shaanxi Province, and another I'd read about in Pingyao, Shanxi Province, which got Sander thinking. Since we would not be visiting Xian, and now that Pingyao was scratched off our itinerary, Sander decided that we should stop in Guide, just for the wall, on our way back to Xining. We had to ask around to find the wall.

When we did, I could see disappointment in Sander's eyes. The wall was nothing like the stone or brick ones he'd imagined ... like the ones I'd described. Guide's wall was made out of adobe bricks and although it was 30 feet tall in many places, it was also in need of repair in many more. Nevertheless, the wall did not lack history. It was, after all, built during the Ming Dynasty and in the neighborhood of 700 years old. To salvage something positive from the experience Sander proposed that we climb the wall. The wall was such a steep and precarious climb that I tried not to show my reservations. Instead, I suggested we walk the perimeter first to scout out a good place to climb to the top.

As we walked around the wall, we noticed signs that we thought might've said something to the effect of, DON'T CLIMB THE WALL. There was a police car nearby and people walking in and out of the surrounding villages. Just as we wondered if anyone would care if we climbed we saw a well-dressed girl walking on top of the wall. My reservations evaporated and Sander found a place to climb.

Photo: Sander climbing Guide's ancient city wall (August, 2010).

With a little effort, we made it and walked along the top looking at the vast courtyards within, the many neighborhoods without. And we simply explored. There was much to explore. It was a fascinating wall. The heights were at times dizzying and we had so much fun we decided to return the next day.

Photo: The stone carving we found in Guide's ancient city wall (August, 2010).

We spent the next day on top of the wall drawing. From a hole in the top of the wall we found a circular stone with a carved pattern like a nautilus shell. We wondered what it was used for and talked about how it must have been regarded as junk before getting tossed into the wall centuries ago. It might, therefore, be hard to say how old it really was. By the end of the day, I don't think Sander was at all disappointed in the wall.

Photo: Sander drawing on Guide's ancient city wall (August, 2010).

It was also so hot that between us we drank 10 bottles of water that afternoon before sitting in the shade along a street eating ice cream, hanging out, watching people and traffic pass by.

Photo: Sander atop Guide's ancient city wall (August, 2010).

Photo: Brad sketching on the top of the ancient city wall of Guide (August, 2010).

Mongolian & Tibetan Encounters

2010-08-08T07:22:00.000-07:00

Photo: The motorcycle has been replacing the horse on the steppe among Mongolian and Tibetan herdsmen. In the Henan Mongol Autonomous County, where Sander and I spent 11 days, we saw Mongolian and Tibetan herdsmen on both horses and motorcycles ... but mostly motorcycles in the town of Henan.

During a bumpy bus ride between Zeku and Heri, Sander gazed out upon the steppe and watched Tibetan women in chubas filling large green bags before asking, "Dad. What are they harvesting?"

Squinting out the window in the direction Sander was looking, I said, "Just as people in Vermont are collecting firewood for their winter, so the Tibetans here are collecting yak dung for theirs. Eventually, they'll pile it into a mound and probably, later on, mix it with water, make it into round fistfulls, flatten it into circular patties, then slap them against a south-facing wall. There the patties will dry in the sun. Once dried, they'll peel them off and stack them away for the winter."

We've been smelling the smoke of yak dung fires lately. Not only from cooking fires but ceremonial ones from below our room in Heri, neaby residences, and Buddhist sites. I've actually taken a liking to the smell, almost as much as I did to the pinon pine on the Navajo Indian Reservation. It's a smell we find most everywhere here.

Everywhere, the Mongolians and Tibetans have taken a liking to Sander. Tall, chuba- and sash-wearing, rough-looking men with weathered faces, would stop or walk over to Sander on the street and lock eyes with him. A bit startled at first, Sander would look toward me. Only a couple times did I have to say, "Meet his gaze, Sander, and hold onto it. Look deep into his eyes the way he's doing to you. Then, when you're ready, flash him a big smile." Unlike the Chinese, who consider it disrespectful to lock eyes for most any length of time, the Mongolians and Tibetans love it. They meet eyes and capture you. It's as if they read who you are in how you respond. Sander, from then on, would meet their gaze, and hold onto it in a long intimate exchange. Then curl his lips into a huge smile revealing his braces. Without fail, the Mongolians and Tibetans of Amdo, who value any form of generosity or act of kindness, even a smile, responded with an even bigger one and often one decorated with many gold teeth. As the the Mongolians and Tibetans of Amdo captured Sander, Sander captured them.

Photos: Captured in an Amdo gaze: 12 people we met.

We were also captured by more than a few monks between Henan and Tongde. They would so often approach us, grab us by the hands, lead us to a certain spot, ask to be photographed with us, and we with them exchanging cameras, and then we would go our own ways. Although sometimes there were other requests. In Tongde, after such an exchange, a group of monks invited us to eat with them. Since we had just eaten, we declined and told them that we were going to climb the mountain. They liked the idea, especially, I think, because they had just climbed it themselves. They then invited us to drink together after we returned. We thanked them but, even though hardly any of the monks we encountered since Hong Kong tried to solicit us for money, declined to take them up on it. But the gesture itself was like another Tibetan smile.

After visiting the monestary in Heri, Sander and I were walking back through town when it was crowded with people from the steppe. Horses were being traded and huge bales of sheepskins as well. Utensils, tools, and food were being purchased. Motorcycles, the new horse of the steppe, were everywhere. A Tibetan on a motorcycle locked eyes with me as he drove slowly past. I locked eyes with him. He looked as if he could have played the lead role in a film about an Amdo fight for independence. I flashed him a big smile. He, to my suprise, stuck his tongue out at me! I told Sander.

"Yeah Dad. It's a sign of respect or admiration. I've gotten it a lot. Actually, I've started doing it back."

Sander and I left Tongde on the Amdo steppe by bus and rode to Guide (pronounced: Gwee de).

The Voice

2010-08-06T14:01:00.001-07:00

Photo: Sander with monks in Tongde (August, 2010)

Sander and I didn't know what the police were so concerned about. We didn't know what we might have captured on film that would send an officer out to get us within minutes after we started filming. Maybe he was followng up on a complaint from a resident, such as the Hui man who rode by on a motorcycle that I happened to catch. Had I known he was Hui when he first came into view, I wouldn't have filmed him. I know the Hui (who are Muslim) don't like to be filmed. (In 1997, in Shijiazhuang, a Hui man once threw a rock at me while I photographed a Hui street market. I got the message and have since always asked.) Sander and I have done lots of asking permission on this journey.

Photo: Tongde, a town on the Qinghai steppe, but deep in the protected Baqu Valley with loess cliffs to the north and south (August, 2010).

But what if the police were concerned about us filming the many new communication towers and installations that line the rim of Tongde's gorge? China's military has made enormous strides in the past few years and Qinghai, the Amdo region of Greater Tibet, might still be a sensitive region regarding potential social unrest among the Tibetans. There are many Tibetans here. Tibetan is the language to know. In fact, as I write this in a little Tongde internet cafe, everyone around me is speaking Tibetan, not Chinese. If the possibility of social unrest is an issue, that might explain the army barracks, as well as the armed police barracks, in most of the towns we've visited in Amdo. If this was over anything regarding the military, I wondered if this might be a problem. So I prepared. The officer said he would be at our room at 8:00 pm.

Before 8:00 I looked up words for world, government, tower, and shadow. I wanted to be prepared to explain that a government that spies on its own citizens would surely spy on other countries. That whatever Sander and I might've filmed from the ground has already been photographed from space. That even if those images didn't provide the information desired, the height and many other details could be extrapolated from the length and shape of the shadows of the towers based on time of year and time of day. I played out the possibilities and came up with a short list of keys words to use and commited them to memory. I wanted to be ready.

I've dealt with the Chinese police before for riding my bicycle in closed areas. The Chinese police simply do not mess around sometimes. At other times, they make examples out of people. I thought of possible accusations and appropriate defending arguments and memorized key words. I tried not to show Sander how nervous I was.

At 8:00 pm sharp a gentle knock came to the door.

I opened it and invited the officer in. He was alone.

He smiled and handed me the camera. I didn't understand everything he said. So I asked Sander to open the camera to see if his film was still in there. It was.

The officer explained that everything was good. He seemed to be as happy as I was that there wasn't a problem.

He asked how long we would be staying.

I told him we'd leave the day after tomorrow. I asked if we could take pictures in Tongde.

He assured me that that would be fine. We were allowed.

I thanked him.

He thanked me, shook my hand twice, and saluted me twice.

I didn't expect anything like this. It was so easy. So quick. So pleasant.

Photo: After saving money in our spartan accommodations in Zeku and Heri, in order to get a shower in Tongde, we had to go with a suite for about $25 per night (August, 2010).

Once he left, Sander and I reviewed the film. The beginning was a segment Sander shot of the monastery in Heri, the town where we spent two days before our arrival in Tongde. In Heri Sander had gorgeous shots of the stupas and prayer flags.

Then we watched the short piece I filmed of Sander walking earlier that day. At the end of the clip, we could hear a voice yelling for us to stop.

A voice, a story, Sander may never forget.

I know I won't.

Photo: Sander at the bus station in Tongde. If one can navigate China's transportation system of busses, trains, and planes, one can go about anywhere in China with ... RELATIVE ... ease ... surprises ... hardships ... and rewards.

Paranoid

2010-08-05T13:43:00.000-07:00

Photo: Tongde stretches out along a canyon of loess cliffs along the Baqu River.

Tongde is in a gorgeous valley! A long, east-west trending, deeply-dissected, gorge that resembles a smaller version of the Grand Canyon-but with more grass on the less-than-verticle slopes. There are many verticle slopes thanks to the loess near the top. There are caves in the loess. We checked one out. I'm sure the caves are old. The town looks relatively new and is comprised of two main roads running parallel to each other with, like much of China, lots of frantic construction. Beyond the construction and noise are high cliffs north and south. Our hotel, the Tongde Binguan, faces the north-facing southern ones. Last night Sander proposed that we climb it where we saw a man and yaks standing precariously on a narrow switchbacking path. I suggested that I walk with Sander's video camera and film him for a change. He agreed.

Photo: A view looking south from our hotel window.

Late this morning, we walked out of our hotel, crossed the busy main street, turned left, then right down an alley. As I started filming Sander, we descended toward the river. There were wading yaks and a Tibetan woman yelling and throwing stones at the yaks from the north bank in an effort to herd them upstream. Sander paused on the bridge nearby where prayer flags covered the railings and fluttered in the breeze. It was a soothing breeze on this sunny, hot day. I zoomed in on Sander, the yaks, then the Tibetan woman. After pulling away I spun around to catch a glimpse of the village near the bridge at the edge of the town, the cliffs in all directions, the huge horizontal stand of prayer flags up the path at the top of the gorge, and, finally, on Sander as he started the climb. The climb was so steep that for every four steps Sander climbed up he slid back down one or two. He slid a lot. But I slid more. We stopped and discussed how we were going to tackle this before Sander said he wanted to see if he could make the climb up the path he chose. Suddenly, a voice, called to me from behind. I ignored him at first, not sure if it was me he was talking to, and continued to try to follow Sander but with noticeable difficulty. I heard more shouts. Before long, I could not ignore them any longer. I recognized the blue uniform. The police. We walked toward each other.

Photo: The path we took seen from a distance.

He told me that he was the police. I told him I know. (Someone must've seen us and called the police.)

He wanted to know what we were doing. I explained.

I asked if he spoke English. He said he didn't.

He wanted to know where we were staying. I told him.

He wanted to know where we came from and where we were going, that is, what our plans were. I told him.

Then he wanted to know what we were filming. I told him that I was filming my son climb up the mountain.

It was the filming that concerned him. Maybe something on the rim?

He wanted to know other things but my Chinese is very limited and I didn't understand everything that he was asking. I told him so. He didn't believe me. He said that I was understanding what he wanted and that I spoke just fine. (Okay, maybe I knew a little more than I let on but I still missed way too much and guessed at the rest. I do a lot of guessing when I speak Chinese.) We argued about that for a while, but, the end, which I did know, it was camera and film he wanted.

I asked if I could take his picture.

He flinched.

He asked if he could confiscate Sander's camera.

I told him that I loved China and the people (implying that and wouldn't intentionally do anything to harm anyone), that I even taught English to a college for the People's Liberation Army.

But he assured me that he would return it tonight. But tonight could mean a long time waiting. I didn't want to wait if I didn't have to. I pinned him down for a time. Eight o'clock pm. He told me that at 8:00 pm he would bring Sander's camera to our room.

I asked if we could climb the hill.

He said we could. We shook hands. He walked away.

Sander and I continued up the wall of the gorge. It was steep. We slid backwards a lot. Tiny stones rolled under our feet. The goats are good at this but even the yaks take their time. The yaks really take their time. We met yaks along the way. Later we met goats. The goats are fast.

Near the top Sander and I stood among a horizontal stand of prayer flags. The flags, the gorge, the town, altogether they were breathtaking! Too bad we couldn't film this! Even worse, too bad I couldn't film Sander make the climb. Yet the climb wasn't over. We still hadn't climbed onto the plateau at the top of the gorge (we were planning to climb up all the way and walk along the rim then hike down via another route). We continued up.

But just as we approached the top we were met by a large, angry, chained dog barking hysterically at us. A woman peaked from over a wall to a home we previously hadn't noticed. She wasn't doing anything to calm the dog. The dog, watching us, wouldn't stop. It looked vicious. We picked up some rocks, turned around, and carefully descended...looking behind us periodically. We slid a lot. One does not want to slide at the wrong spot on a path like this. We didn't slide at any wrong spot but there weren't many right ones either. I thought about the camera and film.

I hope they don't keep Sander's footage and I certainly hope they return the camera.

He should be at our room by 8:00.

If he shows up on time and alone it should be good.

If he shows up later than 8:00 with others it might be trouble.

Back on the main street Sander and I sat in front of a store eating ice cream. It was a perfect time for ice cream and conversation. We decided to walk to the internet cafe.

The cafe was practically filled with Tibetans, most playing computer games and some shouting at each other. Sander and I got online. He read and responded to some emails and is now watching Colbert. A man came in and was watching me from the other side of the room. Five minutes later, as I continued to write this, he stood behind me. He just stood and watched. After a few minutes I said hello. He responded and walked away.

Photo: Among the first Chinese characters that Sander learned were WANG BA (internet cafe). In no time Sander was picking out these characters all over many of the communities in which we stayed (August, 2010).

I just feel we've been watched a lot today.

Maybe I'm paranoid.

Brad

Heri

2010-08-04T17:17:00.000-07:00

Photo: Prayer flags between Heri and the nearby Terton Chogar Gompa Monastery (August, 2010).

Yaks, dri, sheep, goats, horses, and Tibetan tents were scattered and clustered across the seemingly boundless rolling steppe. At one tent, a boy ran to our stopped bus with a large plastic tank. The driver took the tank and poured the diesel fuel into the bus. From a stream, a woman brought another plastic container before the driver filled a makeshift tank behind his seat. Meanwhile, the road, like so many of China's stimulated cities and villages, was under frantic construction.

"It looks like the Chinese are rushing to get the road done before winter," I said to Sander.

"It looks like they're racing to get it done by next week," he replied.

By early evening we had traveled from Zeku to Heri (pronounced, "Hor").

Heri was a small village. Outside the bus we were pointed to the guesthouse where we immediately booked a room upstairs over a shop. There would only be electricity during certain hours. There was no running water during any hours. When I asked about the toilet, we were directed to the community facility down the road.

Heri was a small but vibrant village. We thought it was awesome!

Photo: The wall at the head of my bed (August, 2010).

Photo: The bed post on which I cut my foot during the night (August, 2010).

Populated with Tibetans and Hui, Heri functioned as a center for buying supplies as well as for trading horses, sheepskins, and so on. At times, like in the late mornings or late afternoons, it seemed the population swelled to 10 times its normal size with people in from the steppe. But around noon, when the day was hot, most people were napping. Sander and I didn't nap. We had too much to do.

Photo: Stupas at the Terton Chogar Gompa Monastery (August, 2010).

Photo: Sander at the top of the hill at the Terton Chogar Gompa Monastery (August, 2010).

Photo: Prayer wheels at the Terton Chogar Gompa Monastery (August, 2010).

Photo: A monk, a fire, and Sander reloading at the Terton Chogar Gompa Monastery (August, 2010).

Photo: Mani wall at the Terton Chogar Gompa Monastery (August, 2010).

Photo: Yak dung ceremonial fire at the Terton Chogar Gompa Monastery (August, 2010).

Photo: Near the center of the Terton Chogar Gompa Monastery (August, 2010).

We walked a kilometer up the road, passing, and getting passed by, a herd of sheep and another herd of yaks, to a brilliant stand of prayer flags. We filmed and took photos before continuing up the road to a monestary called Terton Chogar Gompa. There was no charge to get in, we discovered, as we hiked up a hill into the monestary in a clockwise direction where they gave us vitamin water and candy. From the top of the hill the view over the valley was incredible! We walked by a long wall of mani stones and descended on the other side taking lots of photos of prayer wheels. Before long, we seemed to be getting into the heart of the facility when we heard the faint sound of drumming. We followed the drums!

Photo: The building we entered to view drumming and chanting at the Terton Chogar Gompa Monastery (August, 2010).

They led us to a doorway in a walled compound. The beating was coming from inside. From a multi-storied building constructed in a traditional Tibetan style. There was a monk at the wall's entrance. I asked if we could go watch. Surprised to see foreigners, he said we could. Sander and I looked at each other equally surprised at this opportunity. I asked the monk if we could take photographs. He agreed we could. Sander and I looked at each other again, smiled, then stepped through the entrance.

Photo: An inner-sanctum ceremony of chanting and drumming at the Terton Chogar Gompa Monastery (August, 2010).

Sander began filming immediately. He caught the audio of the drumming on his approach. As we ascended stairs, we could soon hear chanting. Sander kept the camera rolling. We entered the building and saw shoes and sandles near the entrance. So we took ours off and I took off my hat as well. We walked quietly up to another entrance and sat down. Two inner and two outer rows of monks, some old, others quite young and sitting on laps. Two drums. Some of the monks looked uncomfortable with our filming. They seemed self-conscious. Yet others didn't mind. The room was a brilliant red with gold throughout. It looked, well, amazing. They continued to drum. They chanted. The chants changed in rythym over time. One monk walked by spreading smoke from incense. It was a fascinating ceremony and the generosity we experienced at the monestary gave me a different perspective from other monks we saw eating from huge cauldrons or buzzing by on new motorcycles or drving in BMW's.

We spent two wonderful, if not spartan, days in Heri before moving on by taxi to Tongde.

Photo: Prayer flags spanning a river between the village of Heri and the monastery of Terton Chogar Gompa (August, 2010).

Photo: Sander filming at the Terton Chogar Gompa (August, 2010).

Photo: Stand of prayer flags between Heri and Terton Chogar Gompa (August, 2010).

Brief Update from The Girls in VT

2010-08-03T06:41:00.001-07:00

Thanks to all who have written to Daryl and Courtenay back home in Vermont!

Sander is feeling much better. His fever broke and he was fine as of yesterday when we last heard from Brad. The "boys" have moved on to Zeku, I believe. We should hear more shortly!

xo,
Daryl

Zeku

2010-08-02T13:27:00.000-07:00

Photo: Horse-trading, or a festival before a race, #1 Zeku (July, 2010).

Photo: Horse-trading, or a festival before a race, #2 Zeku (July, 2010).

Photo: Horse-trading, or a festival before a race, #3 Zeku (July, 2010).

Photo: Horse-trading, or a festival before a race, #4 Zeku (July, 2010).

Photo: Horse-trading, or a festival before a race, #5 Zeku (July, 2010).

Photo: Sander getting dropped off in Zeku (August, 2010).

Sander and I loved Henan. Only later did we realize that most of the people we thought were Tibetan were actually Mongolians who had, over time, adopted many Tibetan ways, making them difficult to tell apart. I will not claim to be able to make the distinction between Amdo Mongolians and Amdo Tibetans in the Mongolian county of Henan. But we loved Henan. In Henan, after a long and arduous journey getting there, we were finally able to relax in a fascinating and diverse atmosphere. We were hungry for diversity. But after ten days in Henan we hopped on a bus for Zeku.

Photo: Binguan night lights in Zeku (August, 2010).

Zeku is a Tibetan town about an hour's drive northwest from Henan. In Zeku, just beyond the yaks on the road, Sander and I were the only two to get off the bus. It was hot, dry, dusty. We threw on our backpacks as the bus took off for Xining, and headed into town. We passed two horses hitched to a post. All that was missing were bouncing tumbleweeds.

Photo: Binguan (guesthouse) in Zeku where we stayed (August, 2010).

Both of us were looking for the Chinese characters for binguan, which means "guesthouse", which means "cheap hotel". We didn't see any for the longest time. But when we stopped to rest and ask for directions, the door we stepped through was an internet cafe. The woman running the place pointed across the street. Down the side alley, now blantantly obvious, were four binguans. We took the first.

Typical of China, the rooms were simple: two beds with thick quilts and flat pillows, a TV (maybe it worked, maybe it didn't), two chairs, a tea table, a night stand, a light in the ceiling, and a little coal stove. There was a community toilet outside and a community washroom down the hall. It had running water: it ran out a spout from a hanging bucket. It was cool. We liked this place, but elected to stay two nights instead of four.

Zeku, like the rest of the China we've seen, appeared to have received an enormous stimulus package from the government and put many people to work. It has been transforming towns like this, as well as the country as a whole, resulting in what appears to be an economic boom of sorts. It's amazing! But staying in Zeku at this time was like living inside a construction site. In Henan, the construction was taking place on the outskirts of town, so we were able to relax. But in Zeku, construction was taking place outside and inside. It wasn't fun, mainly, I think, because the first eight days of our journey was so intense it was like traveling inside one of these hurried Chinese construction sites. We needed to get away from that. From this.

Photo: Herding young yaks into a police blockade, Zeku (August, 2010).

Nevertheless, after settling in and eating lunch at a Hui restaurant, we headed out to explore the town. It was construction all over. But at the west end of town was a hill covered in prayer flags. They were prayer flags like we've never seen. Some were like a 100 feet long! We photographed and filmed like crazy. On the far side of the hill the steppe opened up to clusters of tents, and herds of yaks, horses, and sheep. Sander and I sat and enjoyed the view. The grasslands, the mountains, the clans herding hundreds and hundreds of animals over miles and miles. Gorgeous!

Photo: Sander turning a huge prayer-wheel near the mound of Tar-choks in Zeku (August, 2010).

Photo: Scene and yak-dung mound at the Tar-choks, Zeku (August, 2010).

Photo: Stupa at the Tar-choks, Zeku (August, 2010).

Photo: Detail of the Tar-choks in Zeku (August, 2010).

Photo: Woman walking clockwise around Zeku Tarchoks and the girls who flirted with Sander (August, 2010).

The next day after eating breakfast in our room, I went back out onto the street only to discover that, contrary to the guidebooks I'd brought, there were no longer any busses to Tongde, the next town on our planned journey. Were we unable to get to Tongde, we might have to return to Xining the way we came. We didn't want that. I asked around. Eventually, I was told by a bank officer that we could take a bus to Heri (pronounced "Hor"). Heri was about 41 kilometers from Tongde. Given the efficiency of the Chinese transportation system, we figured that there must be a bus from Heri to Tongde. An unreliable source confirmed that there was indeed a bus. I told Sander. He said, "Let's go for it!" I told him that I was told that the bus will be out here at 10:00 am. We packed and checked out.

Photo: Zeku street scene (August, 2010).

The bank officer walked us to the bus and introduced us to the driver. Because no tickets were being sold and payment was only being accepted right before departure, no seats were claimed until then. But the bus would not be leaving until 2:20 pm. So Sander and I dropped our packs and were about to settle in for a long wait. The driver suggested we place our packs on the seats and he would watch them. We did and decided to go journal in a restaurant. But half an hour later, Sander noticed that the bus wasn't there. Our hearts raced. But this sort of thing often happens in China. The driver told us where he would be departing from. So we went to look for him and sure enough, there he was.

Photo: Tents and herds of yaks, horses, and sheep on the edge of town.

But this was a strange day. The police, for reasons I never understood, blocked off the entire intersection at the center of town for hundreds of yards and for hours. At times it was funny watching them and the herders trying to control unruly yaks that didn't understand they couldn't pass through. Then the police kept moving the parked traffic around. This meant that Sander and I spent the day tracking and retracking down the bus. In the end, however, we found the bus for the fourth time and loaded in, in front of our packs, with half a dozen Tibetans. The bank officer came to make sure we made it onto the bus. After the bus spent another 30 minutes driving around looking for more passengers, we were off across the steppe once again west for Heri.

Photo: Our bus to Heri (August, 2010).

Mongolian Flies

2010-07-31T14:42:00.000-07:00

Photo: Sander sleeping in bed, Henan Mongol Autonomous County (August, 2010).

When I got sick in Xining, Sander took care of me.

Now Sander is sick. Really sick. Far worse than I was. I bought a thermometer and took his temperature. He has a fever. He's really in bad shape. I'll save him the embarrassement and won't describe it. In case his condition worsens, I scoped out the hospital. It's down the street. It closes at 5:30 pm. They seemed like good people. Meanwhile, Sander is taking his Ciprofloxicin, and he's sleeping.

Because the hotel's, and maybe this part of town's, water supply shuts down for hours daily, I only left Sander to make three water runs and pick up supplies. Otherwise, I'm just laying here as Sander sleeps. I wake him up periodically to get him to drink the oral rehydration solutions I mixed up with bottled water, salt and sugar. He did this for me in Xining. (Although he recently admitted that he mixed up the sugar and salt amounts. It tasted like saltwater, but I drank it anyway.) Meanwhile, things are quiet. I hear Sander breathing. Good.

I'm caught up with my journal.

I'm not in the mood to read.

I watch the flies.

The flies.

We have three or four types of flies in our room. Their numbers have been reduced, however. I bought a swater today on a water run. I had to. When I woke up and saw six flies on Sander's heavy thick white quilt, I found the site disturbing. I've been getting Genghis on the flies. Not all the flies. I'm selective with my wrath.

The first type of flies are the ones Sander noticed and wrote a humorous piece in his journal about. He named them Mongolian flies. I look forward to what he says on his blog when he writes about them. We've never seen anything like them. They hover in a self-selcted imaginary sphere in the three-dimensional center of our room and dance. It's fly ballet. Elegant. Beautiful. Inspiring. They interact mostly with themselves. They glide and dart but only within that imaginary sphere. They leave us alone. They leave our food alone. The only things they don't leave alone is the second type of fly.

I call these the bumble-flies. They are huge, fat, obnoxious, clumsy, juicey, and loud. They arrive one at a time. When one comes near the Mongolian flies, they attack. The bumbles bumble away and bounce off the wall. Sometimes they hit my head with a thud. I splatter the bumbles with my swatter. They explode. This leaves me with a mess to clean up. But I'm glad to do it. I hate bumbles in our room. All flies have easy access to our room because there is no screen on our window. Our room would be impossible during the day with the window shut, so we keep the window open. We open an invitation to flies of all sorts. They like to visit. We provide good things to eat. Our room fills with flies.

The third type of fly is the common house fly. Unlike the unnerving buzz of the bumbles, the houseflies fly silently. Stealthfully. They land on our faces in the early morning and wake us up. I hate waking up to houseflies. I cringe at the site of them on Sander. I wonder if they landed on garbage and then on our spoons, chopsticks, mugs and glasses. Maybe they contributed to Sander getting sick. I grab the swatter. I go Genghis. Carcasses are bestrewn across the floor. Legs are still sticking to the walls. I put a sign outside our window. It has a crushed fly...and says: ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK.

There might be a forth type of fly. It's narrow. It bites. It reminds me of those biting flies on the beach of the American eastern seaboard. But I could be wrong. I need more data.

I could say that I'm sick of flies, but that would be a gross generalization. I love Sander's dancing Mongolian flies. They're welcome anytime.

Photo: Dead flies, Henan Mongol Autonomous County (August, 2010).

Arrival in Henan Mongol Autonomous County

2010-07-31T14:26:00.000-07:00

Photo: Manager of the hotel in which we spent most of our nights in Henan Mongol Autonomous County (August, 2010).

28 July 2010

Sander and I have to make our money last. We have no choice but to make every Yuan Renminbi stretch as far as possible. We can't leave China before our flight, and don't want to leave Amdo in Greater Tibet until the last possible moment because our money goes further here. This has meant a change in lifestyle.

We can't graze through the course of a day simply because an abundance of food is available in the refridgerator or cabinets. We have no refridgerator or cabinets. Processed food in China is expensive, although there is a lot of it and it's beginning to show on the waistlines of the more affluent Chinese in the form of pounds.

Meanwhile, I'm shedding them. I eat meals and seldom anything in between. I've gotten used to being hungry. That has been a big step for me. Before this trip, at home, I never went hungry for very long. At the slightest urge, I shoveled or woofed something down. But not now. I even wake up famished because I don't eat before bed. If I'm hungry at night I drink a cup of hot water. At home, I had a couple beers.

The first day we arrived in Henan, I had a regional beer to celebrate even though I had a headache. I didn't realize that my headache was the beginning of altitude sickness. It was a mistake drinking the beer with altitude sickness. I haven't had a drink since and feel no need to. It's odd, but I feel better, thinner, healthier, than ever. I would like to think that I'm acquiring a heightened sense of discipline, but it's really a matter of necessity to stretch our money. The true test will be after we return home and I have food all around me 24 hours a day. But for now, this lifestyle has been good for my wallet and waisteline.

Sander, on the other hand, I try to keep well fed at all times. He doesn't need to lose weight. But he doesn't have the option, like the yaks and dri around us, to graze through the course of the day. So Sander might be losing a little weight too. I hope not. But as Big Tiger and Christian often say in Muhlenweg's book about their adventures in Mongolia, "It can't be helped."

Notes from a Traveler: Guidebooks to Amdo

2010-07-31T14:12:00.000-07:00

For anyone interested in low-budget travel to Amdo, the cheapest route is not always the cheapest route. To do over, I would not book the cheapest flight to Hong Kong and enter Mainland China through Guangzhou. Southeast China is expensive. Travel in China peaks during the summer months, and not only with foreigners, but with moving migrants and students. When one considers the migrant population, Guangdong Pronvince has China's highest population. Schools usually close in July. As Sander and I discovered, the transportation system becomes strained in the summer. Seats of any kind can be hard to come by. If one can't find a seat then one is stuck, and to be stuck in southeast China is to shell out a lot of money. It got so bad for us that I feared we might not get to Amdo, Qinghai Province, at all.

To do over, I would fly directly and non-stop to Beijing before catching another flight to Xining, Qinghai. This will be quicker, less strenuous, and, in the end, possibly cheaper.

Xining is different world. Prices are lower and get lower the farther one travels into the countryside. The countryside, the great steppes of Qinghai, are worth traveling to. Really, they are amazing! After Sander and I return home to the States I will begin posting photos. Then you can see for yourself.

As far as guidebooks, I brought a small library. I did so because knowledge is power, it can save money, and I wanted to provide Sander with the best experience and education possible. But the books are heavy. Presently, my Chinese is good enough that I could do away with all of them. Nevertheless, they have served as valuable resources. I brought four books. They are as follows:

1) Footprint: Tibet Handbook, 4th Edition, September 2009, by Gyume Dorjie. This is an amazing, informative, well-done book. Anyone traveling anywhere in Greater Tibet would be better off with it. I think it's fantastic!

2) Mapping the Tibetan World, 2000/2004 Reprint, by Osada, Allwrite, & Kanamaru. I love maps and therefore this book even though it is outdated. Nevertheless, it remains a valuable resource.

3) The Rough Guide to China, April 2008. Like maps, guidebooks are outdated as soon as they are printed. Especiially guidebooks on China because China is changing that fast! So it is with Rough Guide to China. But it has been useful. It is packed with loads of information. It is, indeed, a worthwhile puchase and useful tool. I'd always been a fan of The Lonely Planet Series but heard that Lonely Planet was going more middle-class and that Rough Guide was better serving the budget traveler. I don't know. I do know that I was often frustrated with Rough Guide to China.

One reason for my frustration has been the maps. The maps included in Rough Guide to China assume a Republic of China political perspective and not a People's Republic of China one. The maps show Taiwan as a separate nation. Regardless of one's political views, what this does is that it not only risks offending the people of the host country, but it puts the low-budget traveler at risk of having his book (his resource to low-budget travel) confiscated. That would be inconvenient and costly. I'm fine with taking political stances, but we should start at home with: independence for, and returning lands to, all of America's Indigenous Peoples; returning lands to Mexico; forming a new nation-state along America's southeast seaboard and calling it, I don't know, Africa America, and so on, and so on (to say nothing of having these forts around the world). Or we could look at Taiwan and how the government has dealt with its own indigenous population. Putting the low-budget traveler at risk of losing her/his book, and offending one's hosts, are not good ways to begin a journey.

A second reason is the spelling of the place names. It would have been useful to include the pinyin, the tones over the romanization of the Chinese characters, whenever a Chinese place was named. Granted, this was done in colored blocks in the chapters, but the way I used the book I didn't discover this until I realized I didn't need the book anymore. To use the book with the Chinese interpretations, such as finding a hotel and using the book to ask directions, one had to constantly flip back and forth between pages. If one didn't do this, then one was left with the name, for example, of a hotel without the tones or characters. In China, this is dangerous.

For example, when we hosted a Chinese exchange student and I would practice reading narratives in traditional Chinese characters, and she would correct my pronunciation, I once read the character for gan. But gan has four or five tones and each tone means something different. The gan I said was not the gan I meant. The gan I said was, "f**k". Another example: In China, the softdrink, Sprite, is popular especially among foreign travelers. Sometimes the more adventurous foreign travelers ask for Sprite in Chinese. But the second character for the Chinese word for Sprite is bi. Bi, like gan, has different tones and therefore different meanings. A Chinese tour guide once informed me of the frequency in which foreigners ask for Sprite in Chinese but since they don't get the tone right what they end up asking for is some form of vagina. It might be wet vagina, or watery vagina, but a vagina nonetheless. This cannot be found on the menus in Chinese restaurants. Tones matter. Rough Guide to China could to better with the tones and character throughout. To do over, I'd give Lonely Planet: China another chance.

4) Lonely Planet: Mandarin, 6th Edition, September 2006. At this point in our travels and limited language abilities, this is the only book I need to travel through China. Whether one only uses this, or with an actual guidebook, this is a wonderful, useful, light, small, efficient, useful book and I highly recommend it. My only complaint is that the pinyin tones and the Chinese characters are so small that I can hardly make them out, sometimes even with my glasses. Still, it's a wonderful little book!

Henan: Men with Beads

2010-07-30T14:36:00.000-07:00

Attaining a portrait of a community is not easy work. Photographing the landscape and streetscape absent of people has its challenges.

Photo: Grasses and flowers of Amdo's rolling steppe (August, 2010).

Photo: Necklaces and prayer beads of a Henan Mongol Autonomous County shop (August, 2010).

Photo: Bundles of prayer flags in a Henan Mongol Autonomous County shop (August, 2010).

Photo: Bells for sheep and goats in a market stall (August, 2010).

However, photographing the people can be another matter altogether. This blog entry is about a process of, an exercise in, building relationships with others:

In an effort to come to grips with our own experience in the landscape and culture we find ourselves, Sander and I have been writing about, filming, and photographing the land and people around us. This has been, in part, our way of documenting the land that has shaped the people; the people, the land. Both have certainly been shaping us. I'm not sure what or whom we have been shaping. But both sides usually come away with something. Sander and I are trying to come away from this experience with as much as possible.

But one cannot just go around filming and photographing people here. Don't try this on the Hui. The Tibetan women, weighted down in colors, silver belts, and jewelry, will not allow it. And I wouldn't again risk it on a Tibetan man wearing a short sword or long knife. (I found out the hard way a couple decades ago when, after pressing the shutter button, a Tibetan pulled out a long knife and lunged after me). So Sander and I ask before we shoot and have meanwhile been trying to break down barriers. Create a sense of trust. Exposing ourselves to show that we're not bad people and hoping that maybe some will allow us to photograph them. There is so much to photograph and film here and we feel we have done so little.

Photo: Peace sign ... usually always displayed backwards (August, 2010).

Our latest attempt to endear ourselves was to sit out in a public space and draw people and things within our line of sight. In China, anything that happens in the street is fair game to watch. It is public theater. It might be an argument, a fight, a stabbing, an accident, or an actual performance...say, with a monkey. I've seen all these things. But over the past couple of days, Sander and I performed. We staged our own theater.

We sat ourselves down on a set of concrete steps outside a store on Tumotenanlu Street in Henan, and drew. We knew what would happen. It did. Within minutes we had a crowd around us so thick that not only were we unable to see each other but the motocycles we were drawing. Tibetan herdsmen love their motocycles, which they call moto. We quickly had a crowd of Tibetans, many were herdsmen.

The men who ride these motocyles dress them up colorfully and elaborately with sheepskins, saddleblankets, saddlebags, and other things. The are, in effect, modern horses. The men, meanwhile, wear chubas (the traditional Tibetan tunic) with sleeves tied in front, or in the back when it's warm above the sash, and sometimes a sword. But in the mornings and evenings their arms are in their sleeves because it gets cold quickly on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau when the sun isn't up.

As we drew, they were also facinated with the hair on our legs. I'd read once that the Chinese look at such characteristics as ones that place certain people closer to apes on the evolutionary scale of things. I don't know what the Tibetans surrounding us felt. But they did appreciate our efforts at drawing and loved watching. One man pretended like he was going to pull the hair from my legs. I pretended like I was going to pull the hair from his chin. He flinched, then laughed.

It was fun drawing even if Sander had to draw the moto from memory because of the crowd and I had to keep shooing people away. Some shooed still others away for me. They loved the diversion and were wonderfully encouraging to both of us.

A little girl nearby laughed at my toes in my sandles. When I wiggled my toes, she laughed. I kept wiggling. She kept laughing. Sander and I tried to draw her too but she kept moving. Finally, I took a photo of her and when she ran off I drew her from the image on my camera. The Tibetans loved that! When I got up to try to capture all the people crowded around Sander most ran off. I took a shot at those who remained.

A couple of the young, virile, males permitted me, finally, to take their photos. The one on his moto invited us to his home. He said his home was south of town out in the steppe. Because I have concerns as a father with Sander riding on a moto behind a young virile male who might have a tendency to show off, to say of the other dangers, I pretended to not understand. He told me in Chinese that he would be back for me and took off with his friend on the back of his moto. The scenario I saw playing out was: both of them soon returning each on his own bike looking to give Sander and I rides out to their homes. I told Sander. Wanting to save our Tibetan friends a sense of face (by not having to turn down their public invitations directly) and uphold my fatherly sense of responsibility, we packed it up and headed for a restaurant on another street. We saw our Tibetan friends roar by a couple times on their motos looking for us. We heard them roaring through the streets many times through the night.

But during the day we were able to form the relationships needed to photograph the portraits of many. One thing we discovered during our time in Henan was how the young males can be described as men with swords and the older ones as men with beads.

The following is a series of photos of community elders, many with prayer beads:

Photo: A prayer wheel held and spun by one of the community elders (August, 2010).:

Photo: Furniture builder (August, 2010).

Photo: Furniture carver (August, 2010).

A Note from the Doctor

2010-07-29T04:58:00.000-07:00

Photo: Sander filming a stand of prayer flags high above Henan Mongol Autonomous County (August, 2010).

Dear Dr. Sue,

Sander and I were hiking down off a high hill after a photo shoot of a stand of prayer flags when he spotted a Tibetan herder's tent. Known for their mastiffs, we picked up some rocks and quietly made our way hugging a fence in case we needed to climb over (or crawl under) to the other side. But because of the rusty barbed wire at the top and bottom, we didn't risk climbing (or crawling) before we had to.

Photo: Prayer flags during sunset high above Henan (August, 2010).

Once we got beyond the tent, I had Sander walk in front of me in case any dogs came up from behind. Everything here is grass (no trees) and it was getting dark and we simply didn't see a strand of heavy, rusty, barbed wire hidden in front of us. Sander tripped on it and it caught him in his left Achilles heel. The wire broke the first layer of skin but did not penetrate deeply at all. We had some hand sanitizer on us, so I put down my rocks and scrubbed it immediately.

Photo: Tibetan tents in Henan (August, 2010).

We descended the hill and on our way into town stumbled upon a stupa. Curious, we stepped inside. Not wanting to exit in a counter-clockwise direction, we got sucked into the monastery deeper and deeper, and beyond the prostraters, ended up turning a few dozen prayer wheels in order to make a quick getaway. Maybe the wheel turning will help Sander, but I'd rather hear from you. We stopped at an internet cafe on our way back to our room where we will scrub Sander's wound.

Photo: Stupa at the monastery Sander and I stumbled upon after Sander cut his foot on barbed wire hidden in the grass (August, 2010).

Photo: Clockwise-spinning prayer-wheels spun by clockwise-walking pilgrims at the stupa (August, 2010).

Photo: Human-size prayer-wheels at far end of the stupa (August, 2010).

Again, it's not deep. But I would like to know if you think I need to get Sander a tetanus shot here in Greater Tibet?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Brad Houk

---------------

So cool--email from Tibet!. Sander's last booster was 5 years ago so tetanus-wise he should be fine. Make sure the area is kept clean and covered with a bandage and antibiotic ointment if you have any. I'm not sure if he is still taking antibiotics from Dr. Smith but if so, that should help. Watch for any signs of increasing redness or smelly discharge.

Photo: Prayer flags high above Henan Mongol Autonomous County after sunset (August, 2010).

Henan: Men with Swords

2010-07-27T14:09:00.000-07:00

Photo: As soon as Sander and I stepped off the bus in the Henan Mongol Autonomous County, we knew this was a place we would spend a lot of time. We visited Henan for 11 days.

China's march toward modernization has been relentless. As Guy Davenport states in his book Apples and Pears, "culture always suffers at the expense of progress." So it is in Amdo, eastern Greater Tibet, Qinghai Province. But in Henan we have finally leaped ahead of the major thrust of China's modernization efforts. Finally! It's been such a long hard journey getting here.

Photo: Mongols, motorcycles, and horses in the Henan Mongol Autonomous County, Qinghai Province (August, 2010).

Sander and I feel no need to venture deeper into Amdo, into Qinghai Province, than Henan. Ninety percent of the people in this county are Mongolian, although most of the people we see in town are Tibetan. Most of the Tibetans are still dressing in their traditional chubas and sashes adorned with what appears to be like pounds of silver, turquoise, and coral jewelry. They come from miles around, maybe hours away, to resupply their tents and yurts on the steppe where they tend herds of yak, dri, horses, and sheep. The horse, for the most part, has been abandoned for the motorcycle. Indeed, the town is abuzz with motorcycles and herders bundled to the hilt on these chilly Qinghai mornings. By mid-day, the chill gives way to the intense Amdo sun and the faces of the people are often those that have been hardened by living out in the weather every day, year after year. The weather of Qinghai is harsh. In contrast, the Tibetans and Mongolians are warm-hearted and open with most any form of generosity...even a smile. As Sander and I entered Henan, we smiled at each other. We knew that this was it! Henan is not a place where foreigners frequently travel. Certainly not with their kids. Currently, we are the only foreigners in town and Sander might be the only Western young adult they have ever seen. He gets lots of looks and plenty of attention. The Tibetan girls are gaga over him. Sometimes they huddle in groups giggling and smiling watching as he eats in a restaurant.

Photo: Sander with a friend in the Henan marketplace.

Meanwhile, we've been documenting everything as much as possible. But getting people to allow us to photograph them is not always easy. So we've been thinking of ways to develop relationships, especially since many portrait photographs or filmings represent the relationship between the subject and the one behind the lens.

To try to address this, we visited a school with the intention of helping out in an English or physical education class. But the school was all locked up (the Chinese often take July off). Another angle was needed. Given the resonableness of our living expenses (we're managing to get by on $10/day/person), I purchased Sander a chuba. It took several days to complete this transaction because most of the chubas were enormous. But finally, through a teenage girl who could speak Chinese, she was able to interpret what I said to her into Tibetan to get Sander what he wanted. Sander left the shop with a dashing summer chuba with colorful wool trim and a bright pink sash. If Sander got looks before this, he really got them now! In fact, he's achieved celebrity status in Henan. Large men in chubas and sashes make beads for Sander on the street to shake his hand! After the purchase, he kept the chuba on while we walked around town hoping that this might break down some barriers and get us invited into a yurt or tent. Our plan worked too well: we soon had two invitations. But I had to pretend not to understand their invitations because our way to their homes on the steppe would have been by motorcycle. Helmets are the rare exeption here and my heart raced at the thought of my son shooting across the grasslands (maybe an hour one-way) without a helmet on what surely would've been a wild ride even if the driver didn't show off. I feared the driver showing off. And then, were we to do this, I would be expected to engage in more than a little drinking in the tent or yurt of our host. Then there would be the ride home. Shit, I really worried about the ride home! Often I don't think about these things. I do things impulsively. But Daryl, my wife, has been a grounding force in my life. Neverthless, as much as I would like Sander to be exposed to life in a tent or yurt, it's not necessarry. What's neccessary is his safety. This has already been a successful journey. My job has not only been to teach Sander to travel on a shoestring and to expose him to this part of the world, but to get him home safely. I have to get him home safely. So we don't need to go deeper into Amdo and we do not need to visit the inside of a yurt or tent. As Sander will attest to, this journey has been wild and challenging. Personally, it's been as hard and challenging as any journey I've ever taken. Sander has not missed out on any adventure whatsoever. I'm proud of how Sander has stood up to the challenges. Neverthless, we both felt honored to get the invitations. Besides, just going out to eat is an adventure.

Photo: Just before we entered our hotel (in the background), another man on a motorcycle pulled up after spotting Sander and invited us to his home.

There is not a lot of variety to the food here. Most people eat various noodle dishes. Any dish with rice that we've had so far has been the exception. Actually, the rarity. We've been eatings lots of noodles; baozi, jiaozi, huntun (wonton), mutton, yak and beef. Our most unusual meal in Henan so far has been Mongolian firepot. Firepot sets on the table and is made of brass. It has a chimney in the center, a moat around the chimney, and a dung, coal, or sterno fire inside. Raw noodles, mushrooms, vegetables, and meat are placed in the broth, in the moat (sometimes the food is raw and placed on a platter and the dining individuals use chopsitcks to hold the food in the broth until it's cooked). The flavor changes, becomes more intense, deeper, with time and interactions. Mongolian firepot is an exciting way to eat, share the company of others, and pass the time. This is a fascinating landscape in which to pass the time, and the food is certainly reflected in the landscape.

Photo: Not only are tunics commonly worn, but sometimes short swords or long knives.

The land around Henan is an elevated steppe plateau. The land is so high that Sander and I spent our first two days suffering from altitude sickness. It was terrible. Pounding headaches, nauseousness, restlessness. But now we are fine. It just takes a lot of effort to do physical things. For instance, yesterday we hiked up the hill to the north of town to film and photograph the strand of prayer flags at the summit. The climb was steep and we had to stop for many breaks. It was exhausting! But we were stopping anyway because the flowers of this hilly grassland were blooming and absolutely gorgeous (I wished I could send bunches to my Daryl and Courtenay)! At the top of the hill the world just opened up: grass hills and rolling green flats to the horizon in all directions. Tents, yurts, and herds thinly spread across the landscape. The fluttering and vibrating prayer flags exploded in color beneath the intense sun, blue sky, and brightly-tinted clouds. I shot photos until my battery died. Then I replaced it and shot more. Sander filmed for 25 minutes. It was a successful shoot. Below, it looked like a funeral. When I saw a vulture, I hoped it wasn't a sky burial. It wasn't. But we gave them lots of distance and I wondered how Henan has changed over the past 50 years.

In only a few years, Henan may look like Tongren. Geographically, Chinese modernization is spreading out from her major cities in predictable ways along roads and rails. Fortunately for Sander, this was the perfect time to visit Henan. What he has been able to observe is precious, informative, revealing. It's an education everytime we step on the street. Henan streets belong to China's wild west.

Photo: While Sander was walking around Henan after purchasing a chuba (a traditional tunic of the Tibetans and worn by the Amdo Mongolians as well), he received invitations to a couple homes and the attention of many.

Henan has that rough-and-tumble steppe character I've so often read about. And yet this is a place of transition. Then again, the steppe has all too often been a place of transition. I've been wondering how this time and place might not be that different from a century and a half ago in what's now America's Midwest before the last of the Plains Indians were forced off their lands and onto reservations. Like this land shaped by relatively recent geologic orogenies, it is about to witness a cultural orogeny of sorts. A transformation from within and without. I wonder if progress will take place at the expense of culture. Yet many of these tent-living, weather hardened, hardy pastoralists look as their great great great grandfathers did a century and a half ago. But just when I think I've stepped back in time, a Tibetan in a chuba and sash pulls out a cell phone and makes a call. Could they have a flat screen TV in their tents? I have yet to own a cell phone or a flat screen TV.

Then again, each day I pass a Mongolian or Tibetan wearing a sword. I can't help but wonder how many communities today still have this: men with swords.

Photo: Mongolian yurt, Tibetan tent, laundry on fence.

Photo: Close up of prayer flags from our first trek up a hill to a stand north of Henan (August, 2010).

Photo: Prayer flags from our first trek up a hill to a stand north of Henan (August, 2010).

Photo: A sample of the many flowers found on the steppe during our hike up the hill to the prayer flags (August, 2010).

Photo: A sample of the many flowers found on the steppe during our hike up the hill to the prayer flags (August, 2010).

Photo: A sample of the many flowers found on the steppe during our hike up the hill to the prayer flags (August, 2010).

Tongren: Monks on Motorcycles

2010-07-21T15:26:00.000-07:00

Photo: The Tibetan elder who sat with us at the Tongren intersection while we waited for the bus to Henan Mongol Autonomous County (July, 2010).

After three days in Xining, Sander and I boarded a bus for Tongren. The drive was a journey into old China, but with a new twist...such as those satellite dishes on so many old adobe homes. Meanwhile, farmers still threshed their grain by spreading it in the road for vehicles to drive over before they winnowed it in the wind along the roadside. It was a gorgeous drive to Tongren.

Tongren, according to the guidebooks, was a small town of huge importance concerning art and Buddhism. The 3 1/2-hour drive through the mountains was as incredible as our arrival was disappointing. Tongren was not a small town focused solely on art and religion. It was a large Chinese town built around the commercialization of Tibetan art and religion. I would not claim that Tongren has reached the stage of Chinese theme park, but we knew as soon as we arrived that this place was not what we'd come for. We felt the urge to move on as quickly as possible. Given the time, however, we had to spend the night.

We tried to book a room in a cheap hotel but were refused entry because we were not Chinese. Being foreigners, we had to go to another hotel, the Re Gong Binguan, and pay twice as much. We did. We paid. And the following morning we threw on our backpacks and hiked to an intersection by a bridge. I had learned the day before that bus tickets would not be sold from the Tongren bus station. What one had to do was wait at the intersection for a bus with the Chinese characters in the windshield showing the bus's destination. We did not know for sure when the the bus we wanted would arrive, but based on what I learned the day before it should arrive by 12:30 pm. Not wanting to take any chances, Sander and I hung out under the shade of a tree at the intersection with an elderly Tibetan man and, from time to time, many passersby.

On the corner, we were never left alone for long. The Tibetans have taken a wonderful interest in Sander. One Tibetan woman thought Sander was a doctor (he was wearing a Red Cross tee-shirt) and was getting up the nerve to ask him to check her out. She never did, but she did hang around us for a long time. Meanwhile, the intersection was fascinating. Men and women dressed in traditional Tibetan chubas (heavy tunics with sashes) walked by. So did many monks in their burgundy robes.

Photo: The woman whom we met at the Tongren intersection who thought Sander was a doctor and wanted him to check her out (July, 2010).

The monasteries, appearantly, have shared in the profits of Tongren's commercialization. It seemed every monk we saw had a cell phone. Many had digital cameras. And still others raced past us on brand new shiny purple motorcycles. Others of red ones. When we ate, sharing a table with a poor Tibetan family eating from bowls of square noodle soup, the monks near us at an adjacent table were devouring huge cauldrons of sizzling beef. Some monks were actually fat.

Photo: Detail of a woman holding beads in Tongren (July, 2010).

Suddenly, a bus with the characters for Henan (the Qinghai town, not the province in the east) appeared and it wasn't stopping for long. I leaped to my feet, raced across the intersection, and flagged down the bus. I confirmed that it was the bus we wanted and asked if there was room. It was. And there was. I ran back to get Sander and my gear but Sander already knew that this was it and was loaded and handed me my pack. We shook hands with our Tibetan friend and ran to the bus.

On the bus we were given seats. The bus drove across the bridge and stopped before taking on more passengers. One man, who I took for the driver, said that I was in someone's seat. Then a man stood by me and told me that I was in his seat. I gave it to him. But then I realized that the first man was not the driver and instead another passenger. Since I was paying like everyone else, I had the feeling that I had just been taken advantage of. What followed was my first argument in Chinese. Some people laughed at the scene. Then another man said that it really was that guy's seat and I backed off. I felt like an ass and kept my mouth shut. But then the last man who spoke to me offered me his seat. I insisted, in Chinese, that he sit...over and over. But a minute later he was sitting with the driver in front and I was in his seat.

The drive was breathtaking! The young mountains were of vertically folded layers of sedimentary rock often capped over with a hundred feet of loess. The slopes weren't vertical but not far from it. This was landslide country and, indeed, we did see the results of some. The drive on the narrow, windy, gravely road and the steep deep cliffs were enough to give one the willies to say nothing of the heart-stopping action that took place whenever our driver passed other vehicles in the most unusual circumstanses: like on the curves. At other places, the road had been washed out. Nevertheless, we continued to climb in elevation and eventually we found ourselves driving on a beautiful hilly steppe with white Tibetan tents, gray Mongolian yurts, yaks, dri, sheep, and horses. In Zeku we stopped to let someone out and I stepped off the bus to snap a few quick photos of a huge pack of tightly grouped horses and Tibetans in what might have been the prelude to a horse race during a festival. There was definitely a festival taking place in Zeku. But the driver called and I hopped back on the bus. Our next stop was Henan. Henan is the county seat for Henan Mongolian County. Ninety percent of the people in Henan County are Mongolian. Sander and I had high expectations for Henan.

Photo: Monks, like many others, gravitated toward Sander. The monks around Tongren, unlike those in Tongde or Heri, showed many signs of wealth, from buzzing around on new motorcycles to talking away on cellphones to snapping photos with digital cameras and so on. Here, Sander stands with a monk between Xining and Tongren during a break in our bus ride (July, 2010).

The Budget

2010-07-20T15:16:00.000-07:00

Photo: Our evolving budget on a clipboard, Xining.

One point of this journey has been to show Sander how to travel on a low budget. I just didn't realize how low, low was going to be. Actually, I didn't realize many things...such as how precisely we were going to have to plan our exit from China. This we completed yesterday with the purchase of airfare tickets from Xining to Guangzhou on August 11. From Guangzhou, we will take a train to Hong Kong before flying home on the 14th. Given the national squeeze on the transportation systems, we had to plan all this out now before heading into the steppe. Had we waited to do this, we would have found ourselves saying, as Ulysses Everett McGill did in O' BROTHER WHERE ART THOU, "Damn! We're in a tight spot!"

Tomorrow, we head into the steppe and will be out of touch for the next 18 days. Our plan is to make a loop visiting Tongren, Henan, Zeku, Tongde, Xinghai, Guinan, and Guide. These are all places Sander chose based on goals, research, and cross-referencing as well as our budget. I haven't Google-earthed these communities but if I could, now I would. This is the part of the journey Sander and I have been most looking forward to. We also have to keep to a budget that amounts to less than $20/person/day for the next 20 days. This will not be easy but we have to do it. If we don't, the consequences will be severe.

The urgency of taking on this challenge, assuming this critical responsibility, is something Sander has risen to. In fact, he has taken control of our finances and has organized his record-keeping to an art. This has carried over in everything, from how he maintains his backpack, counter-space, life. The degree of maturity I have witnessed in Sander is staggering. And because he has been involved with every decision and part of every solution, he, I feel, has grown in ways that classroom or organized tours simply can't provide. This has become Sander's journey. It's just so wonderful to witness this growth in Sander.

Sander has now begun to keep me in line. Last night, as I debated whether or not I could get one more day out of what I had been wearing, he said, "Dad! You really need to change your clothes!"

Photo: Night view from hotel (the Great Mosque of Xining, also known as the Dongguan Mosque, is outlined in green), Xining, Qinghai, P.R. of China.

The Train to Qinghai Province

2010-07-18T07:21:00.000-07:00

Photo: Sitting in the aisle during our 19-hour hardstand train ride from Zhengzhou to Xining, Qinghai Province (July, 2010).

Sander and I arrived in Greater Tibet yesterday evening by train from Zhengzhou, Henan, Province. There are different classes that passengers can choose from on the rail cars: 1) soft-sleeper; 2) hard-sleeper; 3) soft-seat; 4) hard-seat; 5) hard-seat standing. The names are revealing and that will have to do (I have traveller's diarrhea and am between runs. Therefore, this posting will have to be quick). Because this is the time of year when students and migrant workers move back home, or to other regions, making space available aboard trains, planes, and busses is tight, and tickets are hard to come by. In fact, our rail tickets were the last two available for that day. They were for standing room only, in two separate hard-seat cars. We bought them and decided we'd find a way to be together. The train was scheduled to depart around 10:00 pm and we had to be out of our room by 6:00 pm (after buying an extra half day to sleep a little more (Sander did, but I didn't).

I've been sleeping very little on this journey. Actually, I've hardly slept much over the past week for a combination of reasons: 1) jet lag; 2) excitedness; 3) fear of running out of money; 4) fear of not following through on my promise to show Sander Tibetan and Mongolian cultures in Greater Tibet; 5) fear of Sander getting hurt. Some nights I've waited for up to six hours for Sander to wake up.

While waiting, I'd pore over my books (I brought a small library) and finances to explore possible solutions with Sander after he woke up. We started this journey with $4,000 in our pockets. But after five days of travel, as we flew from Guangzhou for Zhengzhou, we had spent half of our money. I was in a near panic. Once Sander woke up and we ate, we talked about our situation and came up with a solution: we opted to cancel our plans of visiting Pingyao (famous for its well-preserved architecture), Shijiazhuang (where we used to live at a Chinese army college), and Shanghai (the location of the World Expo), and instead decided to focus completely on Greater Tibet in Qinghai Province. We figured if we got into the frontier region of Amdo, inflation would be nothing like it was on China's eastern seaboard. It was a gamble we had to take. We cashed $900 in Zhengzhou and dedicated that to travel money in Greater Tibet. Our remaining $1,000 in Traveller's Cheques that Sander was carrying would be used to get us from Xining, Qinghai Province, to Hong Kong for our flight home.

Photo: A long, cramped, grueling ride (July, 2010).

But first we had to get to Xining. The hard-seat train car was new, clean, with air-conditioning and a high ceiling. Every seat was taken. Sander and I didn't have a seat and had to stand in the aisle. What the Chinese do, is sell the aisle-space to an additional 30-50 people. This can nearly double the number of people in the car. With the aisle packed, and people eating and drinking (mostly hot soups and teas), there is a constant flow to the toilets where lines form since, I'm sure, the rail car designers didn't anticipate up to 100% additional passengers using these facilities. As a result, Sander and I sat on our backbacks and constantly had to stand to let people squeeze by to use the toilets, where one was located at each end of the car. And then there were the train attendants, coming through frequently selling food and sweeping the aisle. When the attendants came through we had to squeeze between the legs of those passengers in actual seats. No part of anyone's body was left untouched. For those in seats, it was a sort-of party (but I assure you that hard-seat is no party for any long journey, especially with a crowded aisle). For those in the aisle, it was a testing of stamina. We were on this car, in this aisle, standing and sitting, for 19 hours. That was after four hours of waiting outside in the plaza and later inside in the boarding gate. And this was after my hardly sleeping for a week. The ride was hell.

Photo: The Meining Binguan, Xining, Qinghai Province (July, 2010).

But now that we are in Qinghai Province, our gamble paid off! Today, we brought our daily expenses down to 181 Yuan Renminbi (RMB), for food, lodging, groceries, and a map). We will spend less than 50 RMB for this posting and supper. That amounts to about 231 RMB for the day. This is great news because we figured that we had to live within a 250 RMB/day budget over the next three weeks to make this work. It's working.

Photo: Sander making coffee in our room at the Meining Binguan in Xining, Qinghai Province (July, 2010).

And it's worthwhile. This is without question one of the most interesting, if not the most interesting, city I have ever seen! Tibetans and Hui are walking around in great abundance. In the nearby market we saw several Tibetans in off the steppe buying supplies, such as large cartridge bullets that are still worn in belts like the sort Poncho Villa once wore. Another was looking at beautiful leather and felt boots with upturned toes (a Mongolian influence).

Now our journey begins! Everything that came before was just to get here. This is where the excitement starts, and we are both so damn excited! Today Sander and I made a matrix of the places on the steppe where we want to visit over the next three weeks, which includes the good things about each place based on Sander's values and goals for this journey, the costs in time and distance, and decisions on what to include and what not to after much research. Then we mapped out a route. Fortunately, my poor Chinese is good enough to read a bus schedule and there was one on the Qinghai Provincial map we purchased, giving us an enomous amount of information at our fingertips. But more importantly, Sander also cross-referenced between various books we'd brought to extract additional information to make an incredibly informed and organized journey into this steppe of Tibetan and Mongolian cultures.

I will post before we leave (after I rid myself of this bug).

Brad

Getting to Zhengzhou

2010-07-16T17:15:00.000-07:00

Photo: Filling up before a long train ride from Zhengzhou to Xining (July, 2010).

Low budget travel deep into China and then deeper into her frontiers is a lot of work. So much work, that not only am I having trouble finding the time to write in my journal, but post on this blog. Blogspot seems to be blocked. From China, it's Blockspot. This posting will be done via email through my wife or daughter. I'm writing from Zhengzhou, Henan Province. Zhengzhou is the most populated city in Henan, and Henan the most populated province in China. According to Wikipedia, were Henan its own country, it would rank 12th over all in population, just behind Mexico. But first I should explain how we got here.

On 11 July 2010, Sander and I took a train from Rensselaer-Albany to Penn Station before eating out at the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square and visiting the Guggenheim Museum. We then took a cab at breakneck speed to JFK International Airport where Sander got things beeping at airport security. Maybe it was the change in his pocket, or the wire in the necklace his sister had made him, but it got him sent into the isolation chamber, a glass bubble-box in the center of the security area. It was there that the drama began. It was that toe of his. Sander has been fighting an infection in his toe and bandages it daily. Maybe something was packed under his bandage? It had to be scrutinized. It was, and thoroughly. At one point, a guard's nose couldn't get any closer. Eventually, it was determined to be a good toe and, following a few padded swipes for bomb residue, Sander was freed from the chamber and suspicion, and permitted to continue on his journey. But it would not be the last time he would make security guards flinch.

After 15 hours in the air we landed in Seoul, Korea, via Asiana Airlines. The airlines served us Bi Bim Bam, a Korean dish I feel is worthy of a trip to Korea just to explore her cuisine. Following a five-hour layover we flew to Hong Kong where we got our visas to get into China. When we weren't trying to get caught up on our sleep we were walking around Kowloon. At Chunking Mansions we discovered not only an internet cafe but a vibrant community of Indians, Pakistanis, Turks, and Nepalese and loved the diversity, the atmoshpere, the food. It was awesome seeing Asian Indians speaking Cantonese. A Pakistani conversed with Sander in French and said he picks up languages serving meals to people. He spoke four. Eventually, we took the Star Ferry across the harbor, a bus over to Hong Kong Island, to what we thought would be a short ride on a junk. But the boat turned out to be a sampan. We rode it anyway, returned to pick up our visas, and took a train from Kowloon, through the New Territories, over the border from the Hong Kong Special Administration Region to Mainland China, before arring in Guangzhou. While going through customs, I was directed to the front of a new line by the guards. When Sander attempted to join me, another guard caught him, reprimanded him, and sent him to the back of still another line. This got me involved, as well as the guard who had called me over. Eventually, Sander was permitted to join me thanks to the woman holding my passport who over-ruled the guard angry with Sander. The angry guard stood in a silent boil. Because the railway station was not the one serving trains to the rest of the People's Republic, we had to navigate the subway system to the other station west. There we discovered all the seats were booked for days not only to where we wanted to go (Xining, Qinghai Province) but to all the cities in the region. We would have to spend the night.

A man at the Guangzhou railway station who was helpul at times offered to show us to a cheap hotel. This sort of thing was common and we were bombarded by this daily outside Chungking Mansions in Hong Kong. Actually, I sort of felt bad for the way I'd turned many of them away because they were just good people getting a living off commissions (but no more annoying than those clerks in Home Depot). So we followed this guy for what was to be a 10 minute walk. To cut the time down shorter, we hopped on a three-wheeled cart that took off not slowly down the street, but quickly and against traffic in a three lane highway at night making our NYC cab driver look like a Sunday driver. I was terrified. When we approached a safe spot I told the driver that we had had it and we got out. Sander expressed concern over the creepiness of this guide but I insisted we followed him on foot a little longer. But the road was getting smaller and darker and Sander was right. When a taxi came by I flagged it down, opened the door, and we leaped in. Our guide ran over screaming while pounding on the window. Meanwhile, I was yelling at the driver, "Kai che! Kai che!" (Drive! Drive!) The driver, confused, began shouting back because she didn't have a specific destination. "Dao luguan! Dao luguan!" (To a sleazy hotel! To a sleazy hotel!) I continued ... and off we went.

With trains backed up for days, and hotels expensive still, we decided to try flying since domestic airfare is about the same as soft-sleeper trainfare (not that we were planning to soft-sleeper this route). At the airport, all the flights were booked for days to Xining. In fact, all flights were booked to all Xining-surrounding cities for days. Zhengzhou is not near Xining but it is halfway there from Guangzhou. Better still, it's on the north-south and east-west national rail axis. So we booked a flight for Zhengzhou. But at airport security Sander forgot he was packing his Swiss Army knife in his carry on. This perked up the sensors and guards. As one guard pulled it from Sander's bag, I said, "Ta wangle" (He forgot). The guard looked at Sander and smiled, explaining (all in Chinese which took me a few rounds to get) that he could take the knife back to the baggage check in, check in one of our carry-ons, and then come back through this security point to keep the knife and still catch our flight scheduled to leave in 30 minutes. We did just that. But I have been wondering if Sander is purposely trying to get another residue rubbing.

Photo: Zhengzhou Train Station plaza scene of travelers (July, 2010).

Photo: Close-up of travelers at the Zhengzhou Train Station (July, 2010).

Photo: Close-up of travelers at the Zhengzhou Train Station (July, 2010).

Photo: Waiting four hours for a 19-hour hardstand train (July, 2010).

Now we're in Zhengzhou. From here we have a straight shot west to Xining by rail. I tried to book hard-seats today but all seats were taken. I was told tomorrow there would be seats but the price I was quoted seems like there might not be seats, just standing room in the hard-seat area. We'll do what we have to do. Because I didn't realize how much inflation had hit the eastern seaboard, Sander and I need to get away from eastern China and deep into her western frontiers as soon as possible. Today is 16 July 2010. For me, with how I've been sleeping, the days have been a blur and really just one very long exciting day. Low budget travel deep into China and then deeper into her frontiers is a lot of work.

Chester, Vermont, to Hong Kong, China: The First Few Days in a Flurry Blur

2010-07-13T23:48:00.000-07:00

Photo: The first day of our journey. Sander at Times Square after getting off the bus to Penn Station from the Rensselaer-Albany train station (July, 2010).

A quick entry:

Sander and I took the train from Albany-Rensselaer to Penn Station in NYC before eating at the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square and then visiting the Guggenheim Museum. After a taxi ride at breakneck speed to JFK International Airport we had a long, long wait in long, long lines that ended with Sander's toe being interrogated. Maybe it was the change he had left in his pocket, or maybe it was the wire in the necklace his sister had made for him before we'd departed, but whatever it was he ended up being directed into a glass closet in the center of the scanning room for all to see. The guard took an interest in his bandaged toe and scrutinized it (Sander was nursing an in-grown toenail, hence the bandage). He then swiped Sander's palms for what we suspect to be powder residue. But I am writing too much and will have to continue this later. We are in Hong Kong and have to rush over and pick up our visas before catching a train for Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, P.R. of China. More in a few days. It's our plan at this moment to board another train in Guangzhou and head directly for Xining, Qinghai Province. Must rush!

Brad

Photo: Supper at the Hard Rock Cafe, a museum unto itself, at Times Square in New York City (July, 2010).

Photo: Sander, killing time usefully before our flight, at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City (July, 2010).

Photo: Hanging out at JFK waiting for a flight to Seoul on Asiana Airlines (July, 2010).

Photo: Sander waiting for our next flight during a layover at the Incheon International Airport, rated as the best airport in the world by the Airports Council International (July, 2010).

Photo: Sander on the Airport Express Line (AEL) in Hong Kong, transporting us from the Chek Lap Kok Airport to Kowloon (July, 2010).

Photo: Night scene of a Kowloon street below our hotel shower window.

Photo: Detail of a neon sign on a Kowloon street below our hotel shower window. (July, 2010).

Qinghai Province

2010-07-09T04:35:00.002-07:00

Photo: Brad eating breakfast on the street in Golmud, Qinghai Province, 1986.

The last time I was in Qinghai Province I was fascinated with everything: the landscape, the people, the food ... everything! Everything, that is, except the dog that leaped down off the roof of a house and bit me in the back of the leg. That hurt!

In the photo above, I was slurping down a hot and spicy breakfast with my traveling partner, Gerry (who took the photo). Because it was cold on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau on those December mornings I was layered up under a cotton-quilted People's Liberation Army jacket and a camel-fur-lined Kazakh hat. I'd purchased the hat off a Kazakh in a Gobi Desert community several weeks earlier in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region (Chinese Turkestan). The Kazakh had just dismounted from his Bactrian camel at the post office where I haggled him for his hat. It was a good investment because the hat was as warm as Qinghai was frigid!

Tomorrow we depart for Qinghai, which I suspect Sander will find as the most unusual landscape he has ever experienced. I also suspect that this will be my last posting until after we arrive in Hong Kong.

后天见!

Decision Making: A Design Problem

2010-07-08T06:33:00.000-07:00

Photo: Sander, a 17 year old senior at Green Mountain Union High School, at home.

Sander wanted to travel to Tibet, Mongolia, and China. But traveling into all three put them beyond our reach financially. This posed a design problem (an exercise in creative problem-solving). So we explored other regions that supported Tibetan, Mongolian, and Han cultures. That was when we stumbled upon Amdo, a region of Greater Tibet in China that included Qinghai Province and parts of Sichuan and Gansu. Following a little research, we quickly learned that the Tibetans of Amdo have been more successful in retaining their traditional culture than many in the Tibet Autonomous Region. Additionally, the Mongols of Qinghai can still be found herding on the steppes and living in yurts. Unlike the Mongols of Mongolia (who use the Cyrillic alphabet), many in Qinghai still use traditional Mongolian script. After realizing that we could experience traditional Tibetan and Mongolian cultures in China, and save a lot of money in the process simply by focusing our travels in Amdo, Sander enthusiastically agreed that we should head straight for Qinghai.

Qinghai Province is centered between Gansu Province to the north and the Tibet Autonomous Region to the south, the Xinjiang Autonomous Region to the west and Sichuan Province to the east.

We will fly from New York City to Seoul to Hong Kong. From Hong Kong we plan on taking a train to Guangzhou and then another on to Xining, the capital of Qinghai Province.

Introduction

2010-07-07T08:24:00.000-07:00

Photo: Sander and Courtenay looking for cicadas at the army college where we lived (fried cicadas were considered a seasonal delicacy), Hebei Province, China, 1997.

Not only is blogging completely new to me but so is my Fujifilm digital camera. I'm trying to figure out both of these things simultaneously on at least a rudimentary level before departing on Saturday. This will be Sander's second trip to China.

Sander was last in China when he was five years old, but that was after a year of living there with the rest of us. Sander and his sister, Courtenay, attended a Chinese kindergarten while Daryl and I taught English at a military college.

The military college is in Hebei Province and we are planning to visit there toward the end of this journey. They are expecting us and we are looking forward to seeing our former colleagues.

Although this will be my fifth time to China, I haven't organized such a journey since 1996. So I have been uber-organized far in advance ... which has been so unlike me. It feels good to be this prepared this early.

Meanwhile, Daryl (my wife) has a list of things for me to do before we leave. I need to get busy on completing that list.

Preface

2010-07-05T16:53:00.000-07:00

Herders visiting my campsite in northern Shaanxi Province, China, 1989. This was a 3-1/2 month journey I made alone following the death of my father.

Three years ago, my son, Sander, wasn't connecting in school. Wanting to connect Sander to many things (including school), I proposed going on a journey together. We decided on China and Mongolia via the Trans-Siberian through Russia. But we had to pay for it. So we took on extra jobs after school. Our early work was labor intensive and didn't last long. Raising the money wasn't easy and in order to make a journey at all we revised our plans for one we would more likely be able to afford. Because Sander expressed an interest in Mongolian, Tibetan, and Chinese cultures, we decided to travel to Qinghai Province where all three, among others (e.g., Tu, Hui, Salar), thrive. Finding a more affordable flight to China, and focusing on Qinghai Province, was far more manageable. When the local school district asked me to take on additional responsibilities for additional pay, I accepted. Then I landed a job teaching nights at the Community College of Vermont. After one semester, we had earned enough to purchase airfare tickets. So I did. That was in November, 2009. But that left us with little left over for our other traveling expenses, such as food, lodging, supplies, equipment, visas and various hidden costs we would undoubtedly encounter along the way. Nevertheless, we were determined to make the journey regardless even if Sander had to take his guitar and play on the streets next to a hat while I panhandled. Then CCV offered me another evening teaching gig. That was the clincher! By May, 2010, we had earned enough. It would be tight, to be sure. But it was just in time and after three years of moonlighting we had funded our journey which was rapidly taking on a life of its own.

Special thanks to DH, CH, CL, JH, SR, JL, and the many others who have offered wonderful support in many forms. THANK YOU!

As for our father-and-son journey, I suspect Sander will remember this for the rest of his life. I know I will!

Daryl and Courtenay will drop us off at the Albany-Rensselaer Amtrak station on Saturday, July 9, where we will take a train to Penn Station in New York City before finding our way to the JFK International Airport for a flight taking off in the early morning minutes of Sunday, July 10.

This blog will document our journey from my perspective. It will be written in tandem with Sander's. If photos aren't posted during our journey, they certainly will be upon our return.

Brad Houk at home at the wrestling camp in Sullivan County,
Pennsylvania, 1994 (photo by Kelly Houk).