Hello everyone!
So for the second part of my winter break, I went to a city
in Qinghai province called Xining. Xining is this province’s capital, and the
province itself is located in central China. I spent four days there with my
friend Christina, who I met at the beginning of last semester during
registration. Christina, like me, is also from the US. She actually invited me
to come with her to Xining to visit her language partner, Wang Zuhui (Zuhui is
his given name).
While staying in Xining we visited several temples, museums,
and other places. However, I wasn’t always allowed to take pictures (unless
specifically told it was alright), so I’m afraid I don’t have as many pictures
as when I visited Harbin.
First we went to Ta'er Temple (also known as KumBum Monestary), which is a Tibetan
Buddhist temple. This temple is in the nearby town of Lusha'er, so we had to hire a drive to get there. It was quite interesting to visit, although it was rather
cold, and close to mountains. In fact, all of Xining is surrounded by various
mountain ranges. When we entered the temple buildings, we had to walk to the
left and circle clockwise around the entire room before exiting. This is
apparently a traditional practice. I also learned that the monks make cheese,
which they also use for candles.
For more information about the specific history of this site, I have the following links here for your convenience:
Here are some pictures I was permitted to take:
(This is Christina, who is awesome!)
A couple of times we also ate lunch and dinner with Zuhui’s
family. And every meal was great!
My favirote was dapanji. Besides tasting great, it also helped me feel a bit better because I had a bad cold while in Xing. This was probably because two days before I went to Xining I had been running around Harbin, which was super cold!
Anyhow, here's a picture of the 大盆鸡 (Dà pén jī), which is a big dish of chicken with spicy veggies and lots of potatoes.
We also met his little cousin, who told me I looked like a
man.
Funny story. Because there aren’t that many foreigners in
Xining, a lot of people thought we were here to teach English, or that we were
just a bizarre spectacle. A couple of people asked if we were men because they
couldn’t tell, and some people even wanted to touch Christina’s hair.
We also went to a second temple, but I wasn’t allowed to
take pictures there (except for this one):
This one was also on a mountain, but since I was feeling a
bit sick, I decided to wait half way up while Christina and Zuhui went all the
way up.
(this is actually a staircase leading to the main buildings, but we took a side route instead to save time, and our knees)
We also visited two museums in Xining. The first was the Ma Bufang Mansion. This museum is actually the house of the Chinese warlord and member of the KMT. The house itself was impressive, and it was interesting to see a part of Chinese history which wasn't quite as well known or touristy.
The next museum we went to was the Tibetan Medicine Museum of China.
This museum had lots of ancient paintings of human anatomy and lists of medical
procedures. It was quite fascinating to see those. Unfortunately, I wasn’t
allowed to take pictures anywhere in there. We also saw a work of art that was 600 meters long (that's just over 650 yards), showing history from the creation of man to the present
as seen from the Tibetan Buddhist perspective. Interestingly enough, Tibetan
Buddhism has a fair amount of similarities to Christianity, in that
there is a heaven and a hell, and judgments based on sin and the like.
On the third day we also went skiing. This was my least
favorite day because I do not like skiing, or extreme sports for that matter.
As such, I spent the day taking pictures of Zuhui and Christina while they
learned how to ski.
I’m really happy that Christina invited me to come with her
to Xining. I’d have to say my favorite parts were visiting the museums (what
can I say, I wouldn’t mind living in a few).
The next part of this series will be about Shanghai, the final place I went to during break. I hope you all enjoyed this post!
