Tibetan monks, monasteries and towns
So here I am, in the land of Tibetan monks and monasteries, otherwise known as the city of Xiahe. It's technically still in China, the border with Tibet is still several hundred kilometers away but the landscape completely changed: no more of the strange Chinese landscape mix of industrial sites and farming land, no more spitting Chinese men with their shirts raised to their necks so their fat unattractive bellies are showing. Instead wherever I look I see monastery towers, monks between the ages of 12 and 112 in their deep crimson robes (there are 3000 monks living in the monastery next door to our hostel), amazing Tibetan food and not so amazing Tibetan men staring intensely at my
blond hair and blue eyes (yesterday at dinner in a local Tibetan restaurant a local man was staring and smiling at me so much that my lovely fellow travellers attempted to sell me off to him for 10 pigs and 20 sheep. Luckily the transaction failed and I'm allowed to continue my journey). We visited 2 monasteries today: Labrang monastery with its amazing brown and white buildings, hundreds of monks out and about engaged in their usual daily business: walking around, cleaning the houses, going to group prayer. We were even allowed to observe their group prayer (understandibly, no pictures were allowed) - the mix of loud repeated prayer lines, chanting and drum beats was truly powerfull and literally made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Some people in my group even started crying... And then we visited the Tsewey Black Hat monastery where monks were not as freely mixing with us nonbelievers but one of them showed us around and even allowed us to take pictures of the temple insides and their school and library. We finished the day with a visit to an amazingly old and rural town of Gan Jia Tajiao surrounded by an old rock wall, which is 2000 years old. It's amazing how traditionally people in this town still live - we didn't see a single person dressed in Western clothes, it's all farming and having babies and being completely independent on the outside world... I think that this Tibetan area of China is my 2nd most favourite experience of China so far after the Great Wall of China.
blond hair and blue eyes (yesterday at dinner in a local Tibetan restaurant a local man was staring and smiling at me so much that my lovely fellow travellers attempted to sell me off to him for 10 pigs and 20 sheep. Luckily the transaction failed and I'm allowed to continue my journey). We visited 2 monasteries today: Labrang monastery with its amazing brown and white buildings, hundreds of monks out and about engaged in their usual daily business: walking around, cleaning the houses, going to group prayer. We were even allowed to observe their group prayer (understandibly, no pictures were allowed) - the mix of loud repeated prayer lines, chanting and drum beats was truly powerfull and literally made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Some people in my group even started crying... And then we visited the Tsewey Black Hat monastery where monks were not as freely mixing with us nonbelievers but one of them showed us around and even allowed us to take pictures of the temple insides and their school and library. We finished the day with a visit to an amazingly old and rural town of Gan Jia Tajiao surrounded by an old rock wall, which is 2000 years old. It's amazing how traditionally people in this town still live - we didn't see a single person dressed in Western clothes, it's all farming and having babies and being completely independent on the outside world... I think that this Tibetan area of China is my 2nd most favourite experience of China so far after the Great Wall of China.
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