Oulin White

10 July 2009

The Xiahe Run

Posted by oulin under: travel .

“No tickets for foreigners to Xiahe.” The lady behind the ticket window at the Lanzhou Bus Station said, after she saw Abram standing behind me. “Why not? I heard it’s reopen in May.” I tried. “I don’t know why, but that’s what the police told us.” She responded without much an expression on her face. “pft…” I knew I couldn’t really fight this. So we looked up at the Gansu map above the windows trying to find a place that’s close to Xiahe but not Tibetan. Linxia seemed to fit in that category. I went back to the window and asked if foreigners were allowed there. She nodded reluctantly: “ I need the copy of his passport though.”

After a bowl of real Lanzhou lamian, my energy came back to me a bit. We were lucky. There was a copy shop opened right across the street. 20 minutes later, our adventure began.

We arrived in Linxia, a Muslim town. A guy at the bus station told us to just get on the bus then pay the driver 50kuai instead of 20kuai to go to Xiahe because they wouldn’t sell any tickets to foreigner at the station. It’s the same thing as in Lanzhou. We took the advice. After we got on the bus, I played the “ I’m a Chinese trick” to pay only 20kuai-the Chinese price. The ride was very pleasant as we were very excited as our little plan seemed to work out quite well. Our mood got higher and higher. The scenery changed after a while into beautiful green hills with terrace fields and nice little villages scattered around. We were driving along the winding Da Xiahe River. The water in the river got bigger and more rapid when we went higher. The sky went bigger and bluer. When our bus slowly got in the town, we saw a group of soldiers marching out from the town with machine guns on their shoulders. For a second it seemed so surreal to me. This town was one of the first few places where the Tibetan riot started last year. It looked like the situation hasn’t completely gone back to “normal”, yet. The locals welcomed us at the bus station. We were just feeling happy to make it there. We didn’t think too much about being “discreet” when we saw the smiley faces around us.

The sky was so blue, luring us to go out. Our hostel was in walking distance to the famous Labrang Temple, the second most holy Tibetan temple after Potala Temple in Lhasa. Having a short cut through the field following two young Lamas, we found ourselves standing in front of an impressively long corridor with colorful praying wheels along the wall. The monastery was huge like a little city. The praying wheels surrounded the monastery all the way, which, I think, would take at least 2 hours to finish turning all of them. Two Lamas led us to visit the main palace. When we came out we saw red ropes scattered on a hill across the road. Orange sun light was shining on them. It seemed time had stopped and the Lamas lives hadn’t been changed at all after all this modern development. I felt so peaceful just looking at them. Maybe that’s why Tibetan culture appealed so fascinating to many people.

After discussing with a lady from Dongguan, we agreed to hire a car the next day to take us up to the Sang Ge Grassland where we could stay over night in a Tibetan yurt. Well, this trip didn’t turn out quite well. We asked the driver to stop around the corner of the hostel as we realized our coffee was in the trunk when. Abram went out to get it. Right before he returned, a mid-age Tibetan guy approached our car and chatted a bit with our driver. Later he stuck his head in the car, then told us he’s a police officer and we were requested to show him our IDs. I was waiting for the “bad” news when I handed our passports to him. Instead of kicking us out right away, surprisingly he let us to stay for the day visiting the grassland and the temple but we were requested to leave Xiahe within that day. He said that to us politely, but we all understood that there was no bargaining there. He took our passports away and wished us a good day. We did feel lucky to be able to stay for the day though. We tried to enjoy this given good day as much as we could. Everything, the scenery, first experience of Tibetan yak milk tea and yogurt, first time horse galloping and overlooking at the Labrang Temple on the hill in late afternoon sunshine, etc., was epic and great. Xiahe still is the one of the most beautiful and spiritual places I have ever been to. However, most of the time that day we were thinking how we could make it to stay a couple more days either in Xiahe or in villages nearby. As the day was passing by, our hope got lower and lower since the police guy kept calling our driver to check on us. The worst of all was when we got back to the police station at 6:30pm to pick up our passports, we found out we would be escorted by the driver and his friend, and we had to pay for our ride back to Lanzhou! No further discussion there either. The police warned us if they found us stopping in any other places other than Lanzhou, we would be in deep trouble. Pft…

Loaded with local Baijiu and beers, we were reluctantly on our way back to Lanzhou. After downing 1/3 of the baijiu, we started to feel skeptical about this whole thing. Was it a scam?! He never showed us his badge, he said he knew the driver, we had to pay for our ride… wait! It didn’t seem right at all!!! Well, we couldn’t fight it too much back then. Even so many weeks had passed by, we still have that question in our mind from time to time. Hopefully one day I will return to that peaceful land.