Deeper into the heart of the labyrinth Dawn. No wind. Lavender-rose light spread like butter on distant peaks. Monks and mystics, the faithful and the temporarily faithless, opened like satellite dishes on a sacred hillside above the Labrang Monastery. Slow motion clouds moving to the natural music of the Tibetan Plateau. Everything is Ice Age still for a moment as the stunned earth awakens. The birds first, calling forth the slanted light, dousing sleeper’s dreams, silhouetting the breath of stirring farm animals, glinting off riffles in the Daxia River, driving off the last stubborn traces of the monochrome night, evaporating shadows and turning up color. A low wordless chanting arises from the hillside, lifts and circles like a flock of red-crowned cranes. Smoke rises from sacred spruce fires. Farmer’s motorcycle trucks wind along the road below, moving to the open markets of Xiahe. Life stirs, puts on its boots and pisses in the alley. Breakfast is yak yogurt, Tsampa—dough made with roasted barley flour and yak butter, buckwheat porridge, Momo—Tibetan dumplings, Thenthuk—Tibetan noodles and yak tongue. Boiling hot black tea—filtered and decanted into a churn, then fresh milk and sugar are added. The wind gusts, carving new lines in faces, stealing hats, billowing robes, herding dust, pock-marking buildings, scattering anything not tied down and causing pedestrians to lean into it. Moving clockwise, streams of worshippers walk the Kora, a three kilometer route around the monastery through prayer vapors left by previous pilgrims, spinning the colorful prayer wheels, muttering chants, along a route created for moving, meditative reflection, interspersed with scarlet monks, the old, the young, the tourists, and the devout who flatten themselves on the ground, stand up, then throw themselves back on the ground, and in this way move around the entire circuit. I walked the Kora three times. Each time was different, each time was special. It’s a very active and unique form of prayer. You get exercise—by walking and spinning the prayer wheels, get to mingle with the friendly fellow Kora-walkers, get to spend time in a setting meant for reflection, say anything you want out loud, as people are mumbling in all kinds of dialects, dress however you want—some worshippers dress in the most outlandish costumes, on a plateau high above the rest of the world, surrounded by mountains. Then I rented a bike, and escaped into the Sangke Grasslands, home for thousands of years to Tibetan Nomads. The bike was old and heavy and clunky, but I was not to be stopped, grunting and huffing and puffing my way up the gradual incline, coming to the distinct conclusion that cars hate bikes. Here I was, enjoying the quiet, and though traffic was sporadic, every idiot driver that passed me felt it necessary to honk their horn in warning, as if I couldn’t hear them approaching from a half-mile away. While some cut a wide berth around me, others flew by like meteorites, and it felt as though they were trying to blast me senseless in the swirl of their passing. Still, the grasslands were miraculous. They swept away toward the horizon in fields of wildflowers, clouds, mountains and sky. I passed a lake so still I named it Narcissus Lake and spent some peaceful moments lakeside recovering from the climb up on my ridiculous bike.
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In which the birthday boy runs smack into Tibet Sometimes it takes a jet to carry you somewhere over the rainbow, or maybe a train, a boat, a fast car or a powerful wish, but in my case all it took was three and a half hours of patience and a bus filled with happy-go-lucky passengers. We climbed upward, past amazing, terraced hills, planted with produce, the sheer ability to farm the precipitous heights was astonishing, and at one point I saw a farmer pruning his crops by means of a rope attached around his waist, dropping down, then down, and down---we blasted by too fast to know how he managed to get back up. Then we leveled out and entered a biblical zone of fertile valleys with mosques everywhere. Their signature globes and towers rose above the landscape, more plentiful than church steeples in New England. But what was odd to me was that I equated mosques with desert terrain—these rose above green fields bright with a summer’s growth. I stopped counting them after I reached a hundred and one. After passing through Linxia City, which has long been called the “Little Mecca of China” featuring 1,700 mosques and an important stop along the Silk Road, we started climbing up, up, up, then leveled off in earnest, the terrain changing, growing more austere, though still summer green, with stuttering Van Gogh fields absent of crows, then angling almost imperceptivity downward and eventually arriving in Xiahe. A birthday trip into the land of dreams It’s not every year there’s a blue moon in your birthday month, and not every year you get to celebrate it in China, the coursing bends of time disappear when you believe your spirit is ageless, that time is entirely relative, yet I like to reflect on the period between birthdays as if they were mileposts marking my own personal growth. And so I wanted to do something special this year, find some sacred, holy ground, offer up gratitude and give thanks, but what I didn’t count on was surviving a NASCAR taxi ride across Lanzhou and ending up in a parallel universe. I was going to Gannon, Shambala, a nine-color lucky world of mountains and grasslands, a pristine garden of Tibetan culture, where I could contemplate the rhythm of my life in a place called the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, on the northeast edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Trains don’t go there and so I had to get to the South Bus Station, a traffic-clogged trip running laterally alongside the railroad tracks, and ending up in a third-world dead-zone of rip off cab driver-bus station hustlers, who will try to grab and pull and fight over you for the privilege of ripping you off. I flagged down a cab and snagged the first one, a good omen. He read my destination, written in Chinese, looked straight ahead for a moment, as if steeling himself for the rigors of the drive, pulled down the strange China cabbie meter, and took off. Right away, I knew this was not going to be an ordinary cab ride. At the first sign of blockage, he went up on the sidewalk, scattering pedestrians, then veering back into the roadway, provoking horn blasts and a wake of Chinese cursing. Then he blew through a fully red traffic light, veered right and almost took out a fruit vendor, and continued on, driving in the middle of the road between lanes of traffic. I could have had him stop and let me out, but I had to admit it was exhilarating, so I stopped grimacing, stopped thrusting my palms out to grab the dashboard, stopped doing my phantom brake pedal dance, looked over at him, decided he was not suicidal, and put my life firmly in his hands. It was like a chase scene, except we weren’t being chased, nor were we chasing anyone. As traffic thickened, he drove in the bike/scooter lane, swerved back in, cutting a bus off by inches, cut across lanes, zip-zap-zip, back and forth, braking suddenly and hurling my lungs, my stomach, and my spleen against the barrier of my skin, dodged right, dodged left, then squeezing through openings with a Fig Newton's clearance on either side, never touching the horn and never changing expression. I was delighting in the looks other drivers were giving him. After another swerve in front of a bus, with centimeters to spare, I watched the bus driver throw up his hands in surrender, then re-grab the wheel and actually growl. Shock flew like chicken feathers upward then dwindled back down after his passing. It was zoom-zoom-zoom, screech, whoa, yes! . . . watchit—oh god, getoutoftheway—there’s no way he can stop—he did stop, pause for a light, then, bang-bang-bang, off like a bullet. There was a Muslim man riding a scooter, the kind with the attached truck-bed, who just missed crashing into us by luck alone, who grabbed his round white cap and flung it at us in frustration. I was beyond fear at that point and completely rolling with it. When I had thought I had seen it all, he swerved right, went down an alley, rumbled across a dirt drive, shot over a curb and hit an intersection just as the light turned green. After which we hit a truly impassable traffic jam, and I thought he was going to explode, but he just sat back calmly, and as soon as an opportunity presented itself, BAM, he took off again. We arrived at the station and he screeched to a halt. I sat for a moment, collecting myself. I said, “Wow, that was amazing, you are, most definitely, a professional. Hats off to you, lad.” And though he didn’t understand the words, the intent was clear, and he allowed himself one small smile, stashed the fare in a crude wooden box, and took off back into traffic. I bought a ticket, had lunch in a great Muslim café, found my bus without any problem—the staff at the station were great, boarded the bus and sat in air-conditioned comfort as the bus idled, waiting for departure time. Then, out the window, a great, rabbleous horde appeared. There were about 20 of them, male and female, carrying all their worldly possessions in bed sheets, rice bags, appliance boxes and sad duffle bags. The driver, a nicely dressed man who had been polishing the bus as we waited to depart, absolutely freaked. I could tell he was worried about the schedule and departing on time, and where the hell was he going to fit all this extra crap? I watched out the window in delight as this drama unfolded. Tick-tock-tick-tock—an orderly attempt was made to try to fit in all this extra stuff, the driver walking back and forth in disgust, the rabble growing increasingly belligerent, the loader trying hard to appease. Then, departure time approaching fast, it became shove it all in as best you can, shoo the rabble aboard, close the doors and take off. I was very pleased with the new passengers. They were boisterous, happy, excited, unashamed, with a baby permanently attached to her mother’s breast, carrying food baskets and water thermoses and glasses for tea and merriment to spare. One of them sat next to me, eying me warily (who can figure out laowai) until I offered some of my road provisions, which he accepted daintily, almost reluctantly, still, a bus bond was formed, as we set off for my intended destination, Xiahe, a completely distinct and parallel universe. Xiahe, Journey into the Golden Labyrinth, Part 2 |
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