I was sitting in the Greenhouse Coffee cafe in Xining wondering how many days have been saved by good coffee. I was not only saved but about to flow into one of those Travel-Daze where the world conspires with everyday magic to make the ordinary seem so brand new and alive, when the road is a river and you're letting it just sweep you along, towards nothing and everything. We decided to go to the Kumbum Monastery (does anyone else think this is an unfortunate-sounding name, at least in English?), also known as the Little Tower Temple, and caught a bus that traveled up a long valley flanked by low hills the color of Bronx Zoo lions. On the way, out on the valley floor, there was a typical China sight, a car-buying zone well outside the city where it always seems you need a car in order to travel out to where you can shop for a car. I guess this has to do with China’s relatively late love affair with cars; dealerships are never in a convenient location and always seemed to be included as an afterthought. The bus stopped regularly to let on Mao-capped farmers and local bus riders as well as pilgrims going up to the sacred monastery. Soon we were in Lushar Town, Huangzhong County, 25km to the southwest of Xining City. The town curved along the main street, the modern equivalent of a rural Chinese town in which the ancient road is now lined with tall nondescript apartment blocks, with stores occupying the street level that spill out into relentless outdoor markets, all seeming to offer similar products. The road that rises up to the monastery gate is lined with souvenir shops, and in one of them, a man and his young daughter excitedly greeted me, thrusting a camera at Paul, urging me to take a photo with them. It was a couple of firsts: they were Mongolian and the first that Paul or I’d ever met and I was the first American they’d ever met. So while I hate having my photo taken, (I thought the word was photophobic, but that is something else entirely, it seems there is no word for intolerance for having your photo taken, so I suggest PAD—photo anxiety disorder, or photo-fretful) I relented but didn’t have the presence of mind to get a photo of them posing with me, something I now regret. We entered the monastery through fragrant clouds of juniper smoke, past costumed pilgrims and when we tried to buy tickets, the ticket office was closed, so that meant we could explore for free. Sometimes when you are in the flow of the road everything conspires to engage you. We wandered without aim like the juniper smoke, upwards, and at the top of one stairway, I paused to take a photo of a solitary monk climbing with his dog. It was so still. As if everyone were hiding from us. On the terrace of the Auspicious Palace, sweeps of view expanded outward. It was all holy sky and leafless trees sprouting like sparse hair on balding hills. Winter warm at 49 degrees (9.44 Celsius) with an occasional towel slap of cold Tibetan wind. Something in me was stunned and I gaped trying to absorb what the panorama was trying to suggest to me. What happened next was beyond all expectation: loud cymbal crashes shattered the bartered silence. Suddenly, the courtyard of the palace was flooded with scarlet-robed monks, wearing yellow-plumed woven helmets, rattling blue-draped drums, sounding out low OMMM-sounds on oversize brown mountain horns, the kind made famous by the Ricola commercials. Everywhere there were different textures to look at grounded by the low-throbbing horns. It was as if we had stumbled into a surprise party with impeccable timing. In the center was a skull figure on a post, held aloft by monks holding guy-wire prison escape knotted bedding sheets, and it reminded me of the Mexican festival for the day of the dead, and I thought it was maybe for the dead year now coming to a close, but it wasn’t stark, it was colorful and earthy, with monks wearing demon masks and the skull was smiling and there were even two monks wearing unmistakable masks representing Arab traders, it was a stew of feelings and contradictions. Then, they carefully lowered the skull figure with great ceremony and marched it out through the arched walkways, where they hoisted it with renewed fanfare on the terrace, guarded by fierce-looking monks carrying logs as lances. I was very discreet in taking photos, framing a shot in my mind, then taking out my camera, snapping the pic, then re-pocketing the camera, still, in the photo below, I thought the monk was coming to beat me. It was all so grand, so festive, the clanging, OMMMing, the colorful representations of life, death, and what might lay beyond, the skillful mask making, the pageantry, the amazing Asian faces, the nobility of the procession, the way there was a surge and then a relaxing, then a surge, a relaxing, and then they gathered again and descended the narrow stairway down to converge with other processions below, like scarlet lava flows, then dying out into an ordinary morning, leaving you same feeling as upon waking with the clinging sea kelp of the otherworldly landscapes glimpsed in dreams. We wandered around the monastery, stunned—nothing else could penetrate after witnessing that, yet we found our way to a park that had stairs leading upward and so we climbed, up, and into a realization: there, above the lip of the valley rose the Himalayan Mountains. We were deep in the heart of the roof of the world. The rest of the day was literally a dream, a juniper smoked daydream of bare trees, hills and high late winter clouds. In a souvenir shop we came across these two faces: Also a dream was the bus ride back through China in magic hour light, the dinner of Da Pan Jin, translated as big plate chicken, with potatoes and whole roasted garlic and peppers and spices and later on in my hotel room watching a women’s volleyball match between the awesome mostly blond Croatia team and the tall stately Chinese team.
Out in the night, fireworks were exploding, punctuating everything with flashes of brilliance. Late Winter, Xining, Qinghai Province, China, Part 4 will follow.
1 Comment
Mary
6/26/2015 04:25:12 am
Now Part 3 was very intriguing. I love how you write because it always makes me feel like I am there too. Your writing is incredible and your descriptions beyond words. The photos look like out of history books or a Brad Pitt movie! Love the two cute girls.
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