Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Xining

Living in China seems to be a catalyst for stories. During March, Stacy and I took off on what we thought would be a restful and fun weekend trip, and a good chance to see more of China. What I hadn't planned on, though, were the numerous stories to come home to tell!
After a 14 hour train ride to the city, we boarded a bus for a couple hour ride out to Qinghai Lake, the largest inland saltwater lake in China. Once we got there, a 19 year old guy pulled up on a motorcycle, trying to convince us that he could get us to the lake for ¥20, even though there was a ¥50 entrance fee. After asking a lot of questions to make sure he wasn’t trying to cheat us, we decided to take our chances and trust him. At one point when I was asking him questions, he told me, “I’m Zang minority! Of course I’m not trying to trick you!” That wasn’t exactly a convincing argument, but nonetheless we went with him. I kept telling him we wanted to find a place to stay first, but he was insistent on taking us to the lake first. Stacy and I hopped on the back of his motorcycle, with our backpacks, and rode out to the lake. Once we got there, there was a chance to ride horses, so with our packs still on, we rode horses along the beautiful lake, which was frozen over.

After riding, our new friend took us back into the little town. I've seen villages in China, but I've never seen any that can compare to tiny Nebraska towns. (When I went to the kid's home in December, the driver told me that the "village" had a population of 250,000!) But this place didn't have a lot of life going on. Apparently quite a few tourists come out to the lake and the town comes alive, but only in the summer - not March. While I did see quite a few restaurants and places to stay, not many were actually open at the time. No longer with the option of going back to Xining to stay, we began looking for a place to stay. Motorcycle Man told us he knew of just the place we could stay, for only ¥20/night, so once again, we loaded up on his bike, and took off. A short ride later, we arrived at this home that was made of three rooms and a hallway connecting them. We were shown our room:
The first thing that caught my eye was not that there was carpet on the mattress, but that a mattress existed! It's not uncommon in places like these to just have a little mattress pad instead of a mattress. This makes for extremely hard beds and ridiculously long nights. But this place was high class: not only did they have a mattress, but a mattress pad, er, carpet, on the mattress! I turned to the owner and asked about heat: yup, a space heater would be provided, with electricity turned on in the evening. So far, so good. How about showers? He looked at me with a little bit of a strange look, and told me that hot water would be provided in the morning. I looked at Stacy, and we both kind of shrugged. When you're roughing it, you might as well rough it, right? And my last question: where are the bathrooms? This time, he definitely gave me a strange look, as if wondering how I could ask that question, and said, "Suibian!" which means, "It's up to you!" or "whatever!" Perfect! We told him we would take it (only to find out later that the only way to get around the corner from the house was to face the street to use our suibian bathroom! The street was quite a ways away, though.)

With the lake behind the house, these mountains made up the view from the front of the house. Finding snow on the ground the next morning made us even more thankful for our heated room!The next morning we rode up to the main road to catch a ride back into town on the public buses. The buses didn't come too frequently, and when they did, the driver would lay into the horn as he drove by, expecting people to flag him down if they wanted a ride. That morning was particularly windy, so our friend from the day before told us that his friend lived right on the main street, so we could wait for the bus in his pharmacy/home. It didn't take too much to convince me because of the wind chill. We sat down inside, enjoying the warmth. Hoooonk! Hoooonk! We jumped up and ran to the window, only to see a big truck zoom by. Nope, not our bus. We sat back down and kept waiting. After a while, we heard honking again. Our friend ran outside, but missed the bus. It drove by without even slowing down. I'm began to doubt the ability of his strategy to succeed, but wanting to stay warm, I was willing to risk it for a while longer. After several more trucks drove by, another bus rolled in. Running out and waving our arms, we waited for it to slow down. I'm sure it saw us - there was nobody else outside on the street - but for whatever reason, it didn't stop.

At this point, Stacy and I decided just to wait outside for the next bus, even though it was cold. Another 1/2 hour went by, without a single bus. Looking down the street, we saw a tourist bus parked outside a restaurant. Out of hope for the public bus, the two of us decided to ask if they were headed back into town and if they had any extra room. Every head in the restaurant turned to look at us as we walked in with red ears and windburned lips. The tour leader told me the bus was going back into town, and they did have room, so we piled on the bus with their tour group, sat in the back row, and enjoyed the ride back into Xining!

Once in Xining, the day passed without too much adventure. Mosques dot the city, including Dongguan Mosque, one of the 4 most famous Muslim mosques in China. I love seeing the influence of different people groups on a place.
We made it back safely after an hour flight (note: train ride - 14 hours; flight: 1 hour) and with lots of stories and pictures!

You can find more pictures here.
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