Village In Mountains

There are pics today.

The breakfast today was not as good as yesterday’s bad breakfast. We didn’t get any butter for our bread — only jam. But at least we had warm water for the shower. (Not hot, but warm enough to use).

Yak

Our major activity was to drive out to a village to see how rural Tibetans live. We passed several other rural vilages (including the picturesque one show above) to a village an hour and a half from our hotel. Our family’s house had yaks, of course. Q: If a yak gets loose and blocks traffic, is that a “big yak attack”?

Cow

They also had cows, complete with Buddah decorations. (The cow in the back hads red ribbons on his ears.) When Tibetans eat “yak butter”, it’s almost always mostly cow butter with a little yak butter mixed in.

House

The village was quite hilly. Houses were packed close together and surrounded by walls. I couldn’t get a good picture of what a house looks like. Here’s a pic of the mini-courtyard outside the prayer room. Houses were surprisingly big. They were built of block and were very sturdy. The yards were full of junk, but the houses were clean and the windows well-fitted. If you look closely, you will see painted decoration that’s very typical of what I’ve seen all over Tibet. The drapes you see are cartoon Disney bed sheets.

House Courtyard

Here you can see a small area of the courtyard. This is an arid area, so there’s not a lot they can do about the dust. They tend to throw a lot of what looks to me like junk in the yard. I don’t know whether it’s hard to dispose of larger trash or weather the family doesn’t think of it as junk.

Cheese Mo Mo

We were offered Cheese Mo Mo (sp?) as a snack. It was quite tasty.

Tea Maker

They offered butter tea (butter, salt, water, and a little black tea) and sweet tea (millet, sugar, hot water, and a little black tea) to drink. They traditionally drink butter tea in the morning and sweet tea after 11:00. As I mentioned above, there’s only a small amount of yak butter and a larger quantity of cow butter. This pic shows their courtyard tea maker. I felt the pot and it was quite hot. I saw a lot of these in Tibet. Given all the sun they get, it makes a lot of sense.

Thanka

Buddha Banners

Compassionate Buddha

Budha Case

We were invited into their prayer room. This is always the largest room in the house. On special occasions, a Buddah monk is invited to stay with them. The monk will sleep on the floor in this room. The room is sometimes used for special guests (such as us, aparently.) Other than that, the room is not used. It’s just like the parlor in the old Baltimore row houses of two generations ago (except the priest never slept over). The room is decorated as a temple. It is the cleanest room in the house. These pictures show some of the things in the room. I won’t pretend to be able to explain them well.

On The Roof Prayer Flags And Mountains

If you go back to the courtyard shot, you will see a ladder leading to the roof. I went up this ladder and looked around. Here you can see the prayer flags and a mountain in the background. According to the lecture we got this afternoon, prayer flags should always have five colors. From top to bottom, they are blue (sky), white (clouds), yellow (earth), red (fire), and green (rivers and lakes). Those are the colors I always saw, but I saw that they aren’t always in the preferred order.

A Sign Of Wealth

These people have no problems combining the religious with the secular. I saw pilgrims rotating their hand-held prayer wheels with one hand while talking on the cell phone with the other. We didn’t see any part of the inside of the house other than the prayer room. However, this family seems to be doing pretty well.

Construction

Just outside the house there was some kind of construction project going on. The women and old men were doing the work. The young men were out liviging with the livestock. This is a semi-nomadic society,. The villagers obviously believe in equality for the sexes. You can’t be sure from the picture I got, but the person mixing cement is a woman.

School

After visiting the house (we never got to talk with any of the adults in the village), we visited the school. This is a village primary school. The next level of children go to a centralized school. The children were outside eating lunch. The teacher is from this village and had just graduated from high school. He did not pass his university entrance exams and took this job while waiting to try the exams a second time. There are 10 children in the school.

We had a picnic lunch on the way home. Whe we got back to our hotel, we got a lecture about Tibet cultural history. The hotel did not have a projector, and the lecture was pretty dry. But the discussion afterwards was riviting. I learned a lot about Tibet.

JT: Burning Incense Outside The Entry Gate

There are pics today. Our hotel served what would have been a so-so dinner last night, except that they served a world-class pizza. We had a rough start today. The heat in the hotel doesn’t work. We asked and were given an electric space heater. This device can raise the temperature of the room from 16 to 17 in an hour and a half. (That’s 61 to 63 in Fahrenheit.) But we can stand in front of it to warm up. Plus, it’s the brightest light in the room, so we can see stuff when we want to.

JT: Pilgrims

We had to turn it off overnight, but the room comes with double heavy duty quilts. I woke at 5 the next morning as usual, but Danita slept in until it was time to get ready for breakfast. When she got up, she was feeling pretty bad, with a headache and various miscellaneous maladies. I went to take a shower, only to find there was no hot water. We went down to breakfast to find the best food available was a plate of bread that was placed on one of the tables, with some butter and jam. The only hot drink was coffee with a lot of sugar and a lot of cream.

JT: Pot To Make Tea With Yak Butter

Things got a lot better once we got on the bus. Our first visit was to Jokhang Temple, the largest and most important Buddhist temple in Tibet. Pics of the Jokhang Temple have captions that start with “JT: “. The interest started before we even got inside, with two of the biggest incense burners I have ever seen. Once a year, all the Monks get together for a week. They need lots of tea with yak butter. So they have a huge cauldron for makinging in. The rest of the year, it’s just decorative.

JT: Courtyard Deli Lama Window

There were pilgrims all over the place. They were prostrating themselves, spinning prayer wheels, reciting prayers or songs while counting with a rosary, or offering money at the various statues and other points of religious significance. Did you know there are about 3,000 Buddhas? Primary Buddhas are First Buddha, Present Buddha, Future Buddha, Compassionate Buddha … there’s a very long list.

JT: Courtyard Deli Lama Throne

As before, pictures are not allowed inside the temple. But we were able to take pictures in the courtyard. They maintain special places for the Deli Lama to participate in their important ceremonies, even though the current Deli Lama is exiled, and there will probably never be another one.

JT: Upstairs Garden

There’s also an upstairs garden where we could take pictures. It’s difficult to get details of a lot of things because of the extremely bright sunlight. Interesting things are often in the shade, but surrounded by very bright sunlight. My cell phone camera can’t handle that kind of lighting.

JT: Monk

Finally, here’s a picture of a Monk in the garden. I don’t know what these guys do all day long, but the few I saw were busy running from one place to another every time I saw them.

Tibetan Medicine

Our next stop was a very good lunch, followed by a lecture about Tibetan medicine. I was surprised that Tibetan medicine is much different than Chinese medicine. We learned quite a bit about it. Our lecture was in the traditional medicine hospital, which was filthy. I hope their resident rooms and operating areas are a lot cleaner. We were there during lunch break, so the only person we saw there were a couple of maintenance people and the man who gave the lecture.

Healing Buddha

They were describing how patents chose the doctor they wanted to see. Their description made me ask if patients can make appointments. They can’t. They just show up. If they can’t see the doctor that day, they can come back another day. One of the other people in our party asked about the availability of Western medical equipment. That’s when we learned that the hospital will sometimes do surgery, which uses mostly Western practices. And that they sometimes use Western diagnostic equipment to “correct” the diagnosis of the traditional doctor. Here’s a picture of the healing Buddha. It’s the first Buddha I saw where I was permitted to take a picture.

SM: Outside

Our last touring stop was Sera Monastery. These pictures are prefixed with “SM: “. This is the largest and most important Buddha monastery in Tibet. Just before the cultural revolution, it had 4,000 monks. Today, it has 500 monks. My first picture is outside the monastery. It’s the first picture I have that shows how brown the surrounding mountains are.

SM: Prayer Wheels

No Buddha facility is complete without prayer wheels. I was able to take a picture of these. Remember: always rotate your Buddha prayer wheel clockwise, never counter-clockwise!

SM: Buddha Circle Of Life

This is a picture of the Buddha circle of life. It is held by the god of death. After life, everybody who is not yet enlightened has to go to hell, where there is no light, and walk in the darkness until they are reincarnated. Burning yak butter will give these poor souls a little light. That’s why another thing one can find in any Buddha facility is several large tubs of burning yak butter.

SM: Monk Debates

The most interesting part of our visit (that I could photograph) is the monk debates. Monks educate themselves by reading scripture in the morning. Their lessons are reinforced with debates. The sitting monk is asking questions. The standing monk is answering them. After every answer, monks slap their wrist. The nerve in the wrist is connected to the brain. The slap improves the memory.

Picture With Foreigners

My final picture is of foreigner picture taking. Both Chinese and Tibetans like to ask Americans to pose with them in a picture. The protocol is that once the picture is taken, they thank us and walk away. But this time, I broke protocol and asked them to take the picture with my camera, so I can have a picture of us posing with them.

Well, if you got this far, I guess this post wasn’t too long. It’s about time to get ready for dinner.

Welcome Musicians

There are pics today. We left the hotel at 5 AM to catch an early flight to Lhasa. We arrived at our hotel around 1 and had lunch. Then we left for the summer palace. Flying in, we noted how brown the area looks. It’s quite cold in the winter, and doesn’t get much rain or snow. Lhasa has lots of parks and green areas, which obviously require lots of watering. I expected to see a lot less cars and more bicycles. There were fewer cars and more scooters; but not all that many bikes. Young people have been migrating into Lhasa because they find it easy to start a business. They want more modern homes with Western plumbing and conveniences. Several high rises are being built in the area.

Welcome Scarf

We had a bizarre drive from the airport to town. Several tour busses were in accidents which caused some deaths. The locals passed a law that no tour bus can have more than 20 people when entering or leaving Lhasa. The “20” includes the driver, the guide, and a policeman to ride with us to make sure we obey the law. We had a second van. Seven of us had to ride in the van.

Our hotel has recently been modernized, but it’s obviously in a poorer area. We have to tell the staff when we will take a shower, so hot water will be available. We were given a welcoming ceremony when we arrived. Two musicians played music while a couple of yaks (men in costume) danced around. An attractive young lady gave us white ribbons (for good luck) and a sincere welcome.

Welcomed

There are two palaces the Deli Lama used in Lhasa — a winter palace and a summer palace. We visited the summer palace today because it’s pretty much at ground level. I’m no athlete, but I am in decent shape. Danita and I have been taking the altitude pills. Nevertheless, I felt the affects of being at a high altitude. We kept our pace slower, always used elevators, occasionally felt dizzy, occasionally felt tingly fingers, etc.

Entrance To Summer Palace

The summer palace has several buildings. We were allowed to enter several of them, but we could not take pictures indoors. We spent most of our time in the building built by the 14th Deli Lama (the current Deli Lama). He had to leave Tibet a few years after the building was completed. The highlight seemed to be a radio donated by the Indian government. It was about the size of two stoves side-by-side. I don’t know how he tuned it because there were no dials on the outside.

14th Deli Lama Building

We didn’t go inside the main building,built by the 7th Deli Lama. But we did go inside the library built by the 1th Deli Lama. The building has 1300 religious documents. The white banner you see on the outside of the building has a blue design of several diamonds inside a large white diamond. This is a religious good luck symbol. You can’t tell from the picture, but the line making the diamonds is an infinite loop, crossing over and under itself in an Escheresque manner. It symbolizes that life is infinite.

13th Deli Lama Library

Other than dinner, that’s it for today. Most of us are pretty tired after that mild exercise.

Dumplings: Fish, Rice Noodles, Walnut, Sweet Potato, Mushroom

There are pics today. Tomorrow we go to Lhasha, Tibet for 4 days, followed by 3 days on a river boat. I don’t know how good the Internet service will be. Be patient, I’ll post when I can.

Last night’s dinner was a lot of fun. We ate 16 different dumplings. Each was shaped to represent the filling. The pictures for some of the better dumplings didn’t turn out, but these will show the idea. We had 3 tables with 8 people at each table. None of the tables ate all their dumplings.

Masked Warrior Dance

The music afterwards was quite entertaining. Tang Chinese tunes played by Tang instruments were accompanied by pretty dancing girls. I’m a sucker for pretty dancing girls — especially the ribbon dance. I tried taking pics, but the camera couldn’t handle the lighting. This one came out the best. And, of course, the opening and closing numbers included those fabulous big Chinese drums.

Bike

The next morning Danita stayed in the hotel. I and many of the other tourers went to the city wall. Chinese walls are much more impressive than Western walls. The wall is 14 KM long (8 miles). The top of the wall is 45 feet wide. Some of us rented bikes and a few of us rode all the way around the wall. Chris was anxious to finish within our allotted 45 minutes and set a brisk pace. I decided to ride with him. It was a little faster than I would normally ride. We could only ride this fast because it was before 9 AM and the tourists hadn’t shown up yet. It’s the most fun I’ve had in China so far.

Biggest Drum

Drum Show

We were all done at the center city by 10. We joined everybody up and went to the Drum Tower. The Drum Tower and Bell Tower were used for time keeping. There’s still plenty of big drums at the drum tower. If an adult American starts drumming one of these with their hands, it will make a most pleasing drumming sound. Before long, a safety officer (kind of a sub-police person) will come see who’s playing with the drums. When he sees who it is, he will shake his head and go back to whatever he was doing. (I wasn’t the only one to disturb a safety officer’s harmony.) While we were there, we watched a very cool drum demonstration. Nobody does drums like the Chinese do drums.

Muslem Shopping District

We still had time before lunch to visot the Muslim shopping area. Since it was a sunny day, pleasantly warm; and a holiday weekend to boot; it was mobbed. We were offered the opportunity to walk part of the 1.5 KM long shopping area. Danita and I walked one block and that was enough for us. We were feeling all toured out, so we both skipped a visit to the folk art museum. (It sounded a lot like Baltimore’s Visionary Art Museum.)

Bell Tower

Making Noodles

There are couple of pics today.

I forgot to mention a really cool point of our lunch yesterday. We had noodle soup. The cool thing about this soup was that the noodles were made entirely by hand. I watched the guy make noodles entirely with his hands, and I still don’t understand how he did it. It’s magical. If you want to see a video of Chinese noodle making, you can see one here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64fu1ZHiMP8

Today the weather was cool and rainy. It was a nice change of pace from the hot, sunny weather we have experienced up to now.

Zhao Jing (Cindy)

This morning we started off with another fabulous breakfast buffet. Then we went to hear a lecture about Chinese cultural history at a local university. Professor Zhao Jing (English name: Cindy) gave the lecture. She did a fabulous job of condensing all of Chinese history down to one 2-hour talk. After having taken my course, I learned quite a bit. The end of the talk was about “New China”, as Chinese sometimes call the Peoples Republic of China. She told her family’s story during the food shortage, then the Cultural Revolution. It was a moving talk. You can see Cindy here holding up her parent’s Red Guard band and medallions.

Oracle Bone

After lunch at the University, we went to the Xi’an Historical Museum. There were plenty of people at the museum, but we got in during the lunch hour, when they stop selling tickets. So it was a little less crowded while we were there. There were plenty of artifacts. I’m including the picture of my personal favorite — an Oracle bone. Between 1200 and 1000 BCE, kings wanted to know the future. They would compose a yes/no question such as “Should I launch the battle tomorrow?” The question would be inscribed on a turtle shell or ox shoulder bone. They would drill a hole in the bone, then apply a hot poker. The bone would crack. A diviner would study the crack to come up with an answer, then inscribe the answer on the other side of the bone. This represents the earliest written Chinese history.

We opted out of an optional stop at a jade jewelry store so we could relax at the hotel for an hour. After a dumpling dinner tonight, we’ll see a Chinese musical performance.