Nick had been here
for a little over 24 hours when we packed up and left. We were headed
for Kangding, which is in the west of Sichuan province and commonly
known as the “gateway to Tibet”. I had never been to Tibet
before, or to western Sichuan, so this was a new experience for both
Nick and I, as well as for Brenna and James, who we traveled with.
Before leaving, I
had warned Nick that Chinese transportation was not the most
efficient, to say the least. Every single time I've left Pengshan to
visit another city using public transportation, I have returned weary
and jaded. This trip proved to be no exception. While our bus from
Pengshan to Ya'an went suspiciously smoothly, the road from Ya'an to
Kangding was a total nightmare. If you don't know anything about
Chinese driving, you're a lucky person. In China, rules of the road
are loosely enforced at best, and once you get out of the large
cities they become virtually nonexistent. This particular road was
even worse than usual, as it is the only “major” highway that
leads into Tibet. I write “major” in quotes, since it is, in
fact, only a two-lane road, which twists and turns through the
mountains with nerve-wracking drops off the side. This does not deter
Chinese drivers who are intent on getting there as fast as possible,
which means passing people whenever necessary—and I mean whenever.
Caring little about the dangers of passing in a curve, Chinese
drivers will simply constantly honk their horn to warn vehicles
coming the other way. I've come to approach driving in China with a
kind of horrific nonchalance. “I probably won't die today,” I
tell myself, boarding the bus and settling in.
The road to Kangding
With
such a road and drivers, we inevitably
did get stuck behind an
accident about two hours into the trip. About four cars ahead of us,
a large truck had been trying to pass right before a curve and had
gotten t-boned by another large truck, blocking both lanes. Luckily,
it seemed as though no one was hurt. We waited for two hours for the
police to do something, but their participation at the scene mostly
consisted of wandering around and taking pictures—much the same as
the other many onlookers. In the end, it was another large semi truck
that used some chains to tow one of the trucks out of the way. After
this, I naively assumed that since we were only four cars from the
wreck, we would soon be on the move. This was not the case. Cars in
the other lane (which was still blocked) managed to scoot around the
wreck first, and just kept on coming. Once again, the police officers
did nothing to direct traffic, but instead we waited for the entire
build-up of traffic from the other side to finish completely, before
our side began to move. This took another hour and a half.
In
the end, our entire trip there, which should have taken around 6
hours, took a full 10 hours, and we arrived in Kangding around 11
o'clock.
A kindly restaurant owner opened his kitchen back up to make us a late dinner.
By this time, we were all wondering if we had made a huge
mistake, a feeling that I have come to associate with public
transportation travels in China. In the end, however, the trip was
easily worth the nightmarish journey by bus.
I
had never been to Tibet before, or to anywhere like it, so this was a
new experience for both Nick and I, as well as for Brenna and James,
who we were traveling with. We
came into Kangding late at night and only stopped for a quick bite to
eat at a restaurant before heading to our hostel to fall into bed.
But the next day we were up early and ready to go.
The
very first thing I noticed about Kangding is the air, the beautiful,
wonderful air. After living in Pengshan for a year, I had become very
accustomed to the grayish clouds that usually obscured the sky
(partly from the natural fogginess of the area and partly from
pollution). Even in other parts of China that I had visited which
were renowned for their “clear” air, such as the fomous Bamboo
Sea in sourthern Sichuan, I could still detect a faint smog in the
distance. In Kangding, however, the high mountain air was completely
untainted. In places like that, it is a pleasure simply to breathe.
Just look at dat air.
Beyond
the air, the location itself was also gorgeous, with Kangding nestled
right up against a beautiful moutnain range, a raging river rushing
straight through the downtown, and temples and prayer flags dotting
the hills around the city. Throughout the day, we visited several of
those temples, which was also surprisingly novel for me. After living
in China for over a year and visiting several times before that, I've
become a bit desensitized to temples and pagodas. Yes, they are
beautiful. Yes, the religion and artwork and architecture is
fascinating. But after visiting the first few temples, they tend to
blend together a little in your
mind. Tibetan temples, however, had aspects I had never seen before
in a typical Buddhist Chinese temple. For one, they were much more
colorful, both with the prayer flags and the buildings themselves.
The monks also seemed much more active in the monasteries
and temples that we visited.
After
spending the day hiking up the mountains and visiting various temple,
we spent the evening walking around the downtown, visiting the shops
and the main square. What I
noticed most here was the people themselves. After living among a
vast majority of Han ethnicity in the Sichuan basin, the Tibetan
people were immediately distinctly different, both in their dress and
their appearance. The women were most noticeably different. They were
much taller than their Han cousins, and many dressed in the
traditional Tibetan style—an elegant long skirt with bright
trimmings on their clothes. On their head, they wore their hair in
elaborate braids interwoven with colorful yarns, all wrapped up in a
stylized hat. Their jewelry was equally elaborate, typically using
aquamarine or reddish orange stones set in heavy silver. The men wore
simpler clothes, with long pants and fabric jackets. Their defining
feature was the popular cowboy hat, which was introduced to Tibetans
by an American long ago.
As
for their appearance, I found that Tibetan people look more similar
to Mongolians and Native Americans than they do to Han Chinese. Their
hair is commonly worn long for both men and women. Their noses are
more defined and their cheekbones are high and sharp. Combined with
the many cowboy hats all over the streets, I sometimes felt like I
had walked into an old western.
Typical male Tibetan dress
The
next day, we moved on from Kangding to Tagong, where the “old
western” vibe only intensified as we entered herding country,
though it was not cows that these people were wrangling, but yaks.
The drive to Tagong, which took about two hours, was exceptional. We
traveled through the rolling highlands of Sichuan, with yaks and
herders' huts dotting the grass for as far as you could see.
Sometimes explosions of colorful prayer flags would interrupt the
peaceful green, other times white Tibetan script would be written
onto the hillsides.
Tagong
itself is a tiny town, and about as Tibetan as you can get. In many
ways, it was a more authentically Tibetan experience than visiting
Tibet itself, as you can only enter the country with a guided tour
group and stick to a very specific traveling schedule. For our part,
we were able to eat delicious Tibetan food (lots of yak), talk to
Tibetan people, and visit any monastery or nunnery that we fancied.
The first day, we wandered out to a monastery university currently in
construction and then explored the town, which really consisted of
walking up and down the one main street.
Some younger monks playing around
The
next day we found out that, completely by chance, we had come to
Tibetan China on the Dalai Lama's birthday. All the Tibetan
restaurants in town stopped serving meat and Buddhist activity
throughout the entire town was constant all through the day. A
consistent stream of people turned the prayer wheels and a steady hum
of prayer could be heard from the monasteries. After a disappointing
short horse ride, we rented some bikes and
went on a breath-taking bike ride
to visit the local nunnery, which
was also humming with activity as nuns scurried around the town.
Nick making new friends
In
the evening we headed back to Kangding, which was also full of
celebrations and excitement—and also full of military presence
including firetrucks, ambulances, army soldiers in riot gear, and
armored trucks.
They were obviously well prepared for trouble that
might occur, but luckily the night passed peacefully. In the morning,
we were on our way back to Pengshan. The only hiccups on the way back
were getting stuck in traffic for an hour, and eating a packet of
peanuts at the bus station that later gave Nick and I terrible food
poisoning that lasted for several days.
But
despite the not insubstantial setbacks, the entire trip was a really
amazing experience, and it was easily my favorite place that I have
visited in China so far. The culture, the people, and the geography
were completely different from any place I've gone, and I saw and
experienced and learned so much over the period of only a few days.
Given the opportunity, I would do the trip again in a heartbeat.
This
time, though, I might splurge on a flight from Chengdu to Kangding,
and I would pass on the peanuts.
