Chapter I: The Great Chinese Building Boom - Xining, China

April 21 - that's the day I boarded a plane for the mainland.  The trip to Western China would take about 7 hours worth of travel from Taipei to Shanghai, Shanghai to Lanzhou and then Lanzhou by bus to Xining, the largest city in the Western Chinese province of Qinghai.  Our tour consists of 21 Taiwanese citizens - I am by far the youngest.  I am accompanied by my dad and my 2nd uncle.  


Landing in Lanzhou, we're rushed off to dinner where we were treated to Huang He (Yellow River brand) beer.  As a beer lover, I wouldn't say that this would top any list of beers I would ask for even if it was the only option at a restaurant.  Unfortunately, this beer appears multiple times as we travelled through Western China.

Horses are a big part of Western Chinese culture.  Here's a statue of a horse outside Lanzhou airport.

Xining (pronounced She-ning), has a history going back 2100 years and was a pivotal part of the Silk Road.  It also has the notoriety of being the 2nd worst air polluted cities in China (even worse than Beijing).  And it's pretty clear why it gets this distinction - when you stare out at the horizon in the morning, you can barely make out the skyline.


The reason we're in Xining is two fold.  The first, is for the attraction of the city itself.  Western China's landscapes have been carved out by thousands of years of wind, sand and water erosion.  The scenery is as if they were painted on canvas; awe-inspiring, breathtaking views that no camera could capture with justice (more on that later in this post).  The second reason, was for pure health reasons.  In venturing to Tibet, which at it's lowest point is still around 2500KM above sea level, one must adjust slowly to the altitude or suffer the consequences.  Our tour guide's plan was to adjust us to the altitude by going through China, climbing higher and higher as we head into Tibet.


The city is an odd place - a construction boom is visible everywhere you go, the number of cranes seem to outnumber the number of vehicles on the street, and that says something for a place that is in a constant traffic jam.  The building boom is a symbol of China's wealth and ability to mobilize a workforce to build houses for ghosts.  Why I say that is that when you pass by completed buildings, there are no occupants.  One would think that with the population of China, it wouldn't be hard to find occupants for these dwellings.  Well, not when the large majority of the population of Western China lives below the poverty line and each of these places cost more than any amount of money one of these people would earn in a lifetime.  The apartment blocks are cookie cutter and a throwback to 1970s Russian Communist architecture.  If you disagree, let me show you some exhibits.

How inspiring...it's like a GAP commercial for buildings.

All these buildings are done...and empty.

Xining is also the cultural merging of three main groups - the majority Han Chinese, the minority Muslim Chinese and the even smaller minority Tibetans that are relegated to the outskirts of the cities.  The groups live a strange co-existance.  Observing out the bus window, the groups stuck with their own kind, no mixing or intermingling.  Store signs are all in Simplified Chinese, with certain stores displaying Arabic or Tibetan, depending on which minority group owned that store.


Our tour guide is named Bai Ling (like the infamous Chinese movie actress, who tried to break out into North American cinema, but only ended up on Celebrity Rehab).  She is a spritely girl, who is only 22 years old - a veteran in the Chinese tour guide industry.  She started in the tourism industry when she was 16 - gotta give it to the Chinese for putting their youth to work ASAP.  She's incredibly informative, patient and speaks Mandarin without a sharp mainlander accent.  She takes us to three key sights near Xining:


- Guide (pronounced Gwei De) National Geological Park
- Bird Island Sanctuary
- Xining's highest point at 3820KMs above sea level


Guide National Geological Park was recently made a national heritage site in 1997.  The park is surrounded by walls of rock and clay, carved and chiseled by centuries of wind, water and sand erosion.  Everywhere you turned, there was a photo opportunity.  In fact, I wished I had more time to set up a chair, and aisle, a canvas and a paint set, and have a day to sit, sip a cup of tea and paint like it was my job.  In the centre of the park sits a green lake with a pagoda that serves as a museum for the Guide area.  As an interesting sidenote, the 2011 World Rock Climbing championships were held here.  I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

The hiking trail through the park.

The green lake with the Pagoda Museum.

Lone tree in the park.

Bird Island Sanctuary is located near Qinghai Lake, one of the largest lakes in Asia (about 16 times the size of Singapore), was another pitstop in our two days near Xining.  While there is a stunning view of the lake, and an island that is populated by Comurant birds that use it for nesting, there wasn't much to see and we were back on the bus within 1/2 hour.  Nonetheless, there are some cool pictures.

Qinghai Lake

Me with Comurant Island in the background.

Finally, we went to the highest point in Xining, about 3820KM above sea level.  Tibetans actually come to this spot and throw prayers papers out the windows, I know this because our bus was peppered with a healthy dose of these prayer papers as we drove up to the lookout point.  This lookout is only accessible by one road, which is fine, until there's a car accident.  We experienced this as a truck made too sharp of a turn at a high speed and resulted in a 4 1/2 hour jam on both sides.  It was quite the spectacle - the police standing around not doing anything, Chinese drivers doing what all Chinese do in a crowded situation by trying to force their way to the front, and maintenance workers focused more on their smoke breaks than getting the truck off the road.  Here are some photos:

Truck down.

Everyone just standing around.

Everyone is just trying to squeeze to the front.

Mountains from lookout point.

My dad doing his best "I Dream of Jeannie" impression at 3820KM above sea level.

China was certainly a test of my patience.  Smoking was acceptable indoors, common courtesy was left by the wayside, lining up was unheard of (people just rushed) and well, spitting, excuse me, horking, was acceptable sidewalk behaviour.  My tolerance for the Chinese was working itself up to a point when I had to remind myself that I am a guest in their home and that I have to grin and bear it.  This was my first test in a long series of trials and challenges set up to try my patience.  Add to that the beginning of a cold, this short visit to Xining was proving to not be the best first impression of China.  My dad also shared this view - while he's travelled to the mainland several times on trips before, he has have very few nice things to say about Chinese tourists.  And boy, were we about to encounter the motherload when venturing to Lhasa.


I also shared some small moments of bonding with my dad over photography (probably the very few moments before we started getting nitpicky with each other's photography skills).  He still doesn't understand why I have to take jumping photos whereever I go.


As for the song that helped me on this leg of the journey, for this leg of the journey, I picked "Human" by The Killers.  Not only did their music video, shot in Nevada, look like the landscape of Guide, but the lyrics covered some of the questions I was asking myself during this first part of the trip including:


"Close your eyes, clear your heart, cut the cord."
"Will your system be alright, when you dream of home tonight?"
"I'm on my knees, looking for the answer.  Are we human?  Or are we dancer?"


Now there are a lot of interpretations of this song's lyrics from a discourse regarding if we are still what we think we are as organic living beings or programmed by technology "dancers" to the argument that none of it makes any sense at all.  The way that this song spoke to me, besides having a wicked ass melody for long road trips, is to go and find your escape from what has made you complacent in life.  Are we meant to just live a life or are we meant to experience through actions ("the dance") all our own?  Letting go of expectations, wiping out pre-concieved notions and embracing what you're there to experience should be the mantra of any traveller and I was struggling to find that while starting off my journey.  In fact, there was a sense of homesickness when I encountered my first squat toilet in a restuarant in Xining, and I hadn't even experienced the worst of it.  If I wanted to make the best of my trip, I needed to change my attitude quickly, and this song was a great reminder of that.

Next, I'll take you on my 24 hour ride on the Lhasa Express.  Train travel - it's fun once.  You'll likely never want to do it again.