Living.Vicariously.Through: Xining: Good(and Bad)byes

Xining would be the end of many things for us. Some of these things we knew going in. Others were a disappointing realization.

The first full day in Xining was just that. We woke early and though we were monastaried out, we had already decided the night before that we wanted to go to one more monastery. This one would be special. Not because it is one of the 6 most sacred (though it is) but because it would be our last monastery, our last sightseeing adventure, with Judy and Phil. We had breakfast with them and then all piled into a cab and headed the 30-ish minutes outside of town to the Kumbum Monastery.

It cost us 80Y each for tickets, but it turns out you only needed the ticket in order to get into two specific temples (that we weren’t overly impressed by). The other temples and areas had ticket “scanners” but no one manning them or the person just didn’t seem to really care to scan the tickets. This was a bit annoying since we would have rather just missed the first two temples and saved the money and still saw the rest of it.

Aside from that bit of a grumble, the monastery was very large and fairly impressive. We were surprised and slightly shocked by all the tourists everywhere until it was put into terms that made sense: “This is like the equivalent of the Vatican for Catholics”. Ah, well, that makes a bit more sense now then doesn’t it. We walked all over the entirety of the grounds, stopping at any and everything that we could (had to get that 80Y worth!), and after about 4 hours, we made our way out and back to town.

Once back in Xining, we made our way over to the Dongguan Mosque, also known as the Great Mosque (25Y). It is an interesting mix of Chinese and Muslim architecture styles. We stayed for about 30 minutes or so but decided to leave just after the call to prayer and before they gathered to pray.

We woke early the next morning to say our goodbyes to our new friends and dear travel companions as they were heading out on an early flight to another area of China before heading home. There’s not much that Steve and I will wake up early for, but saying goodbye to Phil and Judy was a worth reason. They are wonderful people and we feel very thankful and blessed to have met them and gotten to travel with them.

Thank you Judy for always using those 10 words of Chinese you know. And Phil, thank you for all the interesting information. Again, you guys are so special and we’re happy to know you and look forward to when our paths may cross again!

The remaining time in Xining was spent catching up (or trying to anyway) on internet stuff and trying to figure out our next move. This is usually the case for us—both being behind on internet type things (emails, blog entries, facebook, etc…) and always needing to figure out our next move since we can’t seem to plan ahead—but this time it was special. This time, we were faced with the obstacle of a 10-day Chinese holiday.

This may not seem like a daunting obstacle to some, but for someone who doesn’t speak any functional Chinese and is trying to get around the country while thousands of other people who do speak Chinese are doing the same, it becomes a challenge. All trains to all destinations we were hoping to go to (farther west) were sold out for 9 to 10 days. Flights to these locations were either sold out or too expensive to stomach or budget. We were stuck and we were getting frustrated. And heartbroken.

We so very badly wanted to go west. I wanted to ride a camel in the desert! Steve wanted to see the strangeness of a place more like a –stan country (Afghanistan, Pakistan, ect.) than like China. We wanted to see the land become dryer and dryer until we could feel the air pulling the moisture from our very skin just to give it some dampness. Heartbroken could possibly an understatement for the sorrow that surrounded us for a full 24 hours as we were forced to come to grips with the fact that plans, hopes, dreams were changing and being abandoned. We could not head west.

Instead, we would go east, by plane. Everything about that sentence sat like a stone in both of our stomachs. But sitting like a stone in Xining, waiting for 10 days for another option wasn’t a workable option either. So, we booked our flight, finished up as much as we could online, packed our bags and went to sleep—still sullen about the disappointment of plans changed, but also anticipating what could now be in store for us because of this new change in going to Shanghai in the morning.