Yakkity Yak
With one week left in China, we had several places we still wanted to see. It seems that everywhere we look there is a city here with more than a million people, and we still wanted to find something a bit quieter. We decided to go west from Xi’an to higher, and cooler, ground. This is the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, and we thought we’d find something different here out. It took another overnight train to get to Xining, another place home to over a million.
We had hoped to go camping for a few days in the nearby grasslands, but couldn’t arrange it all at the last minute. Instead we took a bus into the countryside and ended up in what seemed like a whole different country. The population of this tiny town is primarily Tibetan. Even the bus passengers were mostly nomads and monks. The Tibetan people were very nice, friendly, and generally fascinated by our presence. A man sitting next to us on the bus reached out and pointed at Mike’s arm with a look of shock on his face. He was surprised to see so much hair! His arms were totally bald. Mike then showed off his hairy legs and that really started the chatter. The only word we recognized was “yeti”.
Our next interesting experience was with the food, which we liked a lot better than what we had been eating in China so far. At a restaurant we ordered something labeled “nomad barley dough”. The waitress brought out four little dishes, one each with flour, butter, sugar, and dried cheese. After a few minutes of looking lost and hearing giggles from some ladies across the restaurant, we tried to ask the waitress for help. She nodded and brought us a spoon and a thermos full of hot water. At this point it was obvious that we had to mix this ourselves, create an end product that we’d never heard of before, and that despite the menu’s suggestions that this might be some type of bread it would not actually be baked or cooked in anyway. It went pretty well in the end, and we mixed up a pretty tasty bowl full of something that looked like cookie dough. A few days later we found out that we did it right when we ordered the same thing at another restaurant that came out already mixed up. Aside from that little bit of confusion, the food has been great. Especially compared to Chinese food, it’s more meat and less bone.
Just like the alpacas of Peru, the cows of Wisconsin, or sheep of New Zealand, this region of the world is defined by the yak. It turns out they are just really hairy cows, but the people really know how to make use of them. Most of their food is yak based, the milk is used to make tea, the meat is served in many dishes, yogurt is widely available, and butter is used liberally. The local monastery even makes intricate yak butter carvings for every new year celebration. There is nothing to complain about though, it is all very delicious.
After spending an afternoon seeing the monastery in Tongren, we took another bus to Xiahe where we spent the rest of the week. This town is home to the famous Labrang Monastery, one of the six most significant in Tibetan Buddhism and home to the Yellow Hat sect of monks, of which the current Dali Lama is a member. In addition to the monks and permanent Tibetans, the city serves as a marketplace where the nomads in the region can come to resupply or get their motorcycles fixed. There is also a large number of pilgrims from all over Tibet who have come to visit the monastery. It’s not just Tibetans either, there is a significant Han Chinese and Hui Muslim population. These different groups make it an interesting place despite it’s small size.
We occupied ourselves here by eating a lot of yak products, visiting the monastery and temples, hiking in the hills around town, and taking a short bike ride to the surrounding grasslands. It is nice to finally be out of the city and get some fresh air. Luckily there was an English-speaking monk giving tours and we learned a bit about Tibetan Buddhism and the history of the Labrang complex, which houses six different colleges among other things. There were several trails in the hills surrounding town and we spent part of a day walking around enjoying the good views and even found some ruins of a past settlement. We even got to see some yaks in their natural habitat when we traveled a little bit out of town by bike. There were several herds in the area, mostly just standing around doing what cows do best.
It was a great way to finish our time in China, and it was very interesting to see ethnic groups other than the Han Chinese.