Travelers depart the cosmopolitan comforts of Chengdu and venture to a remote province in western China where they participate in Tibetan Buddhist prayer rituals.
Arriving
We ate noodles in a nondescript restaurant and waited, listening to announcements for departures to Chinese cities – Shenyang, Chongqing, Guiyang – great sprawling places of modern efficiency. But then the voiceover the loudspeaker announced the flight from Lhasa had arrived. Lhasa! The name prompted a flood of images: blazing blue skies, prayer flags fluttering in a Himalayan wind, a land of adventure and faith.
I watched passengers file off the Lhasa flight: wind-burned faces, some shaggy-haired with darker skin, black leather jackets; one or two were stopped to have their IDs checked. A lone People’s Liberation Army soldier wearing dirty fatigues and desert boots. They looked wild and out of place walking into the modern airport. Behind them the aircraft’s jet engines were spooling, and its fuselage was covered in dust and had several dents. It had been on a voyage of fantastical places that morning; not just Lhasa, an app told us, but also Kathmandu and Shangri-La. My partner and I were about to board this plane. It would take us not to Lhasa, however, but to a lesser-known outpost of Tibet, a place called Xiahe.
When an airline employee shouted “Xiahe!”, it brought forth a line of color from Chengdu’s gray departures lounge: Buddhist monks in maroon robes, Hui Muslims in patterned skull caps, Tibetans wearing cowboy hats and bright woolen cardigans. There were several lone Chinese, mostly men with neat haircuts wearing short shirt sleeves. We laid down our chopsticks and joined the line.
Soon, the plane was shuddering up through the thick smog of Chengdu, eventually breaking free and smoothing out above white clouds. We were seated among a group of monks and exchanged smiles but did not speak; I was unsure which language to use.
Cartographically, Chengdu lies in the middle of China but in reality, it is a frontier, the first or last Han Chinese city. West of Chengdu are the huge expanses of Tibet and Xinjiang, places brought under the Chinese flag relatively recently. Places which, outside of China, excite political passions. But within China, they are largely portrayed as holiday destinations or far-off postings for those employed in certain industries (government, military, mineral extraction, hydrology). The politics may be polarizing but, traveling west of China’s central point, the different geography and cultures that emerge are undeniable. As we distanced ourselves from Chengdu, the cloud thinning and snowy mountain peaks appearing outside the window, I felt happy to be heading in this direction.
The smoothness of the flight did not last. Rising air from the mountains began buffeting the aircraft. There were bumps of turbulence before one wing suddenly dipped, providing views straight down to the bare mountain bases before rolling back the other way. At one point, the aircraft suddenly plunged to gasps of horror before the engines whined to regain lost height.
Most were sanguine about the turbulence. One Buddhist monk pressed his face to the window, another was filming the unraveling mountains on his phone. A particularly large monk sitting in a middle seat was quietly reciting mantras, eyes shut, counting his rosary beads. His size was squashing a Chinese man in the window seat who was immersed in a war film on his phone and seemed oblivious to the large, holy presence next to him. Smartly-dressed flight attendants made one daring attempt with the drinks trolley before retreating to their seats, apologizing for the cancellation of refreshments.
It was the sort of flight that would crash, I reasoned: a once-a-week route to a remote area where protests often took place, an old aircraft, difficult mountains. It probably wasn’t an economic route for anyone – a crash would be a good reason to cancel it altogether.
I was relieved when the pilot announced our imminent arrival, and then surprised that there was no descent. From our cruising altitude, the landing gear and flaps whirred into place, and out of nowhere, a runway appeared.
Ours was the only aircraft, the airport the only structure amid a mountainous landscape. I felt a gentle squeeze on my temples from the sparse mountain air as we disembarked. Others were more accustomed to the conditions, jogging across the runway to the terminal, wrapping scarves and shawls around their faces, putting on sunglasses to protect against the fierce sun and wind. By the time we arrived outside the tiny terminal, there was only a single mini-bus. We haggled for two seats for Xiahe, some 70km away.
Nominally, this was still China, but there was no megacity or tea mountain here. In fact, there was little evidence of humans. As we set out from the airport on a single tongue of tarmac, there was only vastness: the earth was a yellowish-brown loess. It was a desert-come-mountain landscape with just this single road snaking through the passes. Lorries would pull out to overtake each other, and oncoming trikes or cars would veer off onto the dust to avoid head-on collisions. We passed through villages with names in Tibetan script; tents with shredded prayer flags clinging to guy ropes in the wind; great herds of yak, goats and horses. A shepherd wearing a dusty serge suit; a woman in bright knits with a baby strapped to her back. Their dry skin with deep wrinkles well-reflected the landscape. It was beautiful but harsh; strewn by the road were bones as smooth as river pebbles. Amidst it all, there were lone Buddhist stupas; atop the mountains I spotted colorful signs of devotion. By the road, a trickle of pilgrims were making their way to Xiahe.
Buddhist stupas became more numerous, then larger: pagodas, huts, groups of people, a large gilded stupa. This was Labrang Monastery, the centerpiece of Xiahe around which the town had grown. The Tibetan driver left us outside our hotel and gave us his card, telling us about nearby grasslands which, at this time of year, had no grass. His Mandarin Chinese was halting, lacking the idiomatic quality of the native speaker.
We left our bags and walked at dusk to Labrang Monastery, an enormous complex of Buddhist colleges, prayer halls, chapels, and accommodation for the thousands of monks of the Gelug School of Tibetan Buddhism who have lived there for over 300 years.
Around the monastery’s perimeter, scores of prayer wheels were kept spinning by pilgrims who circumambulated the monastery in the Buddhist pilgrimage known as a kora. It was mostly ethnic Tibetans doing the kora. They all looked and dressed exactly like Tibetans: bright knits, dark baggy robes, leather belts, hats, pleated ponytails, boots, old North Face jackets. The weathered Himalayan faces were those I’d noticed on the road from the airport.
Hundreds of monks walked the streets – they were mostly not on kora but on business, as it were, going into town or walking between buildings. Some were in groups, some alone, some in taxis, some in coffee shops sipping cappuccinos, some eating in Muslim restaurants, some texting on smartphones. Some smiled at me, some did not, some were old, others were teenagers. The latter group kicked footballs in the streets and carried plastic cups of bubble tea. All the monks had shaved heads and wore a thin maroon robe that exposed a smooth brown arm.
As the sun sank below the mountains, the temperature plunged, and we joined the darkening figures on the kora. Some moved rapidly, sliding their rosary beads and murmuring mantras as they heaved the great wooden prayer wheels that clicked and groaned and flashed the eight auspicious symbols of Tibetan Buddhism. One woman took two large steps and then, wearing elbow and knee pads, fell to the concrete ground in full prostration. Her forehead to the floor, arms and legs stretched out, she wore gloves with wooden blocks on the palms. She gathered herself up, took two more steps, and again fell to a full prostration.
Pledging to return to the kora in daylight, we walked from the monastery into the town. Its open-fronted shops sold copper kettles and statues of the Buddha, knee and elbow pads for pilgrims, yak wool, and yak milk. There were fruit sellers and Tibetan book shops. Beggars of all stripes were on the streets; old men with wounds, ladies who approached with cupped hands, children who held laminated pleas. On one corner was a blind man on his knees, a speaker next to him playing Om Mani Padme Hum over and over. Prostrating himself to the rhythmic mantra, he would clasp his hands together at the sound of a coin or a soft paper note landing in his wooden bowl.
We entered a bright Muslim restaurant full of steam from the open kitchen and cigarette smoke from the clientele. We ate warm eggs and tomatoes, a staple dish across China: it is always good and sometimes very good. Here, it was excellent, the best I’d tasted in many years of travel in China, and I said as much to the proprietor. He dismissed me with a wave and poured me more black tea.
A young couple from Qinghai Province joined our table. They both chain-smoked and were in town selling some American kitchenware product, the girl showing me the product on her mobile phone. She seemed disappointed I did not know it. They too were ethnic Tibetans, their corner of what is now Qinghai Province, part of what was the Kingdom of Tibet, just like this region of what is now Gansu Province. They were friendly, inquisitive, and had an urge to visit America. “Why not go?” I asked. “Because we are not allowed passports,” they smiled.
We walked slowly back to our hotel. Streets were quiet; people were shuffling home, the shops closed early. The silence of the place was only broken when, lost trying to find our hotel, we drew alongside the monastery and heard the deep bass of chanting monks.
The Kora
Early morning light made the mountainsides glow. The sun would not lighten the valley for a few hours. In the faint light, scores of pilgrims were out rotating prayer wheels, chanting, disappearing into chapels, moving clockwise as a group. The monastery, with its temples and stupas, sat at the center of their great mandala.
I stood for a moment, feeling the freezing air, the height of the mountains, the weight of the place. Then, I entered a small room with a giant prayer wheel at the center, small yak butter lamps tucked into niches in the stone wall. I knew little of what I was doing but was soon surrounded by people all moving together. There is no talk on the kora; there is no rule against talk either. There are only the sounds of steps, of prayer wheels, of beads, of mantras.
Slow or quick, it doesn’t matter how you walk the kora. It doesn’t seem to matter if you’re Buddhist. There are no questions. Camaraderie must come, I imagined, during which tales of kora are shared, titbits of gossip on fellow pilgrims exchanged. Or perhaps not. The Tibetan laity are going for Enlightenment as ardently as the monks, and in doing so they have ethical precepts to follow, particularly those of speech – “speaking meditation” as a monk described it; saying only that which does not lead to suffering. Still, I wanted to know the pilgrims, rather than projecting onto them, and hear their stories.
Instead, I began watching the symbols on the prayer wheels as I spun wheel after wheel: the white conch shell, the parasol, the victory banner, all commemorating the Enlightenment of the Buddha. Rotating the wheels, following the group if unsure – that’s all there was to it. An empty white cup was thrust at me, and I rejected it, thinking it was a beggar. Further on I saw a large group, sitting and drinking from white cups, nibbling pastries, exchanging stories. A free breakfast for pilgrims, a chance to linger and speak. It was too late to accept the cup; my unskilful act of brushing it away kept me spinning in samsara.
Monks
It was after 10am by the time the sunlight filled the valley. Thick smoke from yak dung hung in the air. The slight warmth was welcome and provided such brilliant light as to require sunglasses. Pilgrims continued their round, murmuring and prostrating.
We took a tour of the monastery. A monk led us into the temple of Maitreya, the future Buddha. He was less interested in facts and more in asking knotty questions: Are you happy or not? Why? Are you a body? Why? Why are some people lucky?
He spoke good English from living in Canada, but his grin was ambiguous: I felt he hated me. But this was another projection – a cardinal tenet of Buddhism is maitri, universal friendliness, and any sort of aversion is one of the three basic “mental poisons” which keep one swirling in suffering.
When I asked him where he was from, his answer was quick: “From here, from Tibet!” he replied, watching me. He spoke no Chinese, he said. I wondered how he was allowed to go to Canada while others were not allowed passports. I was wary; I’d read in an old Lonely Planet guide that Chinese intelligence agents sometimes disguise themselves as monks, drawing in seditious tourists with stray independence comments.
A Chinese language tour had set out at the same time as ours. The Chinese group had three ordinary-looking tourists: two girls with bored expressions and a middle-aged man with a large camera. At one point, they entered our temple. Our guide was grinning into silence, having asked, “Why are humans and animals different?” I overheard the Chinese-speaking monk give an airy summary of the temple: dates, names, a touch of history, and they were gone, onto the next. During this time, the monk and myself remained in silence, gazes locked.
Leaving
We left early for the bus station. An old bus would take us to the provincial capital of Lanzhou. On the outskirts there would be glimpses of modern Xiahe: an industrial yak dairy, high-rise accommodation, a power plant. Further away, scattered stupas would give way to tall mosques, a colorful mural of Chairman Mao with smiling Tibetans and Muslims, and eventually expressways, smog, and another megacity.
But in the freezing morning on the way to the bus station, there was still the ever-present stream of pilgrims, the clap of wooden blocks hitting the ground in prostration, the fug of incense smoke, the horns; another day was starting at the monastery. There was nothing remarkable about any of it. Only that I observed it for a few days, and in the process became a small part of it and it a part of me.
