Xining and Qinghai Lake

After the long bus ride from Xiahe, we finally made it to Xining. 

We got the bus to our hostel and decided to take the whole afternoon off from sight seeing and public transportation. While I was reading or something, the guy who was working reception made me some tea and we chatted for a while. He works part of the year as a guide in Tibet. He did his undergraduate degree in Shanghai and studied Arabic and Russian, I think. I also asked him about his native language, which is a Turkic language native to Qinghai Province. It was such a nice conversation! And we drank our tea in Tibetan shot glasses used for barley wine. 

The evening when we went out to get dinner, our image of Xining as a relatively normal place was shattered. This was the first of many details which would eventually fuel our jokes. This is a man carrying milk in a plastic bag. That would be milk put directly into a plastic bag. Why? The next morning, we saw a woman with two dead chickens in a plastic bag. She got onto the same bus as us. 

The next morning, we got a hired driver, who was supposed to take anyone from our hostel who wanted to go to Qinghai Lake. In the end my friend James and I were the only ones who went, so it was a pretty great deal. We just got to go wherever we wanted. 

The drive was really beautiful. 

We were definitely there at the right time of year! The yellow flowers were so pretty. 

We found a Sichuan restaurant. The only thing that was at all reasonably priced was the fried rice. But we did have a nice view of the lake. 

In the end we decided not to go into the park and just pay around $5 to get to the shore of the lake. It turned out to be a total tourist trap. But we ended up just laughing at all the tourists and how ridiculous the place was. I’m glad we didn’t pay the $25-30 entry fee to the real park. At least I did get to put my feet in the lake. 

As at every Chinese tourist attraction, you can rent ‘traditional minority costumes’ to take pictures.

There was this man doing the most ridiculous poses. We got this picture of him, but I also recreated one of his other poses. No joke, he was actually doing the pose I recreated in the photo below. 

‘Look, ma! No hands!’

They also had animals dressed up and waiting by the water for people to take pictures with them. For a small fee, of course.

Before leaving this surreal and frustrating place, we did take some nice pictures in this field of flowers. I think they’re actually a plant which is similar to rapeseed. I know the plants are used to make cooking oil.

We drove along the western shore of the lake and the landscape changed to arid plateau and then again to desert. It was very strange.

The next day, we were going to go to the Dalai Lama’s birthplace, but it’s unsurprisingly hard to find and I forgot my passport when we went to the train station in the morning! We decided to just scrap that and spend the day exploring Xining. 

There were some pretty intense propaganda and patriotic displays around town. This flat sculpture was actually kind of impressive. 

The weirdness of Xining became more apparent as we saw this woman selling plants in instant noodle bowls. 

We tried to visit a museum of the Muslim conqueror who invaded the region hundreds of years ago and is the reason that area is now mostly Muslim. Apparently the museum has been closed for no apparent reason for over a year and there is no indication of that online. 

We then tried to go to a coffee shop. I had seen one on the bus to the train station. We went there and they were closed because it was the second day of Eid! We felt like we were having really bad luck trying to find something to do.

We did eventually find this cool Tibetan cafe. The staff were super nice and all spoke perfect English. We stayed for a few hours, because I was finishing up a book. 

That night at the hostel, we were hanging out in the common space and just as we were about to head up, the guy who I had had tea with before invited us to play a card game with some other guests. The object of the game was to gain all the cards. If you lost all your cards, you were out. But not only did you have to sit out for the rest of the game, everyone at the table got to draw on your face with a permanent marker. This was the result!

The next morning, we got the train to Zhangye. While we were waiting to pick up our tickets, this woman who was standing not much more than a meter away from us took a video of us because we were foreigners. I stared directly at her which should have conveyed that I did not approve of her behavior. She continued and I saw her post it on WeChat. I decided to take a video of her and send it to my friends. She continued to stare at us for about 20 minutes while we were in line, so James and I made uncomfortable eye contact with her, which seemed to be the only way to make her stop staring at us. It was frustrating at the time, but I think we had fun with the situation.

We had several hours on the train. The landscape once again was incredible. It was exactly what I picture when I think of Qinghai. Beautiful fields and plateaus surrounded by snow-covered mountains.