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We flew from Kunming to Lanzhou, then caught a long-distance bus from Lanzhou to Xining. The little time we spent passing through Lanzhou, and the even smaller amount of time I spent not asleep on the shoulder of an old man on the same bus through the city, was enough to remind me why I'd disliked it before. Xining was somehow much nicer, despite still being quite grey and dull. We set up camp in Naomi's apartment for the afternoon, showering and washing our clothes and generally enjoying not being filthy.
In the evening, we went to visit a family Naomi had befriended recently. They'd called in the afternoon to invite her to dinner, and when she told them she had friends to stay had extended the invitation to us as well. This turned out to be a really fun evening. We ate with the extended family (although I'm not exactly sure who everyone was or how they were related), so there were about 11 of us for dinner. The only person who spoke any English was the 17 year old son, Mike, but thanks to a mixture of mime, non-verbal jokes and our basic Chinese, this didn't really matter. The dad of the family brought out his own home-brewed 70% snake wine and insisted we all take turns sampling it, then they taught us a drinking game involving betting on toothpicks and used that to make us drink more of the snake wine. Later, we all took turns harrassing each other into performing for the group: Naomi, Mike and one of the women sang for us all; I gave a demonstration of The Seahorse dance-move, Cat danced Gangnam Style... At the end of the night, we sat about the living room listening to the dad's (very obscure) collection of foreign music and embarrassing Hannah by serenading her at each love song.
The next day, Monday, Naomi took us into town to buy bus tickets for the next leg of our journey and show us the Tibetan market by the station. Although we were in Qinghai province, not Tibet, the area is all part of the Tibetan plateau and so a large proportion of the local population is Tibetan. The market here had most things from the standard cheap electronics you'd expect in any market, through traditional clothes and jewellery to lots of Buddhist artwork, like statues and tankhas (the easiest way to describe it is as part tapestry, part painting). We spent a lot of time in an art shop, chatting with the assistant, whose English was really good, and more time rifling through jewellery displays and buying ourselves too many earrings. After lunch, Naomi and Hannah would not stop talking about how much they wanted to take a motorcycle ride through the city. They stopped to ask prices of a group of guys with motorcycle taxis in the street, and before we knew what had happened they were the nucleus of a huge crowd, all of whom had gathered to see what the two foreign girls wanted. Naomi somehow managed to talk one of the drivers into taking her and Hannah around the city for free, so those two disappeared and Cat and I, whose interest in a motorcycle tour was minimal, wandered the streets in vague search of a bus before giving up and hopping in a taxi.
For our last night in Xining, we bought in piles of sweets from the supermarket and looked through all of our group photos from the year together - which took ages! Then, next morning, Cat, Hannah and I were up and out early to catch our bus to Tongren.
- comments
Jo Love it when you say 'our basic Chinese'. Your Xining hosts, including Naomi, sound very good fun. looking forward to the next instalment.... Xx
Stephanie Ella - I think you should continue writing a blog at uni! - I fear I will have withdrawal symptoms soon. What luck for me, as Nicole's mum, that her PT partner writes so beautifully x