Xining

I rushed to reach Xining by September 23rd since my original Tibet tour left on the 24th. The tour I thought was a sure thing fell through at the last minute and I had to go with a new company that didn't have a tour until October 1st leaving me with a week to kill. Too bad I learned this so late, otherwise I would have hung out more in the diving mountains of Sichuan. It turned out to be ok though, since my upcoming itinerary included seven days of car travel, 24 hours on a train, then six weeks of hiking, so a week of rest seemed like a good idea. Plus, there are many side trips from Xining that looked quite neat.

It rained for my first four days, so I spent my time updating my blog, rereading One Hundred Years of Solitude, which I never finished the first time and was glad to see lying around the hostel, and watch movies. I made friends with a Polish couple, who loved traditional archery and had won second in a prestigious tournament in Western China, and Florian, a fund German from Hamburg.

They all left by the time the rains stopped, but thankfully a cute half dutch, half french girl, a fun Australian studying Chinese medicine in Nanjing, and a wise Indian man about my age, and a man from Yorkshire (Manchester folk are always a hoot). We went hiking in the hills North of town and sat around talking for a couple of hours in a worn down pagoda overlooking the city. The next day we hit up a museum featuring Thankas, a form of Tibetan art that takes a minimum of a month to complete. The colorful paintings of the Buddha are incredible.

The next day, we visited the nearby Qinghai Lake, largest saltwater lake in China. On sunny days, like the one when we visited, the lake is a beautiful shade of turquoise, which snowy mountains and sand dunes circling it 400 kilometers of shoreline. In the summer, it is home to an improbable number of migratory birds. We missed the bird season sadly.

That group left (when staying at a hostel for a week or more, you see a few turnovers of tenants), but I befriended an American and Irish English teachers in the middle of a then month long bender. They came to Xining to dry out, but by the time I left, they had already spent five days in Xining, drinking tequila and beer as early as 8AM and hitting the sack around 1PM. Sadly, I've seen worse alcohol abuse in Australia. I chose not to join in with their bender, but I share couple beers with them. They were actually quite nice and a total riot. I hope they don't end up dead.

Overall, Xining was a nice town to chill at for a week. It wasn't too pretty, but it had its charm. It only had 2 million people, making it amongst the smallest of China's provincial capitals. The sky was blue (when not raining) from lack of smog and the town was surrounded on all sides with mountains. Since the town is so diverse ethnically, few people would stare at me or hassle me when walking the streets. Xining also has the distinction of being China's heaviest drinking city. Locals say only Moscow drinks more. This seemed quite true given the vast number of people who were hitting the beer early in the afternoon everyday. I guess the city doesn't really have much to do.