Joyce and I met with a new group of bus mates on Monday. We were a smaller group, and a mix between people from our first leg of the journey and some others that were just going in Liquiang.
Our new tour guide is Tibetian. Shangrila is the closest one can get to Tibet without the crazy red tape so we were going to be learning a lot about Tibetian culture on her short adventure.
Shangrila means harmony in Mandarin. There is a famous story about two American pilots during World War II. The men had been injured and their little plane made an emergency landing in Shangrila, which had remained a peaceful city throughout war time. The men were cared for by the people of Shangrila and they were nursed back to health with Chinese medicine, food, and good company even though they couldn’t speak a word to their rescuers. They are were made famous by saying that Shangrila is the most harmonious place on Earth.
We took our time getting to the place of harmony, though! We stopped at the famous river that the Red Army crossed during the Long March. Then, we were given two hours to walk along the river on a pavement sidewalk. The river was gorgeous and it was great to just walk after a morning on the bus! We took a lot of pictures. We even had a decent lunch that day.
We were on the bus for about two and a half hours after lunch to get to Shangrila. The vista was just so gorgeous, I just stared out of my window the whole time and Joyce educated me about Tibet. Let’ s just saying that our high school social studies teachers told us very different stories about the infamous place.
Our first stop in the outskirts of Shangrila was a Buddhist home. Shangrila and Tibet are considered the most spiritual parts of China since the majority of people openly omit that they believe in a higher power and refuse to declare themselves Athesists. To be a member of the the Communist party in China, you must declare that you do not believe in any spiritual being or beings or the force or….
The Buddhist home was beautiful. Most of my bus mates got their palms read, but since I wasn’t able to speak with the Buddhist monks, I went out to tour the grounds. I found a big tent where Joyce explained to me that when a Buddhist member of the community dies, their body is taken to the tent and is left for the birds to devour. Then, their families bless the bones and grind them into a powder to return to the Earth!
Next, we were taken to our hotel and had exactly five minutes to freshen up before going to a Tibetian dinner. I was nervous about the dinner because Joyce told me that they would be roasting an entire cow and I was trying to prepare myself for that!
We were warmly greeted at the entrance by people dressed in full Tibetian clothing and they gave us white scarves, called “hadas” to wear around our necks like scarves. We were served shots of their alcohol before we went in and I accepted mine happily in anticipation of seeing a full roasting cow on barbeque!
We went into a great hall and were seated at tables close to the ground. We were told to drink a third of our tea, and then the waitresses dished flour and spices into our tea cups. We were told to mix everything up, and it turned into our grain for the evening. Then, the brought out roasted yaks and they pulled in apart by their hands. It was a little easier for me to take than a cow, though, I think. Everyone just couldn’t get enough of the yak meat! Joyce had asked the tour guide to ask the dinner people to cook me some vegetables, which they did and they were delicious. It was really nice of everyone to help me out with that!
Then, the show started. The MC embarrassed me because I was the only white person there out of the group of 500 people or so, even though that I understood it was friendly. It was easy to tell that this particular group of entertainers were excited to do what they do, which was a nice change from some of the other minority sites we had previously visited. We were presented with an awesome show of dancing and singing. It is customary for visitors to show that they are enjoying the performer by racing up and putting their hada around the performer’s neck. Joyce and one of the sweet bus ladies peer pressured me to put mine on a gorgeous singer. I started to walk up to him confidently, but then the crowd started screaming and hollering. I was pretty embarrassed and quickly placed the hada around his neck and ran back to my seat. The MC made many comments throughout the rest of the evening about my “moment of romance” as translated by Joyce. We ended the night dancing with the performers.
We got back on the bus a happy group of travelers.
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