Tibet Trip Day 9/10

Chengdu, China/Kaohsiung, Taiwan

We arrove in Xining, Qinghai Province, China, in the late morning. I did manage to fall asleep on the train and was hoping to wake up before day break. The highest altitude the train reached was 16,500 feet which I recorded on my altimeter, but then by the time I went to sleep, we had yet to fall below 10,000 feet.

I was hoping to be awake for the change to lower altitudes to see if I noticed, but by the time I woke up, the sun was up, we were at 8,000 feet and it was distinctly warmer and easier to breathe. We didn't descend much further as Xining lies at about 7,000 feet, and from Xining we flew to Chengdu.

Xining was an interesting place, as Qinghai Province is a genuine melting pot area with the convergence of Tibetan influence, Muslim Uighur influence from Xinjiang Province to the west of Qinghai and north of Tibet, and ethnic Han Chinese. Ethnically, Uighurs are Turkic and resemble people from central Asia.

There didn't appear to be any discord between the different ethnicities, possibly because no one was occupying someone else's land, and the mix of peoples was probably just normal, regardless of what government was in place.

We just had a few hours in Xining before heading for the airport, and did some touristy things, including going to the Islamic Grand Mosque and a historical site documenting Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek's involvement in the area before the Chinese Civil War, after which the Communists came to power.

Pentax ZX-5n Nikon N70, Kodak BW400CN

It was quite interesting that the Chinese preserved this piece of history, as it was Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists that the Communists were fighting. It was very strange seeing the Nationalists' emblematic star, which is now a part of Taiwan's national flag, hanging above the doors. But the defeat of the Nationalists and their departure to Taiwan was definitive, and there was never a serious movement on the mainland to bring the Nationalists back. They were never a real threat on the mainland after the war.

And Sun Yat-sen is respected by both China and Taiwan as the person who was instrumental in the fall of the imperial dynastic system, with the Qing Dynasty ending in 1912.

We flew to Chengdu in the late afternoon and stayed there overnight. I think if we could have, we would have flown all the way back to Taiwan, but maybe we arrived too late to catch the last flight to Hong Kong so we had to wait nearly an entire day.

We had dinner at a hot pot place which was really good, but I didn't get the name of the place. Chengdu is one of China's modernized cities and the quality of restaurants and hotels is pretty high. Nothing was planned in the evening, so I went out walking as I did the previous time. I found a street lined with Tibetan shops that I had noted before, but most of them were closed.

The first time we stayed in Chengdu, we left too early in the morning for breakfast at the hotel, but this time I found out what we missed. None of the hotels or their breakfasts in Tibet came close to the hotel in Chengdu and I gorged myself cross-eyed and silly on the western breakfast fare.

I suppose this is indicative of the prosperity China is enjoying. And I had no problem appreciating it; this was China, and what Chinese are doing in their own country is up to them. If they want to call themselves Communist despite the emerging opulence, that's up to them. But what they're doing in Tibet is another story. I agree that it's cultural genocide and a crime against humanity.

September 26, 3:07 p.m., Chengdu, China. The first thing I saw in China out the airport. A Maserati.

We only did one touristy thing before heading to the airport, going to a kind of theme park, but I couldn't figure out the theme. It kind of looked like a re-creation of an older China . . . lots of shops, rickshaws. Can't recall much about it of note, it was just touristy but pleasant enough.

Rainbow V 22mm lens toy camera, Ilford XP2 Super

Pentax ZX-5n Nikon N70, Kodak BW400CN

And that was it. We headed to the airport, said goodbye to our Chengdu guide who was very pleasant and professional, flew first to Hong Kong and then transferred to Kaohsiung. I lost track of all the members of the tour group immediately after getting off the plane for all they meant to me. They were nothing, I was nothing.

Car in a ditch, China. Pentax ZX-5n Nikon N70.

3:09 p.m.

4:23 p.m.

5:28 p.m.