Xi'ning

As I mentioned in Xi’an post, Xi’ning is the political, economic, scientific and technological, cultural, and traffic center of Qinghai Province, which is in western China. It’s a somewhat small city situated at the foot of the Tibetan plateau at an altitude of over 7,000 feet.

Xi'ning cityscape:

To get to Xi’ning we took a short evening flight from Xi’an. It was probably one of the most turbulent flights I’ve ever been on. The plane shuddered and rolled pretty much the entire time we were in the air. Fortunately, I was good about keeping my calm, unlike many other people. Near the end of the flight, one of the flight attendants came over the intercom to announce that we would be landing in about fifteen minutes. In fact, after about three minutes the plane made the steepest descent and hardest landing I’ve ever experienced on a flight. It was pretty crazy. Apparently, domestic Chinese flights have a tendency to be turbulent. Some argue that this is due to the fact that their planes are older and the pilots train differently and are not very adept at avoiding turbulence.

We only spent one night in Xi’ning. We arrived late that night and crashed after such a harrowing experience on the plane. The next morning, we attended a lecture at the hotel on Tibetan Buddhism by a Tibetan guy who is a professor of the subject back in Beijing. What I found most interesting about the lecture was the Q&A session at the end. There were certain questions we asked, such as questions regarding the Dalai Lama and the fact that he remains in exile, which the speaker couldn’t answer because of his concerns about being persecuted by the Chinese government.

Some of my friends and I after we tried to take a "jumping" picture on the roof of our hotel:

Before leaving on the evening train to Lhasa, we visited the Ta’er temple, which is a Buddhist temple. It was there that I began to perceive the otherworldliness of Tibetan Buddhism. I remember studying it briefly in high school and again at UMD, but I had never before seen such Tibetan architecture and witnessed Tibetan Buddhist rituals so close. It was remarkable.

Near the entrance of the Ta'er temple:

There were Buddhist monks everywhere: