Day One

I set out for Kangding at about 6:00 Sunday evening. The road from Guza to Kangding winds for about half an hour through the green rocky river valley. I bantered a bit in rough Sichuanese with my taxi driver, asked him to drop me at the bus station so I could purchase tickets for Daofu for the following morning, and paid him the flat rate of ten yuan. Tenzin, another Bridge Fund instructor, had invited me to have dinner with him at his apartment, a flurry of vegetable dumplings being prepared by a giggling gaggle of six Tibetan teenagers. Tenzin is white, and technically an American (at least his passport says so). The son of a Tibetan-English translator of no little repute, Glenn H. Mullin, Tenzin was born in Northern India and spent his childhood between India, America, Nepal, and New Zealand. And his name really is Tenzin. I've seen his Georgia driver's license. He has taught for the Bridge Fund for five years now, and he's really become one of my closest friends and professional mentors. As such, we went out for beers after the girls cleaned up and left.

Tenzin and I tried a restaurant turned bar turned karioke club that his friend manages. Between the loud music and drunk highschoolers we decided to split, for a less crowded less popular thirtysomethings upstairs bar. We typically get invited to drink with Tibetans or Chinese people immediately upon sitting down, as we are generally the only foreigners around and we are a rather lonely looking pair. We attempted conversation with a Tibetan man from Danba, but his Kham Tibetan was different from Tenzin's, and his Chinese was different than mine. Traveling to Daofu would be the same: From standard Chinese, the Sichuan dialect is once removed, and from standard Tibetan, the Kham dialect is once removed. For places like Daofu and Danba, their local languages (from being relatively isolated half a century ago) a again removed from the local dialects.

Soon some Kangding drinking pals of Tenzin's called him and they showed up almost immediately. I asked a girl that was with them what she was drinking, and one of the men promptly informed me that she was his girlfriend. Insecure punk. Tenzin's friends are very goofy, but good natured and friendly. One of them showed me a picture in his cellphone of the former political leader of Tibet, the main man himself (currently kicking it in the green beauty of the Indian lower Himalayas). Tenzin jovially informed me that he is a traffic cop in Kangding. I guess official political loyalties don't run so deep.

I pestered Tenzin to go home and let us pass out at about midnight, as my bus was leaving at 6:00 the following (Monday) morning. I got up slightly before 5:30 and went looking for a cab. It was dark and there were no cars at the gate of Kangding Zhongxue (Middle School, i.e. High School), where Tenzin lives and teaches. I walked up the road to a few parked taxis next to men loading a work truck, and when I inquired as to the drivers the men told me they were sleeping. No surprise there. I began to become concerned that I'd miss the bus, and jogged up the road with my modest pack. After a while I saw a taxi approaching, followed it to its fare's destination, and directed him to the bus station.

Cars in China generally drive very quickly and recklessly. In my hurry I had probably located the only slow taxi driver in Sichuan. We ambled through the back mountain roads until he finally deposited me at the bus station. I hurried past the luggage scanner and onto the bus platform, searching vainly for about ten minutes. I could not find my bus, and it was already past 6:00. I began to feel some anxiety. I asked some passengers milling about at an empty bus stand, and they remarked casually that it had not come yet. Monday was perhaps the busiest travel day of the holiday, and most of the buses that leave Kangding depart for destinations only once daily, at 6:00 am. I walked out of the traffic entrance to the bus yard and found my bus among a long line of empty vehicles waiting to even get into the station.

I asked the driver if I could put my bag in the trunk. It was the only piece of luggage there. When I climbed on I notice five foreigners struggling to stack their overburdened packs in the aisle and on the seats beside them. They had, likely not by coincidence, been assigned the back row of five seats, slightly elevated. These seats are a blessing in an empty overnight bus on a smooth highway, as one can spread out and catch some sleep. They are notorious, however, or bumpy roads, as the back of the bus tends to amplify the vertical jerks of the potholes. I informed them that I had put my bags in the trunk, and they said that the driver hadn't let them. I asked the driver about it in Chinese, and I barely made out from his dialect that it was because they were not going all the way to Daofu, but rather stopping off at Tagong, a popular grassland community with an impressive, millennia-old monastery.

I didn't feel like sticking around to argue as I really needed "to see a man about a dog." I found the public squatter, and wasn't able to take my time as I like, still slightly anxious about the bus departure. I returned with plenty of time, and I attempted to get some sleep as the bus rolled out, well behind schedule. Soon, the foreigners engaged me in conversation. They were Polish, which I had secretly guessed but didn't want to ask because they could have been Russian or Check or Croatian and probably would have resented being called Poles. They were nice, after all, and dealt with their crappy seat and luggage situation in stride by calling the driver crazy in English, and one of the girls was astonished that I could read Mullin senior's book in spite of the bumpy ride. I was feeling a bit ragged, from my previous encounter in the squatter and my lack of water after drinking the night before and from skipping breakfast, which I hate.

The houses began to appear more squarish with facades bordered by wood, as opposed to the bathroom tiled external walls of modern Chinese architecture. I saw a few horses with colored yarn braided into their manes and tails, and embroidered rugs with pictures of dragons or snow lions serving as saddles. But as we entered the valley down the road that leads to Tagong I saw the first really beautiful picturesque views that trip, as magnificent as anything I've seen since Colorado and New Mexico and maybe flying over the Himalayas in September (views from planes are magnificent, but a little too alien for inspiration). The hills were green and amber, not as imposing as near Guza, and the sun shone along a clear stream (like really! Clear water does exist in China!) littered with large stones that led to the open grasslands of Tagong. In the distance I could some snowcaps, dark mountains with shining snowy crowns distant and formidable against the rolling meadows and ridges of lower Kham. I decided rather deliberately that my hunger and discomfort would not distract me from the beauty, and henceforth they did not.

The Poles hopped off at Tagong, the bus barely slowing down enough for them to lug their packs into a white and yellow ocean of tourists and a brown gulf of locals. Later I lunched on potatoes and pork, and fell asleep on the last leg of the trip as a couple of rough Tibetan herdsmen sat next to me smelling like strong butter. As I awoke the scenery was as impressive, but with more New England looking trees and low homesteads with haystacks, firewood stacks, and low stone walls capped by transplanted sod. I noticed a few mantras pieced on the distant hillsides, om mani padme hum and others that I didn't recognize. I knew I was close because I had seen them in pictures of Daofu in the past. The mantras as contructed with white stones, in much the same way that college towns put giant "M"s on the hillsides for Michigan State and the Colorado School of Mines, or how evangelical Christians in Central Louisiana fashion giant crosses near the highway in Louisiana.

I heard "Hello Teacher!" before I could see my two students outside of the bus, waiting for me. They were at the station, waiting for a while as the bus was rather behind schedule. I asked the driver to pop the trunk, and it swung open with a cloud of dust like a forgotten treasure chest in some deserted jungle. My bag, normally a stylishly rugged forest green and black affair, was completely tan from the fine dirt that had kicked up from the pocked road. I smiled a thank you at the driver, knocked off an insignificant slew of the dirt, and slung my belongings onto my back, which left two tan racing stripes against the stone grey of my suit coat.

My student Hannah (Namei Deji) has a cousin that owns a noodle shop across from the bus station in Daofu, and we relaxed there as a few Tibetans watched popular Tibetan singers belt out tunes from a VCD. I snacked on some thukpa noodles with bits of meat. Soon, I noticed a man on the VCD that I recognized, His Imminence Adzom Rinpoche himself. I realized that they were watching a copy of the very same VCD that had been given to me free of donation by Lisa and Drako in Chengdu two days before. The beef stuck in my teeth as I watched images of the Rinpoche alternate with pictures of cows getting their throats cut and snakes being skinned alive. Denouement: conscientious Buddhist purchased the animals from the market and set the luckless beasts free.

After a while Joseph (Dorje) and I made our way to his home. The houses in Daofu are very famous, and his parent's home is a classic example. It is set an an extremely pastoral "village" (a collection of seven to ten homes spread out among the farmland about five kilometers from home). His father inherited a plot for growing wheat and potatoes from Dorje's grandfather, in addition to a modest orchard of green and red apples. As we approached, his previous English teacher Catherine's dog Jake became very excited. Being raised by a New Zealander, he was ecstatic to see a white man. I met Dorje's parents, a regular Tibetan Gothic scene with floppy straw hats and classic dusty rural fashion. I was welcomed inside to meet the rest of the family. Dorje's grandmother is eighty-five and her principle interest is turning prayer wheels. She seems with it enough, at least when she responds the tough Daofu dialect shouts of the family members.

Dorje's uncle is a monk at the monastery in Daofu, and he was able to return to the house to celebrate the holiday with the family. He is the younger brother of Dorje's father, and spent the majority of his time plucking beard hairs with a metal clamp, spinning the prayer wheel, mumbling mantras and attending to the family shrine room. Dorje's older sister is a nun as well, and she was at home recovering from an operation. Her face is a beacon of light, her small eyebrows standing apart from the strong muscles of her forehead, in constant motion from her tireless propensity towards laughing and smiling. She spent a great deal of time singing in the shrine room, reading Tibetan books or preparing food wearing her robes over white and pink long johns beneath a tan corduroy jacket that would have made a great Goodwill find.

The house is large, with the downstairs dedicated to the animals, and washing and storage areas. The one staircase upstairs is very steep in the classic Daofu style. Everything is wooden and painted in beautiful Tibetan thanka style, and the ceilings are blue with bright red rafters. Snow lions and dragons peek from behind wall columns. The main hall/foyer of the house leads in to a number of rooms. Dorje and I stayed in the TV room, which connected the house to the shrine room. There are other sleeping rooms, but the center of family life concentrates in the kitchen (naturally). The roof of the kitchen is covered in plastic sheeting to protect the wood from smoke stains. Near the center of the room is a classic wood burning stove, where all of the cooking is performed. It is also the only source of heating in the home. Because of the high ceilings, Dorje's father told me it gets a little chilly in the winter. The toilet, a medieval side room with an open hole to the first floor and an archer's window to match, is across a second floor outside patio. In the corner of the patio is an altar for burning incense. There is also a metal ladder to the roof, which has vertical prayer flags on poles.

To the side of the foyer is a group of photos of the Great Spiritual and Political Leader that Dares not Speak His Name. I was a bit surprised to see his amiable, paternal face peering from behind his bespectacled old eyes. In America, there are many misconceptions about the stringency in which certain Chinese policies are enforced. Moreover, I spent my time in western Sichuan, which does not suffer from many of the prejudices of the Tibetan Autonomous Region and Lhasa. Also, the night before in Kangding, there was the aforementioned episode with Tenzin's traffic cop buddy.

That evening we dined on thukpa and they force fed me meat momos. I also drank milk tea, which I rather prefer to butter tea. We watched a little TV, aided by the family satellite dish. There were more channels in Arabic than English. I read a bit of Mullin's Gem's of Wisdom, snuggled into the colorful Tibetan style couchbed. Dorje turned off the television, prostrated three times on his couchbed, took off his clothes and killed the lights.