Back on the Plateau

A week ago when I flew into Chengdu I found that most or all of my friends were out of pocket (sick, traveling), so I went to the local supertourist bar to see whom I could recognize. One Guinness and one Beck later I finally recognized someone, a Spanish girl named Ira who challenged me to a game of fuzball. As we were playing on what surely is one of the only tables in Sichuan, possibly China, an American kid wearing a hoodie and some hemp challenged her. He had plans to go to a bar aptly named Hemphouse, and seeing as the place we were at was dead anyway, I went too.

Two bars, two clubs, and a bottle of Absolut later I found myself crashed out on his couch. It turns out that he and his fellow students are mostly pretty hip, and I felt rather fortunate in putting my trust in luck and having it work out. In my experience, when hitting a bar stag things can either turn out really great or really terrible. This was a great night which turned into a great week.

Yesterday I finally got around to leaving Chengdu for a bit, taking the ten hour bus ride up to Aba Prefecture. My buddy Drako, who works for A. Rinpoche, lives about sixty kilometers from the Hongyuan County seat, Hongyuan. I\'m in Hongyuan now, having just spurned a ride to Drako\'s home because of the obviousness of the ripoff. Last night and presumably tonight I will stay again with Tsedrup, the younger brother of Gabzung, the Sichuan Program Director for the Bridge Fund.

I had heard it\'s cold up here, and even though this year is a mild winter Tsedrup gave me five blankets to keep me warm last night. For good measure under the blankets I slipped the fleece blanket given to me by Steve Clark before he died. I was able to stay relatively warm, and the clear full (or almost full) moon poured brightly through the curtains of the second storey window. As I fell asleep I urged the round moon to set quickly, so as not to block out all of the stars which I knew hid in the moonlight of that solid night.

This morning there was ice in my Nalgene. Tsedrup\'s son Dorje Ningju has showed me the town, and without him I\'d be lost in this fairly small town. He speaks some Sichuan Dialect, of which I understand less, but considering my Amdo Tibetan is basically nonexistent we\'re making do just fine.

The phone numbers for Lisa, my student from Hongyuan and ostensibly my reason for coming, are all bogus. Lisa is Tsedrup\'s niece, though I get very confused very quickly when it comes to nomad family trees due to the number of young mothers, mixed families, and men who marry a girl and later her sister. Tsedrup is herding this afternoon, and I hope tonight he\'ll be able to show me Lisa\'s home.

Tsedrup offered to bring me out to help them herd, but I slept too late and my horse-riding skills are kind of nonexistent. Some of my other students have offered to teach me, in addition to learning to downshift on a motorcycle.

By next Friday I hope to return to Chengdu. One of my new American friends is turning 21. I\'ll leave soon after that, stopping at home in Guza to shower and wash clothes. At that point it will be off to the Kham part of the Plateau to ring in the new year with a couple of my favorite nomad students. They\'re second cousins, I think.