| I think that the people who wrote my guide books must have gone to
Xiahe in the summertime. They all say morning is the best time to go to
the monastery and walk around, taking in the atmosphere, and interacting
with the monks. I was out and about at 7:15 AM, and it was freezing. Few
people were out at all. The monks that *were* out were tightly clutching
their robes around their heads, walking quickly and purposefully to wherever
they were going, just trying to stay warm until they reached the next
place with a hot stove. My hands and ears stung from the biting wind that was blowing across them,
despite the fact that I was wearing gloves. But I kept walking around,
because no restaurants were open, and maintaining movement was the only
way to keep my body producing heat.
I went to the ticket office as soon as it opened to confirm when I could
get an English tour. You can roam the grounds of the monastery for free,
but you can’t enter any of the temples unless you buy a ticket and
are with a guide. The guy at the ticket office told me that there would
be one at 10:15 AM. That gave me about 2 hours, so I went and had breakfast,
and decided to walk all the way around the monastery with the pilgrims.
When I had been up earlier, the only people out in any number were the
pilgrims. The stamina of these people really impresses me. Even the oldest
of them, those whose backs are perpetually doubled over at near-90-degree
angles and walking with canes keep up a VERY brisk pace, over ground which
is frequently rocky and uphill. Along about 60% of the way, along the
wall of the monastery, there are vertically mounted cylinders, around
1 meter in height, with various kinds of handles. Each of these is painted
elaborately with the same exact pictures and Tibetan script. These are
called prayer wheels, and as the pilgrims walk the path, they spin each
wheel by its handles.  Each spin of a wheel represents one time saying
the prayer which is painted on the wheels, which I believe is “Omani
Peimei Hung”. Sometimes, especially in the case of the elderly pilgrims,
they don’t spin each wheel a full turn; they just give it a nudge,
as each one is a bit heavy. I’d estimate that there are around 600
of these standard-sized prayers wheels around the monastery. In addition,
at various points along the way, there are about 20-30 little structures
housing wheels that are about 2.5 meters tall, and 1 meter thick. The
pilgrims walk all the way around these wheels, holding the handle the
whole way, thus completing an entire spin. Finally, in the northwest and
northeast corners of the monastery, there are 2 white towers about 4-5
meters high, with square bases that are about 6-7 meters per side. The
pilgrims have to walk around these also, though they require walking around
a certain number of times, the exact number of which I’m unsure
on. I’m also unsure of the number of times the pilgrims must walk
around the entire monastery. As I mentioned yesterday, all of these things
I’ve been describing are done clockwise.  Walking clockwise around
the monastery, they stop and walk clockwise around the white towers and
large prayer wheels, and push the handles of the small prayer wheels with
their right hands, which spins them clockwise. Some of them even have
small, hand-held prayer wheels, which almost look like a child’s
toy made out of brass or similar material, with a handle on the bottom
and a small cylinder on top. From the side of this cylinder, there’s
a small weight dangling from a chain which is spun around…. clockwise.
I really wish I knew the significance of the clockwise direction in Tibetan
Buddhism, but I don’t.
You may notice that with lots of the places I have been to on this trip,
I end up with lots of newly-found knowledge about the place, and lots
of history to report, but this time, I’m left with lots of “I’m
not sure why….”, and “I don’t know…”
Well, here’s why: Xiahe has been a bit of a disappointment. When
I went back to the ticket office to wait for the English tour, I was pleasantly
surprised as a couple of the monks invited me to come in and sit with
them by the stove in the ticket office. We chatted for a while waiting
for other visitors to join. After a bit, they told me to buy my ticket
and wait outside. I did so, but when they pointed at where to go, I saw
that I was being put with a group of about 25 Chinese tourists. I went
back and told them that I was waiting for an English guide, and a surprisingly
surly monk popped out and said, “There isn’t one. Go with
them.” I asked why I was told to come back at this time to wait
for the English guide, and he replied, “There isn’t one today
– go with them.” Frustrated and annoyed, but with no options,
I just joined the group. They were a bunch of students from an art school
in Guangzhou. Basically, the tour went like this: A young monk who spoke
softly and had a very gravelly voice took us to about 6 of the various
temples, let us read the introductory sign (which was in Chinese and Tibetan
– which I had no chance of reading fast enough before we went into
the temple), we would gather round this young monk, and he would re-tell
what was on the introduction sign in a far-too-small voice, and far too
quickly for me to understand. The students told me later that they couldn’t
understand much of what he said, either, so that made me feel a little
less stupid, but still left me having only understood about 10% of the
tour.  Also, inside the various temples, the monk would tell us to take
a good look, because we wouldn’t be let back in. Then, after we
turned around to take this “good look”, an older monk would
rush us out, saying, “That’s enough, that’s enough.”
In the end, I might as well have not had a tour guide at all. At Taersi
Temple near Xining, though Zhuanma spoke in Mandarin to me, at least she
spoke loudly and clearly, and also was my personal guide, allowing me
to ask her to explain things more thoroughly, or repeat herself if need
be. I would gladly have paid for a personal guide here, but I don’t
think they do that.
Here’s my impression of what’s going on, both in terms of
the attitude of the monks, and my disappointment: So far on my trip, I
think I’ve been lucky, and therefore a little bit spoiled by the
quality of the guides and service, in addition to the openness of the
destinations. I think I had also been building up my expectations of Xiahe
because of the praises I had read about it, and the significance of the
monastery. In the end, these are monks, and this is a very holy monastery.
They are here to study and worship – not to be guides for curious
tourists like me. My impression is that they grudgingly accept this minor
invasion of their business because they realize that there is some benefit
to it. But, benefit or not, they’re not especially eager to put
great amounts of effort into it. Oh well, I can still say that I’ve
seen the second most important Gelugpa Yellow Hat Tibetan Buddhist temple
in the world, and had an experience of it - just maybe not the experience
that I had been hoping for. |
