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Thursday 2005-09-29 - Ta’ersi, China
A special breakfast
Last night when we arrived in Ta’ersi, tired from the long bus ride, the Jin Zhu hotel could not provide dinner for us and the little Muslim restaurant across the street was closed. We found two small Muslim restaurants, each too small to hold the whole group, along the road to the monastery, where we had dinner. This morning the girl at the reception offers to open up the restaurant for us — a little futile since there’s no kitchen personnel. We try last night’s restaurants again, but one is still closed and the other is just opening up but doesn’t have eggs or bread. Finally, we find a little place next to our hotel: it’s open but doesn’t have much in the way of ingredients (nor a menu); the owner is very friendly though.
Marie Josee takes the initiative: first we need tea and coffee: together with the owner she goes to a shop across the street to buy a pot of Nescafe (at 58Ұ very expensive here) and a few bags of tea, which she pays for: the owner has no more than 10Ұ in his pocket. Next they go to another shop to get eggs and tomatoes. A third shop finally provides bread and sugar. Now there are enough ingredients for a breakfast for Westerners! Next Marie Josee needs to show him to mix in the tomatoes with the eggs. The result is a great breakfast, and a smiling restaurant owner who seems to think it all rather fun. In the end, we only pay a pittance for the ingredients the owner provided himself.
The breakfast is extra-fun because one of our group has her birthday today: we sing to her, and she gets some presents from the group and also a bottle of rice wine from the hotel management.
Temple industry
At Ta’ersi there’s another big monastery of the Gelugpa Buddhist order — the reason for our stay here. Together with Carla and Gwendoline I walk in the direction of the monastery; we note there is still surprisingly little tourism here — at least they’re not spoiled by it yet. There are many shops along this road, some clearly catering to tourists but also selling religious paraphernalia, obviously catering to the monastery and maybe visiting monks. All shop holders are very friendly, no one minds if you look and don’t buy, or simply remark something is beautiful without any intention to buy. No one is pushy or comes after you to sell something. But we see no other westerners in the whole town, only a few Chinese groups.
Along this street we also find a courtyard with some workshops around it where we can watch how the Buddhist temple ornaments are made; a whole set is already on display in the middle of the courtyard and the metal workers are busy making more. Later, in another street, we see many more such workshops; apparently the monastery is large enough to provide them with enough business.
Surprise in the Kumbum Jampaling
The monastery in Ta’ersi (called the Kumbum monastery or Kumbum Jampaling) is indeed very large. Obviously the Chinese are ‘developing’ it as a tourist attraction and a whole new entrance has been built — which we ignore since the old entrance (now side entrance) is simply at the end of the street: there’s an iron gate, half-closed with a chain, which everyone simply ducks under to enter.
At first we can’t find where to buy a ticket but when we try to enter a temple we’re stopped and pointed to the ticket office. Officially there are nine ‘sites’ to visit but it seems one is closed while some other buildings (like the Kumbum Old Monk’s Home) don’t require a ticket at all. Alas at most temples photography is not allowed — except of course when one monk in a nice jacket over his robes asks me to take his picture!
The whole complex is so huge (and the weather so unpleasant with a constant drizzle) that we give up on the idea of seeing each and every building. One highlight we visit is the Dharma Protector temple where on the second floor, around the courtyard, a range of stuffed animals is looking down on us over the railing: a bear, a deer, a yak, etc.: animals that are also frequently pictured in Buddhist paintings.
Another interesting temple is the Kalachakra Mandala temple: while the outside of the temple building is square, the inside floor plan is laid out in the form of a Mandala, with a large circle within the square of the walls and inside that other squares and circles within each other, forming a three-dimensional mandala. Just inside the large circle (which I understand symbolizes the wheel of time) is a text made of individual Tibetan characters standing up, painted in different bright colors and interspersed with small statues of mythical animals. I’m half expecting the row of characters to start marching round — the whole interior of this temple somehow reminds me of a planetarium and I actually look if there isn’t a mechanism there — but no, I see nothing: this wheel of time remains stationary. What is weird is that when you walk around in a clockwise direction (as required) you’re reading the text from right to left (if you can read Tibetan that is) but the Tibetan script is actually written left to right. I wish I could read the text here!
At a third temple (of which the name has escaped me) we find a real surprise: a little gold frame propped up on a Buddha statue holds a portrait of the Dalai Lama with the (unofficial) Tibetan flag as the background. Portraits of the Dalai Lama are strictly forbidden by the Chinese (as is the flag) — didn’t they notice this or are they getting a little more lenient?
After a late lunch at a Chinese restaurant (our dishes beautifully decorated with flowers folded from thin slices of a kind of radish) and a birthday party with a big Chinese birthday cake in one of the upstairs gambling rooms of the hotel, we board our bus again which takes us to Xining.
