Qinghai I - Xining (October 2007)
“Watching a documentary on a broken color television”

The origin of the famous yellow river is 1,000 km away; but close to Xining the river is still relatively small. We arrive on a gloomy drizzly afternoon. Without any blue in the sky and with the brown clay landscape wrinkled around black rocks and cut in half by the yellow-brown water, it’s like watching a documentary on a broken color television. Higher up, the water of a small side river is blood red and with the roaring sound of a constant thunder it is squeezed through its savage surroundings. The houses we find on the lower parts, close to the city, are paved with cow dung but the porches are square, typically Chinese. Mostly from red brick. Sometimes shiny white.

Xining is the capital of Qinghai. It’s built on a 2,200 meter high platform and embedded in a ring of 4,500 meter high mountains. The little center, approximately two km from the station, has some skyscrapers and breathes a tidy western atmosphere. But the district that borders the station is completely different. The streets are raw and poor. A piece of paved sidewalk is the exception in a desert of muddy sand with now and then a lost brick. The scenery makes me think of the dentures of old men. Between the ruins and an occasional building the cold October wind howls. Nevertheless this environment is the backdrop to a lively market and some very hospitable restaurants.

For the first time in China I notice the widespread presence of Muslim people. On an earlier occasion I visited the night market in China’s old capital Xi’an: a crowded tourist heaven, with lamb kebab, red paper lanterns and Turkish folklore. Muslims are no exception there either, but outside the night market the Muslim people disappear in a sea of Han-Chinese. Here things are different. Except for the western center, which is claimed by young modern looking Han-Chinese, Muslims dominate the streetscape. Most men are wearing flat white caps, the kind that butchers ought to wear in old movies, only round. Some women wear headscarves. Most restaurants are run by Muslims and don’t serve beer, but their policy towards alcoholic drinks is sympathetic. Bringing your own is no problem and a small Chinese supermarket is never far.

All over China hotpot is considered a popular treat for both tourist and Chinese. The West (Qinghai- and Xinjiang Province) is the cradle of the hotpot. It’s mostly served by Han-Chinese but in Xining it’s served differently from, for example Beijing.

In Beijing there are lots of restaurants from cheap to relatively expensive in which the dish is served. There it’s like fondue. They bring one round pot of broth to your table. A spicy broth is separated by a metal wall from a neutral one. The wall has a soft “s”-form, together with the round outline of the pan it forms the yin and yang sign without its two dots. Dishes of vegetables, mushrooms, wafer-thin beef and mutton and all kinds of tofu are served separately. The customers can cook the vegetables and meat themselves in the preferred broth. Here almost every street has several hotpot restaurants but the cozy inviting atmosphere of the Beijing restaurants is nowhere to be found. In Xining the dish is served as a quick snack. Not a pan per table, but one immense pot of broth boiled on a coal furnace per restaurant. The ingredients are limited to vegetables, mushrooms and tofu. They’re pinned on wooden skewers an neatly shelved, side by side, in a showcase. My favorites are the cauliflower and the oyster mushroom. The vegetables chosen are removed from their skewer and put together in a sieve. The sieve is put in the big hotpot to soak. The broth is (probably) drawn from mutton with seasonings. After boiling, the vegetables can be served with or without noodles and some additional hot sauce. A stomach-filling meal costs 10 yuan . The doors of the eateries are wide open. In one or two months It will be minus twenty celsius. Therefore the present afternoon temperature of around plus ten degrees is considered warm.

The traffic is also different. In spite of the flatness of the cityscape, rickshaws and bikes are no part of it. For transportation you can use the city bus or a cab. More fun are the motorbikes. They’re illegal, but outside the city center they are tolerated. On every corner groups of young men are waiting on their shiny machines. Long thick gloves attached to their steering wheels are hanging to the ground, ready for their arms to be put in whenever the have a ride. It is early in the morning when I ask for one. I am looking for transportation to go to a swimming pool. Most Chinese can’t swim. Moreover, a pool is an expensive thing for most locals. This means that they’re scarce and not well known. The chauffeur can’t help me. I decide on taking a ride anyway, so I pick a place on the map close to the center and ask him to bring me there. From there on I walk.

Eventually I find a pool behind the center. It’s something in between a normal swimming pool and at hot spring. Underwater lamps make the water translucent yellow. A little like the water of the river but much more transparent. It is said that the thirty-degree-celcius water has healing powers but for me it is mainly too hot to swim my laps. I think, maybe this is how the Chinese accidentally invented hotpot: a guy who forgot to take the vegetables out of his pockets while swimming in this hot soup. However, I must say the soaking is a good experience. In the pool I have a nice conversation with an English-speaking Chinese man. He tells me that there are a lot of foreigners in Xining. I am surprised because I haven’t see any so far, but everything is relative: as he continues he talks about 200 foreigners in a population of almost 800,000.

After a few relaxing days Li and I have planned a little trip to a park with a mountain lake approximately 140km from Xining. We hire a taxi. The road meanders its way through the mountains. At some points the mountains are covered with iron netting to prevent boulders from smashing on cars. These precautions are not taken everywhere. As we continue, rocks with a diameter up to three meters are vertically planted on the road. “Fallen yesterday, because of the rain”, the driver responds to our curiosity. The way he is maneuvering around them shows that he is not intimidated at all.

The streetscape of the little village where we spend the night doesn’t score high on the romance meter. The streets are wide but without the allure the words “wide streets” refer to. The big square in the middle isn’t different. The streets, the square and the boring buildings bring to mind a society where aesthetics make way for functionality, forgetting that beauty is a function on its own. The village is surrounded by the same clay mountains that we found outside Xining. Here they are within walking distance and start directly behind our hotel. In spite of the rainy weather we try to climb them. But we don’t get past trying, they are too slippery. Dirty pants and all, we return to our hotel for a hot shower and a clean bed.

The next morning we have no trouble finding a driver to bring us to the mountain lake in the protected resort. When we reach the park entrance we seem to be the only visitors. We continue by foot. As we are walking uphill towards the lake it starts to snow. In an hour we have reached the lake. But we cannot see it. It is covered with a thick layer of fog. However, the woods surrounding the lake are clear and the half foot of snow carpeting, leaves a fairytale impression.

As we return it’s almost five o’clock. It will be dark soon but the driver insists on taking us to a nearby ravine. The sight is promised to be magnificent. We agree but with hindsight we suspect that he had a hidden agenda. The sight is spectacular but at the lookout point there is also a gathering of Chinese workers just back from working in the mountains and waiting for a bus. The driver asks us if we can take two of them. We make room and he makes a little extra money.

When we are almost back we reach a village with all kinds of little vegetable gardens. The village and the gardens are surprisingly well taken care of. On the last corner of the village two women signal the driver to stop. Not far from them there is a large quantity of sacks of red peppers. October is in the middle of the harvest season. With the commuters already out of the car there is space for some new business. For 10 yuan the chauffeur drives up and down a few times. We are compensated for our patience with a bag of peppers. It’s on our lap as we enter Xining after another satisfying day.