On the airport shuttle I found myself translating for all the foreigners. The only other Chinese people were a couple from LiJiang named Zhao. On the shuttle we chatted and decided we would travel together and split costs. Since I had no idea where to go and what to do, I thought I would just go along with their itinerary. I had no major plans here other than chill and look at beautiful scenery.
Mr. Zhao is a Traditional Chinese Medicine Doctor, who was in his forties and his wife was a nurse in her twenties. He found out I majored in psychology and wanted me to know that Freud is useless in real life. Translation,…basically what I learned was useless and he felt I needed to know that. I had to tell him I also studied photography. He didn't comment on this because he himself was into photography.
Dr. Zhao picked out the hostel and negotiated everything. I later learned he upset the owner's pride by trying to slash price and complained how terrible the place was. This backfired later in the evening. I had no problems with the beds. It's youth hostel style and I have been staying in these kinds of set up. The couple insisted that we stay in a three bed room with no one else in it. Anyways they were nervous and stressed about traveling so they watched out for thefts and safety. This then upset the owner even more because he felt that Dr. Zhao viewed his place and his people as thieves. I guess it really hurt his pride. In fact this owner as it turns out is a very family man and took a lot of pride in his creation and care of this hostel. He liked travelers and enjoyed meeting them and taking care of them. He likes to put on Latin music for atmosphere and took pride in having lots of foreigners here. It made him more western and somehow better than common locals without class or culture or success. We ended up in a 7 bed room. I don’t think the hostel was hostile to us, they were full and only had larger rooms available. Either way, it was just the three of us who had the whole room to ourselves.
We dropped our bags off and took a local bus #3 to the monastery. On the bus we met a man from Australia who left his tripod on the bus. Mr. Zhao was a good Samaritan and called 114 to get info on how to retrieve the tripod back even though this tourist didn’t mind replacing it because he said it was cheap to begin with and it’s even cheaper to replace one here.
We went to a monastery that had 700 resident monks. I just helped myself to tag onto a tour group and listened in on all the info. I learned the yellow sect of Tibetan Buddhism, the one the famous Lama that the West knows is in. I learned the 6th Dalai Lama passed away young. During his short lived life, he was into writing romantic novels and songs. People disapproved of this so when the 7th Dalai Lama came around people refused to recognize him. They even tried to poison him but there would be others who would swapped the food out to save him. When he found out about this, he faked his own death and ran with his mom to Shangrila. Here people honored him and he went into seclusion until the entire public recognized him as 7th Dalai Lama.
Afterwards I was happy to be able to speak to a Lama in the Blessing Hall, this is where one could buy beads that have been “Kai Gwang”. I thanked him for speaking to me. I told him I didn't get much response from Lamas in Tibet. He mentioned to me that maybe they didn't speak Mandarin and that this could have been the root cause of lack of friendliness. He said he recited the Peace Sutra for his practice and all 700 monks here eat together during lunch.
