Catherine Travels, June 19th

We were met in Lanzhou at the train station by a new guide, Mr. Liwanhai. He is from a family that includes Tibetan and Han roots. We drove for a bit in the Hue Autonomous Region, where 70% of the population is Muslim. We are due to come back here day after tomorrow to do more exploring. Now we travel on to the Gansu Tibetan Autonomous Region, high onto the mountains of the Tibetan Plateau, to the village of Xiahe, at 9700 feet elevation.

But our main visit along the way was to the Buddhist grottoes of Binglingsi. We reach the grottoes by driving to a huge dam along the Yellow River and taking an hour long ride upriver in a boat along the reservoir/river. Sounds romantic, doesn't it? The boat was tiny and battered, with a covered seating area and an overwhelming smell of gasoline. It was tippy and low in the water. Our guide said we took the boat to avoid a very bad road. I'm not sure I can even contemplate a road the Chinese consider bad. Our boat driver was a capable, unsmiling woman - but more about her later. The trip was a little anxiety-producing, but very pretty. The reservoir is lined with the terraced, farmed areas that are everywhere in China, here made rich by the loess soil that has blown in from Mongolia over millenia.

The Binglingsi caves line an inlet of the Yellow River in an area of jagged rock spires, looking like fingers, or the hoodoos of the American Southwest. More than 1000 caves have paintings and carved stonework, made over a period of 1500 years. The largest Buddha is at least 75 feet high, currently undergoing restoration. Equally impressive is a large sleeping Buddha, now resting in a small temple. Along the pathway are plaques indicating caves that are now under water, since construction of the dam raised the water level. Our guide says people were not unhappy about the dam, despite the damage to the caves, as it has prevented the regular floods that used to savage local homes and fields. The most important of the murals and stonework in the low caves were removed and placed in higher caves. The stonework is more visible than the paintings, since we are not allowed to enter the caves themselves. Above all, the site is a vivid testament to faith over the centuries, a religious and artistic community financed by devout traders from the Silk Road. We met a monk on the trail with a bit of English. He invited us to walk up to the monastery on the site, an hour's walk up the gully past more caves.

Instead we opted for lunch, at a stand with tables and chairs along the path. As the only European folks on site, we were fussed over, especially by an older woman selling trinkets who was the aunt of the cook for our lunch. She is known only as Shun Li's Mama, as she doesn't speak her own name. Her second son, 14 years old and tending sheep on the mountain, fell to his death, She went mad for nearly a decade. She has recovered sufficiently in the last few years to climb down several kilometres every day to the Binglingsi site to sell trinkets and help in her neice's food stand. She and Bill bonded firmly over the negotiations for some Buddhist amulets, and she was disappointed that we did not climb up those kilometres to her house to spend the night.

Our trip back down river was enlivened by a hostage taking - ours. Our unsmiling boat driver stopped the boat in the chop at the widest part of the reservoir. With the wind blowing and the first rain sprinkles of a coming storm, she announced that she wasn't going to take us to the ferry landing where our van and driver waited. Our guide Liwanhai talked calmly, while the boat driver constantly screamed at him. Liwanhai used his cell phone (go figure - we live in a wired age) and the situation was ultimately settled between his boss and hers. Meanwhile we sat for an hour mid-lake, boat driver screaming, with Bill reminding me frequently that my having hysterics would only raise the price of our leaving. Our side appeared to have won, with an ultimatum delivered by her boss to her cell phone. There was no bribe (and no tip for the boat driver). The best explanation for the whole adventure was Liwanhai's -- she is a woman whose heart has been eaten by a wolf.

We drove safely to Xiahe, stopping at the border to the Tibetan Autonomous Region. There we paid half a yuan apiece to use a W.C. that consisted of a hole in a cement floor, through which you could see, 100 feet below, the tributary to the Yellow River. It made me glad we hadn't had to swim to shore from the boat. I promise to try to make this my last toilet story.