Strangers

It feels like ages since I last wrote. Using the internet in Xinjiang is a different ballgame. To gain access you first have to present your passport to the clerk at the internet cafe and then try to weave your way around the abundant firewalls by sneaking through all sorts of proxy servers. I failed at this game and couldn't access blogspot which is part of the reason I've been so long between posts. The other part is that we have been traveling pretty hard for the past few weeks and what access we have had to computers and free-time has been limited. In the past three weeks this group of 12 has found its way through five cities/towns separated by 75 hours of train rides and 22 hours of bus rides and hours of walking pack-laden through foreign streets in search of our home for the night. West across Xinjiang through Urumqi, Turpan, Kashgar, and the border-town ( w/ Tajikistan Pakistan & Afghanistan) Tashkorgan and then back through them all to exit through the south east of the province into Gan Su province, and across that into Qing Hai's capital city Xi Ning where we now rest for a day and reflect on the faces and places and worlds we have shared with our generous, deep-rooted, home-sharing friends of the desert.

This province, mountainous and many-bordered is home to 55 of the 56 ethnic minority groups in China (says China.org, but my cab driver this morning told me there are only 50). The people of these ethnic minority groups make up more than 2.38 million, or 45.5%, of the province's population. Largest in number are the Tibetan people (21.89% of the population) who have been living on the plateau for countless generations. The Dali Lama is was born in what is now Qing Hai. Tomorrow will find us in one of the small Tibetan mountain towns which border the city. A local non-profit organization dedicated to the cultural and ecological preservation of the Qing Hai Tibetan plateau has invited us to teach English and do some translation work in one of the schools where they operate cultural preservation projects including Tibetan language classes and Tangka painting workshops. These are links to the organization's websites, which are mostly in Chinese, some photographs that are quite nice: http://feiyu.tibetcul.com/49422.html and http://www.qtpep.com/. We will spend five days and nights in home-stays with families.

The process of a home-stay, arriving in a strange place at a strange home and then being surrounded by the daily life of strangers, is quite intense. This has especially been the case in the minority villages we have stayed in where Miao, or Tibetan, not Chinese, has been the language spoken. I often find myself feeling useless and helpless... and silent. Silence is not my usual state of being. I think it's really good for me to have no choice but to practice silence. Being moved to a level of communication that consists mainly of observation and miming is an opportunity to focus on the world of doing and being and away from the world of saying and explaining. It's a world where walk matters much more than talk, where the non-verbal arts of expression and perception are sharpened. I hope that I will make time in my life to practice these arts and skills when I'm back in the world where I often rely on my words to do my walking for me.