Glimpse of the Heavenly Plataeu...

7 days in Tibet

Surrounded by pp mostly from an entirely different era, upbringing, house culture...
(and i'm talking about our fellow travellers of the Bus No.4)
Immersed in the 2nd "mother tongue"... is a familiar yet strangely alienating experience. As though u are constantly listening thru a layer of bubble wrap, transparent yet still not quite within your grasp. Although by the 8th day -- you surprise yourself by calligraphing characters u'd thot had long fled your mind.

A trip totally without any expectations...
Its rewards and hardships shall remain with me hopefully longer than my short term memory for there are some lessons in life you'd like to learn only once. Dysentry is prob on top of this list!

Pre-Tibet : Chengdu
Is it the romantic morning mists,
or the eerie suspenseful rolling fog...?
The glass door opens and truth assults your unsuspecting delicate nostrils....
CITY SMOG!!! yucks. it is as polluted as they claim.
Well, this city is known for its wells.
The airport is called Shuang something -- the meeting place of 2 oredi non-existent rivers?
Being in Sichuan, it is expected that we had the Ma Po Tofu for lunch AND dinner. And for reasons unfanthomable -- each table gets 2btl of beer but ONLY one miserly btl of coke. sigh.
After feeding us, it is our turn to play our part. So with the enthusiasm only afforded by 1st day tourists, our cameras click with each wave of the blue flag, heads swivel wherever a "heritage" replica presents itself, ears straining attentively lest we miss out any jewel of ancient history...
Unfortunately, since we have a chinese and a japanese garden; and had a Tang City... the "awe" barely lasted 10min. It's a pity for Xue Tao's memorial garden, for i'm sure she must've been an inspiring character to be placed 1st item on our city tour.
However, the Highlight of this day turned out to be quite excellent. Despite a minor stab at my heart (the memory still lingers and burns, and i can't help comparing and thinking yes she'd fit this beautifully too if she was born to a different env), the performing arts were of a varied and entertaining nature with Bian Lian being it's centrepiece. What's more amazing was the combination of puppetry, mask changing and fire blowing ALL in one. That is an extinct art only available in the Motherland. So happily ends the 1st day for our tourists as we head tired but reasonably satisfied, back to the hotel beds.

Here ends part I...