Face The Sun: Let There Be Light.

To Stand on Jericho's Walls and Face the Sun.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

My interest in Qinghai (and later Gansu) was largely logistical: I had some serious questions regarding the day-to-day lives of Tibetan monks.

(I recognize that going to Qinghai and Gansu rather than Tibet seems illogical, but it was necessary. Moreover, only three of the six major monasteries of Yellow Hat Tibetan Buddhism are located in Tibet. One's in Gansu, one's in Qinghai, and a third is across the border in Himalayan India).

It took me about 15 minutes at the Ta'Er monastery, on the outskirts of Tibet, to get a monk to invite me home. This was all the invitation I needed to grill him on everything I wanted to know.

So then, monk logistics:

If you're a monk, the monastery will give you an annual income based on how long you've been at the monastery and rolling under the assumption that the temple has been pulling in donations. This ranges from about 2000 kuai ($250) a year to about 4000 kuai ($500) a year. This allows you to pay for your monk cell phone, which you are not forbidden to have since Tibetan Buddhism is, shall we say, unique.

The monk I was talking to, a respectable old-timer with 14 years at the monastery, was pulling in 3500 kuai (about $430) a year. You get paid in cash, in a single lump payment once a year, every November.

If you're an irresponsible monk who isn't good at budgeting and you blow through all your monkmoney by oh-let's-say mid to late August, you aren't going to go hungry: you can always get yak butter and millet flour* -- the staples of the Tibetan diet -- from the monastery.

The monk who invited me home was 36, and had been at the monastery for 14 years, meaning that he entered when he was 12. This is not uncommon. He claimed it was his own choice, but despite that, when his head was shaved and he was given his robes, he was near tears. His parents live about 5 hours away from the monastery, in eastern Qinghai. He usually gets to see them every year or two.

Being at a monastery for 14 years will get you a pretty sweet pad. His was a multi-bedroom complex (he had 6 roommates), with a backyard where he was raising a vicious Sharpe puppy who was out for blood.

Following my in-depth interview on monk logistics, he pulled out a bag of pears, sent a younger monk to go wash a few, and then asked me some questions of his own: since you're an American, can you help me get a US visa? (No). Will knowing you make it easier to get a US visa? (No). How can I apply for a US visa? (See the website -- it's in both Chinese and English). Do monks have a better chance of getting US visas than other Chinese people? (See the website). But really, what's it going to take to get a US visa? (I'm not kidding, Mr. Monk: the best thing for you to do is see the website). Can you give me a letter to give to the Embassy for when I apply for a US visa? (Dude. No.).

*Coda: I am a person who is embarrassed by foods I dislike. I have been systematically identifying foods that I don't like and forcing myself to eat them until I do like them, so that at this point there are very few things I sincerely won't eat. I recently got over my phobia of wasabi and other horseradishes. Mustard has long since been conquered. Onions are old hat. Hard boiled eggs remain a stumbling block.

Despite embarrassment and systematic eradication, I'm going to come right out and say this: Yak butter is perhaps the single most god awful "food product" on the planet. It retains it's gamey, full-on animal flavor while having none of the pleasant properties of butter. It's full-flavor comes on top of a crumbly and waxy texture that wouldn't be good on bread if there were bread to be had, and the smell, the overpowering room-filling reek of it makes everyone and everything in Tibetan areas smell vaguely Yak-y. In addition to being a food product, it's also a medium for sculpture (monasteries keep elaborate butter sculptures of Buddhist icons for a year before cutting them up and giving them to the poor), and is burned on alters in large candles.

The Tibetans love it as "yak butter tea," which is a hunk of yak butter in a teacup with hot water poured over it so the butter melts and forms an oily skein on the top. This puddle of oil is then blown away by the person consuming it, allowing them to drink the now Yak-flavored water underneath it while lightly painting their upper lip with liquefied yak fat. When the teacup is half full, a handful of millet flour is tossed in, and is combined by hand with the liquid in the cup to form a dry, crumbly dough with little nutritional value, an intensely chalky texture, and an overwhelming flavor. This dough, called tsampa in Tibetan, is the primary staple of Tibetan cuisine, and goes a long way to explain why there are few if any Tibetan restaurants in the US.

Labels: Buddhism, China, Qinghai, Tibet, Tibetans, travel

Posted by Dakota on 6:16 AM link |

Current Location:
The People's Republic of China.

Stop by any time: everyone's welcome.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem to Be Born

Comments and requests for dates should be directed to email.

And here I am.

And for all you random folks out there whom I don't know, for the love of god, email me. I'm abroad, know no one, and look forward to hearing from you. I'm especially looking at YOU, whomever YOU are who's Facing The Sun all the way from Kenya. And Sweden. And Canada. And whatnot.

Books Tackled, 2006:

1. Jarhead, Anthony Swofford
2. Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia, Dennis Covington
3. A Brief History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
4. A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City, Anonymous
5. Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism, Dawn Prince-Hughes

This year's movies, in chronological order:

1. Kung Fu Hustle
2. A Wrinkle in Time
3. Pi: Faith in Chaos
4. My Big Fat Independent Movie
5. The Winter Guest
6. Voices in Wartime
7. What Dreams May Come
8. Farewell My Concubine
9. The Ring
10. Like Water for Chocolate
11. Sahara

Orange Lifesaver.
In Passing.
Foxy Librarians.
Naked Translations.
Open Brackets.
The DC Bloggers Site.
Linguistics Blogs.
The DC BlogMap.

Foreign Service Officers by day, Bloggers by day as well.

The Diplodocus
(Islamabad, Pakistan).

The Permanent Mission of Joshie
(Zagreb; Libyaward).

Prince Roy
(Chennai; Taiwanward).

Sue and not You
(Tbilisi, Georgia).

Life on the Mekong
(Vientiane, Laos).

FSO Globe Trotter
(Lahore, Pakistan).

Vice Consul: Diplomatically Transformed
(New Delhi, India).

Adventures in Good Countries
(Japanward).

Our Man in Tirana
(Tirana, Albania).

Anne's Blog
(Kazakhstan; Greeceward).

Blogota
(Bogota, Colombia).

Furnish Worldwide
(Curacaoward).

Tasman's World
(Dhaka, Bangladesh).

GlobeHoppers
(Lome, Togo).

World Adventurers
(Seoul, Korea).

Aaron Martz
(Switzerlandward).

A for Adventure
(Chennai, India).

The Excellent Adventures of Nickie P
(Paris, France).

Permanently Disco
(Dhaka, Bangladesh).

Consul At Arms
(Kingston, Jamaica).



Five Random DC bloggers. Asterix indicates recently updated.