Qinghai Lake

Hong Kong Highland Exploration Team 2006

Author：Jasmine Ma

Picture：莫炳亮及Hong Kong Highland Exploration Team

17th to 19th August.
Shanshan, Qinghai Lake

We had been chasing after the trucks all the way through. We noticed all trucks were seriously overloaded. Tibet had done a great job in supplying tons of fresh and delicious fruits to the southern part of China. Tibet was really great .

On the green green grass of land , there were lots of white lambs and some yaks that could only be avalable on plateaus . At the front , a place looked like an ocean , and that was the country's largest inland saltwater lake in the northwestern province of Qinghai , the Qinghai Lake. .

The Tibetans had much interest on foreigners. They came by riding their horses to take a look at us and left shortly. Those horses on the plateaus were fat and short. We grouped together facing the grassland , blue lake and the cattle and listened to daddy’s story about the Bird’s Island . We were eager to go to the place where my father mentioned the birds’ shit were stacked up to 2 meters in height. Before we arrived there , only god knew there weren’t any bird shit , not even birds available! The Bird Island had become a tourist spot and we needed to pay on all items. The staff there directed us to different directions and we could hardly look around together. That was a common phenomenon in China. The birds had already migrated to the south while the local staff were still working hard to maintain that wonder piece of tourist spot under the name of birds.

Originally , we planned to have a camping inside a park of Qinghai Lake and we should be the only car fleet there. However , we had met some governors of the state and we were driven to Xining. Xining was the capital city of Qinghai Province and it took three hours to get there. Although we would not experience a camping life in the park , we remembered the dinner we had on the lake side closely together with yaks , deer and lambs.

The deer were more passional and they loved to play with us just like our puppies at home , on the other side , the yaks were much impassive and just kept eating grasses by themselves. We enjoyed our stay there and left for Xining. At night , Xining was very prosperous and similar to that of Shanghai.

20th August.
Qinghai Lake , Hezuo

We got the news last night about the roads from Xining to Sichuan Province would be very tough , the speed would be something like 20km per hour. The roads condition offered the cars a “thorough massage” , that meant our cars were bumping ups and downs all the way and we all suffered a lot. Just imaged , we were like staying in the cradles and had been shaking without a brake . We moved on as slowly as tortoises.

The car fleet stopped and we asked the leading driver what happened , and we knew we had arrived the ferry pier waiting to get on the vehicle ferry to carry us across the river. My god ! We were surprised to see that kind of ferry nowadays in China . We had that in Hong Kong years ago when I was a kid and that recalled a lot of memories of my infant world. The cars kept rolling onto the ferry , the sailors didn’t care of the overloading problem . They wanted to carry as many cars as they can. We didn’t surprise about that as it was too common too see in China.

We went across Liujia Gorge, which was the widest part of Yellow River. That was also the most beautiful reservoir we had ever seen. I had asked many people before I was convinced the water came from the Yellow River. The water was crystal clear , we could see the bottom clearly. We passed through several mountains and we had never seen such a rich place that were full of farmlands one after the other. There were numerous fruit trees and tall maize . We were the only visitors there , the moist climate and the swaying willows around gave us a feeling of entering into a fairy land.

On the way , we bought some peaches from the kids. The peaches were so fresh and red as a baby’s face and we didn’t attempt to bite . We went there unconsciously and we were afraid we could hardly find that way again. We had to leave that in our memories reluctantly.

21st August.
Hongyuan

After we had entered Hezuo , a place with a special name ( Hezuo means cooperation) , we arrived Sichuan Province.

The boundless Ruoergai was the most beautiful grassland in China. That was also the heaven for the nomads. When we were on our way , we heard of a funny incident. A big ox intruded into a small shop for an unknown reason. The shopkeeper used a chair intended to scare the ox away , however ,the ox use one horn to knock the chair off and withstood the shopkeeper on the other and pushed him on the floor. We didn’t have time to see what might happen next , we just blessed him all the best.

Not long after , our progress were suspended by road works. We guessed we had to wait until the late evening. The Tibetans approached us and suggested us to change our routes with some charges on leading our way and to press the grasses to enable us to move on smoothly. We felt uneasy with miles of long queue ahead. We were surprised to see the truck drivers at the front didn’t respond to those Tibetans and preferred waiting.

We were led to a small road and there was no grass at all. We were cheated ! We were stopped again by a gang group extorted us for more money when we entered a narrow road .We felt the Tibetans were not trustworthy at all. Luckily one of the Tibetans lent us a helping hand and led us out by using some other way.

We had the last camping on that night , wonderful ! On that most beautiful piece of grassland , my younger brother and Allen ( a member’s kid) learned how to ride a horse. Regarding the camp sites , we always had new and exciting experiences. We had our camping in desert , on Gebitan , near the cold Ranma Lake and also on the slope of Mount Everest. We were seldom biten by mosquito .However , when we had our morning camping in the desert, there were so much mosquito chasing after us and our skins looked shot by machine guns.