Out West

Hello from Qinghai, one of China's largest minority centers. This is where our group's real work is going to begin.

Since my last entry, a lot has happened. Our last days in Xi'an were nice. I got to see the Terra Cotta Warriors again and it's still just as amazing. We also toured what I believe was a Qin Dynasty palace. Sometimes these palaces seem all the same so a small group of us chose to take a cable car up the mountain next to the palace to take some pictures of the view. What we didn't know was that once you take the cable car you cannot enter back into the palace (where we had to meet up with the rest of the group), so we had to sweet talk the guard ladies to let us back in with what little Chinese we know.

For lunch that day we had China's version of America's version of Chinese food. It was pretty hilarious. That evening a couple of us went out with our professor-mentors and had some good bonding time. We had a new mentor join our group from Xinjiang. This is exciting for me (even though he's an economist) because he is a Uyghur, a Turk-muslim minority native to Xinjiang that I wrote a research paper about last semester.

Last night we left Xi'an for Xining of Qinghai province by train. Fortunately, our group got to have hard sleepers for the 13 hour journey; however, our Chinese grad students had to stay in the hard seat car (if you read my last blog about Wuhan you know how excrutiating that can be for a journey over night). I think they had a good time even though they got no sleep. Our group had a fantastic time on the train. It might've been the best part of our trip so far. In the hard sleeper car it is divided into sections and each section has two bunk beds each with three beds.

The section I was in was the most fun. One of the harmonica players in our group started playing some blues, my roommate sang and made up songs about being broke in China, and I created a percussion section and before you knew it we had our very own "Chinese Train Track Blues Juke." Everyone in the car loved it (pictures will be provided later). That evening I also got to know our sociology group's mentor on a more personal level. I am glad our mentor is a Chinese woman because not only can we learn more about China from her but I got to learn about career building as a woman and how to balance a career and family. She's an amazing and intelligent woman and I feel lucky to know her.

So far, Xining is the most interesting Chinese city I've been to. I think it's incredible that it is the capital of Qinghai but the Han ethnicity is small (Han is the major ethnicity in China). Another aspect of the city I enjoy is that it isn't crowded. There's a lot of space and you can walk on the sidewalk without worrying about getting run over by a motorcycle.

Our group got to check out the Qinghai University of Ethnic Minorities and attended a lecture given by one of our mentors. Tomorrow we attend lectures on topics that completely pertain to all of our research so I am very pumped.

This evening I just ate the best meal of my life (no offense mom), seriously, the Hui people really know how to make mutton spare ribs like no other.
More later!