Day 8 – Mao’ergai

After our exertions on Dagu Shan, we rested for a day in Mao’ergai, where the Reds spent more than a month while preparing to head north. Originally, they hoped to seize control of the main road into Gansu, which ran through Songpan County Town two-three days’ march east of Mao’ergai. However, the attack on Songpan failed, leaving them with only one option: to head due north across the vast Grasslands and try to take control of the road closer to the Gansu border. The plans were thrashed out at a meeting in the great lamasery at Mao’ergai, one of the largest and oldest in the region.

We received a guarded welcome in Mao’ergai. Six years previously, Andy and I were the first foreigners anyone could remember seeing here (in the meantime, two Americans are said to have passed through a couple of years ago). We made friends with the mayor and were treated very well; certainly, no one asked to inspect our papers. On this occasion, we were directed immediately to the police station (I didn’t even realise they had one in 2003 – it’s a one-street, one-horse town from which letters were said to take 20 days to reach Beijing). The police chief, however, didn’t appear for a couple of hours. I think he had some important drinking to do – once he finally showed up, he rambled for more than an hour while a subordinate took down our details: “You people from capitalisht countreesh should undershtand that in s-s-socialisht countreesh we have different laws…you have to reshpect our laws…we are Tibetan Buddishts, we will never go back to the time of shlavery…” Anyway, he let us go in the end, so he wasn’t such a bad bloke.

Little seemed to have changed since Andy and I visited the lamasery in 2003, other than that it was much emptier as the monks were on their summer holidays. Twice a year, they leave the lamasery to visit families that can be as far away as Gansu or even Qinghai. A skeleton crew of senior monks remains on duty. Tserden, pictured above, showed us around. He said no other foreign visitors had been seen since Andy and I six years before.

The Red leaders are supposed to have held their discussions here, where the monks now hold competitive theological debates. This is a spectator sport in the big lamaseries. The winner is judged by popular acclaim, and success in these contests is important if a monk wishes to rise through the lamasery’s hierarchy. These buildings, like most in the lamasery, are of post-1980 vintage. The lamasery was largely destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, when religious practice was proscribed and the monks sent home (or worse). Like others throughout the Tibetan lands, it has been rebuilt since the lamaist church was re-established in 1980.

This picture comes from our visit in 2003. The fellow joking around with me was one of only two who were present in the lamasery on this occasion.

Here he is in 2009. Tseden was delighted to see an old friend, and asked if he could come and stay if he visits Beijing. I said that was fine, as long as he didn’t smoke in the apartment or bring girls home. He said he thought that would be OK.

Note the bones under these prayer wheels, part of the piligrimage route around the lamasery. When herders’ animals die, they sometimes bring the bones to the lamasery, where a monk inscribes sutras on them before placing them under the prayer wheels. In other lamaseries, they might place the bones of horses inside the wheels. All this helps the herders’ beloved animals pass safely from one life to the next, and hopefully to rebirth on a higher plane.

Tserden stands in front of the only pre-Cultural Revolution hall still standing. To the right of the doorway you can see a stuffed wild boar, which originally hung over the entrance to an adjacent hall. I asked Tserden why Tibetan Buddhists would stuff a boar and hang it over the door. “I don’t know,” he said, though he did claim the boar had not been hunted and killed, but died of natural causes.

We paid a brief visit to a nunnery, high on the hillside overlooking the Mao’ergai Valley. The nuns have a hard life: unlike their male counterparts, they have few opportunities to leave the nunnery, and none to earn money. The monks and lamas (the latter being a man who has attained a very high level of education and respect in the lamaist church) are in demand to chant sutras, give blessings and officiate at ceremonies, and they are paid for providing such services. They can also do a bit of business or even, like Tserden, earn money by driving the family vehicles or showing tourists around (not that the latter would get you very far in Mao’ergai). The nuns rely exclusively on donations from their families. What we saw of their life was Spartan in the extreme. Initially, the chief nun invited us for tea, but the invitation was quietly rescinded after the nuns started having too much fun taking photos with us…

Day 9 – Into the Grasslands

The road north starts here, along the valley leading into Guoxigou. The altitude here is about 11,200 feet above sea level.

Jiacuo was alone among us in trying out old-style trekking, wearing a pair of grass sandals just like those used by the Red soldiers on the Long March. “Not comfortable”, was his verdict.

Progress slowed to a crawl across the Grasslands. Not only did we face bogs that had to be carefully negotiated, but there are no bridges across the rivers, which had been swollen by heavy rains. Although the days were mostly dry, each evening we camped as early as possible to avoid the rain that usually started after seven or eight o’clock.

Day 10 – The Grasslands

There are many tales of Red soldiers being lost in the bog. Some, at least, are true. I know one man whose father was a child soldier on the Long March. He stumbled into an area like the one above, and his unit leader went in after him. The child climbed over his leader’s body to safety, leaving the older man to perish. Animals were at especial risk. While a man could just about be supported by the ground here (you can see a couple of our intrepid crew in the distance) a loaded pack-animal would sink immediately, and the Reds’ animals had no experience and no sense of danger when they first entered the Grasslands. We almost lost a horse in 2006 when it walked blithely into a swampy zone; it never did anything like that again, mind you.

Yang Xiao navigates the bog in Guoxigou. These flowers only grow on wetlands; I haven’t yet found out their name.

You can just see our camp at the bottom of this valley. Gordon caught three more fish in the river, but none big enough to put in the pot for dinner. We had changed horse teams at Mao’ergai, and our new Tibetan comrades had no objections to catching or eating fish.

Day 11 – Still the Grasslands

I had heard many Tibetans talk about the wolves that roamed the Grasslands, but had never entirely believed them – until now. The fellow above is actually Han Chinese, though he lives as a herder alongside the other Tibetans here in Songpan County. This wolf had already killed four of his goats, so he poisoned one half-eaten carcass. The wolf was dead the next day. He skinned it and buried the poisoned meat, taking the wolf teeth to sell in the county town (100 yuan each, he reckoned).

The wolf killer, Lao Zhang, didn’t know how to cure a skin, however, so Yang Xiao had to screw up his nose to demonstrate the size of the beast. It must have weighed close on 100 pounds, easily big enough to take on a man if it was hungry enough. It give me plenty to think about when going to the toilet at midnight – Lao Zhang said there were another three wolves roaming the valley.

Zebo Ridge is where Andy and I went wrong in 2003, and where we would have gone wrong this time, as well, if our Tibetan comrades had had their way. We turned east at this ridge in 2003, rather than going due north, taking us on a 15-kilometer diversion. Our horse team were keen to do the same, as they were nervous of going too close to a town called Maiwa – and as they couldn’t read a map they had no real notion of where, exactly, Maiwa was. The people of Mao’ergai are involved in a feud with Maiwa over foraging rights on the border of their two regions. The most important resource is the chong cao, or aweto, a medicinal product which is the main source of ready cash for Tibetans in this area.

From Zebo was half a day’s march to Galitai, the halfway point for the Red Army on the Grasslands. Today it is where the main road from Songpan to Ruo’ergai intersects with the road to Hongyuan, and where our team was delighted to find a shack with a kitchen and tables. Today was our first and only introduction to the rigours of crossing the Grasslands in the rain. And what rain! We were completely exposed on the ridge above Galitai as the rain blew into us almost at right angles. It broke through ever piece of waterproof gear we had on, even our gaitors. Dean celebrated our arrival at safe harbour by breaking out his box of Gran Corona cigars. The Tibetans were happy to join the party, which also celebrated Philipp’s birthday.

Jiacuo liked the cigars so much, he smoked two. He wondered why he felt hungover the next morning.

Day 12 – Grasslands to the Song-Gan Highway

The Grasslands Restaurant, home of the Galitai Cigar Club.

And here’s the Grasslands Restaurant six years ago, when Andy and I also stayed the night in Galitai. As you can see, the road has been upgraded considerably since then.

The great Ruo’ergai Grassland as viewed from Galitai. In 1935, there was no road here, just this vast expanse of prairie and bog, three days’ march from the next town.

To see Part 3 of this adventure, click here…