Entering in Buddhist temple

Alone with Tibetan

This morning out of nowhere, it’s easier for me to get up, a feeling that I haven’t had since the beginning. I get ready for a passionate day and filled with spirituality. Dad tells me that because of work, he won’t be able to come with us to a great Buddhist temple that is 30 km from the city of Xining. But before, prudent as he always is, dad asks Liu Jia to go to the China Mobile store to add minutes on my phone. Unfortunately, she was only able to add minutes to her phone because apparently the woman at the booth told her that we had special SIM cards. Since I don’t appreciate her curt SMS, I let her know. She doesn’t think like I do and with her lame arguments that blame me, we have a heated argument. We don’t speak to each other anymore and she begins to cry because she ran out of arguments. In the taxi on our way to the temple, all she does is pretend to cry and doesn’t want to talk to me. But once we arrive at the temple, she just laughs and starts to speak to me again. That suits me because doing the entire visit of the temple alone or with a Chinese guide with no translation would have been difficult me. Before doing anything, famished, we sit at a small table in front of a group of eighty-year-olds who swallow their noodle like twenty-year-olds do. We order 3 bowls of noodles and eat them avidly while watching the noodle seller make, roll and cook them. Before going in the temple, we decide to have a look at the market around the temple. We discover prayer objects, Tibetan art, paintings, but also very different and charitable people. We bump into a man dressed in a suit and wearing sunglasses, he reminds me of The Godfather, one of my cult films. Later, we meet a Tibetan couple who show us their artwork and paintings. The husband has a glass eye and I try to see if it’s dangerous for a French person to sleep on the shores of lake Qinghai where many Tibetans lives, but he doesn’t seem to know. We leave them and we go seek new treasures that lay in souls. We walk ahead and pass in front of similar shops without stopping and encounter a man well “wrapped” and who, with glasses in front of his eyes and bracelets in his hand, finishes making them. I stay with him and notice that everything in his shop has some relation to Buddha. I look at a painting of Buddha and observe it; then, I ask Liu Jia to tell him that he looks like Buddha. He looks at me, joins both hands and thanks me. He is so happy that I stay and talk with him. Few minutes later a woman with a baby and an 11 year-old girl arrives, and that’s the whole family. He takes his baby in his arms and he seems so happy that I’m happy for him. I keep talking with him, and when we finish the discussion, I say goodbye and leave. We continue to wander around the market but we don’t find any more treasures. We then decide to head to the temple’s entrance and to find an English guide if possible. But all the guides who speak English are absent and we take, out of necessity for the film, a guide that speaks only Chinese. That’s not really good because there will have to be a translation done after. At the last moment, a woman approaches us and tells us that she speaks English. I ask her a few questions to see her level of English: it’s not excellent but it’s better than a Chinese guide. We apologize to our Chinese guide and we go with our new guide to the ticket booth. At the booth, a monk with a 19th century gentleman’s moustache sells me the tickets. We walk ahead and stop in front of eight statues, each representing a part of man’s life. We pray in front and see old people pray as well and circle the eight statues three at a time. With the guide, we go to the different temples that all look similar. I notice that in China, my dense and united eyebrows are very much appreciated. In one of the temples, I encounter an old man and stay by his side to get to know him a little more. I learn that he’s the oldest monk in the temple and that he’s 89 years old. I talk with him and would like to be like him when I’m old. After, we head towards a temple where tickets hold like magic. Actually the secret is that they put Yak butter so that the tickets stick to the stones. We go towards another temple where I see a little girl play, and there I pray. To finish, we head to the Yak sculpture chamber, sculptures that monks make out of Yak butter. I’m impressed and I imagine a little better the Buddha my friend Irène’s father had sculpted out of butter back in Paris, which I had not seen yet but heard so much about. Then, we leave the temple and thank our guide for her help, giving her 80 Yuan, roughly 8 Euros. We look for a taxi. There’s one who proposes to take us for 50 Yuan, 5 Euros while in Paris the same trip would have cost us 10 times that.