through the looking glass

from lanzhou :: hezuo. a volunteer opportunity I’d wanted to take there never materialized, but I’d heard about a position at hezuo normal university and was intrigued. I liked the sound of teaching in gannan, a tibetan autonomous prefecture, my first stop would be the capital.

the bus ride south is just silly. six hours on unpaved twisty roads to get ~150km. linxia, the hui city, and xiahe, popular monestary attraction, passed by.

the hills glowed dark red, covered in part with a misty moss; the storm clouds overhead emphasized something of a wasteland feeling about the place. rather than the expected small homes and sheep dotting the landscape I watched mine after mine pass by. small scale operations, workers covered in soot or ash or unknown black, hands dark and hard as stone, carried their harvest.

entering hezou gives the impression of a mining town, an industrial beginning. low slung buildings line the dry street. walking north from the station brought a plethora of wide eyes and open mouths but not a single ‘hello’. we spotted a muslim yang rou place and entered to dead silence and midair chopsticks as every eye followed me to a table. my goofy smile at the situation brought hearty laughter from a table of tibetans.

exploring the city some more revealed a shiny new downtown. past walk street with its mock ancient facade and hotels above every shop you arrive at a giant shiny park, complete with bizarre sculptures, grassy fields with straight paths, and the requisite playground equipment. tall hotels, office buildings, and cranes obstruct the view of the mountains. keep walking straight and you arrive at education row, school after school after school of every variety. middle schools get the closest spots, working out you start hitting the universities, including a teacher’s college and a teacher’s university.

I spent some time wandering around the small campus of hezuo shiyuan. there seems to be only one major teaching building, a library, and a shiny new building whose purpose I could not easily ascertain, administration? lots of gardens, a dirt basketball yard. next to the daily paper in the glass stand the library advertises their latest aquisitions, a sure sign of interest, or possibly hope. a vast sky and distant mountains filled my line of sight.