Songpan
From Langmusi to Songpan
A long travel day, mainly though the grassy highlands of Amdo. The green hills are spotted by small white specks (sheep) and slightly larger black specks (yaks) and even larger black specks (tents). We partially travel over a newly built road and smaller dirt roads where the new road isn’t finished yet, for example over a high pass early in the day. 
Occasionally, giant billboards try to convince us to visit the Pandas. All in all a very stark contrast. Are the nomads better off with the new roads? Or will Chinese move in and marginalize the original inhabitants? It’s hard to make up your mind about this and the many contrasts this country offers.
Occasionally, giant billboards try to convince us to visit the Pandas. All in all a very stark contrast. Are the nomads better off with the new roads? Or will Chinese move in and marginalize the original inhabitants? It’s hard to make up your mind about this and the many contrasts this country offers. As lunch we have a picnic in the grass fields: Apple pie and “dwarven bread” (massive chocolate cake) baked by the restaurant we had breakfast at hat morning (Leysha’s). They must have spent the whole night baking them, but it was worth it, and some variety from Chinese food (which is excellent everywhere, but sometimes you want something else).
Finally, a last high pass (with a flat tire) marks the end of Amdo and the beginning of Sichuan with a two hours descent along the Min River to Songpan.
Long, tedious travel day complete with flat tire and a field of stupas built in honor of the PLA in 1986 (? The English information on the ticket to this dubious “sight” was rather cryptic, and presumably courtesy of Babelfish).
My cold came back, and everyone was pretty beat, too (altitude, or will this be the eternal excuse for our lack of stamina?). Leysha’s apple pie was the only highlight of the day that otherwise saw our stay in an outwardly impressive glass & steel hotel that was inwardly totally dysfunctional: Toilets didn’t work (flush using the shower head), continuous power failure (stick flashlight in a roll of toilet paper for an improvised night light), etc. If it had been a primitive shelter like in Langmusi, okay. But this hotel (“Traffic Hotel Songpan”) was a huge pseudo-posh atrocity that’s rotten at the core.
Lame. Just lame.
Songpan
A rest day! Finally, we sleep in until 8:30! A breakfast with fruit granola and yoghurt at “Emma’s Kitchen” marks the start of a lazy day.
“Emma’s Kitchen,” run by a Chinese woman who doesn’t look older than eighteen in my eyes (and whose name is certainly not Emma), is very interesting, a mini-embassy to the Western world.
Emma not only makes Western food, she also speaks English fluently and serves as a knowledge source for people who don’t speak Chinese. She could help us by recommending medicine against Steffi’s cough and wrote the characters down on a sheet of paper. We handed the paper to a pharmacist, got a box of pills, and went back to Emma so she could translate the instructions.
The place is decorated with international flags and postcards from all around the world.
It’s interesting to observe in myself the enormous comfort that comes from small patches of familiarity, such as exchanging a few words in English or having granola and muesli for breakfast. I immediately felt relaxed, at ease, “safe.” That’s not to say that I want all of China to be more Western - but an occasional dip in reminders of home (after all, there’s no place like it, right?) is refreshing on a trip that immerses us in the foreign culture we came to experience...
Also: “Home” has ceased to be Pittsburgh, or Groningen, or The Netherlands or Germany - it has now officially become “The West.”
Songpan is quite a nice place: Beautiful center walled by three gates, and really nice buildings with a variety of shops. 
A wonderfully civilized and lovely place with a pedestrian area within its old city walls and lots of restored old houses. This city of teahouses and leisure has something of a recuperation station for weary travelers from all over China. Chinese tourists, Muslims and Tibetans live here, and shellshocked Westerlings gather at Emma’s.
A wonderfully civilized and lovely place with a pedestrian area within its old city walls and lots of restored old houses. This city of teahouses and leisure has something of a recuperation station for weary travelers from all over China. Chinese tourists, Muslims and Tibetans live here, and shellshocked Westerlings gather at Emma’s. We ran into a wedding that involved fire crackers and spraying the couple with confetti and other stuff.
We spent the day in Songpan under the wonderful banner of laziness in a place called “The leisure teahouse.” We sat there for hours and had green tea and lemon tea and spicy dumplings, and chatted (how wonderful to be alone with Niels for a change) and wrote journals and strolled through town afterwards.
I dropped one of the dumplings into the hot sauce, splattering my freshly washed shirt with the telltale red splotches of the inept chopstick handler. Good going.
