One of our filler days, stopping over in Xuahua en route to Qinghai Hu. Left the highland and descended to a much more comfortable altitude with slightly less than 2000 meters above sea level.
Huangloong park ranger in Rou Er Gai
Our lunch was good at a Hui minority muslim Halal restaurant.
The Hui people (Chinese: 回族; pinyin: Huízú, Xiao'erjing: حُوِ ذَو / حواري) are a predominantly Muslim ethnic group in China. Hui people are found throughout the country, though they are concentrated mainly in the provinces of Ningxia, Qinghai, and Gansu.
In fact, the "Hui nationality" is unique among China's officially recognized ethnic minorities in that it does not have any particular non-Chinese language associated with it. Most Hui, although they are not ethnically Han Chinese, are similar in culture to Han Chinese with the exception that they practice Islam, and have some distinctive cultural characteristics as a result.
We visited the most important Tibetan Buddhism monastery outside Tibet, the Labrang monastery.
Labrang Monastery (Tibetan: བླ་བྲང་བཀྲ་ཤིས་འཁྱིལ་ Wylie: bla-brang bkra-shis-'khyil; Chinese: 拉卜楞寺 Pinyin: lābǔlèng sì) is one of the six great monasteries of the Geluk (Yellow Hat) school of Tibetan Buddhism.
In the early part of the 20th century, Labrang was by far the largest and most influential monastery in Amdo.
The monastery was founded in 1709 by the first Jamyang Zhaypa, Ngawang Tsondru. It is Tibetan Buddhism's most important monastery town outside the Tibetan Autonomous Region.
As we passed the famous Qilian mountain range, the natural border between Gansu and Qinglai province, the green and yellows sight gave way to a more barren brown surrounding. Once covered with pines, now is just grass, rubble and very fine dust from the western desert.
We passed through the Hui and Sana villages, mostly agriculture based planting canola, millet and barley.
Street boys in Xuahua town with sponsors gifts
Xuahua town is very clean and the local people are very kind and helpful to show us around. We are lucky because Xuahua town is holding her annual Yellow River swimming competition today and the town is alive with visiting participants and visitors.
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