Tibetan prayer wheel with Qinghai Lake in the background.

For the past week I’ve been been visiting the western city of Xining in Qinghai Province. Xining is one of the main stop-offs before entering Tibet or Xinjiang. Xining is a melting pot of Tibetan, Muslim and Han Chinese communities. Everywhere one can hear different languages being spoken and can see the colorful dress of people groups from the surrounding regions.

Yesterday I went on a two-hour drive from Xining to Qinghai Lake, China’s largest saltwater lake located in the northeastern region of Qinghai on the Tibetan Plateau. The lake’s elevation is 3200 meters/10,498 feet above sea level and is surrounded by a vast expanse of grasslands in which there is an abundance of sheep, yaks and camels. The weather was cold and rainy and the van I was in didn’t have a functioning heater — it was a chilly trip. However, the drive to Qinghai Lake was well worth the cold ride.

Driving out of Xining, the van steadily climbed through steep terrain similar to a mountain pass. But instead of a downhill slope on the other side, the road leveled out onto the Tibetan Plateau and its sprawling grasslands. Periodically we passed Tibetan nomads herding sheep or yaks. We even came upon a man pulling a string of camels down the road.

Rider and his bactrian camels plodding down a road near Qinghai Lake.

Qinghai Lake is truly off the beaten path and there are only a couple of facilities that cater to tourists. We stopped at a place that rents small four wheelers and horses for rides along the lake. There wasn’t a restaurant, but we were able to hire a Tibetan lady to cook lunch for us. The food was simple but good. We had boiled mutton and mianpian, a kind of noodle soup. And of course no Tibetan meal would be complete without yak-butter tea.

Tibetan girls near a gas station on the way to Qinghai Lake. When my wife asked if she could take their picture they obliged for 2rmb.

When traveling to Qinghai Lake remember to dress warm, it’s almost always windy and the weather can be cold anytime of year. Keep in mind that facilities in the region are limited. In terms of places to sleep and eat, you won’t have much to choose from.

To get there you can rent a car and driver from Xining. The other option is to take a bus or train to one of the small cities near the lake. Qinghai Lake is a good place to stop on trips from Xining deeper into Tibetan regions in the west of China.

Check out www.tibetanconnections.com for more detailed information on China’s Tibetan regions, Lhasa permits and other Tibet travel services. Tibetan Connections is a travel service based in Xining. It’s operated by two westerners who have years of experience exploring Tibet.

The Yongling Tombs, located deep in the Liaoning countryside, is a great destination any time of year. However, the fall is one of the best seasons for a drive through Liaoning Province. It is a time of the harvest, mild weather, and hillsides burning with the brilliant reds and yellows of changing maple trees.

Maple trees near Guanmen Mountain

The drive to the tombs in the fall winds through beautiful countryside and village scenes that one might expect to meet only in a story book. Everywhere farmers are out harvesting their crops, one swing of the scythe at a time. Oxen plod down the road pulling villagers and their produce home from a hard days work in the fields. And every few kilometers shepherds can be seen out tending their flocks of sheep grazing on the brush along the edges of fields and the road’s shoulder. For a person living in one of China’s urban centers it’s hard to imagine that this kind of fresh air, picturesque farmland and slow pace of life exists just a few hours drive out of the city.

The food at this time of the year in the Liaoning countryside is excellent. All of it is fresh — freshly brought in and prepared from the fields. It has a hearty simplicity and fresh flavor that invigorates the hungry. The produce of this region is a topic in which the locals take great pride and never tire of discussing. On a recent trip to the Yongling Tombs my wife and I ate lunch with a friend from the region. He talked with great disgust about the rubbish eaten by urbanites: “Full of pesticides and fertilizer” he kept saying, “it’s nothing like the organic ingredients we can get here.”

The food and the scenery are well worth the drive; however, the Yongling Tombs is a great destination in itself.

The Yongling Tombs

The Yongling Tombs is said to have excellent fengshui. Qiyun Mountain backdrops the tombs and has 12 peaks, one for each Qing Emperor.

The Yongling Tombs is one of three Qing Dynasty imperial burial sites located in Liaoning Province. The other two, the Zhaoling and Fuling Tombs, are located in Shenyang. All three tombs are listed as UNESCO World Heritages sites.

During the rule of the Qing Dynasty, emperors would visit the three tombs regularly to pay homage to their ancestors and pray for the continued prosperity of their nation. Upon the arrival of the emperor, elaborate ceremonies and sacrifices would be performed.

The furnace pictured above was used for burning sacrifices to Qing ancestors. Sacrifices often consisted of gold and silver ingots, food, silk, and colored paper.

Construction on the Yongling Tombs began in 1598 at the end of the Ming Dynasty. At this time Nuerhaci (known as the father of the Qing Dynasty) had already began uniting Manchu, Mongol and Korean warlords throughout what is now Northeastern China, a work that founded the Qing Dynasty and laid the groundwork for his grandson, Emperor Shunzhi, to take The Mandate of Heaven and completely consolidate control of China under Qing rule. The tombs are the final resting place of Nuerhaci’s father, paternal grandfather, paternal great grandparents and several other more distant relatives.

Identical dragon bas reliefs are located on each side of Qiyun Gate, the gate leading into Yongling’s inner court and mausoleum.

The Yongling Tombs are a two-and-a-half hour drive east of Shenyang. If taking a private car or renting a cab aren’t options, you can take a bus to nearby Yongling Town; from the town of Yongling its a five minute cab ride to the tombs. The entrance fee is 20rmb.

Inside these pavilions are four stone tablets extolling the good deeds of the Qing ancestors in the Chinese, Mongolian and Manchu scripts.

Most visitors to China eat chunbing at least once. It is a round, flat, tortilla-like cake that is best known for its coupling with Beijing Duck. However, chunbing’s roots run the deepest in Manchuria (Northeastern China). Throughout the region, restaurants market their chunbing-making expertise on nearly every street. And unlike other regions where chunbing is mainly used as a wrap for the roast duck, scallions and plumb sauce in Beijing Duck, there are numerous northeastern dishes made specifically for pairing with chunbing. I recommend trying them all.

Bottom left-hand plate is chunbing topped with Jingjiang Rousi (京酱肉丝 jing1 jiang4 rou4 si1), small pieces of pork cooked in plumb sauce and served over fresh scallions.

Eating a chunbing wrap with chopsticks.

If you’re in Shenyang, there is one chunbing restaurant in particular that I recommend. My wife, Mollie, and I recently discovered Yifenli Chunbing Restaurant while walking down a back street of Shenyang trying to decide where to eat dinner. We stopped in front of Yifenli Chunbing Restaurant, still undecided, when the owner, a lady in her sixties, came out and energetically ushered us in. When I asked how to address her, her reply was that all of her kids were in their forties, so we should call her Auntie.

Auntie, always welcomes her guests with a smile.

Auntie’s restaurant is simple, clean and serves excellent, no-frills northeastern fare. It’s a workingman’s restaurant, a place to get a unique taste of the real China. But perhaps the best part of eating there is Auntie herself. She is extremely patient when explaining the menu. In fact, we recently recommended this restaurant to friends that don’t speak or read Chinese and they said that Auntie actually brought ingredients out of the kitchen to show them their choices. They had a great meal and a lot of fun.

Yifenli Chunbing Restaurant

Location: Yifenli Chunbing Restaurant is a fifteen-minute walk from the US consulate. From the consulate walk north three blocks on Sanjing Street (san jing jie) until you come to Dongwei Road (dong wei lu). At Dongwei Road take a right and walk about five minutes. You will come up to Yifenli Chunbing Restaurant on your left-hand side. The address is No. 94 Dongwei Road.

Cost: Yifenli Chunbing Restaurant is not expensive. Two people can order two dishes, with chunbing and beer for under 30rmb (approx. $4).

Recently, a friend treated Mollie and I to a wonderful dinner at a trendy Sichuan restaurant here in Shenyang. The meal was excellent. It’s centerpiece was the “Shuizhuyu”, a dish in which a fish is boiled in oil mixed with a blend of “mala” spices (literally translates to “numbing spice”). We had a great time, but we ran into a minor problem: a small fish bone lodged in Mollie’s throat.

The bone remained until the next evening when I finally located it with a flashlight. It was too far down Mollie’s throat to remove with tweezers (I tried), and she didn’t feel comfortable with my proposal to attempt the removal using chopsticks. So, we finally broke down and walked the 50 yards from our apartment building to the neighborhood dental clinic. It was 9:00pm and the clinic was closed, but a lady in an adjacent traditional Chinese medicine clinic was able to rouse the dentist for us — he sleeps in his office.

The neighborhood dentist, a short friendly man in his late twenties, quickly came out and ushered Mollie back to his dental chair while pulling on his lab coat. Mollie sat down, opened wide, and he successfully removed the tiny fish bone.

One of the more colorful dental office storefronts on Shenyang’s Shiyiwei Road.

When he was done I asked how much we owed. The dentist’s reply was that for such a small matter he wouldn’t even consider charging us. I told him that for us it was a big matter and I laid 20rmb ($2.50) on the table. His flustered reaction was to insist that I was giving way too much. He hurried back to his desk and took out 15rmb, grabbed me, then pressed the money into my hand. The more I tried to break free, the harder he pressed. So, I took the money and our fish-bone experience cost a total of 5rmb or about $0.75.

I believe I could have gotten the bone with chopsticks. I at least would have liked to have a try. However, Mollie was quite satisfied with the services of our neighborhood dentist. What a pleasant end to what for Mollie was a quite unpleasant experience.