Diary – 11 August 2007

What is up with the once superb Blue Guide that it fails to so much as mention beautiful Qinghai province, up in China’s northwest?

Xining, Qinghai province, China

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What is up with the once superb Blue Guide that it fails to so much as mention beautiful Qinghai province, up in China’s northwest? Here a lively mix of minorities make up 46 per cent of the population. Tibetans and Muslim Hui are the most prominent, alongside a sprinkling of Kazakhs and Mongols. At Xining, Ta’er Si (Kumbum) is one of the largest and most important (Tibetan Yellow Hat) Buddhist sites. Labrang, on the grasslands bordering Gansu, another. The exquisite Qutan mon-astery in Ledu county yet another. This is an early Ming complex built with the blessing of the first Ming emperor and the symbols on its roof are gifts in the Han style. At Xining the Great Mosque, the largest in China, has golden emblems on its roof, gifts from the Tibetan lamaserie next door. To ensure further harmony, two out of its four minarets are small Chinese pagodas.

In Qinghai province the average yearly income for the Tibetan or Hui farmers is between $300 and $400. In this vast province, larger than Texas, with a population of only five million, many are nomadic and the remote villages are desperately poor. A year ago Beijing, determined now to improve standards, announced that all those living on the land should have free education. This was greeted at provincial level with wry smiles. But since parents normally pay, their children are now flooding the schools (rural boarding) and the intakes of these have risen over 30 per cent. Many classes have increased to 60 or even 100. This intensifies the crisis in the supply of teachers throughout China: sometimes well trained in an urban environment, young teachers are appalled at having to teach out in the sticks, obliged to live in mediaeval conditions on the most basic wage.