Last few weeks ago, grade 9 and 10 students went to the school trip to Hei Shui. Hei Shui is the one part of origin for Tibetan Buddhism. I was very interested in history, so I prepared lots of thing for this trip. First day, we went to the Wenchan earthquake museum. At the entrance of museum, there are graves for heroes who died to rescue other people. We should be careful, quite and polite to respect those people. In the museum, it described the destruction that made by the earthquake. That earthquake made a huge financial loss and casualties. Also, the museum taught us what should we do when earthquake happen. It wrote in Chinese, but we still could watch pictures. After the museum, we went to the school, which was destroyed by the earthquake and it was horrible. It gave me a plaintive feeling. After visiting that school, we moved to the traditional Qiang’s village. We went up to the small mountain and we could see the beautiful view of mountains and the village. At there, the type of rocks was different. Mr. Brian told us that it happened because of earthquake. Each step of mountain’s rock shows the age of rocks and it happened by earthquake and sea level. We went back to the village and grade 10 students went to the Qiang person’s house. It was based on two trees and they just built up by surrounding those trees. Their house built for protection because they had a lot of wars and they need to protect themselves.
Next day, we went to the Tibetan Buddhism monastery. It was built on the high mountain. Before we got into the monastery, we need to take off our shoes because it meant being polite in front of Buddha. When we got into the monastery, we need to pray 3 times in a raw to be calm down and being polite without any anger. In the monastery, there were more than 100 of statues of the Buddha’s image and there were bowl what filled in clean water in front of each statue. Those water bowls were for praying to Buddha with clear mind. By putting money to the Buddha statues, we can pray for luck. The main part of monastery was the 3 big Buddha statues. The biggest statue was the Indian prince who created the Buddhism and it stayed at the middle. Left side Buddha has a lot of meanings. It contained jealous, sexual problems, hubris, complicated, which are humans had on their mind. Right side Buddha was for trying and missionary. I put some money into the small box to wish for good luck and no more problems in my life. In second flour of monastery, there were lots of old books about Buddhism at one side. They saved those books to teach other young Buddhists. In other side, there were the powders of dead Buddhists because they burned their body when they died and there were only for the high levels of Buddhists. After visiting the monastery, we came back to the hotel and had a free time. During the free time, we went to the area for basketball courts. Many people were playing basketball. So I noticed that after they finished their works, they came to the basketball courts to enjoy their free time together. I think that is one of their cultures.
Next day, we went to the glacier. Before I went up to the glacier, I thought there would be a lot of snow at there. However, there was less snow that I expect because of the global warming. At the glacier, the sunshine was burning my skins because I was on the high mountain, so the sunshine was very strong. However, the weather of the top of mountain was windy, which was very cold. I felt that this place could not be the living place for people. After we got back to the city, we went to the traditional Tibetan food restaurant. At there, we could enjoy their traditional foods. They had a different kitchen system and it was quite good system for cooking and rising the temperature for rooms. At nighttime, we went to the park and we saw people who were dancing at there. It was very different as Chinese culture because it had few big circles with dancing. We joined them to enjoy feeling of dancing. It was a different experience as a watching the show.
It was very nice trip for me and I enjoyed a lot. I hope I can go a school trip again next year.