Where am I?

I'm in a grassland. I'm in a city. One minute I'm surrounded by white capped Muslims, the next I'm up to my gills with American Christian missionaries. I'm in a market selling monks' robes and horse saddles. I'm in a giant shopping mall eyeing overpriced counterfeit khakis.
I'm with a Tibetan. I'm with a Han. I'm with an American.
They all operate in independant spheres, showing indifference to one another.
Smiles are indignant or do not occur at all.

None of the Chinese students want to be here. For them this is a third rate college in a third rate city. Their writings tell of the anxiety of reaching Xining, their anger and frustration at first seeing the "dusty, yellow mountains" as bear as "a monk's head." Why have they been banished to this end of the earth, this border town in a province once only seen as a prison cell on the government's maps.

The Tibetans want to go home, or they want to go somewhere else. It is but a period of fun and freedom before they end up doing all sorts of things - or doing nothing at all. The rate of success for graduates of Qinghai Shida is not to be envied. Most students will go home to their villages to teach English, a few will work with NGOs or non-profits, and a pinch will go on to study in the Philippines, or (with some sort of God's good grace) in the US.

Is the simple life a better life? So many of my students in all my classes are either from farming communities or from nomadic families. The Americans preach a good "simple life" and tout their babies, cookies, and pasta as a carving out of the simple and the pure.
They come from a privileged position, the students from hardly any position at all.
Yet they all agree that the family is to be missed and they all agree that life can be very difficult and very sad.

So maybe Xining is actually united by qualities of longing. Longing for the simple, for family, and for change. Be it change of scene, or change in others' religions, change is in the air. Its a change that is being inspired by people's desires to create the better and from their frustrations with the status quo in their uncomfortable new homes. Perhaps the largest difference is just what they gave up to experience this discomfort. Many Tibetans gave up a hard and abusive life. Many Han gave up a generational pattern of farming. Many Americans gave up all of their creature comforts to come live in a place so foreign and so challenging to their ideas of the mundane. Does this make the Americans more brave? For they were the ones who gave up the best to pursue the less desireable. However, the safety net of a land far away lies with them, not with the citizens of China. For many of the students, if they fail at this college, they may never have another opportunity for a college education again. They may end up as taxi drivers, waitresses, low ranking government officials, or as owners of convenience stores, selling cigarettes and pumpkins seeds late into the night.

Xining is a place which defines discomfort. It is a place that calls for bravery. It is a place that strives for the sea but remains, firmly, rooted deep within the mountains, rivers, fields, deserts, valleys, and wastelands of China. Far from its sea.