Few people would claim that Qinghai was a land of milk and honey. But the thousands of beekeepers who swarm to this deprived western Chinese province are hoping to change that, at least in part. Every year, when the rapeseed is in flower near Qinghai Lake, beekeepers from across China pack up their crates of bees and head for the shores of this immense salt lake. Mingled with the steady drone of the bees is the regular hum of the tourist buses that ply the road from Xining, as visitors from the provincial capital and across China flock to the western shore to see the bird sanctuary and the famed Bird Island.

Sheltered from the midday sun, the makeshift home of Zhang Chen crouches low upon the earth, the tent door flapping idly in the cool breeze that blows in from the vast plateau and the Kunlun Mountains in the southwest. In the doorway an elderly lady is busy removing royal jelly from the cells of a comb, while several yards away Zhang busily inspects the hives, removing the trays one by one and glancing over them with a professional eye. "I have been coming here for ten years and each year business improves," he says, "but competition is increasing and the lakeshore area is becoming quite crowded." Glancing along the highway it is clear that Zhang is right, the hives of other beekeepers are discernable in the distance, row upon row of industrious activity, the sky a multitude of little zipping black dots above a sea of yellow.

The lake itself is a large inland saltwater sea, which supports a fishing industry and a growing tourist industry. At the western end is Bird Island, a rookery where thousands of migratory birds nest in summer. Bar-headed geese, great cormorants, black-necked cranes, black-headed gulls, sandpipers and pied avocets are among the bird species that breed at Qinghai Lake. He Ping, a local guide, explains that Bird Island is now, in fact, no longer an island. "A shortage of rain in recent years has caused a drop in water and has made the island a peninsula," he says. "The lack of rain and falling water levels are creating problems for both the birds and the people in the whole region." Standing on the hillock that overlooks the small island, it is difficult to imagine there ever being a shortage of water, as the cormorants careen and crane their necks in the perennial search for food over an area of water nearly three times the size of London.

Scattered in the hills beyond the yellow fields of rapeseed are a number of tents belonging to nomads who live permanently in the region, the families tending herds of sheep, goat and yak, and the young women and children clad in colorful chubas, in stark contrast to the monotone landscape of the dry and arid hills of the plateau. A young boy, the son of a local yak farmer, invites me to the family home, a surprisingly spacious tent. Sacks of grain and flour fill one corner, a milk churn and a pile of dried yak dung fill another, while the beds at the back are all piled with brightly patterned rugs and blankets. On a stove in the center a pot boils, the smoke from the fire carried out through the roof by a crooked pipe.

The family is in town today and Sonam, the second youngest son, has been left in charge. I ask about his family. "My older brother is a monk at the monastery," he says, "and my second older brother, sister, mother and father work with the animals." When he is not busy helping in the home, Sonam attends the school in the nearby town, and hopes to go to college in Xining, with the aim of becoming "a rich man" in order to take care of his family-a praiseworthy ambition for an eight year old. The rest of Sonam's extended family occupy the high ground in the spring and summer seasons, far up in the distant mountains, but by mid-autumn they begin their age-old transhumance, the yak returning from the snow-bound pastures to the comparative shelter of this lower valley.

On the road to the lake, 26 kilometres outside of Xining, is Ta'er Monastery, where Sonam¡¯s brother studies. The monastery is the largest belonging to the Yellow Hat sect outside of Tibet, and dates back to 1577. The streets outside are a hive of activity, pilgrims and tourists mingling amidst the incense smoke and the makeshift market that springs up early each morning. Metal-workshops line the main street and to a chorus of clanging hammers people trade silverware, much sought-after amber and coral jewelry, cowrie shells and, more furtively, but fetching high prices, the withered black shoots of caterpillar fungus, or Cordyceps sinensis. An old woman informs me that it cures "everything," but smiling politely I move on. The hills around the complex offer peaceful walks, the once barren slopes now dotted with newly planted trees, and at twilight young monks who have been swinging lazily from hammocks in the shade of the trees make their way down to the monastery, chattering and laughing beneath the massive stars overhead.