A visit to Qinghai full of surprises and one miracle

I had previously spent two Chinese New Years with a Tibetan family in a village of Diqing prefecture, Yunnan province. The six weeks seemed enough for me to know all that I needed. This year, I planned to spend Losar (Tibetan New Year) in Qinghai province with the family of a Tibetan girl I'm supporting financially to study medicine. Before I left Beijing, I refreshed my memory with basic words for greeting, eating and drinking, and rejoiced thinking I would eat mutton every day.

I was surprised to discover, however, that the Amdo Tibetan language spoken in Qinghai differed greatly from Khamba Tibetan of Yunnan. But this was only the beginning of a chain of surprises.

People in this village raised exclusively cows and ate only beef. We ate with hands, using a knife for big pieces of meat with bones.