What attracted me most however is the local Tu people's talent in singing and dancing. We watched a performance, and were amazed by the flute playing at the beginning.
 
Then it is the duet that drew much attention.

Though I have no idea what the lyrics about, it is definitely a love story we can tell from the passionate singing.
 
What attracts me most is always the dancing part. They even give me a great chance to involve, to be a dancer in one of their performance. Well, the role I danced was a little bit funny, being the bridegroom who is ready to marry a girl. The dance itself is of course, easy, no problem for me. But the dance included the embarrassing process of traditional Chinese marriage bows. The "bride", the woman I danced with, and me the "bridegroom" had to first bowed to the Heaven and Earth, secondly bowed to the parents, and thirdly bowed to each other. Since it was during a dance, and I was dressed in local suit, it must be very funny when we have to bow to the audience. And I heard laughers from the entourage. I have no problem being made fun of, but what troubled me a little bit was that people in the entourage would not stop joking with me saying yunfeng, my bride groom, why not go back this evening and stay with your girl. Well, that's also part of the fun of traveling when you are with a group of people.     
 
The most fantastic part of my Qinghai tour is the visit to Qinghai Lake, the largest salt lake in China.
 
Since it is called the "sea" literally in Chinese, I was well prepared to see a very large lake.  But I was down found after seeing the lake at the first sight because it was no lake at all and you can barely see the other side of the bank. There are seagulls flying on the "sea". And the colors of the sea are different blues. There are light blues near the bank and deep blues in the center.

The music is from the ferry boat which cruises the lake every day. It must be fun that stand in the very front of it, stretch your body, try to embrace the wind, imaging being a seagull flying.
 
Instead of letting me be like the Rose and Jack in Titanic, we chose the motorboat which is much faster than the ferry. The fun of it was that you could feel the water since you are so close to it while at the same time you are taking the risk of soaked in the water that splashed. 
 
The Bird Island on the Qinghai Lake is called "the Kingdom of Birds". It is on the western tip of the lake hosting hundreds of thousand migratory birds. In April, tens of thousands of brown-headed gulls, cormorants, and swan come from South China, Southeast Asia and other places to multiply here. But to my great disappointment, we didn't make the time to visit the island. But I said to myself "well maybe it is a good thing that we human beings should leave them alone."
 
But it was very worrying that local guide told us that the Qinghai Lake is shrinking because there's less inflow of water. The local government has begun protecting it by stopping excessive use of water in agriculture. Well, I doubt it can stop the lake being smaller every year, but still it is a good beginning.
 
Talking about food, not as usual I am going to make it short because it seems to me there are no more beyond mutton, milk products. Since I am not quite a meat eater, I just suggest that Qinghai serves the best mutton in the country. Well, local people claim that.

(CRIENGLISH.com)