“Qinghai province has an abundance of wildlife and natural resources that you can know them around ‘Qinghai lake’ and ‘Amne Machin snow mountain. We are looking forward to the following trip.”

　　Where is Qinghai? This was my first pop-up question when I got an acceptance letter from international students and scholars, Tsinghua University. Then, it’s time to Google. So I know a bit about Qinghai. Located in Western China, Qinghai is a part of the high-altitude Tibetan Plateau. We have lots of places where Tibetan culture flourishes and Qinghai is the best choice.

　　Qinghai province has an abundance of wildlife and natural resources that you can know them around ‘Qinghai lake’ and ‘Amne Machin snow mountain. We are looking forward to the following trip.

　　First of all, I would like to thank the State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, Ministry of Education of People’s Republic of China, China Intercontinental Communication  Center (CICC), Information office of the People’s Government of Qinghai Province for your efforts to make this journey to the West happen, and Tsinghua University, Beijing Normal University and China Communication University’s students and teachers for your efforts to make us get along so well during the trip.

　　Let’s begin our story. This is not only my first trip to Qinghai, but also my first trip to the Western part of China. During my time in China, I had studied in Xiamen and travelled during the holiday to Kunming, Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou and Tianjin. Recently, I’m studying at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.

　　As I mentioned before, I had no idea when they told me about Qinghai. So, I goggled both in Thai and English (forgot to tell you guys I’m Thai), I didn’t find enough information in both languages, particularly in Thai. In Thailand, we have popular website with discussion forum that you can find many reviews in many topics - travel forum likes lonely planet- but when I searched the keyword “Qinghai” and “Xining”, most of them said it is a transfer province or city to Tibet. Therefore, I didn’t get any detailed information related to our destination.

　　Another good point for getting nothing is that it is a real adventure! We were counting the day to leave for Qinghai and the day we will meet new friends. Our trip is about 16 days with other two universities, Beijing Normal University and China Communication University. Each school will select 9 international students under the supervision of their own international student office’s officer (we called them as 老师 which means teacher, showing your respect to them), and also during the trip, we have other officers and staff from the government and participated organizations. 

　　The first week, we travelled in Xining city and its surrounding areas; for the second week, the three universities were separated into three routes to go to the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau areas–Tsinghua University to Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture and Golog (or Guoluo) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, at the southeastern of Qinghai, Beijing Normal University to Haidong City and Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, the east of Qinghai, and China Communication University to Yulshul Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture , the southwestern of Qinghai.