Our drive to Minxian and night train to Xian

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25 May (Monday) - Our original plan was to land on Lanzhou on 25 May, and immediately take a car to Xiahe where the Labrang Monastery is located. This is also where my parents, who were missionaries, were married 60 years ago. However, travel restrictions have not been lifted yet, so plan B was to spend the evening in Lanzhou two nights, take the car to Minxian where my parents lived after they were married on 26 May, and then to take the day train to Xian on 27 May. However, with the Dragon Boat Festival being held from 27 -31 May, all train tickets for the day trains were taken, so Plan C was to take the night train to Xian the night of 26 May. When we arrived at our hotel, after checking in, we asked Matthew, the manager, to arrange for a car for the next day. We negotiated a fair price and a 9 AM pickup. The we headed out to eat.

Restaurants are actually hard to find; usually located on the second floor which is reached by a dark, narrow staircase. Ordering is also difficult, even when they have a picture menu. We pointed to several items and asked what kind of meat was in them. This usually meant charades and barnyard animal sounds. My son, who found this whole process to be very embarrasing, pointed out that Chinese animals didn't make the same sounds as American animal...mooo did not mean beef, and oink did not mean pork, and cluck didn't translate to chicken. He was right of course, as what they nodded their head confirming that the dish was chickem turned out to be walnuts. Furthermore, none of the dishes that obviously were hot on the menu were in fact hot. I gues we had ordered from the salad menu. None of the dishes was particularly satisfying. And although we were dying for a cold drink, the colas were warm. We also had the obligatory Chinese tea and something resembling milk...probably yak milk.

26 May (Tuesday) - We had the hotel breakfast, included with the room, which was all Chinese noodles, boiled rice, bread, etc. The orange juice and milk were both served hot. They had a grill with eggs, so I ordered a ham omelet...I'm not sure what they used the grill for , but it wasn't to make omelets or any kind of egg as far as I could discern. After this meager breakfast we met our car and headed for Minxian...375 km from Lanzhou. The first hour was all four lane expressway. The signs were very funny...don't litter was Forbidden to Chuck Jetsam (as in flotsam and jetsum, I guess)! The expressway ended in Lintow, which my Mom informed me was where my Dad lived the year before they got married. Sixty years ago it was all mud huts. The city was now modern high rise apartment buidings. We wondered whether this is what Minxian would look like. The last 150 km was supposed to be paved all the way, but major sections were being repaved. After several hours of very bumpy road, a certain unnamed elderly women began to have bladder control issues. As there were no restrooms within many kilometers, we had to resort to the road behind the car. Fortunately, no busses or the military convoy we had passed earlier chose that moment to pass us. This exercise was to be repeated several times. We traveled over two mountain passes, and stopped to photograph the herds of yak and other domestic animals.

About 1 PM we arrived in Minxian, now also full of high rise apartment buildings. Our first priority was lunch. Again, finding a restaurant was problematic, so our driver asked a policeman for directions. We arrived at a second floor establishment as they were closing, but the staff saw this as an opportunity for fun and stayed to serve us. The menu had no picturesm which is just as well, so we left the ordering to our driver. Soon, dished appeared one by one. At some point we had to tell the chef that he could stop cooking as were couldn't eat anymore. The driver made some great choices, and what was supposed to be hot was hot, and what was upposed to be cold was cold!

Our next priority was to try to find the mission compound where my parents lived. It was on a knoll above the city, so my Mom drew a picture of a house on a hill. The waitress assured us that she knew exactly what we were looking for, so off we went through the back alleys to a knoll that led up to a mountain that had a temple on it. We didn't want to disappoint the waitress, so we told her that this is what we were looking for. We took pictures with us in front of the knoll and temple and with all the neighborhood. We realized that Minxian had been so rebuilt that in most likelihoodm nothing remained. Also it was 3 PM by then and we wanted to get back to Lanzhou by dark.

The return trip was the inverse of the trip there, with nothing of further interest to report. We had kep one of our hotel rooms for an extra day so that we could shower and relax before catching our 11 PM express sleeper to Xian, which turned out to be a great idea. By now we were tired of trying to get the right Chinese food, so we ate KFC (sorry about that Rosanna, I know they mistreat their chickens, but that was the only American food we could find).

27 May (Wednesday) - We took a taxi to the train station in time to catch the 11:07 PM train. The soft sleeper cabin which could accommodate four people, was wonderful...clean with lace curtains and blue drapes. We immediately went to sleep, awaking about 7 AM. We arrived in Xian at 8:30 AM, to rainy weather, which was fine as this was going to be a travel day, and could now be a rest day instead. We were able to check into our hotel early; and we each had our own room with a queen sized bed. I tired to find a phone that accepted my international calling card, but apparently no such thing exists outside of Pudong Airport in Shanghai. (Rosanna and Tamara, please have Mom call Will's cellphone as he can receive calls from the U.S. but not place calls. Otherwisem she won' hear from us until I get to Pudong Airport on Saturday morning! I hope you are also reading these blogs to her.). We showered and rested, and then met at 1 PM to walk down the street to find food and shopping. We found a first floor restaurant with pictures of food, so tried that. Again, ordering was a game of charades. I asked for dim sum as that was pictured, but no one knew what dim sum was. I finally found their dim sum cart, so our problems were solved as we selected a dozen different items. I'm wondering what their reaction would be if I ordered Moo Goo Gai Pan? I have learned that none of our Chinese food in the U.S. is either called the same, or indeed actually exists as a dish in China.

After lunch we tried to find "the Mall" that the concierge assured us was just down the street. Well, their concept of a mall and our concept are entirely different; at least in downtown Xian. My only hope of buying my wife a silk jacket seems to be on Friday evening when we return to Shanghai.

We had planned to walk around the city wall, but it contiues to rain. The forecast is for partly cloudy skies on Friday, so maybe we can do that before we head to the airport. So the rest of today is blogging and catching up on email and relaxing. Tomorrow we had hired a call for the day to take us to all the sights, starting with the Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses. As it will like be raining, we are pleased that most of the sights are indoors. That will be the subject of my next blog...

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Comments

[Tamara Carlsen]

I'm trying to imagine how it looked before all the modern day buildings. It's too difficult