Blogs from Lanzhou, Gansu, China, Asia - page 2

Vrijdag 29 juli Het Provinciaal Museum van Lanzhou We zouden vandaag uitgebreid de tijd nemen om het Provinciaal Museum van Lanzhou te bezoeken. We hadden dit volledig vernieuwde Museum reeds bezocht in 2006 of in 2007. Toen ging het na een jarenlange renovatie weer open. We vonden het toen zó interessant dat we er nu weer naartoe gingen. Vlakbij het treinstation konden we op bus nr. 1 stappen en een half uur later in de buurt van het museum afstappen, en dit voor de reusachtige som van 1 Yuan (10 Eurocent) per persoon! Iedereen kon het Museum gratis bezoeken: op vertoon van je identiteitsbewijzen kon je bij het ticket-Office een gratis ticket afhalen. Op een groot paneel op het gelijkvloers konden we zien waar de verschillende zalen te vinden waren. De beschaving langs de zijderoute worden ... read more

We originally planned our trip across China by train. With the combination of the Chinese love of train travel, a massive floating population, and the peak of summer holidays train tickets have become a rarity, selling out mulitple trains within the first hour of opening. This forced us to change some plans and to take buses from Xi'an until we arrive in Urumqi. Luckily for most of these journeys the bus journey is only slightly longer...apparently. So our first bus from Xi'an to Lanzhou and we were somewhat excited and nostalgic remembering a very funny and terrifying sleeper bus nearly four years ago through the south of Laos. We were anxious to know how the Chinese experience would compare. Good point to note, we weren't two people crammed into a largish 'single'bed this time and instead ... read more

This was really our first taste of how expensive tourism in China is. This was an activity that wasn't included in the 'kitty' portion of our Dragoman trip. Previous excursions had always been included in the 'kitty' and so the cost was always somewhat hidden from us. Not this time. To just get to visit the mountain, it cost us each 120 yuan (approx. $18), then if we wanted to take the van up and down from the top (which we did), was another 40 yuan each. Although had we been a little bit more on the ball back at home, we should've got our student ID cards from SAIT since we were techinically students at the time, this would have given us a 50% discount. Sadly though once we got to the top it was ... read more

Back to teaching So, back to teaching and no more holiday until mid-January! Seems a long way away. Teaching carries on as normal, I’m even getting used to getting up at 6.30am every day .The students are doing well and I hardly ever hear any Chinese in the classroom anymore which is great and the students are happy to discuss anything I give them so it feels like I’ve made progress! Finals are very soon though and then I get 3 new classes of masters’ students and it all starts again. 'Tis quite sad, I like my students! My Doctoral classes have just doubled :s which is quite hard work. All of their classes finish in week 11 of the semester but mine finishes in week 16, so a month of double classes and we can ... read more

A few weeks off before term starts We spend the next few weeks of freedom before term starts exploring and sightseeing in Lanzhou, climbed 'White Pagoda hill' and drank Chinese tea looking out over Lanzhou, climbed a huge hill in 'Wu Quan park' and nearly suffocated getting up the stairs - apparently the high altitude affects my anaemia issues though hopefully I'll acclimatise soon, great views from the top though! and then took the chairlift back down (the wrong way round to do it but we couldn't find where it started to get it up the hill :( We went to the Gansu Province Museum which Andrew loved and I thought was moderately interesting, helped by the English language labelling. Mostly we improved a little of our Chinese and got better at ordering food in restaurants ... read more