Blogs from Gansu, China, Asia

July 13 - The Terracotta Warriors & Train to Lanzhou - Dia 23 Waking up in a bed again and starting the day with warm soy milk, a traditional morning drink around China. Warm foaming soy milk, still have not tried it with coffee ? The Terracotta Warriors, supposedly the 8th Wonder of the World. What did I think of it after visiting it? First we had to pay around 30 Canadian Dollars to get in. We tried to get in as students but it did not work as planned. After a couple of discussions we accepted the reality that only Chinese students were valid for the discount. The whole walk through the clay monuments was not what I expected. I honestly thought we where going to be walking next to them. But in order to ... read more

A 6.30 start (to catch up on blog) and an 8.00 taxi to the Lanzhou Xi (West) new station for the bullet train. Once again, we were staggered, the station is only magnificent, absolutely vast, beautifully clean and efficient; it reminded me a bit of Gatwick 50 years ago, an horrendous contrast with the dreadful sort of transport facilities to which we have become inured in UK. Noted on the way that virtually all buses here in Lanzhou are actually either electric or at least hybrid, but there is no denying that most cars (far too big and gas-guzzling) and most scooters are still on diesel or petrol. The train left on time, fairly near full, and with the same excellent staff arrangements. Once again, we remembered the notion that in UK they might operate trains ... read more

After breakfast in the hotel (jolly good, 18 RMB, ca. £1.50) we walked a couple of km in warm, sunny weather to explore Five Springs Mountain Park. It was Saturday, so quite busy for the time of year (by our standards, VERY busy). It is an extensive park on the side of a 650 metre very steep hillside, and the many shrubs and trees were just coming into leaf or bud. The area is packed with facilities, hawkers, street-stalls, temples, shrines, a zoo, a fun-fair, five different springs and numerous washrooms in varying degrees of suitability. Maghnus had decided to run up to the top (35 minutes?) whilst K and C elected to “people-watch”. Quite a lot of them watched us instead, and we were greeted by various children; we also watched a chap playing a ... read more

Day 26: Driving to Lang Mu si Well, here we are in Langmusi, pretty high up. We are in a nice hotel, will find out the name eventually, although we are the only guests and, indeed, the only visitors in this mountain village which has been improved and extended for what must be a massive tourist influx in summer. It seems the visitors are Chinese nationals who arrive in throngs by the coachload, plus a sprinkling of what would once have been hippies, nowadays backpackers or possibly New Age? The effect is rather like being on the former set of a major Wild West movie, watching the tumbleweed roll through town. All the same, we are privileged to be here out of season, in glorious sunshine, surrounded by snow-capped mountains, and at liberty to wander at ... read more

An excellent breakfast and then collected some washing; a cultural difficulty became clear, as to why laundries will not handle “smalls”. Seemingly Moslems and Buddhists both have specific rules as to how such garments must be segregated and handled, so it is simplest to leave it to the individual in question. Leaving town, Kevin calculated that at least 3,000 mature trees have been recently transplanted to decorate the street, each one at 20ft high and 6 inches diameter, all hand-planted and supported individually by four spread-eagled stakes and a collar; even at (say) £250 a tree to cover propogation, growing on, uplifting, transport, planting, staking and irrigation, this is a huge investment in a remote and quite small population centre. The weather was magnificent, and we drove on whilst contemplating the truly gigantic scale of investment ... read more