Blogs from Gansu, China, Asia - page 10

黄河远上白云间，一片孤城万仞山； 羌笛何须怨杨柳，春风不度玉门关。 More than 1300 years ago, a poet wrote this poem to describe the landscape around Yumen. I am not a good translator, meanwhile, you know that the poem is always very difficult to show its feeling in a different language. From the poem, we get the information that the land outside Yumen Gate was already barren and infertile. The Yellow River was flowing far away. The only town stood besides the barren mountains. Plants should not be blamed not living there, since the spring wind couldn’t get through the Yumen Gate. It seems that the Yumen Gate is the line between life and desert. Back to the 21 century, the situation seems worse and worse. Not only the area outside the Yumen Gate is difficult for all creatures. In fact the Yumen Gate is ... read more

Wow, what an amazing first week in Baiyin, so much has happened! The people so friendly and welcoming it feels impossible to repay them. We are constanly been invited for meals, sometimes 3 a day and we have to apologise and posepone one of them. As we are the only westerners in the city and they never see tourists (although it is a great place to live there really isn't anything for tourists to come here for) it's special for them to be friends with the few westerners in town. So for the moment at least everyone wants to speak with us and invite us into their homes or to restaurants, they give us some really special gifts, put us on the head tables at large dinner parties and refuse to let us pay for anything ... read more

Lanzhou is pronounced Lanjo. It is a huge modern city and has a reputation for being polluted. We had an afternoon to explore and I visited a park next to the Yellow riverand a Taoist temple. The highlight of the park was a cable car ride over the river. The temple called white cloud temple was largely destroyed during the cultural revolution and is now being reconstructed. The work was going on while I was there with golden statues in their plastic wrapping. The first part of the temple I visited had female spirit figures called "auntie ...." and the English caption said that Taoists believe that men and women are equal.... read more

Do you know that tibbetan monks have apple phones? There is a strange contrast between the other worldliness of butter lamps, Buddhas, trumpet and cymbal, sutras and black boots on the one hand and on the other the modern world of the monks shopping in town, eating in the restaurants and using their phones. The Buddhist temples are a riot of colour, but the monastery will stay in my mind because of the scale of the kora around it. The kora is 3 km long and it surrounds the temples, large prayer hall, teaching halls, and the monks' houses. There are long sets of prayer wheels, interspersed with a larger prayer wheel housed in a tiny building. Some of the Tibbetan pilgrims walk the kora fast and turn the prayer wheels fast, but some of the ... read more

Jiaguan fort is at the western tend of the great wall. Parts of the fort have been rebuilt, but some of the Ming dynasty buildings survive. They include a theatre - perhaps the Chinese equivalent of the Globe - though it was much smaller. Our camping spot was a few kilometres away, but this had a very different feel and there were no groups or tourist shops. I preferred it to the fort. The wall snakes up over the hill with intermittent guard towers. This section of the wall has been reconstructed, but it gave an excellent feel for the size and scale of the wall. The evening light made for good photos. the climb up was steep, but short. After dinner the insect life sent us fleeing from the mah Jong table to our tents. ... read more