Blogs from Gansu, China, Asia - page 16

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

Week 1 - settling in We finally get to our apartments to find only one is at all liveable as the other hasn't been lived in for a year or so and the dust in Lazhou is legendary, so we set up in the clean(er) one and I pretty much spend the next week cleaning the other one from top to bottom. Once it's finally clean we move into that one, Andrew will use the other one as an office. We also start getting used to living in Lanzhou - not being able to read signs, menus, shop fronts etc. which is a bit of a shock, and also not being able to ask anybody anything, but we get very good at pointing and smiling, very quickly - our phrase book is a lifeline! We explored ... read more

Following a bit of procrastination, I decided to head North from Songpan through Gansu province up to its capital Lanzhou. I'm not sure what attracted me to Gansu. I think it was the desire to get off the tourist trail somewhat, and also the opportunity to visit "Tibet" without having to go to the hassle of actually visiting Tibet - Southwest Gansu being comprised of Tibetan grasslands and monasteries. It may also have been not wanting to face the arduous trip back to Chengdu. The journey was very bus-dependent, but the scenery was unlike I've seen before - grasslands bordered by mountains, yaks blocking the road, masked nomads riding horseback across the grasslands. All coupled with the assorted medley of objects that accompany you on bus journeys here - a 10 foot bamboo pole, baby ducks, ... read more

The weather remains warm and long may it continue. A quiet week all in all and so I have been running a bit more than usual. We also played a few games of badminton but got hammered by our neighbours. Must try harder! Next week they have challenged us to another game. The chance of even getting a couple of points is highly unlikely. At the weekend, I went for a walk to the outskirts of town and headed towards the countryside. You don’t need to walk far to see farmers working the land the way they did maybe 50 years ago. There is an abundance of apricots at the moment and apart from eating them, the locals are also drying them out to preserve them. They are also doing this to the rind of water ... read more

I have been to Dunhuang before... I know it's in the middle of nowhere... really... but two summers ago, during a 1 week break from my studies in Beijing, I went to Dunhuang by myself to see the desert, and to explore the Mogao Caves. There was something about Dunhuang two years ago that I loved. I don't know if it was the food, or the people, or just the general atmosphere, but Dunhuang has always held a special place in my traveling heart since traveling there. At first, however, it was not on our itinerary. I didn't think we'd have time to fit it in, and thought we'd have more time in Turpan, so I thought I could show Witt the desert there. But when we arrived in Jiayuguan, we learned that the tourist attractions ... read more