China

After a simple breakfast in the courtyard, we hopped on a speedboat to a dinosaur excavation site, home to the one and only, LANZHOUSAURUS. It sounds made up but it’s not! It is a recently discovered species found close to Lanzhou, hence the name.

We headed back into the city and did some regular people stuff like: pick peaches the size of a grapefruit, eat hotpot, and get a haircut. Before arriving in Gansu, my impression was also that of Dunhuang, the patch of green surrounded by the Gobi desert. In reality, there is an abundance of fruits and vegetables, and due to the climate these fruits and vegetables beat Canadian fruits by a LONG mile. It’s not even close…. the fruits are soooo good! Even the potatoes here are better because they have less rain, so somehow it tastes more ‘solid’.

We wrapped up the city view with a visit to the night market, and tasted a lot of foods not really found anywhere else. Lanzhou is pretty cool! And thanks to our hosts in Lanzhou who treated me better than my mother would have!!!

 Waking up without a hangover, we watched a bit of the replay of the Olympic opening ceremony, which was pretty darn cool. I didn’t really know what London could use as their theme, but the industrial revolution seems extremely apt, considering that’s pretty much where the source of modern society is born out of.

In the afternoon, we took a 4.5hr ferry along the Yangtze to another cave complex with 1600 year old buddhist sculptures carved out of rock…. amazing! The ferry was pretty long, but we came prepared with cards, fruits and lots of snacks to snack on! Once we arrived at the destination of BingLing Temple (炳灵寺)。The surrounding scenery was also extremely impressive, with impressive high-rise rocks surrounding the whole valley. Really cool scenery!

WELCOME TO THE ROCK

Taking the same ferry (downstream this time, so only took 3.5hrs) back to the docks, we had dinner and drank same baijiu made with a wheat product (青稞) only produced in high-altitude areas.

No TV in our hostel tonight, so we sleep early and see some more of the surroundings tomorrow!

 We were picked up in the train station by our extended family and had an authentic bowl of Lanzhou beef noodle soup! In the afternoon, while waiting for our relatives we walked along the Yangtze river, crossing two bridges and did about 8km in less than two hours, but to our chagrin there was nothing much to see in the riverside where we walked.

Lanzhou is a rather big city, one of the central cities in northwest China, and it definitely has that big city feel to it. After a great meal (the restaurant owner sold enough lamb stews to become a real estate developer…..w t f), we were taken to a “slow rock” 慢摇 bar. Don’t let the name fool you, here in Lanzhou, slow rock is probably the equivalent of a downtown club, with bright lights and loooudddd hiphop blasting through the audio. This place was one of the hottest bars in Lanzhou, and it had live performers doing some pretty good party songs, with a guy wearing shades yelling “PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR” and other standard party anthems like… dance versions of Spice Girls, White Stripes, and some really good Chinese party hip hop. The highlight of my evening was the DJ spinning some remixed Skrillex…… ahhhh, nothing beats some wubwubwub dubstep after multiple beers in a foreign city. Oh, and the girls were rather attractive, but definitely not to me and my hiking shorts and Arcteryx tshirt.

People in the northwest are pretty heavy drinkers, with each ‘set’ of beer being 18 bottles. We had 1.5sets….. between 4 people… We were too drunk to watch the Olympic ceremony at 4am! Zzzzz

The old city of Dunhuang is actually really small, so following our guidebook we walked over to the Dunhuang History Museum, but apparently our book is 3years outdated! So instead of walking anymore in the desert sun, we succumbed and hailed a taxi to the new museum. The museum is new, with interesting architecture and had a lot of information about the city’s rich history. Being a centre of trade and people, it is really an oasis in the desert, both figuratively and literally, it is surrounded by desert!!!!!!

In the afternoon, we headed out to see the historic relics from the Han dynasty, and whatever remains of the great wall built back then. Dunhuang was the entrance city during the Han dynasty for the Silk Road, so along with Jiayuguan there’s a lot of interesting mishmash of different peoples. And for the last part of the day, we headed into the desert to see the “Devil City” (魔鬼城) Continue reading →

Another morning, another round of beef noodles, and we’re on our way to Dunhuang, another city along the old silk route. Over the 500+km drive, the desert landscape took hold and it felt like I was going nowhere! Seriously, how did people manage to walk across such long journeys to trade silk? And that’s just like an insignificant of the trip from Mediterranean/Europe?!?!? Now, even 1.5km is barely walking distance!!! Crazy.

Dunhuang, although it is surrounded by desert terrain, is actually a very nice little town with a lot of things catering to tourists! We found numerous coffee shops (this is China, coffee is a luxury good) with free wifi, comfy sofas, cozy decor and parked ourselves there for a couple hours and relaxing to the music and caffeine. Then we headed out and sat down in one of the street market vendors selling BBQ chicken wings and lamb skewers! While eating dinner, we overheard a very strange but familiar sound… ENGLISH! We met this Korean guy that was traveling alone throughout the northwest of China, so we shared some stories and chatted up a bit!

So tomorrow we’ll start actually start seeing some of the sights around the city, stick around!

We started off our day with a breakfast of champions, a bowl of beef noodles! I don’t know how they do it, but the noodles in the northwest taste SO good. Something about the freshly strung noodles, to the bowl of piping hot soup, it’s just soooo good.

We headed over to the tomb sites of 3th century China. The area has over 100 tombs, but so far only 18 has been excavated and 1 is available for tourists to view. It was incredibly cool taking steps down into the tomb, as it was extremely quiet but also amazed at the fact that the structure is still intact after over 1700 years!! The tomb itself was small, but had three separate small rooms decorated with paintings depicting life back in the day, it even had one for barbecuing meat!
Cool story: The first tomb was discovered by a shepherd walking his sheep, when he accidentally fell into a tunnel dug by tomb thieves!!

Next stop, we headed over to Jiayu Gate (嘉峪关), the gate of which the city was named. Being the western end of the Ming dynasty Great Wall, it was one of the entries into China for the Silk Road. And when the King said “Banish them to the outskirts” as punishment for whatever reason, this may be the last gate they’d leave from before entering the wilderness and probably left to die. Inside the walls, a gleaming city with all you’d need, but outside the walls is not a friendly sight. Mountains to your left and right, winds gusting across the plains with sand blowing into your face. The place is a bit touristy, but if you ignore the tourists and realize the historical significance of this gate, it’s actually pretty cool.