Trip West -- Lanzhou

A week after returning from Korea, we started out again, but this time in the opposite direction--west! We embarked on a ten day trip from Beijing to Lanzhou in Gansu Provence and then by small jumps down to Chengdu in Sichuan Provence. On August 17th, the four of us boarded a train at the Beijing West Station.

After a fairly comfortable, twenty hour journey in our 'hard bed' car, we arrived in Lanzhou, the capitol of Gansu. It is a big city of 3.2 million people situated on the banks of the Yellow river between two mountains. While the majority is still Han Chinese, Lanzhou also has a very large population of Hui people who are mostly Muslim. As a result Buddhist temples occupy the mountainsides while Mosques are scattered throughout the city.

After settling into our hotel, we spent Saturday getting acquainted a little with the city. We made stops at Lanzhou University and the city's main square before going to a large park. At the park we climbed part of the mountain, rode rides, and observed the locals having fun. Then we rode a gondola very far up to the very top of the mountain for a panoramic view of the city.



For part of Sunday we explored the area near the Yellow River. We even took a short motorboat ride on it, and crossed it from above on another gondola. We discovered a huge water wheel still operating, and Josiah and Ameila got to grind corn the old-fashioned way.

For lunch we had a couple delicious bowls of hundun (wonton soup) and several boazi (steamed bun stuffed with meat). For dinner we ate at a Muslim restaurant. All the dishes were excellent, but our favorite was still the yang rou chuan (lamb meat on a stick). Needless to say, our stomachs were already full before we capped off the night with ice cream from Dicos, a Chinese fastfood chain.



By the time we left Lanzhou, we felt that in our short time there we had become much better acquainted with the city. A little more of our apprehension about the possibility of moving there in the future had faded away.

While aboard the train to Lanzhou, I had received a text message informing me that the return train tickets back to Beijing that I had thought had already been purchased by a friend had actually not been purchased. Now there were no more train tickets at all. Each night in Lanzhou, I went to an internet cafe to try to find train tickets back--all to no avail. By the time we left Lanzhou, it was clear that flying back was our only option. How plans (and budgets) change!

We said goodbye to Lanzhou early Monday morning heading south and further west into the great unknown. We were finally leaving the big cities...