Lanzhou, a small town of 3 million
Trip Start
Jun 09, 2005
1
16
105
Trip End
Jun 08, 2006
Lanzhou,
China
Monday, August 1, 2005
This is also our first encounter with mass chinese tourism - the car park is full of tour coaches and the place is heaving with noisy chinese tourists. Unfortunately Rachel has developed a uncomfortable case of sickness and diarrhea so she has added misery to cope with.
Down here on the silk road it's hot, and leaving Magao we roll up the tarpaulin on the side of the truck and take in the views of the Gobi desert around us
00 On the great wall
. The Chinese economic boom means that roads everywhere are being brought up to A-class or motorway standards. Nowhere is this done in half measures; for example we are driving along a 400km stretch of roadworks through the middle of the Gobi Desert. Every mile or so we're diverted off road, and we bump along a track in the desert while work on the main road progresses. We see thousands of roadworkers clad in bright orange and sweating profusely in the relentless sun.
Eventually, after passing Anxi, we are running out of daylight hours and we pull off the road and drive accross the desert to find somewhere to camp for the night. We find a dry river bed and drive up as far as we can get in the truck without getting stuck. It's too hot for the tent so we throw down a groundsheet and sleep on top of our sleeping bags under the stars. Fortunately Rachel is starting to feel a little bit better and we put her illness down to a 24hr sickness.
As we continue down the silk road the next day we get glimpses of crumbled old parts of the great wall and the lookout towers along its length. The desert landscape gives way to irrigated fields where harvest is progressing. For the grain harvest, the local farmers either have mini combine harvesters which cope well in the allotment-sized fields, or they use the traditional methods of cutting the corn by scythe and stacking the unthreshed corn in stooks in the field. The stooks are then gathered up and brought in to the farms for threshing.
We take a turn off the main road and head into the Quilian Shan Mountains
01 1st July Glacier
. As it starts to get dark we stop and camp in a muddy field beside the road. It starts to pour with rain and the tent starts to leak. It's also cold because we've gained altitude. We wrap up warm in the sleeping bags and try to ignore the rawness of the night.Next morning we drive further into the mountains towards July 1st Glacier. We see big fat marmots the size of Alsatian dogs scurrying around the hillsides. After the road stops we pay our Y51 entrance fee and hike about 5km up to 4300m altitude to the snout of the glacier to get a good view of it. Its a pleasant enough place but to our view lacks the excitment we experienced walking across glaciers in Himachal Pradesh in India.
Driving back down towards the silk road we stop in a wide grassy plain surrounded by mountains. The homesteads are deserted and few livestock seem to graze in this empty landscape. The sun slowly sets in the distance turning the sky yellow and orange.
Next day we get to Jiayuguan, famous as the great wall has been restored here. It's a hot dusty outpost on the great wall, and has a fort containing three large pagodas. We wander around the fort and remark on the ramps that allowed horse mounted archers to scale the walls to shoot arrows at the maurauding huns
02 Campsite after the glacier
. The wall itself marks the division between the ancient China and Mongolia, however China has extended its borders somewhat, so these days its about another 300km to get to Mongolia.In Jiayuguan there's another bit of the wall called the Overhanging Wall, restored in 1987. It's so well restored that we question its authenticity, however it's a pleasant 20 minute walk up the wall meandering up a steep hillside with views out over the shimmering vastness of the Gobi desert.
That night we stop to camp in a barren area on the edge of an area of irrigated fields. We enjoy another textbook sunset and we are visited by some of the local farmers and their families who are very friendly. After nighfall, the farmers bring a cartload of 12 huge fresh water melons as a gift for our onward journey. I inherit Rachel's 24hr bug and spend the night bouking and skittering, sometimes simultaneously.
Next day I'm not really with it but I'm reasonably comfortable, tucked in a blanket, lying across 4 seats in the truck, with a bucket beside me just in case.
En-route to Lanzhou we stop on the edge of a small farming community for the night
03 John on cooking duty
. As we are setting up the tents, a gaggle of villagers arrive to enjoy at the spectacle of the foreigners in town. The children enjoy playing games with us and having their photo taken - they are so photogenic. The older men wear dull Chairman Mao suits, sport large cumbersome round spectacles, and smoke pipes. The crowds swell to about 60 or 70 as we sit around the campfire. The village leader tells us through our chinese guide that we are welcome to stay as long as we wish and this the first time that they have ever seen Westerners apart from on TV - so we understand their facination. They also invite us to a tour of their village in the morning.The village (called Dun Miao or something similar) has a population of just over 1000. The dirt streets are lined by small houses each with its own enclosed courtyard. In the courtyards the villagers grow a few vegetables and keep pigs. Some of the houses are brick construction and others are adobe. Inside each house is a single large room with a bed at one end, a sitting area at the other, and a wood burning stove in the middle. Surprisingly each house has a swish satellite TV and DVD system provided by the government to help rural communities 'keep up to date'. The decor is reminiscent of what your grandmother's house looked like when you were a child.
We part company with the villagers, waving to the children, as we head to Lanzhou
Children sleeping in cart
. Suddenly we cross an enormous viaduct entering the compact city from the west. I ask our Chinese guide how many people live here and he responds that 'its just a small town, three million population'.
In the evening we go out for a Chinese banquet organised by our guides. It's an interesting meal as every dish seems to be cooked with excessive chillie including the rabbit, snails, and chicken (amongst other things). I pick at the vegetables and rice pretending that my stomach is still turbulent from the earlier sickness.
We go out with the group to Focus nighclub in the centre of town which is a glitzy and sophisticated place. The corridors are lined with 'private rooms' waited on by pretty young girls which our guide assures us are not what we think they are. The drinks are sold at 20 times the normal street price. Inside we go to a room where there's a really good live band. In another room is a hot DJ with poledancers. Some of the group buy bottles of spirits (about Y500 a bottle) and drink to excess. About 1pm it all comes to head as the American, Tom, becomes legless and apparently scratches a local girl on the face. She is upset and telephones her male friends who are en-route to the club. We decide to leg it before trouble breaks out (in our imagination we're confronted by 50 kung fu experts outside the nightclub)
As for Langzhou, it's amazing how little there is do do here for a city of 3 million, except enjoy the luxuries of our first 4-star hotel in China.
