Lanzhou - The capitol city of Gansu province

16.01.09

We arrived after having spent the night on the train from Jiayuguan. Lanzhou is situated in the South of Gansu, by the Yellow River (Huang He). It is a fairly big city with around 2,8 million inhabitants. According to the Lonely Planet China book, this city was at one point during the 1990s considered to be the world's most (air) polluted city. But no problem, we have bought these nice "cotton covers" for our mouths.

We quickly noticed that Lanzhou is a city full of sights. There are many things to see here. The Gansu Provincial Museum is really cool. It is loaded with Silk Road history, and with an awesome paleontological department. The last one is very interesting because of the many discoveries in this province.

We also visited an old Taoist temple close to the bank of the Yellow River. White Cloud Temple was beautiful, but it looked kind of lonely and malplaced because of all the skyscrapers surrounding it. Also we saw a beautiful mosque that is situated in the center of the city. Lanzhou has a lot to offer. It is surrounded by hills, and has a lot of parks. We hiked to the top of White Pagoda Hill. It has many nice buildings and a white pagoda on the summit. Unfortunately, the visibility was a bit like Lonely Planet warned us about.

Lanzhou is famous for it's beef noodles (niu rou mian). We decided to go to test them, and we see why. They were delicious. We ate them again a couple of times before we set off towards our next target on this journey: Chengdu in Sichuan Province.

Happy New Year

We, Christian and Tom, have had a wonderful semester in Yinchuan. We have seen a lot and experienced even more. Now we look forward to the next semester, which will bring us even more joy and happiness. But first we will have a vacation. Chinese people celebrate the new year when the lunar calendar says it's time. So we also look forward to the 25th of January, when there will be celebrations all over China. That's what they call Spring Festival, which is a holiday spent with family. But since we don't have that much family in China, we decided to travel instead. So here comes our current travel schedule; Yinchuan - Ürümqi - Dunhuang - Jiayuguan - Lanzhou - Chengdu - ?. The question mark means that we haven't decided where to go after Chengdu. But every decision, every experience will be noted down here on the blog. Maybe just in short words, and definitely without pictures. All the most interesting pictures will be posted when we come back from our one month journey through parts of China. So all that remains is to say; happy western new year!

But for your pleasure, here are some pictures so you wont forget us while we are gone;