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.

Urumqi - The city that is furthest away from any ocean in the world

10.01.09
We are in Urumqi, Xinjiang. Trying to get a drift of the Uighur way of life. Went to Turpan yesterday. Nice little town with a great mosque and bazaar. Stayed in Silver Birches Youth Hostel, cozy and cheap. Leaving for Dunhuang tonight.
Urumqi is the capital city of Xinjiang province, and is situated in the North Western corner of China. The city has a population of approximately 1,5 million inhabitants (The whole region has approximately 20 mill. inhabitants). Urumqi is about 100 meters under sea level and is 2250km away from the nearest ocean.
Of things to see in Urumqi is the Xinjiang Autonomous Region Museum and the Erdaoqiao market.
The city of Turpan that we visited had an old beautiful mosque and minaret. Visiting the bazaar in Turpan was also a cool experience. The bread in this region is very tasty. We have tried out some of the different types of food like samsas (baked mutton dumplings), girde nan (nan tasting bagel), polo (a rice dish with fried meat rice and pumpkin) to mention some. Travelling here offers great views (mountains, plains, desert).
As long as one brings enough clothes, travelling here in January is no problem weatherwise.

Visit from Sogn og Fjordane University College (HSF)

Christian and Tom are now officially famous. Or at least a little bit. They've made it to the official pages of Sogn og Fjordane University College (Høgskulen i Sogn og Fjordane) in Norway. How on earth did this happen, you might ask. Well, I'll tell you.

It all started when we on the 11th of October got a visit from HSF. Two lovely ladies, Åse Løkeland and Helga Kalhagen, came to visit Ningxia University to see whether there are possibilities of an exchange program. They have heard nice things about our Sinonor project and wanted us to tell about our experiences so far. And since we both did our teacher training in Sogndal we were more than glad to help.

So we went with them to an amazing mosque (looked kind of like Taj Mahal) and told them how nice Yinchuan is. We also got to watch some calligraphy art, and got two master pieces of the artist (who looked remarkably like a chinese Jahn Teigen). There we told them about our follow-up work, that we would like to spread the word of our project and the work we do here in China. They were really nice ladies, so they asked us if we wanted to write a web letter to their web pages. We said "definitely, yes" and sent our little letter. And now you can read the letter for yourself. Unfortunately for you English speakers, this is only in Norwegian.

http://www.hisf.no/no/internasjonalisering/nyheiter/reisebrev_til_hsf_laerarjobb_i_hjartet_av_kina