Thursday, October 07, 2004
First installment - Gansu Trip
I'm going to have to do this in parts, cuz this may take a while to recount. I just got back from my trip over October break, but have to go directly back to work tomorrow for the next eight days, boo. wah. so yeah, i'll try to get all the trip info in when i can. this is as far as i've gotten, enjoy. i made amend this later, so be warned.
e
GANSU
Friday – Got out early from Shanghai. Flight was at 10 am and we were all ready to leave the city and find a horizon (shanghai clearly (gunkly) lacking one with all of the smog). The flight was about three hours and, since I was tired from the night before (teaching done for the week, went to ju lu lu, you know the rest), I tried to sleep through most of it. But upon entrance of Gan1Su4 airspace, my mind became alert, and the windows over my neighbors’ shoulders became acutely interesting. Not so much rolling hills and not quite mountains, it was something that you would only think would be in Crouching Tiger or some other movie far removed from reality that met my eyes. That moment was a refocusing of reality for me. The seat partner and her bladderful husband before me faded into the periphery as the window view of parched golden hills and shock blue sky became my foreground. I was going to set foot on that land and drink of its waters (2 kuai/bottle) and breathe its air. The rest of the plane ride was no more real to me than a faded memory, as I was already on the ground.
LANZHOU
Friday (di er) – Yes, it really was cold in Lanzhou, the weather forecast did not lie. Stepping off the plane told you that fact immediately, but cold doesn’t matter so much when your eyes are in control of your body, urging on the legs and helping pump blood to whichever body part is in need. The airport was on the outskirts of town, and we’re talking one of those big hoop skirts with eight layers Elizabethan style, not no Lanzhou shopping mall street perform mini skirt, oh no. Took a bus into town that was in no hurry and then found our way to one of the hotels on the Lonely Planet copied pages that Jeanne brought with her. Oh, let me backtrack. The Players: Scott, Jena, Toersten, and Jeanne. Couple 1 and couple 2 plus me and a camera. And I hope I’m spelling Toersten’s name right, he’s German, I’m only part. So yeah, found a hotel and shelled out some money in order to spend the night. For the most part I shared a room with Scott and Jena and all five of us settled numerous money sharing, doling, splitting problems along the way quite well.
Lan2zhou3 is a city of 2-3 million, the capitol of its province (Gansu), and is set in the valley that was carved into this mountainous landscape by the Yellow River (Huang He). So when you approach Lanzhou, say by bus, you are always going towards it from above, sliding down the edge of a bumpy bowl. You don’t expect this city at all. You go through several burbs and toll booths and tunnels and keep seeing mountains and dirt and not much else, until you come around one last pass and see the extent of Lanzhou. It’s kind of like driving down a dirt road that is a bit hilly on your way to some destination, but then as you top a rise, there’s a large puddle preventing you from crossing the next dip. Lanzhou’s just one big puddle in the middle of nowhere that pulls everyone towards it to get a drink, but they find that the water is dirty and shallow and they leave as soon as they can. Now, that might be a bit prejudiced of me, since I am writing this after the fact and have since left and returned and left again, but I stick to what I said. The rest of Gansu is what is worth looking at, not Lanzhou. That being said, we were eager to look around.
First we tried going to the Lanzhou Historical Museum, so we took taxis there (multiple since you can’t fit five in one taxi) and got out at our destination. However, that museum was under construction, aka not built yet, and we were out of luck. But there was a nice travel agency right next door where we went and had a chat with the man there, asking him how to get to Bing3Ling2 Si4 (our next destination) and then from there to Lin2xia4 and then Xia4he2. After a long drawn out conversation with the man and his English counterpart on the phone, we figured out that we a) didn’t need his help, and b) simply needed to go to the bus station, hop a bus to a city near BLS which was clearly marked in the Lonely Planet guide, and take a boat from there. No prob. From there we went to a nearby temple (I forget the name, sorry) and climbed up its many stairs and through its many tourist traps to the top, where we could get a good view of Lanzhou and the Huang He. It was a very nice day and the town was bustling with activity for National Day October First. Everyone was happy that their vacation had begun and the temperature plus the sunlight made it feel like springtime. The temple was unremarkable, except for the arcade-style handheld gun video games scattered on the hillside that made bleep pow and kerchow noises all the way to the top. However, the trees were old and exuberant, the paths worn in some places and made of closely scrunched pebbles in others, and there were beautiful birds kept in wooden cages calling to me pitifully. These are things that I would not get in Shanghai and every time I looked up and actually saw blue sky and that alien horizon, I was so very happy to be in Gansu. We were all giddy from a long day and all of the newly processed information tickling our brains, so we went and ate dinner and then went to bed relatively early, for the next day we would venture out beyond the city.
BINGLINGSI
Saturday – The next morning we awoke in the same place, but I was far more prepared for new input then I had been the day before. And we were moving on. We had bought some bread the night before and partook of that to break the morning fast and headed off to the bus station. We had gotten some wrong information from the hotel attendant (they never know what they are talking about) and so went to the east bus station. From there we took a bus to the west bus station (harrumph) and then finally were able to leave the city and head on out. First though, had to buy some traveling insurance. In Gansu province, all foreigners must pay 40 kuai for traveling insurance so that the province won’t get in trouble if a foreigner dies. It doesn’t actually do anything for the purchaser. With that out of the way and tickets bought, we boarded a bus and knocked out our first leg. Bus travel is kind of odd there, since the driver is always trying to get more passengers on the bus and so is stopping as many times as possible to accrue the greatest amount of payload. Of course, it is illegal to overload a bus (one of the things the police actually monitor, not speed or safe driving), so it’s a tricky game. I, being the fifth wheel, got to sit with someone outside of our group, and it was quite amusing to watch the dance among the newly boarded passengers as they tried to figure out who would be my seatmate. At first it looked as if a young 13 yr old girl would be forced into it, but she basically ran away and a 16-17 yr old boy was laughed into place. This was typical for most of the subsequent bus trips we took.
We arrived at our destination, a port city of a very large lake on which Bingling Si (Bingling Temple) resides, and caught a 10 kuai van ride that took us about three feet to the dock where all of the boats were kept. After blowing that guy off (still paying the money), we went in search of a boat. This wasn’t very hard, as all of the boat owners were nipping at our wallets. We met up with two other foreigners (Kyle and Megan, teachers from Yunan, recent grads from Stanford, Kyle polisci, Megan EALL) and got on a big boat that slowly took us in the direction we needed to go. It was a nice boat ride with scenic views and interesting people, but it took a while to get there, that’s for sure. The boat had yellow and red peppers curing on its roof and rocked not so gently each time a powerboat came by delivering their guests in a third of the time. I was enthralled by the coastline and the goats and animals clinging to the cliff walls, so the time flew by (gaung1yin1 shi4jian4).
To be continued…
e
GANSU
Friday – Got out early from Shanghai. Flight was at 10 am and we were all ready to leave the city and find a horizon (shanghai clearly (gunkly) lacking one with all of the smog). The flight was about three hours and, since I was tired from the night before (teaching done for the week, went to ju lu lu, you know the rest), I tried to sleep through most of it. But upon entrance of Gan1Su4 airspace, my mind became alert, and the windows over my neighbors’ shoulders became acutely interesting. Not so much rolling hills and not quite mountains, it was something that you would only think would be in Crouching Tiger or some other movie far removed from reality that met my eyes. That moment was a refocusing of reality for me. The seat partner and her bladderful husband before me faded into the periphery as the window view of parched golden hills and shock blue sky became my foreground. I was going to set foot on that land and drink of its waters (2 kuai/bottle) and breathe its air. The rest of the plane ride was no more real to me than a faded memory, as I was already on the ground.
LANZHOU
Friday (di er) – Yes, it really was cold in Lanzhou, the weather forecast did not lie. Stepping off the plane told you that fact immediately, but cold doesn’t matter so much when your eyes are in control of your body, urging on the legs and helping pump blood to whichever body part is in need. The airport was on the outskirts of town, and we’re talking one of those big hoop skirts with eight layers Elizabethan style, not no Lanzhou shopping mall street perform mini skirt, oh no. Took a bus into town that was in no hurry and then found our way to one of the hotels on the Lonely Planet copied pages that Jeanne brought with her. Oh, let me backtrack. The Players: Scott, Jena, Toersten, and Jeanne. Couple 1 and couple 2 plus me and a camera. And I hope I’m spelling Toersten’s name right, he’s German, I’m only part. So yeah, found a hotel and shelled out some money in order to spend the night. For the most part I shared a room with Scott and Jena and all five of us settled numerous money sharing, doling, splitting problems along the way quite well.
Lan2zhou3 is a city of 2-3 million, the capitol of its province (Gansu), and is set in the valley that was carved into this mountainous landscape by the Yellow River (Huang He). So when you approach Lanzhou, say by bus, you are always going towards it from above, sliding down the edge of a bumpy bowl. You don’t expect this city at all. You go through several burbs and toll booths and tunnels and keep seeing mountains and dirt and not much else, until you come around one last pass and see the extent of Lanzhou. It’s kind of like driving down a dirt road that is a bit hilly on your way to some destination, but then as you top a rise, there’s a large puddle preventing you from crossing the next dip. Lanzhou’s just one big puddle in the middle of nowhere that pulls everyone towards it to get a drink, but they find that the water is dirty and shallow and they leave as soon as they can. Now, that might be a bit prejudiced of me, since I am writing this after the fact and have since left and returned and left again, but I stick to what I said. The rest of Gansu is what is worth looking at, not Lanzhou. That being said, we were eager to look around.
First we tried going to the Lanzhou Historical Museum, so we took taxis there (multiple since you can’t fit five in one taxi) and got out at our destination. However, that museum was under construction, aka not built yet, and we were out of luck. But there was a nice travel agency right next door where we went and had a chat with the man there, asking him how to get to Bing3Ling2 Si4 (our next destination) and then from there to Lin2xia4 and then Xia4he2. After a long drawn out conversation with the man and his English counterpart on the phone, we figured out that we a) didn’t need his help, and b) simply needed to go to the bus station, hop a bus to a city near BLS which was clearly marked in the Lonely Planet guide, and take a boat from there. No prob. From there we went to a nearby temple (I forget the name, sorry) and climbed up its many stairs and through its many tourist traps to the top, where we could get a good view of Lanzhou and the Huang He. It was a very nice day and the town was bustling with activity for National Day October First. Everyone was happy that their vacation had begun and the temperature plus the sunlight made it feel like springtime. The temple was unremarkable, except for the arcade-style handheld gun video games scattered on the hillside that made bleep pow and kerchow noises all the way to the top. However, the trees were old and exuberant, the paths worn in some places and made of closely scrunched pebbles in others, and there were beautiful birds kept in wooden cages calling to me pitifully. These are things that I would not get in Shanghai and every time I looked up and actually saw blue sky and that alien horizon, I was so very happy to be in Gansu. We were all giddy from a long day and all of the newly processed information tickling our brains, so we went and ate dinner and then went to bed relatively early, for the next day we would venture out beyond the city.
BINGLINGSI
Saturday – The next morning we awoke in the same place, but I was far more prepared for new input then I had been the day before. And we were moving on. We had bought some bread the night before and partook of that to break the morning fast and headed off to the bus station. We had gotten some wrong information from the hotel attendant (they never know what they are talking about) and so went to the east bus station. From there we took a bus to the west bus station (harrumph) and then finally were able to leave the city and head on out. First though, had to buy some traveling insurance. In Gansu province, all foreigners must pay 40 kuai for traveling insurance so that the province won’t get in trouble if a foreigner dies. It doesn’t actually do anything for the purchaser. With that out of the way and tickets bought, we boarded a bus and knocked out our first leg. Bus travel is kind of odd there, since the driver is always trying to get more passengers on the bus and so is stopping as many times as possible to accrue the greatest amount of payload. Of course, it is illegal to overload a bus (one of the things the police actually monitor, not speed or safe driving), so it’s a tricky game. I, being the fifth wheel, got to sit with someone outside of our group, and it was quite amusing to watch the dance among the newly boarded passengers as they tried to figure out who would be my seatmate. At first it looked as if a young 13 yr old girl would be forced into it, but she basically ran away and a 16-17 yr old boy was laughed into place. This was typical for most of the subsequent bus trips we took.
We arrived at our destination, a port city of a very large lake on which Bingling Si (Bingling Temple) resides, and caught a 10 kuai van ride that took us about three feet to the dock where all of the boats were kept. After blowing that guy off (still paying the money), we went in search of a boat. This wasn’t very hard, as all of the boat owners were nipping at our wallets. We met up with two other foreigners (Kyle and Megan, teachers from Yunan, recent grads from Stanford, Kyle polisci, Megan EALL) and got on a big boat that slowly took us in the direction we needed to go. It was a nice boat ride with scenic views and interesting people, but it took a while to get there, that’s for sure. The boat had yellow and red peppers curing on its roof and rocked not so gently each time a powerboat came by delivering their guests in a third of the time. I was enthralled by the coastline and the goats and animals clinging to the cliff walls, so the time flew by (gaung1yin1 shi4jian4).
To be continued…
