The Great Ganzu

I am currently in Lanzhou where I have left the lush land of eastern Gansu behind. The tirip here has been quite an adventure having left Xi'an by bus. While the train ride takes 3-4 hours, even though the travel roughly the same path the bus trip took almost 8 . This is mostly because of the very rough road conditions.

They are currently building a multi-lane freeway (which would most likely be a toll road, like every other highway in China) and it cannot come soon enough. The road from Baoji to Tianshui is a one and a half lane winding dirt road, filed with many pot holes and much mud. Drivers in China have rules of their own, it is definately not a you were here first system, but rather a who ever can get there first type of road rules. So when in the oncoming traffic lane we passed nearly 2km of backed up trucks I was not all two surprised. When we finally reached the problem area it turned out two trucks had gotten stuck as they made the turn up an overpass. I glanced down at the still uncompleted highway that ran below and back up at the road in enough time to see a farmer walking his water buffalo past the traffic jam! Only in China I thought. 45 minutes later the problem was finally solved and we were on our way again, only to be met with a similar problem less than an hour later.

But the scenery in this part of the country (before you reach lanzhou) is quite amaing. The hills that surround the Yellow River valley that we were driving thorough have been terraced and are lush with farming and orchards. In the varry are these small towns that very well could be from 50, 100, 200 years ago, if it weren't for the satelite dishes mounted on every house and the multitude of motorbikes.

Most of the trip winded along the Yellow River. This was once the greatest river in China, but today it is not much more than a large creek in some places, which almost saddened me. You could see how over time the water had created these mini-canyons. It was beautiful and I wish I had been able to take some decent pictures, but with the rain and the resulting mud on the windows none of my pictures turned out very well.

On that note, I know I owe you about a week and a half's worth of pictures. It is a bit of a time consuming task, which I must do when I have free internet so it will have to wait a couple more days.

The local specialty here seems to be sunflowers, they are growing everywhere and my favorite food here has by far been the sunflower cookies, which remind me a bit of peanut butter coookies. The bakery also had a cinnamon roll type cake that was very good as well. The local specialty is meat noodles, but last night (in Lanzhou) I had some sort of spicy fried rice. It was very good, but am feeling a bit queezy at the moment. Next time I think I will say 'not spicy' instead of 'a little spicy'. If mine was a little spicy, I am not sure how they manage to eat it!

Well I am off this evening for Jiayuguan via a 9-10 hour train ride. Jiayuguan has a glacier as well as a Ming fort and the western most portion of the Great Wall, once you pass it you are out of the area historically controlled by China. It should be very interesting. Will try to post again soon.