Lanzhou
At
A little bit of information about the national holiday: It’s a week-long, nation-wide break. That is, a break for everybody that works outside of the tourist industry. The government highly encourages people to travel and take vacations during the holiday. Not having a Christmas season, this week and another holiday in the spring are the biggest chances to boost the Chinese economy. So everybody with money travels. One of my Chinese teachers says she doesn’t leave her apartment for the entire week because of the crowds. She doesn’t have the money or ambition to leave
Another detail you should know before I continue: Chinese vacations are nothing like American vacations. Instead of going to a resort or a beach for some R&R, the vast majority of Chinese vacations are taken with tour companies. As I briefly described before, the goal of these tours is to see as many different places and things as possible. They stop at many different sites per day, giving the tourists half an hour to an hour at each site to walk around and snap a few pictures before being herded back onto the bus to the next site. Every site consists of the following: a parking lot packed with tour buses, a ticket window next to the entrance to the “attraction”, hundreds of tourists following guides with megaphones, and vendors selling the local specialty along with the same carved buddhas and jade necklaces that can be found at every booth in
Here’s a decent map of the northwest:
http://www.backtojerusalem.com/images/nw-china.jpg
Our trip started at
The first thing I noticed after getting off the plane was cool, dry air. It was very refreshing, after being in the heat and humidity since May. We met our tour group, and got on an old bus, which would take us to the first of many tourist sites.
The closest we ever came to seeing what the people in rural
When we got to the city, the touring began. The bus dropped us off at one spot after another. The tour guide spoke in Chinese, so the sites themselves (especially the historical ones) did not have much interest for us. By the end of the day we had visited a big old-looking metal post, a water wheel on the river (where pigskin raft rides down the Huang He were offered), and some sort of a temple built on the steep hillside across the river from downtown. I found the street-side food vendors much more engaging. As the tour walked through town, we would stay toward the back and get homemade yogurt, hot sweet potatoes, spicy homemade potato chips, and roasted nuts. All were cheap, all were delicious. From now on, I’m going to try to eat my meals out of a cart on the side of a busy street.
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/img/255/7433/400/101_1971.jpg)
View of downtown from the hillside temple.
After the touring was over for the day, we had 2-3 hours to kill before our overnight train left for Jia Yu Guan, so we went to a hotel for foot massages. Foot massages are awesome, but they can sometimes be hit or miss. The one I had in
1 Comments:
Whatever, obviously I give the best foot massages ever. I'm fairly insulted... ;-) don't leave me for a chinese foot masseuse.
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