By Helmut Lueders from Germany

Travel date: July 16-21 2010

First impression of Lanzhou is the airport road, read earth, drizzling rain and hundreds of trucks close to a power plant, not really a number one touristic attraction. Our driver takes us to the hotel we had booked over the internet – to hear the simple answer “meiyou”, indicating that no room had been booked. The staff is not at all interested in my booking number. Our driver is quite helpful and manages after a dozen phone calls to find a decent hotel in downtown. Although we arrive after 10 p.m., there is quite unexpectedly a vivid night market next door. Breakfast is somewhat unusual for Western tastes – hot orange juice, cold potatoes and no tea… The next morning is much more friendly with a walk uphill to the White Pagoda and a Buddhist temple with a great view over the provincial capital of Lanzhou. Crossing the bridge over the mighty Yellow River we discover the giant replica of ancient water wheels which used to be part of an impressive irrigation system. There were more than 200 of those wheels. A nice early morning climb to the White Pagoda, situated in a lovely parc that allows a fantastic view over the provincial capital of Gansu province.

Our rental car takes us out of town. It is a first encounter with rural China: tricycles, bikes, agricultural machinery, trucks, more trucks and nearly no private cars. Dozens of small roadside shops selling and repairing everything – this has nothing to do with the glamorous China of many dozens modern cities with 1 million plus inhabitants, ultramodern airports, five star hotels and eight lane highways – a different country than the one I have lived in for several years. Water melons everywhere as the road climbs up into the mountains. The sun burns. We can observe a growing Muslim predominance with many mosques around. Despite a plethora of fuming and smoking diesel engines, the air quality is much better than in Beijing. There are many involuntary stops as we pass toll gates everywhere – even on regular two lanes roads we need to pay. The good side is that many roads have improved and are much better than our guide book describes them.

Bingling Se

This ancient monastery in a spectacular setting is our first destination. But there is no road, we will need to hire a boat. There is nothing close to a port – we have to find a place only the locals know. Two small boats are hoping for the lonesome customer… However, before we reach this place we have to make another stop as our driver needs to get his lunch. It is noon, precisely, and we know that hundreds of millions of Chinese are used to lunch at exactly this point of time. We find a boat, we discuss the price for some time and we will probably still have to pay far too much. Anyway – the scenery compensates for every Yuan… This trip alone is worth a great detour. And much more: the cultural relics of Bingling Se have not been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution as many artefacts in the country have been.

Labrang Monastery

All around Xiahe there is a 50% share of Tibetan population. Entering into Xiahe we see the gold and blue roofs amidst the blue sky. A Buddha out of gold and copper, people with colorful clothing, a peaceful place with some 1500 monks living there. We take part in an English tour of the huge monastery and we feel lucky not to have come in winter time when the thermometer falls below -25 centigrade. The monks leave the monastery only twice a year to spend short holidays in the surrounding grasslands. Otherwise, they stay for a lifetime, studying philosophy, medicine and many other sciences. We follow the 3 km long pilgrimage trail plastered with prayer wheels. Xiahe is the most important Tibetan monastery outside Tibet. As we could not get a permit to travel to Tibet, we take in the atmosphere here. Grasslands all over as far as the eye reaches, many horses and yaks, tents for the monks on vacation along with the burning sun (we are at an altitude of 3000 meters!) let us forget that the summer here lasts merely four months. From September on snow will fall. We can’t find suitable hiking trails and drive back to the friendly Tibetan Overseas Hotel with its excellent food.

Tarzan Lake

A small unpaved mountain road leads us to Tarzan Lake – although difficult to find, there is a hefty entrance fee in the middle of nowhere. A small and extremely clear mountain lake in a pleasant surrounding gives us much pleasure after our years in Beijing’s polluted air. We could have walked much longer but we need to take the excellent road to Hezuo as a side trip. Far reaching views provide an enjoyable trip.

Milarepa

The side trip leads us to a nine storey temple which was reconstructed in 1988 but looks much older. A makeshift temporary settlement of some 100 tents around the temple serves people in their most festive clothing on their annual pilgrimage. A very long drive brings us back to the lowlands. Old, traditional villages can be seen – but at the same time modern, planned structures that are merely five years old. Road construction everywhere – this area will completely change its character within a few years. Two narrow mountain passes full of trucks, narrow passages through the villages and incountable bends will not last for long. We can see work in progress of a six-lane highway with long tunnels through the mountain which we are slowly crossing. We spend the night en route in Wushan, a small city of 140,000 inhabitants with many new buildings and a hotel which is just one year old. We are the first foreigners ever that have come to this modern hotel. The entire hotel staff is so amazed to see us that they completely abandon all other duties (although there was not much to do with only a very limited number of guests). There were 9 staff to accompany us to our room in the third floor. Same thing during our evening walk in downtown Wushan: people are not at all used to foreigners. Moms told their kids: Look here” What a contrast to the big Chinese cities we know. But traveling in Gansu will change soon. It is another Chinese province on the fast track towards modernization. But the next morning when we continue our road trip we enjoy the rural insights to villages, markets, heavily loaded farmers crossing the road with their bags, tricycles and tuk-tuks with two dozen people on board, the old man with his tea pot, the group of children playing on the road, mom coming from the market with fresh vegetables, the donkey carrying a cart loaded full with hay. Yet, the villages, too, are changing. Bricks for construction everywhere, scaffolds, huts torn down to give way to new structures, high voltage pilons, solar panels, advertisement boards. Our trip unexpectedly turns out to be an extremely long road trip – but it shows us rural China, it shows the daily life of several hundred millions of Chinese farmers, often overseen by foreigners and businessmen in the cities.

Water Curtain 1000 Buddha Caves

Little known as the whole of Gansu province, these caves represent an unusual experience. The first time in China (and maybe the only one), we see a premier top tourist destination without tourists at all – virtually nobody (except the man at the ticket booth) is here to enjoy the narrow gorge that leads to hidden grottoes and cave paintings. Hundreds of stairs are well worth being climbed.

Meiji Shan

Again a slow road with many bends, passing one mountain pass. Farmers put their hay in the middle of the road, waiting for passing cars to run over it and separate the straw from the remaining grains.

Arriving at the huge parking lot of Meiji Shan there are still another 3.5 km by foot or by electric car till we arrive at the impressive vertical mountain structure. A steep road steadily going uphill finally allows a stunning view to a vertical rock in mud-rose colors. From far away we discover breathtaking structures – ladders and stairways, steep stairs glued to the vertical rock. Soon we will be climbing there, too – passing close to hundreds of niches, statues, Buddhas. Hard to imagine how the artists have achieved all this: It is not just the artistic masterpiece of transforming stone and rock into vivid faces with so many different expressions . it is our astonishment and admiration how they could have achieved this in the middle of a vertical rock. The mere fact of looking down from the small stair cases nearly gives us a feeling of total dizziness. And those artists in the old times had no staircases and ladders like the ones we are climbing today. Even these modern wooden structures of paths and stairs are a fantastic achievement of the 20^th century, allowing us to get so close to the three giant Buddhas in the middle of the vertical rock. It is worth to take some extra time t walk to the beautiful botanical garden nearby or to take the small road towards the “accumulated fragrance mountain” - both allowing great views of Meiji Shan from a distance, Our car is waiting for us and will bring us back to Tianshui. A great day out which is difficult to organize without a car.

Tianshui

A typical Chinese city without the right of being mentioned as a touristic place of interest in any guidebook. However, we enjoyed a stroll  on a warm summer evening through the huge fruit, nuts and vegetable market, the small road with more than two dozens of tea shops, a temple with a shop of calligraphy utensils, the pedestrian zone with a gifted 12-year old karaoke singer, elegant shops and uncounted food stalls, shopping malls, bakeries, restaurants and all the other ingredients of a Chinese town of  a million, completely unknown in the Western world – in short, one of the 100 or so Chinese cities with a million people or more living there.

The last day of our trip through Gansu province takes us back to Lanzhou airport – 300 km on a large two and four lane modern highway through mountainous areas with several tunnels and nice views, connected to another modern highway to Lanzhou airport, some 90 km out of town.