Journey to the Celestial Empire, part 2

Sunday, May 8 -- Shanghai to Lanzhou

   After a workout in the hotel gym this morning, we prepared for the next leg of our journey. This one would take us first to Shanghai's other airport, Hongqiao International, and a 3-hour flight to Lanzhou, in the far western province of Gansu.
   The two cities are nearly 1,100 miles apart by air, roughly equivalent to the distance between New York and Kansas City, but in terms of culture and topography, it's more similar to going from New York to Denver. China is divided politically into 22 provinces (it considers Taiwan to be its 23rd province, something the Taiwanese disagree with), five autonomous regions and four distinct and separate municipalities, of which Shanghai is one. Gansu Province, our destination for the next few days, has been described as the place where China, Mongolia and Tibet meet. Indeed, we would find a diverse culture with strong Mongolian influence in the north and Tibetan to the south.
   Lanzhou lies alongside the Yellow River, the sixth-longest in the world, and is astride the Northern Silk Road. To understand this region, it's helpful to understand something of its history, and the Silk Road is a major part of that.

   It's impossible to underestimate the importance of the Silk Roads in the development of civilization from southern Europe all the way to western China and the islands off southeast Asia. Its use as a trading route goes back over 2,000 years. As you can see from the map, much of western China is arid desert, primarily two distinct deserts: the Taklamakan and the Gobi. The Taklamakan, particularly, is very harsh, with cold nights thanks to Siberian winds from the north and little rain, thanks to the Himalayas to the west and south. It is the second-largest shifting-sand desert in the world, after the Sahara. In other words, it's not a place you want to be caught in for very long, which is why the early traders developed two branches of the Silk Road, along the desert's northern and southern rims. 
   If Americans think of Mongolia at all, it is likely from the movies and depictions of two great Mongolian warlords of the past, Genghis Khan and his grandson, Kublai. The Khan dynasty ruled large parts of Asia for a long time, beginning with Genghis' ascension in the early 13th century. Although brutal in many respects, Genghis is credited with securing the Silk Road and thus ensuring the burgeoning trade that would connect Europe to East Asia.





Kublai Khan, as played by Benedict Wong in the Netflix series Marco Polo,
which stars Lorenzo Richelmy (right) as the Italian trader and explorer.

   We arrived at Lanzhou's Zhongchuan International Airport in early afternoon. (Unlike the U.S., China has only one time zone.) The airport is located about 50 miles outside the city itself, in the midst of what is called Lanzhou New Area, where the government is turning what had been a mountainous, arid wasteland into a new industrial and population center. This is an effort that is not meeting with as much success as the government anticipated, according to this article that Sue found a few days after our return: Along the New Silk Road.
   At the airport in Shanghai we had met up with five members of our Gansu-bound touring party: Dave and Leslie Flood Hershberger from Cincinnati, along with Walt and Bonnie Lee and their daughter Bridget from Minneapolis. In Lanzhou we were joined by the final pair, Dave Faulkner and Ann Waters from Ft. Wayne, Indiana. EXO was right on the ball with a bus to our hotel, and we spent the next hour being mystified by the barren, almost otherworldly landscape.



The area outside Lanzhou was a contrast between sandy, barren mountains
and farm fields growing crops that must not have needed much water. (WL)

   As we started down into the Yellow River valley, we could see increasing signs of civilization, and also Lanzhou's infamous air pollution. In Shanghai we had seen many people wearing surgical masks over their nose and mouth, and we would see more of them here.

  

Lanzhou's skyline sported the construction cranes we saw
everywhere in China.

 


Crossing the Yellow, not too far from our hotel.



The skyline of the city was not enhanced by the air quality. (WL)

   By mid-afternoon we had arrived at our hotel, the Crowne Plaza Lanzhou. We'd been under the impression that Lanzhou is one of China's smaller cities, and I suppose it is: only 3.3 million people reside here. By contrast with ultramodern Shanghai, or at least those parts of it we had seen already, Lanzhou was more in line with what we expected in a Chinese city: very crowded with chaotic traffic and significant air pollution. Really, though, it wasn't as bad as it might sound from that sentence. The hotel, in particular, was very nice indeed.
   We didn't have much time to enjoy it right away, as we were due to take a tour of the riverfront and visit Lanzhou's famous night market for dinner. So after a quick check-in and change of clothes, we met again in the lobby and sallied forth. Our first stop was the White Pagoda Temple.



The Chinese are well aware of their pollution problem. Their effectiveness in dealing with it is the issue.



3-wheeled motorcycles were everywhere, along with 3-wheeled trucks. As
for automobiles, we saw brands from Japan, Korea, and Taiwan,
as well as many European cars and even a few American models.



The White Pagoda Temple, dating back to the Yuan Dynasty founded by
Kublai Khan, was where we first knew we were really in China.



The temple is on a hillside, accessible by a series of stairways. We were now at
5,000 feet elevation, and when we climbed the stairs we could feel it.



Our guide, Steed, explains some of the intricate stonework.



After descending back to street level, it
was worth a look back. (WL)



Before crossing the river, it was time for our first group photo:
(L-R) Bridget, Walt and Bonnie Lee; Sue and me; Leslie Flood and Dave
Hershberger; Ann Waters and Dave Faulkner. (WL)

   We crossed the Yellow on the famous Iron Bridge, built by German and American architects in 1907 and composed entirely of imported materials; the rivets were brought all the way from Germany. Today it is just for pedestrians, and there were a lot of them. We noticed that we were the only Westerners in sight; indeed while at the temple Sue had been asked to pose in a photo with a young Chinese woman. When Sue asked our guide about it, he said, "Because you are so beautiful!" This would happen again during our time here in the Chinese West.
   I had picked up a few Chinese words and phrases in preparation for the trip, and they came in handy. We were the object of more than a few stares and several pictures. Lanzhou does not get many Western tourists, we were told, and we could believe it.



The Iron Bridge. (WL)

   The waterfront was a pleasant place, with lots of pedestrians enjoying the evening, including many families. We had seen parents with two children in Shanghai, or with one plus one on the way, and Andrew had told us that the government is relaxing its notorious one-child policy, which went into effect in 1980 and, according to the government, prevented some 400 million births, either through contraception or abortion. Parents who had a girl first were allowed to try for a boy with the second child. As of the start of 2016, it is now officially a two-child policy.
   Steed, our guide, explained that Lanzhou residents had for many years utilized water wheels to irrigate crops, and we saw some examples on our walk, along with the city's famous inflated sheepskins, lashed together in rafts and used to cross the river.



The riverfront along the Yellow was getting busy.



Steed and his assistant May pointed out the sights, including the vendors.

Walt made the acquaintance of a local stray dog's deposit and had to use river water to remove it from his shoe. (WL)

A popular stop is the statue of the 7th century Buddhist monk Xuanzang, on horseback, and his
disciples, who according to legend were half-animal, half-human.



Large water wheels like these once numbered over 200 along the shoreline,
pumping water inland for irrigation.

The sheepskin rafts were available for river crossings, but there were no takers from our group.

The sculpture of Mother Yellow River, another popular riverfront attraction.

   Our bus had come over to this side of the river to transport us to the famous Night Market. Taking about two blocks along Zhengning Road, the market was like nothing we'd ever seen. The video captures the sights and sounds nicely. The food was very good indeed, and you couldn't beat the atmosphere.

It was early evening, and Zhengning Road was already busy.

There were some foods that were so exotic we just could not sample them.

Plenty of fruits and vegetables, many of them familiar to Americans.

This fellow's potato chips were delicious. A nice-sized bag could be had for the equivalent of about $1.

The vendors were all friendly and eager to sell their wares. The sanitary conditions were not bad,
but the lack of gloves on the vendors alone would've sent our FDA into hysterics.

   You can see how it appeared to us when we entered the market with this video: Lanzhou Night Market.
   We made one circuit of the market and then doubled back, choosing our dinner items. In addition to the delicious potato chips, I had some noodles and Sue had a spicy meat-on-a-bun treat, the closest thing I saw to a hamburger. Most of us washed our food down with a sweet beer that was available for about $2 a bottle. In Shanghai we had already found that the Yankee dollar would go far, and out here in the west we would find it went even farther. The official exchange rate was about 6.5 Chinese yuan for one dollar.

Before Sue and I could make it to our table with our goodies, the rest of the group was chowing down. (WL)

Dave H liked the noodles, too. (WL)

   After dining, we made our way back to the van where Steed and May were waiting for us. Everybody agreed it had been well worth the visit, but we were tuckered out and had a long day of travel ahead of us tomorrow, so back to the hotel we went, arriving just before 9pm. There were no invitations to meet at the hotel bar. We would have to be on the road by 7am the next morning, when we would begin our journey to Tibet.



Monday, May 9 -- Lanzhou to Norden Camp


   Steed and May were there bright and early, and after a hearty breakfast at the hotel's well-appointed buffet, we were on the road. Normally the drive from Lanzhou to the camp would take about four and a half hours, we were told, but we had some detours to take along the way. Although we were anxious to get to the camp, we would not be sorry we took the extra time to see what turned out to be some remarkable sights.

The group was buzzing as we waited in the lobby to depart for Tibet.

   Getting out of Lanzhou took us an hour. At 3.3 million people, Lanzhou would be the third-largest city in the United States, ahead of Chicago and just behind Los Angeles. China, like other large, industrialized countries, needs to generate a lot of electricity, and we drove past what appeared to be a nuclear power plant. But according to what I would find out later, all of China's nuclear plants are located in the eastern part of the country, well away from Lanzhou. The country relies on nuclear plants for 3% of its power and intends to double that by 2020. By comparison, America generates 20% of its electricity with nuclear power (France is the world leader at 74%).
   So how do they generate the rest of their electricity? For the most part it comes from coal. In 2011, China passed the U.S. as the largest consumer of electricity in the world; they get 3/4 of that from burning coal, and about 17% from hydroelectric plants. Even though they have the third-largest coal deposits in the world, the government has been cutting back on coal consumption and seeks to increase hydroelectric and other renewable sources. They have a long way to go and overall their pollution-control efforts seem to be well behind ours; the smog we saw in Lanzhou and Shanghai reminded me of what I saw in Milwaukee and Chicago back in the sixties and seventies. But they're getting there, and if what we saw is an indicator, they'll get there fast.

It sure looked like a nuclear plant to us, but evidently it wasn't. (WL)



Outside the city, the landscape still looked very dry, but the low areas were almost all being cultivated. (WL)




On some hillsides the industrious Chinese farmers employed irrigation.  (WL)

  

In the cities we'd seen no sign of Communist Party propaganda whatsoever. In the countryside of
Gansu Province we started to see older men wearing the traditional Mao Zedong cap. (WL)

 
   Our first stop was to be the Bingling Temple Grottoes, a Buddhist shrine. Our advance literature had mentioned "grottoes" and we assumed we'd be going through some caves. Not quite.
    Some two hours after leaving Lanzhou we crossed the Yellow River again in a mid-sized town and soon came to a series of tunnels that allowed the highway to cut right through rather large mountains. We were now alongside the Liujiaxia Reservoir, formed by a dam on the Yellow further upriver. The reservoir is enormous, 50 square miles, holding one cubic mile of water. We were still high up in elevation, about 5,600 feet above sea level. It was a beautiful place to stop for a bathroom break, although the women were dismayed to find that their toilet facilities were, shall we say, not what they were used to. 

We made a stop at a roadside stand for strawberries, but the restroom facilities were not to our ladies' liking. (WL)

The bridge across this branch of the reservoir was impressive...

...but the ladies were less than impressed with the rest stop's bathroom facilities,
even though they were an improvement from those at our previous stop.

This might've been the first time the Wisconsin logo appeared in Gansu Province. Sue wears a shirt
from the Los Angeles Athletic Club, where our nephew Ian Tindell got married in 2014.

 
  Not too long after the rest stop we left the road and made our way down to the waterfront, where our transportation across the reservoir awaited us. By now we knew we weren't going to caves. We boarded a speedboat, just big enough to hold all of us, and shoved off for a half-hour cruise across the reservoir. Somebody whistled the first few bars of the theme from Gilligan's Island, but we---well, most of us anyway---had complete confidence that Steed and May, our guides, knew what they were doing. 

   Much to our surprise, there were very few boats on the reservoir. We were told the fishing was pretty good, which made it even more mysterious. Up in Wisconsin, as in most of the States, a body of water like this would be home to dozens of boats on such a beautiful day. Not here. 



The village on the shore was among the most primitive we'd seen,
but the people were happy to see us. (WL)

Near the lakeshore, farmers were at work, planting corn.

Our skipper prepares our boat, on the right.

Putting on the life vests proved more challenging than we anticipated. (WL)

The scenery along the far side of the reservoir was impressive. (WL)



We came ashore at the entrance to the temple and got acquainted with the guards.

It was a hike from the entrance to get to the grottoes, but worth it.

The Chinese were rather creative in getting people to stay on the path.



Almost all of the grottoes had intricate drawings and carvings within.



(WL)

(WL)

  
   Work on the grottoes began in the 5th century AD and took nearly a thousand years to complete, stretching throughout several dynasties in Chinese history. The style of each grotto corresponds with the dynasty in which it was created. Over the centuries the grottoes have been subjected to erosion, weather and looting, but the Chinese government protected the site decades ago. Today there are 183 caves containing 694 stone statues and 84 clay sculptures. By far the most impressive artifact is the 100-foot tall Maitreya Buddha. Maitreya is regarded as the future Buddha, the successor to the original, Gautama. Buddhists believe Maitreya will achieve complete enlightenment and teach the pure dharma, or cosmic world order.

Sue got this shot from the bridge across the canyon. That's me and Leslie below the Buddha.

On the way back, Bonnie and Leslie were feeling pretty frisky. (WL)

  
    After another ride across the reservoir, we boarded our bus and hit the road. Our next stop was the city of Linxia, which is the center of Chinese Islam. There are an estimated 23 million Muslims in China, about 2% of the population. The majority of them live in the northwest of the country, especially in Xinjiang Province, just west of Gansu. China has 55 officially recognized ethnic groups, and the Hui and Uyghur are the two most numerous of the ten predominantly-Muslim minorities, mostly of the Sunni sect of Islam.
   Known as the "Mecca of China," Linxia is today a city of about 200,000 and has been an important cultural and economic center since the days of the Silk Road. It was around 1:30pm by the time we arrived and the sunny weather we'd experienced all day was being replaced by clouds and rain. We were treated for lunch at a restaurant, with a pagoda-style room all to ourselves. By now all of us had been in China for a few days and were getting somewhat proficient with the use of chopsticks, although knives, forks and spoons were usually available. 

Many of our meals were served on rotating platforms in the center of the table, like this one.
Each course was placed on the platform and diners rotated it to get their portion. (WL)

    We had all wondered how we would handle a week or more with Chinese food. All of us had eaten at Chinese restaurants back home, but now we were experiencing the real deal. And it wasn't bad at all. There is no Chinese word for "calories," and their food contains very little sugar. They treat vegetables as equal parts of the meal, not as add-ons, as we usually do in the West. There's lots of rice, of course, and there will always be a soup, but not the soups we usually see back home, which tend to be loaded with beans and meat. Theirs is more like a watery porridge, but it is surprisingly filling. Chinese also tend to eat till they are full and then stop, whereas we Westerners, especially Americans, have been conditioned to overeat.
And of course you can't really shovel food with chopsticks. Another thing they don't do is snack. I would wind up losing five pounds on this trip and yet never felt hungry.
  
   After lunch we toured the nearby Da Gongbei Mosque, which also contains a madrassa, or school. The mosque was built as a shrine to Qi Jingyi, a Chinese Sufi master who died in 1719. He studied under a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad and was instrumental in the spread of the Qadiriyya, a conservative Muslim sect. There are about 80 mosques in Linxia, and our tour was interesting, to say the least. 

Da Gongbei Mosque, which is also a mausoleum for Qi Jingyi.

Inside, incense is lit as the man in the chair chants.

The graves inside have headstones covered by colorful sheets. Chinese Muslim burial traditions
differ in significant ways than those practiced by Middle Eastern Muslims.

  

Despite the raindrops, May wanted to get a selfie of herself with Bonnie and Sue.

   We also got to see the Dabei Street market, where there were many interesting shops displaying some impressive local artwork and crafts.

Steed shows me the intricate work on a knife. This shop had some excellent items, but we'd been told that
shipping them home, even in our checked bags, probably would result in their confiscation. (WL)

There were rug merchants whose work was stunning, just as beautiful as we'd seen in Turkey. (WL)

The pottery and sculpture was equally beautiful. (WL)

   By now it was late afternoon and the day was starting to wear on us. We still had another hour and a half on the road from Linxia to Xiahe, the town near Norden Camp. It wasn't very long after our departure from Linxia that we left the Chinese superhighway system, which is as impressive as anything you'd see in the States, and got onto the back roads, where the traffic wasn't always vehicular or even human.

(WL)

   It was right about now that Walt, who was tracking our progress on his phone with his GPS app, said that we were getting toward the end of the road. Literally. Since leaving Linxia, we had noticed that the road signs were now in Chinese and another language we were told was Tibetan. Although not in the official Tibet Autonomous Region, we were in Amdo, one of three traditional regions of Tibet, the others being Kham and U-Tsang, which comprises the official political region. The residents here, we were told, consider themselves Tibetans. We were now at about 9,500 feet above sea level.
   Not too long after Walt gave us the rather sobering update about being near the end of the road, we turned off the road to Norden Camp.

Norden Camp, near the end of the road. And when you're at the end of the road in Tibet, it's really
the end of the road. (WL)

Upon arrival we were each presented with the traditional Tibetan greeting shawl. (WL)

While we waited to check in, we enjoyed the amenities of the camp's main lodge. We would
soon see that our lodgings were a little more primitive. (WL)

Our group would be the only guests at the camp for the next couple nights. The Lees and Hersbergers
were in cabins, which were relatively spacious...  (WL)

...while Sue and I, along with Dave and Ann, had yak-hair tents. Each dwelling had electricity,
but no running water. Heat was provided by coal-burning stoves, and the bathroom, as Sue
has just discovered, is a one-hole outhouse, called "Finnish bathroom" in the camp brochure.

As we gathered in the bar before heading to dinner, Leslie came in, still in shock over their Finnish bathroom.

  

 We gathered in a separate dining cabin for what turned out to be a splendid meal. Our chef was an American, originally from Connecticut, who had worked previously at a lodge in the remote Himalayan nation of Bhutan, on the border of India and China. This was his second season at Norden, and in fact the camp's season was just beginning. They still had to get some of the kinks worked out, such as making sure the showers consistently had hot water, as we would soon discover. Our first meal, though, was splendid and exotic, a sign of things to come.

First dinner at Norden Camp. (WL)

Our first meal in Tibet featured yak steak as the main course, and yes, that's a yak bone. We scooped
the marrow and it was surprisingly tasty. (WL)

With no city lights to wash them out, the stars at night were something to behold. (WL)

   We turned in around 9pm, exhausted from the long day of travel and exploration, but excited about the days to come. The stove was throwing off some decent heat, once they got the chimney fixed, and we burrowed down into our beds under yak-hair blankets. Tomorrow we would begin to meet the inhabitants of Tibet, both two-legged and -four. The next phase of our great China adventure would be quite a phase indeed.

(WL)