Lanzhou

The train ride to Lanzhou was 22 hours. I was happy to be back on a train. For nearly the last month or so, I had been in lands devoid of trains. And this was one of the nice ones, too, so 22 hours really didn't seem like too long.

The scenery was interesting. We rose up out of the densely settled plain which surrounds Chengdu and through verdant river valleys and farmland and the occasional coal-belching factory. I noticed that the music which they blast through the train's loudspeakers changes according to time of day. In the afternoon it was pop and techno. But by evening it had switched to instrumental musak, including a schmaltzy rendition of George Harrison's "Something".

When I awoke we were in a different land. Until now, the main color on the palette of the landscape had been green. Now it had turned an arid yellow-brown.

Lanzhou is in the geographic center of China (kind of like Kansas). It is a commercial and transportation hub, a river town, and a crossroads between east and west China. Although the majority of the three million residents of this landlocked city in Gansu province are Han Chinese, there is a sizable Uighur minority. The Uighurs are Muslim, and I'm going to be seeing a lot of them in the coming weeks. I got off the train and had lunch at a Uighur eatery. Flat, doughy noodles in a vegetable stew. Instead of tea, they poured me a cup of vegetable broth to drink. I love going to places like this where I just order what I see on the display or on everyone else's plates. I have no idea how much it will cost, but when I go to pay the bill it's almost always less than expected. This time, it was about 30 cents.

I was in Lanzhou for all of seven hours. I arrived at 1:00 pm on the train, and I was out on another train by 8:00. I'd heard bad things in Lonely Planet, such as that Lanzhou is the “most polluted city in China”, so I decided not to spend the night there. Furthermore, I was eager to get going along the Silk Road. But my seven hours in Lanzhou were enjoyable. There was some gray haze in the air, but nothing too horrible.

In a way, Lanzhou reminded me of Los Angeles. The arid, desert mountains which rise as a backdrop to the modern city resemble those in Southern California. The Yellow River flows through Lanzhou. I have now seen both of China's major rivers, the Yangtze (which flows through Tiger Leaping Gorge), and the Yellow (Huang He). Add to these the Mekong and Irrawaddy, which I saw in Yunnan, and I've now seen most of the major rivers of Asia. The Yellow River is fast-flowing. But it ain't so yellow. Brown River is more like it. But the river has afforded the city a pleasant riverfront promenade, lined with shade trees, food vendors, and people playing games, singing, dancing, and where teenagers skateboard.

There's also a great grassy open space in the heart of the city, framed by a multi-level shopping center and stadium, called "East is Red Square". It too is full of food vendors as well as good-looking temporary-hire PR girls offering free samples of such exotic products as Minute Maid Orange Juice and Nescafe .

It was easy to kill time in Lanzhou. I found an English language bookstore. All they had were classics. I bought Joseph Conrad's first novel, set in Malaysia.

Then I crossed an iron lattice pedestrian bridge over the river. I found a narrow flight of crumbling stairs leading up the hill on the other side. This soon turned into a dirt path, but I kept going up until I reached a temple. I was actually more interested in what I saw going up the hill than what I found at the top. I gazed out on meager Uighur settlements nestled in the badlands and canyons of the mountain. These rudimentary, mud-walled structures reminded me of the hillside slums of Latin America.