Lanzhou

Day 314 (May 8, 2019) – Lanzhou, Gansu Province, China

We had one of our most memorable welcomes when we arrived at our Lanzhou hotel. A very professional woman greeted us and checked us in. She didn’t speak English, but she was lightning fast at typing messages onto her phone, which she then had speak to us in her translation app’s robotic English voice. After getting all our information and scanning our passports and visas her last message ended with something like, “we apologize for not speaking English well, so we can use this app to communicate, but here are some tomatoes.” Tomatoes? The app had been doing a very good job until it started talking about tomatoes. But then as we looked up at her, slightly confused but thankful for her kind welcome, she presented us each with a box of tomatoes. So, it turned out the app wasn’t mistaken. She was actually giving us tomatoes. We never would have expected that one.

The Yellow River running through Lanzhou.

Lanzhou is a small city by Chinese standards (roughly the size of Chicago…) that sits along the Yellow River. The river was surprisingly enormous, although Lanzhou is only the first major city along its path as it makes its way through Northern China and out to the ocean. It wasn’t the prettiest looking river with its super thick muddy brown color. It had been raining a lot and the river was moving swiftly. Even ignoring the muddiness, it didn’t look like the cleanest river either. As we watched from the shore, we could see all sorts of debris, from plastic grocery bags to a piece of wood with nails sticking of it, floating downriver. To our surprise there were a good number of people swimming in it too. They were absolutely flying downstream as they swam with the current. I don’t think we would have risked going into that water.

The Yellow River and its surrounding land area was the main attraction in town. There was a huge park running the length of the shore filled with sculptures and gardens all along the way. We also visited the White Pagoda, located at the top of a hill across town. The White Pagoda itself was less impressive than the panoramic view across the city. The skyline was just as striking as any major city in the world; maybe even better than most with the Yellow River in the foreground and the mountains in the background. At night, the Zhongshan Bridge and most buildings in the city were light up, which made for a colorful evening stroll.

The Zhongshan Bridge light up at night.

We could tell when we got to Lanzhou that we were moving farther away from the most popular tourist routes in China. We had what was probably our worst attempt at communication one afternoon when we were having lunch at a hot pot restaurant. We were using an app to translate the menu and we ordered what translated as “best quality pork.” When our plates arrived, we didn’t see any of the pork slices we expected to have and instead got a plate of something that we honestly had no idea what it was. All we wanted was to ask the servers if the unknown dish on the table was what we had, in fact, ordered.

Some of our plates for hot pot. Our unknown dish is the front left. We later learned what it was...

Unfortunately, we had the absolute hardest time trying to communicate our question. We tried using our translation apps and miming and pointing to the menu but all we ever got were confused looks. Then we tried to ask if they had a translation app on their phone so they could better communicate with us, but they had no idea what we were trying to tell them and they started doing internet searches for a picture of the unknown dish in front of us. It was clear they were not used to dealing with foreigners. It also made me really wish I knew more Chinese. We gave up and just assumed it was what we had ordered and went with it. I ate a bunch of it (Travis was too scared) and it wasn’t all that exciting. It didn’t taste like much. It had a very slight rubbery texture but essentially just tasted like the hot pot flavor. After some research and thinking about our communication afterwards we concluded that we had, most likely, ordered that dish. It’s normally called yellow throat but is actually sliced pork aorta. Well, now we know!

Hot pot was always a fun meal.

Lanzhou was interesting because China’s Muslim population started to have a more notable presence. There were mosques around town and some very interesting night markets with all sorts of food that we hadn’t seen in the rest of China. Travis was most mesmerized by the boiled goat heads.

The Zhengning Road night market.

Boiled goat heads.

Lanzhou’s most famous dish is, by far, their beef noodle soup. We had this on a few occasions. It’s typically a breakfast dish but we had it for lunch or dinner. Fresh hand-pulled noodles served in a spicy, oily beef broth. It’s simple but delicious. Most people slurp and practically inhale the entire dish all at once. The idea is that the noodles have been cooked to the perfect chewy consistency and their consistency will be lost if the noodles continue to sit in the hot broth, so you better eat quickly.

Lanzhou beef noodle soup.

We also had a lot of trip planning to take care of while in Lanzhou. We had originally planned to continue along the old Silk Road route all the way to Urumqi in Xinjiang Province, but right as we were planning this much of the world had started to again call out China’s poor treatment of the Uyghurs in the region (see here and here, for example). At the time, tourists were allowed to freely travel into Xinjiang Province, but others who had gone warned that a police state was effectively in place throughout the region. Even in Lanzhou we noticed far more police officers around than most other cities we had been to. Our concern with going to Xinjiang Province wasn’t as much about our safety as it was about our ability to communicate.

Having a beer on one of the floating river barges.

We carried our passports with us everywhere in China. A passport is needed to book train tickets, gain entry to tourist attractions, and our hotels were supposed to be sending our passport and visa information to the local police station everywhere we went. Effectively, China knew everywhere we had traveled and everywhere we had stayed. We had read that this monitoring was even more intense in Xinjiang Province. We should expect to be asked simple questions from the police about what we were doing there and what our itinerary was. I’m sure we could have handled this, but we would have felt more comfortable if our Chinese communication skills were a bit more advanced. In the end we decided that what we wanted to see in Xinjiang Province wasn’t worth the hassle, so we changed our plans to take us only as far as Dunhuang and not all the way to Urumqi, therefore avoiding Xinjiang Province.

A chef preparing beef noodle soup. They were ready to serve hundreds of orders of soup.

With our newly rearranged itinerary planned out, some new train tickets in hand, and a new flight booked, we were ready to continue heading west from Lanzhou.

Another photo from one of our privacy-lacking bathrooms. This was taken while lying in bed. There was a mirror strategically placed so you could see right to the toilette. There was no door. It was open to the rest of the room and separated on three sides by glass. I don't know why this is such a common thing in China.