Bingling...Si
Lanzhou, China
So now I'm in North central China sort of at the edge of the Chinese part of China near the top of the Yellow River. Mercifully the temparture has dropped considerably, with it topping out around 30 C.
Closing the book on Xi'an, at breakfast the other morning I noticed that I was surrounded by lots of tables of Germans each bearing what was apparently one of Xi'an's major souvenirs, chinese babies. Nothing to say other than that it was a weird spectacle.
On a self-centered note, all the guidebooks warn male travellers to be wary of frequent attempted hook-ings. Well I haven't really been solicited at all aside from the standard Beijing street pimps, so I'm not sure whether to be insulted or flattered - I must have an un-hook-able look about me, which is either gay, poor, or too attractive to be hooked. I'm going with the latter for now.
Regarding Lanzhou city (another one of those 3.5m person cities that nobody in the US has ever heard of)not that nice but not that bad either. Beer drinking was all the rage here among locals, which suits me fine. There's an outdoor bar in the parking lot next to the hotel which is not half bad at night, if you don't mind the bartenders who shortchange westerners (for meager amounts), the smell of motor oil, and the fact that you shouldn't sit at one of the back tables, as they are frequently hit by buses backing out of the parking lot, no kidding. Still at the equivalent of 37 cents a beer, I'll take it and then some. My crap chinese has incorporated the word for beer "pijiu" -- although when I say it, it comes out as "pee-jew", which causes confusion as it is also the chinese word for Eric Lipman in a bar after 10 minutes.
The main highlight here, which I didn't know about until a few days ago, are the caves at Bingling Si (photo below, found off the web, not taken by me) http://www.martinsbta.co.uk/images/photos/china/big/bingling.jpg
I'm not sure if it's possible for a Buddhist cave to be f-ing awesome, but these caves were f-ing awesome. Briefly speaking, it's a series of thousand year old Buddhist caves, frescoes, & statues carved into the side of a canyon off the Yellow River. Really truly awesome. To get there, you have to take motorboat (that frequently runs aground as the river is huge but shallow & silty, also you tend to run aground more if your boat, like mine, is overloaded with rotund Marseilleise) through these huge canyons for about an hour. The highlight is the 70 foot or so tall Buddha carved into the side of the cliff around AD 700, very cool.
The only problem is that it costs an arm and a leg to get out there and they hit you with fee after fee once you get there, including a ridiculous 300 Y to see the "special caves" at the very end, which I declined. The Japanese visit in droves and they fork over anything, so they drive the price way, way up.
My company for the trek was a local guide I totally forgot his name halfway through so I started calling him "Li", since pretty much everybody's name out here is Li, which proved correct. He was in fact Mr. "Raphael" Li, apparently Michelangelo and Leonardo were taken, though I give him props for not choosing john, george, david, like most. Despite his latin name, he was quite confused about the name "Miguel", as are most Chinese, who tend to pronounce it "My-gull" or "Mee-gull"
Later on today I'm taking the night train to Jiyaguan, which has to be a metaphor for something, or at least will be before tomorrow AM.
So now I'm in North central China sort of at the edge of the Chinese part of China near the top of the Yellow River. Mercifully the temparture has dropped considerably, with it topping out around 30 C.
Closing the book on Xi'an, at breakfast the other morning I noticed that I was surrounded by lots of tables of Germans each bearing what was apparently one of Xi'an's major souvenirs, chinese babies. Nothing to say other than that it was a weird spectacle.
On a self-centered note, all the guidebooks warn male travellers to be wary of frequent attempted hook-ings. Well I haven't really been solicited at all aside from the standard Beijing street pimps, so I'm not sure whether to be insulted or flattered - I must have an un-hook-able look about me, which is either gay, poor, or too attractive to be hooked. I'm going with the latter for now.
Regarding Lanzhou city (another one of those 3.5m person cities that nobody in the US has ever heard of)not that nice but not that bad either. Beer drinking was all the rage here among locals, which suits me fine. There's an outdoor bar in the parking lot next to the hotel which is not half bad at night, if you don't mind the bartenders who shortchange westerners (for meager amounts), the smell of motor oil, and the fact that you shouldn't sit at one of the back tables, as they are frequently hit by buses backing out of the parking lot, no kidding. Still at the equivalent of 37 cents a beer, I'll take it and then some. My crap chinese has incorporated the word for beer "pijiu" -- although when I say it, it comes out as "pee-jew", which causes confusion as it is also the chinese word for Eric Lipman in a bar after 10 minutes.
The main highlight here, which I didn't know about until a few days ago, are the caves at Bingling Si (photo below, found off the web, not taken by me) http://www.martinsbta.co.uk/images/photos/china/big/bingling.jpg
I'm not sure if it's possible for a Buddhist cave to be f-ing awesome, but these caves were f-ing awesome. Briefly speaking, it's a series of thousand year old Buddhist caves, frescoes, & statues carved into the side of a canyon off the Yellow River. Really truly awesome. To get there, you have to take motorboat (that frequently runs aground as the river is huge but shallow & silty, also you tend to run aground more if your boat, like mine, is overloaded with rotund Marseilleise) through these huge canyons for about an hour. The highlight is the 70 foot or so tall Buddha carved into the side of the cliff around AD 700, very cool.
The only problem is that it costs an arm and a leg to get out there and they hit you with fee after fee once you get there, including a ridiculous 300 Y to see the "special caves" at the very end, which I declined. The Japanese visit in droves and they fork over anything, so they drive the price way, way up.
My company for the trek was a local guide I totally forgot his name halfway through so I started calling him "Li", since pretty much everybody's name out here is Li, which proved correct. He was in fact Mr. "Raphael" Li, apparently Michelangelo and Leonardo were taken, though I give him props for not choosing john, george, david, like most. Despite his latin name, he was quite confused about the name "Miguel", as are most Chinese, who tend to pronounce it "My-gull" or "Mee-gull"
Later on today I'm taking the night train to Jiyaguan, which has to be a metaphor for something, or at least will be before tomorrow AM.
posted by Miguel V | 9:26 AM
2 Comments:
Bet that mosquito repelling shirt got a workout on the visit to the Buddhist caves, Me-gull!! Do they have any vacancies for July 4th weekend?
SSV
Thanks for the shout out Big Al. Hope the Super Happy Fun Caves were all they were cracked up to be.
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