Lanzhou

Dear all,

Lanzhou was to be a stepping stone to other more beautiful locations in China. Claire informed us that it was the 15th most polluted city in the world and that there wasn't much to do there. I wasn't entirely happy with this conception. The organised portions of the trip are focused on visiting the ancient and beautiful, but the tour of China would be slightly lopsided if we only looked for and saw the old.

As we drew nearer the city the landscapes remained beautiful but the air grew smoggier:

The city itself was not attractive:

The hotel was fourteen storeys tall and very central but the bathroom smelt strongly of sewage. I set out soon after arriving.

Through sheer luck I found my way to the main pedestrianised shopping street. The shops were full of European designer labels and brands that pretended to be European designer labels. The only other white people about were on the clothing advertisements. I was aiming to find coffee, a hat (mine was still in Beijing), wifi and loose green tea. I succeeded in finding tea and nothing else. I walked into an expensive looking shop that stocked around fifty varieties of green tea. For some reason the shop assistants all burst out laughing as soon as they realised I couldn't speak Chinese. It was straightforward enough to make my purchases though. I simply lifted the lids and smelt around fifteen of them then picked the two that I liked the best. I came out with two bags of tea, 150g for 25 yuan and 15g for 25 yuan (£5 in total). I think that was expensive compared to market stalls but I didn't care, I had found something.

That evening we went to the night market:

We ate soup made out of one of these cow's heads. It was good but not great. The fish and chips were better:

As with the meat on sticks in Pingliang, both the chilli paste and the dry spice mix is used.

I kept on getting fish bones stuck in my throat which was making me choke slightly. It was embarrassing because I think the Chinese people who were watching me thought I couldn't handle my chilli.

We (myself and Kelvin) finished it off with some kind of soup containing scrambled egg, peanuts and goji berries:

There were several of these charcoal stoves with the outlet pointing directly out into the crowd. I think they did it on purpose to get some more room around their stall.

After dinner we happened across the others and joined them for beer:

That was a good night.

Stephen