Lanzhou

Well, when I finished my post the other day, we were driving along the highway (it's not that I want to extend it too much). Suddenly, we could see between the barren hills the towers of some buildings and, almost immediately, we had in front of us an apparently very large city, and at its feet the Yellow river (Huang He): Lanzhou. I was told later that it has 3 million inhabitants.


And it really looks like it. In a few minutes, we went from the quiet and almost lonely driving of the highway to chaos. Cars, buses, motorcycles everywhere; bikes too; pedestrians crossing wherever they fancied (in part, because pedestrian crossings are few too), a concert of honks. I wasn't really surprised, but it was too sudden. Somebody told me that it was like that, or worse, all over China and most of Asia. Taiwan is a paradise in comparison. So, I spent a very good time laughing at what I was seeing and missing the precise and acid comments that would have been made if I had been with my brothers.

We arrived to the hotel that was our meeting point, we got the ticket for the night train, we left our luggage in a room, I was very positively impressed, and we left in order to have some of the typical and famous "beef noodles".

They were a little spicy and the soup was hot. But apart from the sweat I broke, adding the heat to the mix, they were really good. We could also see right there how fast they were made too.

An interesting detail was to see the cultural mix, I don't know if racial, of the city. The muslim comuntity was very visible.

We had some time to kill, so we took another taxi, another example of crazy driving, and went to see the Huang He. Wide as so many rivers, and with its particular brown color.

We ended up going upriver in two motorboats —we could see some nice buildings along the banks of the river, some mosques among them&mdash, but went back on a raft made from wood and inflated lamb skins, as in the old times. Very quiet and relaxing.


The truth is that the evening was perfect, specially if we were far from the deafening roar of the city traffic, with a very nice temperature and a fresh breeze. We even had a couple of beers next to the river. A very good beginning.