Lanzhou to Dunhuang

Westward along the silk road from Xi'an we took a couple of sleeper buses via Lanzhou to Dunhuang. An oasis in the Kumtag desert.  Home of the singing dunes, see pics and Mogao caves which we will visit tomorrow.

Landscape between Xi'an and Lanzhou

Wa-wa

Sleeper bus scene

Lanzhou has some serious topiary. The shots of the best ones don't do them justice so you will just have to take my word for it

Boy on the sleeper bus

The fetching gators turned out to be indispensable accessory. Fashion meets function

The tallest dunes are 1750 metres high

Moi, suitably attired

J and I

XI'AN addendum

Making rubbings at Beilin Bowuguan

Arcade 

XI'AN

Beilin Bowuguan is the Forest of Stone Stele. Letters, books, treatises and instructions dating from the Tang dynasty 1086AD are carved into stone. We rode around the wall surrounding the old city. All 14 KM of it. Afterward we returned to the 21st Century with a spin around an arcade

A view from the North Gate. It was restored after Sun Yat Sen's army destroyed it in the overthrow of the Qing dynasty

Wo3 reflected in the stele

The correction to this letter was carved into stone to teach students of calligraphy to weigh their words

Tools of the trade

Preparations for applying the paper to the stone. Notice the characters have been scratched out on this part of the stele

The entire stele

Why we couldn't get a train ticket. Everyone has the same idea

PingYao to Xi'an

The day before leaving we spent the day running around the various houses that had been turned into museums

Giacometti does Buddha

Cultural Revolution slogan: "Earnestly Undertake Struggle, Criticism and Reform"

Someone swept here

View from the Wall down Xi Da Jie

View from the Wall

According to the guide book there are 72 stations of Sunzi's 'Art of War'. Little diorama vignettes in the towers along the wall. Seemed more like just domestic scenes a la Remembrance of things past.

2001AD/ 100BC

The pits of Han Yangling

Me and my little ponies

A couple of the myriad tombs at Han Yangling Mausoleum

What the figurines lack in scale compared to the 'other' Terra Cotta Army' they make up by being set in lakes of mercury and taking up 20 square kilometres of real estate

Mosque and cooling towers on the way back to town

 

Drum Tower performance

Beijing to PingYao

Mister Wang, our concierge of the NaliNali courtyard having fun with a hose. We had already been without water for four days.

Sadly, we bid CaoChangdi 'zai jian'. We are rolling slowly west toward Kashar in XinJiang Province but first stop is PingYao, Shanxi. A tourist town for sure (there was a Mickey sighting) but not obnoxiously so. People still live and work in the walled city and it still has a patina that speaks of its age. The place has been partially restored but just enough to keep gravity at bay.

Staying with the tour at GuGong (Forbidden City)

Auto rickshaw ride around the Forbidden City. 

Our Guest house courtyard in PingYao

Me on my mighty Pigeon Flyer, circumnavigating the wall 

said, Pigeon

The old and the new China

This is the oldest walled village in the world i think.  Now we know where Ai Wei Wei got all his architectural ideas.

Evening falls

Artist studio in Wang Village outside of town

My reflection in the Wang family tree that looks remarkably like a circuit board

Mondrian's cave home

Other cave dwellings

ShangBi Underground Castle. Castle may be overstating it just a wee bit.  More like the ancestors of Beijing's famous 'Shu Zu", (Mouse tribe - a million migrant workers who live in the underground bomb shelters Mao built in the 70's) Pictured here is a sentry's post for aboveground reconnaissance.

A castle tunnel 

A farmer's barn set into the mountain.

Castle location

Instructional tiles show how to prevent being electrocuted