All over western China, you can find stalls selling 肉夹饼, pronounced roujiabing. At it’s most basic, a roujiabing is a seasoned chopped meat filling, stuffed inside a round pocket of bread. But not all roujiabing are created equal — and I’m not talking about quality. As we traveled around Gansu and Qinghai, every bite into [...]
Just added: Guides to Jiayuguan and Dunhuang, Gansu Province
In between Lanzhou and Dunhuang sits the small town of Jiayuguan, which was once the westernmost outpost of the Chinese empire. Centuries ago, a huge fort marked the end of the Great Wall and the beginning of barbarian lands. Today, China’s reach extends much farther west to [...]
Langmusi, a tiny Tibetan town along the Gansu-Sichuan border, initially seems like an unlikely draw for tourists both Western and Chinese. It’s not much more than a one-street town, with a couple of small monasteries. But it is a terrific jumping-off point for explorations of Tibetan nomad culture in the mountains around town. An enterprising [...]
(Warning: This post involves a lot of venting. More happy stories to come!)
Yesterday (location: Lanzhou, Gansu Province) was one of those days when it seems that China is trying to tell me that “you shouldn’t be here.” The day was all about transportation: buying tickets for the rest of our trip and then taking an [...]
When this appears, I’ll be about halfway through a 24-hour train ride from Changsha to Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu Province. Originally, my plan was to continue from Gansu into Xinjiang and eventually to Kashgar. But after the riots, we scrapped our plan to visit Xinjiang. Instead, we’ll visit a few sites along the Silk [...]
