through the looking glass

liupanshan

no one goes to ningxia. not entirely sure why as it appears to have just about everything one could want in a holiday destination.

guyuan city’s a waking sleeper; might just be the next disco capital of northern china. cool kids in chill bars dominated the nights. no overt pop and flashing lights for this crowd. even the clothing stores held promise. I’d move there just for the food at one little italian restaraunt looking place down the main food alley. yummy and cheap, good combination. while it might not have been discovered much by the foreign crowd, the local travellers nearly had the entire town booked up, took us three tries to find a hotel.

from guyuan one can easily get to liupanshan, a spectacular 3000+ meter mountain complete with near abandoned temple complex, lush purple trees, randon sandfalls and a waterfall or two. would that we arrived earlier, would make a smashing weekend backpack retreat. we heard rumors of horseback riding but had enough trouble just getting on a bus (and mad props to the random guy who watched for a return bus to make sure we got on the right one), so it’ll have to wait till later.

from zhongwei one can head for either the plethora of lakes or the desert where it intersects the yellow river. at the latter one can either pay 65 kuai to see the singing sands, raft along on a pig raft, or head across the water bridge to more sand dunes and rent a dune buggy for an hour or two to climb up to the pagoda and catch some surf on the descending dunes or simply pretend you know what you’re doing and scare the crap out of the chinese guy hanging off the driver’s side as you ramp up speed and crash through sand piles. can you guess which one I did? ;-)

zhongwei also hosts a temple, home to just about every religion that’s so much as passed through china. while ningxia might be the hui minority province, everyone else is well represented at this miao. fuxi, budda, and the daos coexist in almost unheard of harmony. not only historically, mind you, but today as well. as we were crossing the street we looked up and saw a buddhist and taoist monk hanging out together, waving and having a chuckle in our general direction.

pics up soon. killing a little tie at a net bar waiting for a 3am train out. yeah, that’s a bit of a down side. as is no hard sleeper tickets. aah well, it might actually be worth it in the end.