Our daoyou finally arrived around 6ish, and informed us that the travel agency didn't have anything scheduled for us until 11. Whatttttt. She told us we could get a hotel room and go sleep for a couple hours, but it was 80 kuai and we didn't want to pay, so instead we got some breakfast (the traditional noodles of Lanzhou!) and set off on a slightly undirected adventure in Lanzhou. Our daoyou was actually a college student, and she was super cute and nice and let us leave our luggage in her dorm room since we didn't have a hotel. She gave us a little tour of Lanzhou University, which wasn't very interesting but it gave us something to do. At one point we saw a man pacing in circles and reading out loud to himself, and after some careful listening I determined that he was reading the Bible, which I found interesting. I hear it's a good way to sharpen one's English.
One of the major features of Lanzhou is that it's on the Yellow River (which is really a sort of rusty red color), and it boasts the first bridge over the Yellow River. Exciting, right? Our daoyou took us to see these huge water wheels powered by the river, which was kind of neat. There were a bunch of dudes with rafts that had some strange blobby pontoon-things on the bottom, which we learned were sheepskins. The raft man inflated one by blowing into its leg. We kind of wanted to take a sheep-raft ride, but it was still like 8 am and kind of cold out.
Spiffy water wheel:
There was a big old statue around this area that we decided to take a picture with, and I even climbed up on the statue for the picture. You wouldn't believe the way random Chinese people came out of the woodwork to take pictures of us. It was pretty silly.
On the other side of the river from the city of Lanzhou is a really nice, pretty little mountain with some semi-famous pagoda on top. We took cable cars up the side of the mountain (soooo much better than walking) and climbed up to the top where the pagoda was. It turned out to be a small and wimpy pagoda, but we were having such a nice, laid-back tour with just the five of us and our daoyou that we didn't really care. I don't think our daoyou was used to having tour groups like us, but we had a good time enjoying travel in a more college-studently way. We checked out some of the traditional gourds of Lanzhou that they put designs on by carving them or burning them or painting them or something (I forget), which was cool, and then we opted to take a zipline back down to the bottom of the mountain. Our daoyou got to go for free (tour guides get all tickets free at tourist attractions), although she was really scared to go, but the daoyou has to stay with her tourists, so she had to do it. It was super fun.
Overlooking the Yellow River and the city of Lanzhou, as photographed from a cable car on the side of the mountain:
After we had gotten back down the mountain, we tried to plan our afternoon. There weren't any activities left on our schedule, so we decided that maybe now we could consider that hotel room for a nice nap and a shower. It seemed that we could only go to one hotel (I don't know if the travel agency had a deal with them or if all the other ones were all booked up or what), but when the daoyou called to make a reservation they said that there wasn't any hot water for showering. Whoops. We decided that we could deal with that, we supposed, and in a flash of brilliance I suggested that she ask the hotel to give us a discount because there was no hot water. It totally worked. In the end, it was 30 kuai per person, about $4 American. Hen hao!
We had an incredibly delicious lunch in Lanzhou, although there was a wedding reception at the restaurant so they kept forgetting to bring us our food, but when the food came it was so amazingly good. All of the other Chinese food I've had in China just can't measure up. To add to the fabulousness of this day, after we picked up our luggage from our daoyou's dorm room, we got to the hotel to find that they did, in fact, have hot water, although Casey didn't realize it so she showered with the cold water anyway. Whoops. So we got hot showers (well, Richard and I did) and we still got our discount and we had a couple hours to nap. It was so excellent that our unhappy travel experiences of the previous days were just a hazy memory.
For dinner we went out for some traditional kind of Lanzhou noodle (different from the traditional Lanzhou noodles we had for breakfast). The restaurant we went to was run by Hui people, members of a Muslim Chinese ethnic group. Our daoyou informed us that if you get the noodles at a Han-owned restaurant instead of a Hui restaurant, they won't be very good. It was like our nang escapades all over again. The Han Chinese just can't make that minority food, apparently.
After dinner we caught a shuttle to the airport and it was back to Beijing...we got back to campus at about 2 am, although I was randomly compelled to clean my room/have a dance party for a couple hours while my roomie was still conveniently away on her May Break trip to Shanghai. It was a good time.
Annnnnnd that's the end of my May Break, except for the parts I left out because I felt that certain issues deserves separate posts, namely, racism, sexism, and sketchy bathrooms, all of which we encountered in abundance on our trip. Keep your eyes peeled.
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