Gansu
During July I was invited to stay with Amy, one of my students, in her home in Gansu province which is the north west of China. It's one of the poorest provinces, but it's dryer and cooler than Beijing in summer which is a good reason to go in itself.
To get there we took a 30 hour train journey from Beijing Railway Station. Spending so long on a train actually wasn't so bad. We took the hard sleeper option which is 6 beds to a cabin, and it was a comfortable way to pass the time as we passed through several other provinces.There was a bathroom and hot water so you could wash and make instant noodles. So new experience number one was travelling by train, and overnight.
We arrived the next day in Zhangye which is a small city in Gansu. I met her family and we went out for a drink near the town centre. In fact, over the whole time there was a lot of eating out and a lot of drinking of baijiu, which translates as white wine but it's more like Chinese vodka. I also got to go to KTV (kareoke) for the first time and ended up going back a couple more times. In the evenings, especially in summer, everyone likes to be outside either eating or drinking, or dancing to music in the square, or playing with their kids in the park. In this way, I think Zhangye could be like any other Chinese city - just people enjoying their lives with their families.
While in Zhangye we visited the largest indoor sleeping Buddha, at the aptly-named Big Buddha temple. We also went to the local park which in China always seems to be a big affair, with a lake and rides for the kids. It makes UK parks look pretty small-scale. Gansu must also be China's noodle capital because we must have tried every sort going: Lanzhou beef noodles, clay pot noodles, noodles made of rice, noodles made of beans...
Over the next month, we went with her friends and family on several trips. First we drove a couple of hours to the mountains and met some ethnic minority people. They live in the mountains and make a living by welcoming visitors at their camp and offering traditional snacks such as yak butter tea and yoghurt, which is very nice! They also entertained us by singing folk songs and dancing. As part of the welcome they gave me a white scarf and invited everyone to have some baijiu. This experience was definitely worth the perilous and bumpy drive up the mountain.
On another trip we went to Sunan, or the Sunan Yugur Autonomous County, which has a majority of Yugur minority people. It was fascinating to see one of China's 56 national minorities in one of their hometowns - different clothes and people riding horses through the streets.Towards the end of my stay we went to her cousin's wedding in another city. As well as attending the wedding meal (a huge room full of family and friends, traditional speeches, much toasting/drinking of baijiu) we made a stop at Jiayuguan, which is the most western part of the Great Wall. So after five months in Beijing, I did go to the Great Wall, just at the other end.
In all I spent about a month with Amy and her family, and as well as all the natural scenery and minority people, what I remember most is how welcoming her family were, lots of dinners, noodles, baijiu and KTV! Photos here.