Zhangye Danxia Landforms Geology Park

Gansu province near Zhangye

 (张掖丹霞地貌)

For more on Zhangye and around click here: Zhangye / Mati Si

On our last day (in Zhangye), we decided to visit this newly developed geo-park, a scenic area of multi-coloured rocks, which has been put on the map by Zhang Yimou 张艺谋 who shot (part of) his film San Qiang Pai An Jing Qi 三枪拍案惊奇 here. This film, which is known by the titles A Woman, A Gun And A Noodle Shop 三枪拍案惊奇, as well as A Simple Noodle Story, is Zhang’s personal take on the Coen brothers debut film Blood Simple.

Danxia Coloured Rocks

The geology park is about 40 kms, or an hour’s drive from Zhangye, in the opposite direction from Mati Si.

Zhang Yimou and Cast

We are told to get on a bus, and after a short drive we are let off at a viewing platform, from where we gaze at the amazing scenery.

Lunar Landscape

The landscape is positively lunar, or something out of a sci-fi pic: we are surrounded by row after row of [Read more →]

Tags: Gansu Province, Travel, Uncategorized by Adam
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Langde 郎德

Guizhou Province near Kaili

We hope you enjoy this video slide-show. The photos were taken in the Miao Minority village, Langde near Kaili in 2007. The accompanying songs are traditional Miao folk songs with modern music (again the slide-show is a bit too long: I  promise to get the videos down to about 3 minutes in the future). For more information about Langde and how to get there: Continue reading below the video.

Langde was once the centre of an important Miao uprising against the Qing, which took place in the 19th Century. These days the village of Langde suffers a different kind of Han invasion; that of hundreds of Han tourists, coming to get a feel what has been marketed as exotic Miao culture. Nowadays, Chinese tourists take part in traditional singing and dancing events and marvel at the elaborate dresses and jewellery of the residents of Langde. How things have changed!

Miao Minority in Langde

For the traveller Langde is still a great village to visit. Its setting is idyllic, built on a green hill overlooking an elegant slow bend in the river. Rice fields and wandering water buffalo add to the rural charm. The village itself is a classic collection of traditional Miao two or three-storey wooden buildings, draped in strings of drying chillies and corn.

Langde Houses

We were visiting in the middle of August and spent almost the entire day in and around the village. In all that time only [Read more →]

Tags: Culture, Guizhou Province, Travel by Adam
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Mati Si: a day trip from Zhangye

Mati Si 马蹄寺

Click here for Zhangye  & Danxia Landforms Geology Park

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Once we’ve passed Zhangye’s outskirts, where a whole forest of gleaming highrises is springing up, and have negotiated the chaos of smallish lorries, pick-ups, tractors and loaded carts that convert the narrow, two-lane road out of town into such a nightmare, we can begin to enjoy the scenery.

Scenery just outside Zhangye

An initial rural stretch of fields, haystacks and little mud-brick farms descends into a dry, dusty bowl, after which the ground starts rising again and the land becomes fertile once more. A huge mountain range comes into view on our right and, to our amazement, we see that some of the peaks are covered in snow!

Qianlian mountains 前连山

This is, of course, the Qian lian range in the foothills of which the temples of Mati Si can be found, and the people of the Yugur (Yugu) minority. [Read more →]

Tags: Gansu Province, Travel by Adam
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Stage 6: Zhangye and around (see stages 1  2  3  4  5  of our 2011 trip) & Danxia Landforms Geology Park 张掖丹霞地貌 & Mati Si / 马蹄寺

Dafo Si 大佛寺

Getting there from Alashan Yuoqi

The attractive city of Zhangye is only a three to four hour bus ride away from the Inner Mongolian town of Alshan Youqi, the gateway to the Badan Jarain Desert. And, as the friendly ticket lady at Youqi’s bus station had assured Adam two days ago, there are no problems getting tickets. So we swap the tickets for the 15.00 bus which the Badain Jaran travel agency had erroneously bought us, and hop on the 8.30 one instead.

Zhangye Stupa

The bus starts out half-empty, but doesn’t stay that way for long. This is still peasant country, where local people prefer to line up by the road side with their sacks and bundles, waiting for the bus to pick them up, rather than make their way to the bus station. The main difference with 20 years ago is that most of the transactions, involving pick- ups and drop- offs, are arranged on mobile phones these days.

Zhangye Guildhall

The other thing that takes us back into time is the speed of the ride; or rather, the lack of it. In fact, we have seldom come across a driver less in a hurry. Though we normally want our buses to go slowly and carefully, ever fearful of accidents, even we think that this guy could speed up a bit. [Read more →]

Tags: Gansu Province, Inner Mongolia, Travel by Adam
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