Another Weekend Outing: ShaPoTou and Tong Xin

Our officials graciously planned another outing for us this Saturday.

We first went to a tourist site called "ShaPoTou" near the city of Zhongwei.  This is a place where tourists come to float down a branch of the Yellow River and play desert in the sand.  Like most Chinese tourist attractions, it was crowded, overpriced, and not very natural or authentic.  But we still had fun riding on camels (not me) and sliding down a sand dune (me!).  We were at a lower elevation than here and the sun was very strong.  It wasn't hard to imagine we were really trudging through the desert on the Silk Road hundreds of years ago.

After ShaPoTou, we stopped in the town of Tong Xin to see the Grand Mosque, a nice old building with a good view of the town.

Then we came home.  It was a long day, but still enjoyable to see more of Ningxia.  And the drives were just as beautiful as last week.

Drive-by scenery at 7:30 a.m.

Drive-by scenery, through the bus window

Drive-by scenery

At ShaPoTou.  River on the left and sand beyond.

Horses and camels

Sand sliding

I saw this guy lose a bunch of papers as he slid down.  I'm watching from the chairlift.

Beautiful view at the top

Looking down and ready to slide!  After buying a ticket and waiting in line, of course.

Tourists on a sheep-skin raft

Teammate Cara posing by an excellent display of "Chinese air-conditioning"

More country scenes -- corn and sunflowers

The Grand Mosque at Tong Xin

Sunset

View from the mosque

Dusk

An Outing to Mount Xu Mi

This past weekend, the officials in charge of us planned an outing to a Buddhist mountain a couple hours away.

It was an altogether delightful chance to see some of the countryside here in Ningxia.  Enjoy the photos!

Sunflowers from the van window.  We also saw corn and goji berries growing.  The drive was the best part!

We sometimes passed caves in the mountains.  Apparently people lived in them in the past but mostly use them now for storage or animals, if they haven't been closed up altogether.

Baby sunflower with a mosque in the distance

Here is Xu Mi Mountain.  The left part has a giant carved Buddha and the part on the far right has stairs, caves, and little temples.

We walked through this pretty little valley to get across to the Buddha

There he is.  There was a museum at the site that told us about how Buddhism spread through China along the Silk Road, which went through this area somewhere.

Then we climbed up the right side.  Here's a little side trail to see Cave #15.  These small caves had small doors or windows but we couldn't go inside.

The climb and one of the little Buddha huts built into a cave.

Nearing the top

Beautiful Ningxia

Me with teammates Meggi and Larry -- the only ones on our team to go all the way up.

Our Chinese leaders all made the climb.

Meggi with Mr. Li, a leader we see every day at school, and Jack, a Chinese teacher who has been given the daunting task of taking care of the foreigners.

Time for the drive back!  Here are some goji berries drying with the goji bushes behind them.

Let's pause for a second to learn something interesting.  Several years ago, the government wanted to move Haiyuan (the town I'm in now) to a different location where there would be more water.  So they built a nice new town.  But then people didn't move there.

We drove through the new city before knowing what it was, and we couldn't believe how beautiful and wide the roads were.  There were half-finished and fully-finished-but-empty shopping centers, there were traffic lights that hadn't been turned on (and weren't needed), and everything was clean and empty.  We saw only a few vehicles.  It really seems like a ghost city, but it was never inhabited in the first place.  Very strange.

(Our Chinese friends tell us there are plans to bring in some factories and that the town will probably fill up as people come to take the factory jobs.)

Empty city hall; empty plaza

Down the main road of the new city

We called the new town "Mannequin City" because we saw a few mannequins (but no people) in some of the store windows.  Here I am impersonating a mannequin while standing in no danger in the middle of the road.. 

The drive continues.  Love that blue sky!

More sunflowers

There were lots of homes like these in the villages we passed.

That's it!  It was a fun day and I hope there's another outing in my future before I leave Haiyuan next Thursday.

A Stopover in Yinchuan

I tried to upload some photos of Haiyuan, my home for the month, but the Internet is too slow tonight.  So I'll go back a few days and treat you to a day in Yinchuan, since I already had the photos loaded.

We had thought we would go from Beijing to Yinchuan (the biggest city of the province) and immediately get on a bus to Haiyuan (the town we are teaching in, about 4 hours south).  However, on the bus we were told that we'd be staying two nights in Yinchuan.  Who knew?  Here are two nights and a day in the capital of Ningxia.

So far the local officials have given us two banquets.  Here is the first, in Yinchuan, featuring many fun dishes including these naturally purple mashed potatoes with sprinkles on top.

Raw fish, anyone?  I tried the salmon.

First night's view from my hotel: Covered market

The old Drum Tower was just a block from our hotel and each night there was a variety show there.

Xi Ta, a thousand-year-old Taoist(?) tower

Several of us climbed the zillion steps of Xi Ta.  Here is a view on the way up...

...a view from the top...

...and another tower-top view of Yinchuan

At the top, with the tiny stairwell in the foreground.

Another view from the top of the tower.

Here is the tower seen from the park at the bottom.  I loved all the birds circling around it since I see very little wildlife in China.  It looks ominous here but it was actually quite nice.

Some of my team

We visited the south gate mosque, which allows tourists

For sale at the mosque

Prayer room

There was a tiny museum at the mosque and I ran into a family from Qufu, the little town I lived in for two years way across the country.  What are the chances?

Our last meal in Yinchuan was a dumpling feast.

Dumpling assembly lines.

There you have it!  The next day we got on a bus and came down to Haiyuan.  It's been great so far... busy every day with lots of teaching.  I'll update more when I have time!