Our itinerary for today was to drive from Ninxia to Xinin 西寧, a distance of 360 kilometers (224 miles). We would stop at several sightseeing spots in Ninxia and Lanzhou City 蘭州市. Our first stop for today was the Laohua Mosque 清真老華寺, a major Islamic institution in Ninxia. The mosque has been rebuilt and relocated many times since its establishment 600 years ago. It was even completely decimated by the Red Guards during Communist China’s Cultural Revolution. Today the mosque serves as the civic center for religious, cultural, social, and community activities.
The main prayer hall was wrapped around by tall columns. On the rooftop, a big dome sat in the center and a small tower at each corner.
(Click on each picture to get the full-size view. Some pictures were taken by Ben, Peter, and others without explicit attribution.)
The fountain in the courtyard in front of the prayer hall provided water for the ablutions (ritual cleansing) done before prayer. This water fountain was only symbolic because a large restroom with long rows of faucets for the ablutions was on the side of the prayer hall.
The entry gate, seen from the courtyard.
The mosque’s soaring minarets (towers) were in competition for the airspace with the neighboring high-rises.
Streets in Ninxia were wide and clean. A meat delivery was made at a butcher shop while we walked by. The Islamic shape of windows on the second floor of these stores mimicked the shape of the entry gate at the mosque
Our second sightseeing spot was an ancient Islamic neighborhood in Ninxia, called Eight Mosques and Thirteen Alleys 八坊十三巷. It’s a neighborhood established many millenniums ago. It's surrounded by eight Islamic mosques and with thirteen crisscrossing alleys. The inhabitants have historically been all Muslims. The recent redevelopment has turned an old neighborhood into a major tourist attraction.
Walls along many alleys were adorned with intricate bronze friezes.
Many life-size bronze statues were placed on the streets.
Woman meeting men – an amicable encounter of the opposite kinds.
Man meeting men – an awkward encounter of the same kind.
One of the eight mosques surrounding the neighborhood.
Other than the tourists, the pedestrians on the streets were mostly Muslims.
Our next stop was Lanzhou City, the capital city of Gansu Province. The city has been around for more than 2000 years. It was a major stop along the ancient Silk Road. Although it is rich in history, my very limited impression of the city is that it allegedly has the best hand-pull noodle in China. Its Lanzhou Ramen 蘭州拉麵 is a must-eat when visiting the city. We had our lunch at a Chinese restaurant next door to a ramen shop. The lunch menu in the restaurant included regular Chinese dishes. We elected to order Lanzhou Ramen from the next door noodle shop as extra items. The noodle al dente, the soup flavorful, it’s as good as a ramen should be. We were satisfied.
After lunch, we visited the Gansu Provincial Museum. (picture copied from the web).
Since Lanzhou was a major stop on the ancient Silk Road, adventuresome merchants and war heroes left numerous marks and impressions in the city. Many relics of stories and legends from those eras were on display in the museum.
Our next stop was the Waterwheel Museum, a Lanzhou municipal park along a river bank. Waterwheels of various sizes and shapes were cute and interesting.
Suddenly a parade of ladies in Chipao 旗袍 appeared out of nowhere and we couldn’t be more surprised and pleased. It turned out that a group of Chipao aficionados was on a photo shoot for a local print media.
Chipao, known as cheongsam in the West, is a tight-fitting one-piece Chinese dress for women. Its current form was created in the 1920s in Shanghai and was popular during the Nationalist China era. The dress was forbidden by Communist China for decades. Only in recent years has the ban been lifted. It’s surprising to see that after only a short period of liberation the dress has become a fashionable item in China. The late Madam Chiang Kai-shek and the wife of the current leader in China often wore Chipao for official appearances, with a much lower sidecut than the pictures shown below.
By nightfall, we finally reached our bus ride destination, Xining. Our hotel for tonight, San Want Hotel 神旺大酒店, is owned by a giant Taiwanese conglomerate. As such, I was expecting a hotel with immaculate facility and impeccable service. Instead, I found peeling paint on doors at various locations inside the hotel. When something lost its luster, there is a Taiwanese saying, “Falling Paint” 落漆, often used to describe the sad situation. It is an apt description of the hotel, figuratively. This is a picture of the hotel at night, taken while we walked back to our hotel after dinner.
This map shows the third and final day of our three days bus ride. We started from point A (Linxia), visited point B (Lanzhou), and arrived at our final destination point C (Xining). Total distance was 360 kilometers (224 miles).
When we arrived at Ninxia last night, we had a wonderful dinner at an Islamic restaurant. One of the memorable dishes was a plate of boiled lamb meat with garlic and chili paste as the condiments. The lamb dish turned out to be a renowned local delicacy, called Linxia Hand Grab 臨夏手抓. Grabbing the lamb meat by hand used to be the proper way of consuming the dish, and garlic plus chili were the only correct ingredients to add flavor to the meat. There’s even a local saying emphasizing the perfect combination of meat and garlic: Eating meat without garlic, the food only gets half tasty. 吃肉不吃蒜 味道少一半. Here is a picture of this delightful dish, copied from the web.
Ninxia Hand Grab, a simple yet delicious dish of lamb,
The city's streets, mosques, and neighborhoods are flavored with Islamic scents.
And who can forget the al dente hand-pulled Lanzhou Ramen?
Equally unforgettable were the suave Chipao ladies parading a unique fashion trend.
Three days of bus ride have made our butts and spines well-conditioned and trained,
Ready to hop on the sleeper train bound for Tibet, our trip’s main destination.
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