I took an early morning bus to Jiayuguan. The route from Dunhuang to Jiayuguan is more or less through the Gobi Desert and the landscape remained bleak and dusty the whole way. A lot of Xinjiang also has this type of landscape so it was hardly anything new, but I had to pity the people getting on and off at the small roadside villages we passed. Living in this part of China would be hell.

I arrived at Jiayuguan around midday and found a hotel. I took a walk around town, arranged a taxi for the following day, and had dropped into a Manchurian restaurant where I had Manchurian style dumplings and herb infused baijiu. I had been meaning to have beer but a drunk group of Chinese guys leaving the restaurant as I ordered persuaded me to try the baijiu, which was apparently made in Manchuria by relatives of the restaurant boss. It tasted a little more interesting than most baijiu, but was still very rough stuff. Being infused with herbs it was reddish rather than clear so maybe it no longer qualified as baijiu (白酒 - literally ‘white alcohol’). The fact that it was about 50% alcohol by volume and served hot made it especially hard going.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 30th, 2007 at 11:43 pm and is filed under China, Gansu, baijiu (chinese spirits). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.