The combination of uncertainty about the boat situation and laziness on my part meant I didn’t bother to get up early and try and visit Binglingsi. Instead I just relaxed around town. I went out for some breakfast, had my shoes shined, and bought some breakfast buns for the shoe shine girl. We chatted a little as she was shining my shoes. She was working on Dingxi Rd. and said she was from Dingxi herself. She told me that if you followed Dingxi Rd. to the very end you would get to Dingxi. Back at the hotel I checked on a map found that Dingxi Rd. ended after a few blocks. Either she was living in a very constrained little world or had been joking.

Around noon I visited the bus station to try and buy a ticket to Xiahe, the location of the largest Tibetan monastery outside of Tibet itself, and the second most important Tibetan Buddhist center in the world. Apparently the only bus left at 7am and it wasn’t possible to buy tickets in advance, so I would just have to come back early the next day.

I messed about doing some work and then spent the evening reading in a branch of the Shangdao Coffee chain. For dinner I had a Lanzhou style ‘shou zhua’ (手抓) meal. ‘Shou zhua’ literally means ‘hand grab’, and in the context of a restaurant indicates foods you eat with your hands rather than with chopsticks. ‘Shou zhua’ restaurants are all over Lanzhou and seem to be either the traditional local specialty or a recent local craze. The most popular item was chunks of lamb on the bone. The meat was tender but there was no seasoning besides five spice powder and salt. It was nothing special, but good to try I suppose.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 1st, 2007 at 8:51 pm and is filed under China, Gansu, Tibet. 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.