Easter Letter to my Family from Northwest China

Bren, Bern, Dad, Mom,

Happy Easter!

The trip is going well. I was sick for the first few days, but am back on track now. On Tuesday, I did not want to leave Shanghai because of stomach cramps and a rash. But I was hoping I'd get better and it worked out. We flew to Xi'an and spent two days there. Aside from seeing the Terra Cotta Warriors, which were amazing, I barely left the hotel room because the cramps turned into diarrhea. The only good thing about this was it distracted me from the rash. I took Cipro and watched three movies in the hotel room - Casino Royale, In the Valley of Elah, and Lord of War.

On Thursday, we flew from Xi'an to Lanzhou (one hour). Xi'an is in the middle of the country, Lanzhou is further west. On Thursday night, we checked out a couple local restaurants. The locals stare at us a lot more than in Shanghai. Pretty much every time we're in public, people blatantly stare, like their entire head follows where we go. Or today, we were walking down a back alley and this guy was nodding to his buddies that we were coming. They also get a much bigger kick when you speak Chinese to them. Part of it is because they don't expect it and part of it probably because it sounds ridiculous, like a Chinese person speaking English after four months.

Friday, we checked out the Huang He (Yellow River), one of the biggest rivers in China and it knifes through Lanzhou. It is peanut butter-colored and made me miss the Schuylkill. We also rode a cable car across it and up the side of a mountain. Pretty cool. Aside from that, there isn't much to do in Lanzhou, (it's an average town by Chinese standards with about 3 million residents), so we left that night on a 14 hour train ride northwest to Dunhuang. We booked "soft sleeper" seats (four beds in a room) and got lucky as we had no roommates. The trip went by very fast - we watched the scenery, played cards and read for the first four hours. Then popped Advil PM and the next thing I knew we were in Dunhuang (Saturday am).

In the morning, we saw ancient Buddhist artwork, which has been stored in caves alongside a mountain since it was made 1,400 years ago. It was incredible, the detail of the wall paintings and the colors of the various buddhas, one which was 75 feet tall! Couldn't take pics, but it didn't bother me much.

Last night (Saturday pm), we took the train from Dunhuang to Jiayuguan, about a 4-hour trip. We played Rummy along the way and taught two train conductors how to play. They were very entertained and one played a couple rounds with us. Good times. Today, we checked out a section of the Great Wall and Jiayuguan fort, which is only 700 years old and was used to guard the city back in the day.