niniane

10/8 – Lanzhou

We arrived in Lanzhou almost perfectly on time (Chinese trains are awesome) and found a cab driver somehow. (I was amazed at how literally every cab had someone booked. How does this happen?) As we drove over to the hotel, he was quite fascinated in where we were from, what we were doing (in Mandarin, of course), etc. I think this was in large part as Lanzhou isn't exactly a tourist mecca, so it was exceedingly peculiar for a bunch of white people to be there. (Especially, I think, a white woman who speaks any Chinese at all – although to be fair, I can more easily find white people who speak Chinese than white people who don't speak Chinese off in the hinterlands. The farther out you go in China, the more likely it is that foreign tourists speak at least *some* Mandarin as it becomes increasingly necessary.)