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We stayed in Lanzhou for nearly two weeks mainly at Lanzhou University Graduate campus for about 2 weeks. The region is incredibly dry with a very large city. In the urban area there are about 10 million people but in the whole city is nearly 300 million. It is an important industrial region of the country.

LANZHOU UNIVERSITY Campus was situated right in the middle of the city. It was nothing all that special but they kept it very clean and had some nice squares and sidewalks. They had a ton of basketball courts, a couple dirt fenced areas where kids played soccer and badmitton and 4 clay tennis courts. There were also concrete ping pong tables in various places on the campus.

The CITY was similar to Philadelphia or New York but kept up alot better. There are always women sweeping the streets and people taking your bottles to return for money. Bikes outnumber cars and there are special lanes for the bikers as well as bus and drop off lanes. They follow like no legal driving laws there which is pretty crazy. Their # 1 rule is pretty much whoever is there first has the right of way.

Lanzhou is surrounded by many RURAL AREAS where there would be small fields of vegetables, grass and flowers. Again since it is so dry there they cannot grow all that much.

The YELLOW RIVER runs through the city and has the color because of yellow dust everywhere. It runs pretty quickly and has a couple of main bridges that run across it. The picture with the statues in the backround I think is based on the story of Buddhism coming to China from India across the Silk Road

We took a taxi and then a ski lift up LANZHOU MOUNTAIN and saw a series of structures and temples. There was a wonderful view of the whole city on one side of the mountain and fields of wheat on the other.

We went to a secluded BUDDHIST MOUNTAIN with many beautifully painted gazebos and tons of temples. Near the top there were spectacular views of the green mountains. There were vendors everywhere trying to sell you crap and games right next to temples of their gods. The bottom picture is of Dr. Sun and John shooting BB guns at balloons.

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