Silk Road: Jiuquan Park

General Huo Qubing who celebrated his victory using spring water here

An interesting stop we went to is Jiuquan Park in Gansu province, which has a beautiful lotus pond, shady covered walkways and another pond with white swans.

This spring water doesn't freeze during the wintertime

The highlight is a square well that has spring water in it. The story goes a young general named Huo Qubing who led his troops to a victory against the nomadic Xiongnu.

To celebrate, Huo only had some Chinese wine, but not enough for hundreds of soldiers. So he poured a vat of the liquor into this spring water, which was enough to quench the thirst of his army.

Beautiful lotus flowers still in bloom in the lily pond

What's interesting about this spring water is that it's still bubbling to the surface and even in the wintertime it never freezes. The water is very clear, but no we didn't drink it -- there were many coins that had been thrown in there.

Silk Road: Jiayuguan and the Great Wall

Visiting Jiayuguan, the western outpost of the Great Wall

Jiayuguan was the last part of the Great Wall before heading towards Central Asia. It was built during the Ming Dynasty with stones, bricks and rammed earth, those these days it's been fixed up for tourists.

Tourists sampling some Peking opera at Jiayuguan

It was here that people had to have passports if they wanted to travel beyond the Great Wall along the Silk Road. The passport was a document in calligraphy that had their name and the emperor's seal on it. Outside of the Great Wall were the nomads called Xiongnu, Mongolians and Tibetans, basically barbarians.

Today's tourism officials have tried to spiff up Jiayuguan by making tourists feel like they are going back in time. There are "guards" standing by the gates and later on they parade around a "prisoner" in a wooden shackle before they start showing off some amateur martial arts routines.

Around the corner up on a high but small stage are Peking opera performers in costume complete with musicians. Did the audience really have to crane their necks to see the show back in the day? Just wondering.

One tourist giving his best drumming performance

There were also some odd-ball amusements -- literally. Our tour guide was so excited to shoot tennis balls from a mini cannon at a target that he did it twice, for 20 kuai for each round.

One of our fellow travelers paid 10 kuai to be able to hit a massive drum 10 times. However, instead of just banging the drum, he did a little dance routine as well, much to the amusement of local visitors.

Tourists could also purchase the "passport", where your name would be written in calligraphy and stamped with the Imperial seal. Strangely not many interested in getting the "modern antique" document.

People needed to carry passports to go beyond this pass

After our visit, we headed to a nearby part of the Great Wall, called The Overhanging Wall. It's called that because it looks like it is clinging onto the cliff. It also apparently has the nickname "Western Badaling" because it looks similar to the popular part of the wall near Beijing.

Our tour guide challenged us to climb up to the top, so five of us women took it on with aplomb. It took around 20 minutes to get up, and climbed over 400 steps. My aunt and I were the first to go, and it wasn't too difficult a climb, just that it got steeper and we stopped periodically to catch our breath.

When we almost got to the top, I heard a small boy's voice shout, "Ayi, jia you!"

I climbed the Overhanging Wall!

I looked up to see a boy, about five years old looking down at us and smiling with three other male adults. He kept shouting, "Ayi jia you!" "Auntie, add oil [keep going!] and I thanked him for the encouragement.

I regret not taking a picture of him before he scampered off again to the next section of the wall. We soaked up the amazing view below, celebrated our summit with three others before making it down again. Now I can say I've visited four parts of the Great Wall -- Badaling, Mutianyu, Simatai all near Beijing, and now the Overhanging Wall in Gansu province!

Silk Road: Zhangye Danxia Geological Park

Minerals and sandstone helped create these colourful rock formations

One of the highlights of the Silk Road tour was visiting Zhangye Danxia Geopark. It took a while to get there, and once we arrived, we had to board the park's own buses to tour around the place in a kind of hop on, hop off style to four different spots.

Located in the county of Zhangye, in the foothills of the Qilian mountains, the park covers 322 square kilometres and it's very impressive -- the hill formations look "rainbow" coloured, with layers of colours formed due to deposits of sandstone and other minerals over a 24 million year period.

Each spot in the geopark looked amazing

And the colours and the rock formations really are cool -- it's kind of like the Chinese version of the Grand Canyon, but with brightly coloured hills in layers of red, orange, white, green that seem to go on and on.

Each location seemed more amazing than the one before, providing dramatic backdrops for people interested in selfies and group pictures. It was quite hot that day, not scorching, but enough to warrant a hat and some sunscreen.

For the most part people were respectful of the environment, though a few did go out of bounds to get what they felt was a better shot. Our tour guide quickly reprimanded them and they complied. One more step and they could have fallen down the hill...

Some areas allowed visitors to have a good overview

There was a sign that said no aerial cameras, probably meaning drones, but there were lots of selfie sticks...

We were so lucky to come just before Golden Week so there weren't that many tourists. And since the park is so spread out, there was lots of room to move around freely and take good shots. Somehow I feel like the pictures I took didn't even capture this awe-inspiring place properly...

Silk Road: White Pagoda Temple

A bronze statue of Tibetan Lama Sagya Pandit with a reconstructed temple

North of Lanzhou is the White Pagoda Temple, a massive white stupa set against the blue sky and roses. It was built in honour of a Tibetan Lama, Sagya Pandit Gonggar Gyamcan, who came here for talks with Mongol prince Gotan, about Tibetan submission to the Mongols.

The ruins of the original temple with an offering urn

This also led to the spread of Tibetan Buddhism to Mongolia, as Sagya Pandit taught for five years until his death in 1251. He was buried here.

The original temple was destroyed and rebuilt a few times before its current incarnation, a large white bulbous stupa. But after you walk past it, you can see the ruins of the original temple which are even more interesting.

It looks like a pile of old bricks that only amount to part of the base of the temple, but they seem to have more meaning than a shiny bronze statue of the Lama completed in 2012.

A very old gate within the Confucian Temple

Our Tibetan guide was keen to pay his respects here, circling both the new and old temple, saying prayers and bowing three times.

We also visited the Confucius Temple in Wuwei that was built during the Ming Dynasty in 1439 on instruction from the reigning emperor at the time. It took two years to build it, but various extensions were added on later.

A statue of Confucius

Wandering around here is nice -- there's hardly anyone else around and lots of architectural details to photograph. One wonders though if it still has as much significance today as it did centuries ago...