Special food: night market in Zhengning Road, Lanzhou, stewed sheep's head, beef noodles, and hand-grabbed sheep.
Lanzhou was chosen as the starting point of this trip. There is an overnight train to Zhangye in Lanzhou, and you can go to Zhangye on Saturday morning. In summer in northwest China, the sunshine is long and the sunset is late, so Saturday can make full use of the whole day.
Fly to Lanzhou on Friday and arrive at Lanzhou airport at 6 pm. There is a city railway leading to the urban area in the arrival hall of Lanzhou Airport. You can buy tickets in advance on the railway website. Please remember that the name of the station is Nakagawa Airport. You can't search by other names.
The train from Lanzhou to Zhangye leaves on 10 in the afternoon, which means I have a complete dinner time. After arriving at Lanzhou Station, I took a taxi and went straight to Zhengning Road Night Market.
Visiting Zhengning Road Night Market is a reserved program in Lanzhou. This is the oldest night market in Lanzhou. The stewed sheep's head, mutton offal soup and mutton skewers here smell delicious.
Braised sheep's head combines all the essence of a sheep and all the tastes of eating a sheep: tender, soft, smooth, crisp and juicy.
There are rules for eating sheep's head: the first step is to eat the sheep's eyes that explode juice. The sheep's eye is the most delicious part of the sheep's head. Gently pull out the sheep's eyes and put them directly in your mouth. Smooth sheep eye muscles and mutton soup in the eyes are produced in the mouth, which is rich in taste and very delicious. The second step is to break the sheep skull by hand, and the soft sheep brain flower appears in front of you. Dip the brain flower in bright red material, send it into your mouth, and enjoy the feeling that the brain flower quivers slightly in your mouth. There is also a kind of sheep noodles, which can eat sheep's head. Sheep skin is thick, rich in collagen, and the meat is tender and soft. Finally, eat sheep's ears and sheep's ladders, which are very crisp. Unfortunately, due to folk reasons, some stalls don't sell beer.
After eating, I went back to Lanzhou Station, just in time for K966 1 ordinary express in Lanzhou-Zhangye. Of all the modes of travel and transportation, I think the green leather overnight train in the west is the most interesting. I remember that a train bound for the west used to take a week, which was very travel-like.
In the night market, I wrapped two roast fat sheep loins and five oversized roast mutton. Carrying two cans of Yellow River beer with you in the small supermarket at the station is enough to comfort the dusty night in the clang of the train.
The train arrived in Zhangye at 4: 45 in the morning. I reserved a car in advance and asked the driver to take it to the railway station. Drive all the way south from Zhangye Railway Station and arrive at the border ferry at sunrise. Rape flowers are in full bloom.
Cross the border ferry and enter Qinghai from Gansu. In front of us is Qilian Mountain. The main peak of Qilian Mountain is 4000-6000 meters above sea level, and it stretches nearly 1000 kilometers from east to west. The vertical difference of Qilian landscape is dizzying. From snow-capped peaks to green basins and valleys, the scenery and climate fluctuate with the elevation, and there can be four seasons in a day.
Qilian Grassland was selected as one of the six most beautiful grasslands in China. In July, Qilian Grassland went to bloom and bloom, which is the best time of the year. Looking around, the sky is gray, the fields are vast, and cattle and sheep are everywhere. Herdsmen here like to spray different colors on sheep as a distinction. Sheep of different colors graze on the green grassland, just like an impressionist work.
Come to Menyuan at ten o'clock in the morning. Menyuan is backed by Qilian Mountain, and under the continuous snow-capped mountains, there is the largest rape field in the world. In mid-July, it was the time for bloom, a rapeseed from Menyuan. On the vast land, there are patches of yellow-green rape flowers and green wheat fields. Smile at the sea of flowers.
During the flower season, the local people will enclose some areas as scenic spots to collect tickets, and the price is higher. The advantage of self-driving compared with tourist bus is that the self-driving vehicle itself is a mobile viewing platform, free and convenient. The world is very big, and rape blossoms are brilliant.
The return trip starts at 1: 30 pm, because there is another important node in the afternoon: colorful Danxia in Zhangye. Qilian Mountain blocked the warm and humid ocean monsoon, making Hexi Corridor a criss-crossing area of oasis and desert. Gobi, desert, Danxia and Ya Dan are typical landforms here.
One month after summer, the solstice is the latest sunset time in Zhangye. Check before you go out. The sunset time is 20: 40 that day. The sunset in the northwest is late, which is good news for travelers. One day's trip can be fun for two days: from Zhangye to Menyuan, and then from Menyuan to colorful Danxia.
The time to arrive at colorful Danxia in Zhangye is 6 pm. It rained heavily in Zhangye early this morning, and it was clear in Wan Li in the afternoon. These are two important conditions for Zhangye Danxia to shine brilliantly. You know, in a year, there are only a handful of days when it rains and it is sunny. Thank God for the food.
The splendor of colorful Danxia begins at dusk. At this time, the sun is not as enthusiastic as at noon, and the color temperature is getting warmer. The weather in Xu Lai is no longer sultry and cool. To tell the truth, if you come too early, the strong sunshine will make Danxia white and ugly.
Colorful Danxia has five observation platforms, each with its own characteristics. It is hard to say which one is better. Just follow the route of sightseeing bus, from one observation deck to another, just go forward, and don't struggle.
To tell the truth, the colorful Danxia after the rain is really beautiful in the sunset. Stay near colorful Danxia at night. Dinner is Zhang Ye's hand-grabbed mutton beef noodles. It is an irrefutable truth that beef and mutton pasta tastes better as it goes west.
The next morning, I rushed to the ice ditch near colorful Danxia to prepare for sunrise. As a result, the scenic spot didn't open until eight o'clock, so I missed it. It turns out that if you want to shoot the sunrise in Danxia, you need to buy tickets online in advance and make an appointment for the admission time online. It seems that you have to do your homework more carefully before you go out.
Come out from the ice ditch Danxia and go straight to the Great Buddha Temple in Zhangye City. The Zhangye Buddha Temple, built in Xixia, has the largest indoor reclining Buddha in China. The Great Buddha Hall, the Sutra Hall and the Maitreya Pagoda of the Great Buddha Temple are all ancient cultural relics, and now they have all become museums. The treasure of the town temple, the reclining Buddha, is located in the Great Buddha Hall, and its workmanship is very fine. Because it is indoors, the color is quite well preserved and it is a peerless treasure. Compared with the excitement of colorful Danxia, this treasure place seems to be left out in the cold, with few tourists, which makes people feel cool. Well, it's clean here.
On the way to Horseshoe Temple by car, we bypass Zhenyuan Building in Zhangye City. Zhenyuan Building is the largest bell and drum tower in Hexi Corridor.
At that time, Zhang Ye was like a giant hand, stretching his arms along the Hexi Corridor and gripping the throat of the northwest. This is the origin of the territory of a big country. Standing here, I seem to see the golden horse of that year. In those days, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty cut the western regions and opened the Silk Road on land, which set up a big pattern of China's integration with the world.
Hexi Corridor is the intersection of farming civilization and nomadic civilization in China. Nomads covet the prosperity of the Central Plains and become the fuse of conflict. The two sides clashed constantly, loved each other and killed each other, and finally merged into one, which led to national unity.
Horseshoe Temple is named after the legend that Tianma drinks water here and leaves hoofprint on the stone. This hoofprint has become the treasure of horseshoe temple, which can be visited and sacrificed by people. Horseshoe Temple was originally a Buddhist temple in Han Dynasty, and later it gradually became a Tibetan Buddhist temple.
Besides horseshoe prints, the most famous horseshoe temple is the 33-day Grottoes. These caves were dug in a huge monolithic mountain, and even the connecting stairs were dug in the mountain. What you see outside is a castle suspended in the air, which is simply wonderful. Humans are really great. They have created miracles that ordinary people can't understand for their beliefs.
Along the Hexi Corridor, there are dozens of Buddhist grottoes besides Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes and Tianshui Maijishan Grottoes. These grottoes are large in scale, exquisite in craftsmanship and devout in faith, which confirms the spread process of Buddhism from northwest to southeast along the Silk Road, first taking root in the western regions and then blossoming and bearing fruit in the mainland. Ji Xianlin, a master of Chinese studies, commented: "There are only four cultural systems with a long history, vast territory, self-contained system and far-reaching influence in the world: China, Indian, Greek and Islamic, and there is no fifth; There is only one place where these four cultural systems meet, that is, Hexi Corridor in China and Xinjiang, and there is no second one. "
The return flight takes off at five o'clock in the afternoon, flying from Zhangye to Xi 'an, and transferring from Xi 'an to go home. This is a weekend trip to Wan Li.
# Fly with your heart on weekends # # #
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