Today has been all about transport. We got the bus to Wuwei to find a hotel that would store our extra baggage while we walk the stretch Yong Chang-Wuwei. The three hour trip was very pleasant. For once, the driver drove safely and kept to below 100 km/h or 55 mph on the speedometer, but by our judgement the small bus went at about 20 km/h less.
Jon did a great job and after five attempts found a hotel that had a storage service and seemed trustworthy.
We had dinner just down the road from the hotel, and were served what I think was the best Gong Bao Ji Ding course ever. This is Jon’s favourite chinese meal and I’m slowly catching on.
Then we took a bus back to Yong Chang. It was close to six o’clock by the time we got here. Rather than spending the late hours of the day looking for a taxi and finding our last walking position, we had another good meal here and will set off again tomorrow.
After dinner, I went to an Internet Café and had two nice surprises. First, they have a lot of cool games on the PC’s here. I tested Counter Strike, but later - perhaps in Wuwei - I’m going to see if they have Command and Conquer which is a big time favourite. Perhaps I can hook up with a gaming mate in Norway 
The other surprise was that two guys came over and introduced themselves and said they wanted to be friends. At this time it was getting late, so I told them we would be on our way tomorrow morning. I showed them the Chinese version of this site and had a talk with them. Their English was better than normal, so we managed to keep a conversation going in Chinenglish. Probably they speak English when they are playing online games.
Mental note: Visit Internet Café if I get desparately lonely after Jon has left China…
Brother Jon
On the return leg on the bus, from WuWei, back to YongChang, I sat next to a retired “security guard”/national service man. He said he was familiar with the area north of YongChang where we will be walking tomorrow. What was most interesting was that he had met an elderly man in the area. The old man mentioned a legend about Roman soldiers passing by here in times gone by. Credible? Don’t know.
On further investigation, this Wikipedia link sheds more light on the supposed Roman connection:
Entries (RSS)