Tongjia Guesthouse
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

What I love about this sign is how it shows pheasants and grouse or

some kind of bird that I just don’t imagine really hangs out here on

the edge of the desert, but the proprietors were clearly going for a

farm and country feel. Indeed this is a lovely little guesthouse

(don’t get excited and think spa in the desert – I won’t go into the

sanitary details, but assume Chinese small town standard) with

orchards and gardens from which they make their food, and where guests

are welcome to pick grapes or apples for snacking. The Yurt in the

next shot is also theirs – something new this season, that they say

has been very popular for visitors.

Tongjia Guesthouse
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

What I love about this sign is how it shows pheasants and grouse or

some kind of bird that I just don’t imagine really hangs out here on

the edge of the desert, but the proprietors were clearly going for a

farm and country feel. Indeed this is a lovely little guesthouse

(don’t get excited and think spa in the desert – I won’t go into the

sanitary details, but assume Chinese small town standard) with

orchards and gardens from which they make their food, and where guests

are welcome to pick grapes or apples for snacking. The Yurt in the

next shot is also theirs – something new this season, that they say

has been very popular for visitors.

Landscape from the Train
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

The train ride from Kongtong Shan into Ningxia was lovely – small

agricultural valleys and enough railway tunnels going through the

mountains I lost count. A few times I grabbed my camera to capture a

passing landscape that struck me. Also, after the two kids one seat

over kept peeking over the top of their seat to see what I was doing,

I decided to start engaging them…first by taking their picture, then

by letting them take my picture, pictures of each other and/or of me

with them. I’m giving you a few of these. They’re classmates and had

just been happy to see each other on the train. By the way, don’t

think this is a typical hard seat train: it was morning, and the train

filled up very fast so that the last five hours or so were spent quite

crowded, with folks in the aisles.

Then you’ll see shots of the southern Ningxia agricultural landscape

as seen from the train. Lovely, sparsely populated, towns built into

dry hillsides, and so on.

Kongtong Shan
Originally uploaded by paulbrockmann.

Kongtong Shan: sacred Daoist mountain in southeastern Gansu province.

More or less the middle of nowhere, socio-economically speaking, but

some lovely surroundings. The nearest town is depressingly pre-1991

Soviet zone as concerns architecture and air pollution, but mercifully

the people are that delightful contemporary Chinese mix of open and

curious and nosy and fun and many other things mixed in.

Having already climbed more than a thousand steps (I stopped counting

and the steps kept going for a VERY long time), I took a moment to

capture this temple, seemingly lost in the clouds high above me. In

the next set of shots after this, you’ll see both this temple from

closer up (pay attention to the foot bridge at the bottom of the shot,

which perilously spans a terrifyingly steep and deep gorge), and a

view of the path itself as seen from above – look for the white line

winding through the trees.