Yellow River - Facts and Details (Part 3)

Places along the Yellow River

Lanzhou (9 hours by train or 2.5 hours by air from Beijing) is the largest city on the Yellow River and one of the most polluted cities in China if not the world (See Pollution). In the old days, it was regarded as one of the gateways to the Silk Road, the last major place to change to buy provisions before heading to Turkestan and Central Asia.

Today is an industrial city from petrochemical factories and brickyard kilns trapped inside a long, narrow Yellow River valley, flanked by mountains. The air pollution is so bad there has some discussion about blasting a hole in the mountains to allow the dirty air to escape.

Lanzhou is home to about 2 million people. It was described The New Yorker as “an assemblage pf rusting machinery, slag heaps, and landfills; of chimneys, brick kilns, and belching thick smoke; of concrete tenements whose broken windows are held together with cellophane and old newspapers."

Tourist Office: Lanzhou Tourism Administration, 14-1 West Xijin Rd, 730050 Langzhou, Gansu, China, Map: Google Map. Lanzhou is accessible by air and bus and lies on the main east-west train line between Beijing and Urumqi, also the high-speed rail line.

Bingling (six hours from Lanzhou) means "thousand Buddha" in Chinese and "10,000 Buddhas” in Tibetan. Situated in Xiaoji Mountain, 20 miles southwest of Yongjing County, it is where people have been carving statues and niches into a two-kilometer stretch of steep cliffs above the surging Yellow river for more than 1000 years. There are 183 caves, 694 stone statues, 82 clay figures and 900 square meters of murals preserved here. The tallest statue is 80 feet high and the smallest is 20 centimeters. Two-thirds of the sculptures which are set up along four tiers were made over 1000 years ago. 

Yinchuan (10 hours by train or 3 hours by air from Beijing) is the most important city in Ningxia and was once the home of the mysterious Xia civilization. The main tourist sight is the Nanguan Mosque, built around 400 years ago and restored in 1981 after being damaged during the Cultural Revolution. To enter the mosque you go through a wonderful green tiled archway. The mosque itself is composed of two levels, topped by three slightly onion-shaped blue domes, the largest of which sits in the middle and is 70 feet high. The upper level contains a prayer hall with enough room for 1000 people. The bottom level houses bathing halls and residences for the imams.

Yinchuan lies on the Yellow River. The city has long depended on the river for water but these days its often little more than a narrow channel. On the northern side of Yinchuan is Haibao Pagoda, a strange, square-looking brick-and-stone structure that has 11 stories and reaches 160 feet into the air. If you feel adventurous there is a wooden ladder by which you can climb to the ninth floor. The ladder may or may not be open. Guesthouses can arrange camel rides through sand dunes and along the banks of the Yellow River.

Maps: Google Map. Getting There: Yinchuan is accessible by air and bus and lies on the main east-west train line between Beijing and Urumqi. Travel China Guide (click transportation) Travel China Guide

Shapotou (160 kilometers from Yinchuan on the main east-west train line and the Yellow River) boasts a camel riding farm and offers dune sledding in the dunes of the Tengger Desert. Web Site: Lonely Planet Lonely Planet.

Dragon's Gate is the most spectacular of a series of gorges that squeeze the languid Yellow River into a raging torrent downriver from the Shaanxi Loess Plateau . Inside this 12-mile-long gorge, the Yellow River is compressed to a width, in some places, of only 50 feet by steep cliffs that rise up on both sides of the river.

                                                               Yellow River at Hukou Falls in Shaanxi

Yan'an (230 kilometers north of Xian) is a shrine to Chinese Communism and place where many people still live in caves carved into the yellow cliffs. Located in the Shaanxi Loess Plateau , it was the termination point of the Long March. Mao, Zhou Enlai and others hid out in Yan'an from 1937 to 1947 and regrouped and eventually launched a major offensive from that transformed China into most populous communist nation in the world.

The revolutionary museum is one of the biggest tourist attractions in China, drawing more than four million visitors a year. Visitors can check out black and white photographs of the last stages of the Long March, buy Mao memorabilia and have their picture taken in front of the caves where the top Communist leaders stayed.

The post-Long-March compound at Yangjialing is near the mouth of a dry valley, just north of town. The four-cave complex where Mao lived and worked is tunneled into the side of a hillside. The canopy bed Mao is used us theatrically littered with cigarette butts, seemingly to illustrate the midnight oil spent developing strategies to fight the Japanese and the Nationalists. A photograph of the helmsman hangs over the desk where he used to work. Most of the visitors are uniformed soldiers and Communist Party members.

Yan’an now has a population of about 340,000 and has a booming economy thanks to the recent discovery of oil in the area.

Web Sites: Travel China Guide Travel China Guide Getting There: is accessible by air, bus and train from Xian. Travel China Guide (click transportation) Travel China Guide.

Mangshan Yellow River Tourist Center (32 kilometers northwest of Zhengzhou) is a 10-square-mile area known for four things: 1) a project that diverted the Yellow River to Zhengzhou; 2) the Yueshan Temple Scenic Spot, where Zijin Tower and Iron Chain Bridge are found; 3) Luotuo Bridge and the nearby Stele Forest of the Yellow River, with 570 stone pinnacles inscribed with calligraphy; and 4) the Hanba Erwangcheng Scenic spot, which contains two Shang-era archeological sites and a mountain with a wonderful view of the Yellow River.

 
Yellow River Raft

Yellow River Boat Tours can be organized from Sanmenxia dam to Ruicheng. Along this 40-mile route you will see the Mausoleum for the Yellow Emperor, the Burial Ground for Carriages and Horses, the No. 1 dam on the Yellow River, the Pagoda of Baolun Temple, Shaanxian cave dwellings and hot springs. The water is calm around Sanmenxia but rough around Luoyang.

Longmen Caves (12 kilometers south of Luoyang) stretch for 1½ kilometers along a 100-foot-high cliffside on the west bank of Yellow River. Designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and considered one of the three great treasure houses of grotto art in China, the Buddhist caves features more than 2,345 caves and grotto niches, 43 pagodas, 3,600 tablets and 100,000 statues built over a 400 year period between A.D. 493 and 960.

The tallest is 50 feet tall and the smallest is only two centimeters. The best are comparable to the finest sculptures in the world. Others look like something a schoolchild could make.

Binyang Cave is the main cave in the group. Nearby is Thousand Buddha Cave. Fengxiansi Cave contains the largest group of images as well as some of the most expressive and expertly carved ones. Here, a 50-foot-tall Buddha stands alongside a Heavenly King crushing a demon and a 30-foot Lishi guardian with rippling muscles and fierce expressions---considered by some scholars to be finest sculptures in China. Many of the caves are filled with dripping water tainted by acid rain from produced by the nearby industrial city of Luoyang. UNESCO World Heritage Site Map: UNESCO Also try the UNESCO World Heritage Site Web site World Heritage Site