Urban Crawl 2

Out Of The Box

Out of the shoebox that is. The next morning I left my tiny apartment bedroom early, to put Zhou at ease. She was grateful, and overwhelmingly apologetic.

I headed to China Railway Express, the freight division of China Railways, and organised for my bike and almost all of my gear to be transported up to Lanzhou.

They went through everything with a fine-toothed comb, but it was all good.

The issue with my bottle of unleaded petrol was resolved with a minimum of fuss. The receptionist just poured it into a bottle, and said she'd use it in her own motorbike. Not rocket science is it.

Bewdy, 'fraid of the freight. It'd been a long time since she was last on a train - a relatively short trip in south Vietnam over nine months ago.

Small fish market

With mudskippers

Old apartment blocks

Dwarfed by the new

Fan dance rehearsal

Steam buns, baozi, so delicious

Dog grooming place

So many chilled walkways around

The occasional Chinese model popped up on the screen. Better than none, I guess.

Fake flower power

Spiralling out of control

Cheap and delicious spicy noodle salad

After I finished the young woman brought me this jelly tea for free. Sweetie.

"Welcome. I hope I can be your niche preference. Hiding joy and being proud when showing off."

Me trying to make my own pagoda shape

A frequent roadside snack of mine. All of them actually.

Water chestnuts, called that because the plants grow in water.

Mushroom mania

Portal to the portal

Pounding rice dough to make delicious sweets. The Japanese make mochi like this too.

I found a real bakery.

With real fruit and nut bread. Absolutely divine. I ate the whole loaf in one sitting.

Rare art deco building

Hippy art, didn't expect that

Did expect this.

The evolution of architecture

Just cos you say it doesn't mean it's true.

The crystally orange Crystal Orange Hotel

There's an anime festival coming up. Anime is massive in China, with an estimated 400m consumers of assorted anime products here.

Straight down the line

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Go to Part 3