Have you heard the saying, “April showers bring May flowers”? Well, here in China’s northwest, the saying would be more accurately altered to “March sandstorms bring April flowers.” Some days, the skies are grey with dust blown in from the Gobi Desert and you can barely see the skyscrapers outside your window. But other days, you can enjoy strolling through town taking in the fragrance of the flowered trees in bloom. This is our first spring in China, and we are thoroughly enjoying our time exploring the city.
Lanzhou University
The campus is gorgeous in spring time. Various kinds of flowered trees, bushes and tulips drape the campus grounds. Our kids love playing by the pond, with its koi fish and tadpoles swimming about.
White Pagoda Mountain Park
Just past the famous Zhong Shan Pedestrian Bridge along the Yellow River, this is a favorite place for the locals to visit. The trees provide ample shade and you can enjoy beautiful views of the river and the city. Today, the river is green, not yellow because the water is calm and there are not strong enough currents to shake up the sediment underneath.
Five Springs Mountain Park and Lan Mountain
This is another popular spot of the locals to enjoy a weekend hike with the family. At the base of the Five Springs (Wu Quan) Mountain, kids enjoy amusement park rides and playing with the tadpoles in the spring water flowing down the mountain. There are also many vendors selling local delicacies and trinkets. You can either hike up the mountain or take a chair lift. The path is well paved and we enjoy trying to spot different buildings around the city that we are familiar with.
Shi Chuan Pear Orchard
This past weekend, some friends took us to an ancient pear orchard just outside of town. It was so peaceful and relaxing. There are many private gardens where owners set up large tables to offer tea and meals to visitors. Some have bouncy castles, swings or a trampoline for kids to play on. You can literally stay there a whole day if you like and only have to pay for the reasonably priced meal and tea. The trees around us were mostly around 300 years old, but there were older ones as well. Our friend said they could get to around 800 years old. Pears were originally cultivated in China and there is a rich history of pear cultivation along the Yellow River. The dry climate of Gansu province is ideal for growing many things, including pears, apples and peaches.
Most people think there is nothing special about this place besides beef noodle soup. After living here for a year, we beg to differ. The people are friendly and easy going, there are so many wonderful local delicacies and produce to enjoy, the Yellow River and mountains are fun to explore, and the scent of spring blossoms in the air is such a treat.
One thing that has really touched our hearts since moving to China since last summer is the warmth we’ve been shown by my husband’s new colleagues and other locals that we have met. We have moved many times but never have we been so warmly received and felt such a genuine interest for friendship as we have received since moving to Lanzhou.
During the pandemic, friends reached out to us regularly to check up on us and when we got sick, made sure we had medicine and sent us food to help with our bad coughs. Now that life has normalized and we are able to enjoy more of the city, one colleague reached out to us and invited us to join his family on a ski trip. We had a blast!
Our friend purchased a package deal that included the shuttle ride to and from the resort, gloves, rentals (skis/snowboard and ski pants/suits), ski lifts, snow tubing, and lunch. The total cost was around 150 RMB per person ($30 CAD or $22 USD). Helmet rentals were only 30 RMB extra ($6 CAD, $4.40 USD) and required if you go on the steeper slopes.
Shuttle to ski resort
We got on the bus at 8:30am, departed at about 9:00am and made it to the ski resort within an hour. This resort was the furthest of the 4 local ski resorts. There was a bigger one close by which we are interested to check out another time, but an hour bus ride was not too bad.
Check in
When we arrived, we checked in, paid 100 RMB rental deposit per person, and received plastic cards that served as both our locker keys and rental passes. The lockers were full sized and ample space to fit all the snacks and extra clothes and other supplies that we brought. You could choose to get either a snowsuit or a pair of snow pants. You could choose either ski or snowboard rental. If you wanted to switch some time during the day, I think that it would be totally fine. Everything from check in to rentals went smoothly and we were pleased how organized everything was and that there was ample space to get changed. The equipment was in good condition and decent quality.
Ski instructors
The biggest thing that was different from our experience with skiing in Canada is that there were no formal lessons provided by professional ski/snowboard instructors that was organized by the resort. Instead, individual instructors were lined up just above the escalators on the rental platform. As you got your rentals and started changing, some of them would approach you to offer their assistance (free) and would ask you if you had ever skied before. Our friend told us to expect the cost of hiring a trainer to be 300 RMB ($60 CAD, $44 USD). We politely declined each time and didn’t felt overly annoyed by them.
On the slopes, we noticed that the professionalism and level of teaching skill of the instructors greatly varied. If you want to learn how to ski, what I would recommend is that you first observe someone actually teaching others on the slopes first. Hire someone that impresses you with their teaching skills and suits your personality and learning style. As far as we could tell, everyone was getting private one-on-one lessons.
Ski slopes
This ski resort was no Whistler, but it was good enough for our beginner/intermediate ski level. The man made snow was great quality and it was easy to ski on. There were 4 slopes – a super beginner one where most of the people learning to ski for the first time were getting their lessons, and another one that a beginner could quite easily manage. We loved the conveyor belt for the two beginner level slopes. It was easy to get on and off, especially for young children. Then there were two steeper slopes that were intermediate level. However, we did find that there was a big jump from the beginner slopes to the harder ones. Since most local skiers were beginners, there was barely a line for the chair lift for the steeper slopes.
Dining experience
There were two eating areas at the resort, one indoor and one outdoor. At the outdoor food area, there were long picnic tables to eat at. You could order a lot of fun food that would be popular with kids such as sausages. Our ski package included the indoor eating experience. You could choose from either rice and dishes (mainly vegetarian), or noodle soup (beef or some other one with tofu, ground pork and veggies). Kids and adults get the same portion size and the food prices were very reasonable, even if you didn’t have the meal included in your package. There was also a bubble tea shop and convenience store inside. We were happy to see that nothing was overpriced.
First aid
After some time skiing, our middle child started complaining about his foot hurting. He got a blister because the boot was rubbing against the side of his foot. Even after changing to more comfortable ski boots, he said the blister was still bothering him. I approached a staff person about it and we were immediately escorted to the first aid room. It was a nice room with a bed, desk and sofa. We sat down on the sofa and soon after, a nurse came in to talk to us. She treated his blister with some kind of disinfectant spray that also helped with the pain and put it a band aid on it. She took a photo and shared the photo with me on WeChat, along with instructions for what to do if we needed to go to a hospital for treatment after it. Insurance was included so any treatment for any injury would be free. She gave him a cup of hot water and we were allowed to stay there for as long as we needed to. We felt so well cared for! It was nice to be able to just sit there and relax for a bit. Soon after, my son was feeling better and he enjoyed skiing for the rest of the day.
Other snow activities
After we had enough of skiing, we did some snow tubing, which was also included in our package. Helmets (mandatory) were included. There were two runs, with a conveyor belt bringing you to the top, just like the ones for the beginner ski slopes. Each person sits in their own snow tube, but a lot of people were linking feet and arms so that they could have two or more go down all together. The longer the chain of snow tubes, the faster you would go down! We all loved it.
You could also pay 30 RMB to rent ski-doo snowmobiles to ride around in a small area, or rent some other electric riding vehicles for kids. They looked like fun but we were pretty spent from skiing all day already.
When we left the resort to board the bus, a gentleman offered to take us horseback riding on his ranch just below the resort. It was only 30 RMB per person, or 50 for two. We had to get on our bus so we politely declined.
Conclusion
This was not the biggest ski resort near Lanzhou, but were were pleasantly surprised at the level of service, quality of rentals and facility there. Our family had a great time and we could see ourselves going often in the future. We are also excited to check out the other ski resorts too. Maybe the larger one would have more professional ski instructors as we did hear from another friend that their son did some kind of ski camp for kids before.
If you want to visit Lanzhou in the winter, we would highly recommend hitting the slopes for some winter fun. The great experience along with a bowl of Lanzhou’s famous beef noodle soup for dinner that night would surely create lasting warm memories for you and your friends.
The last things that our boys expected to be able to do in China was to go trick or treating for Halloween. Besides leaving behind friends and family, this was probably in their minds, one of the top sacrifices they were making in following their parents’ dreams for our family to move to China. Well, today we proved that with a little creativity, we can still do Halloween.
Using the Cricut Explore Air 2 and some cardstock paper, the boys helped their mom make a bunch of Halloween decorations. Here are some photos of our door all decked out with bats, spiders and jack-o-lanterns.
We bought two huge bags of candy at our neighbourhood corner store for approximately 100 RMB ($20 CAD). The assortment included gummies, lollipops, gum, jelly, mini cakes and cookies. They even had these fantastic eye ball gummies, perfect for Halloween!
We then invited some neighbourhood kids to join us for our own version of trick or treating at our apartment building.
Since one boy had no costume, I enlisted my 13 year old son’s help to make him a costume. This was a great project that my son could get ADST credit for homeschooling. We gave the boy a few costume ideas and he decided that he wanted an airplane costume. My son used poster paper and cardboard to make wings that would be strapped to the boy’s back. Water bottles were transformed into jet engines with aluminum foil. He used orange and yellow construction paper to make the flames that were stapled back to back and fit over the bottom of the water bottles. He looked up the China Air Force symbol and used construction paper to create that on the back side of the wings. The end result was not too shabby.
Today we set up our Cricut machine once again, and set to work on some paper window decorations. Our plan was to use our dark apartment building staircase for the “trick or treating.” Each level had a window ledge where we could place some candy. I thought it would be a bit more of a work out for the kids to have to climb up the stairs to get the candy on each level.
It was a total success! The kids had a blast. And the little boy loved his airplane costume. Ok, maybe he loved the candy more.
The last few days in Vancouver before our flight to Shanghai felt like a crazy whirlwind. In an unexpected turn of events, we received an email the day of our flight informing us essentially that my husband could not fly. We scrambled to confirm with various people that myself and our three kids would still be allowed to enter China without him as our visas depended on his. Before we knew it, we were at the YVR airport checking in. Exhausted and stressed out, we hastily said our goodbyes and got in line to pass through security. Almost 24 hours later, we arrived at our quarantine hotel in Shanghai.
Though to many, this time in quarantine is an unwelcomed inconvenience, this time for me is a gift from above. I need sleep. I need recovery. I need to hit the reset button. This past month, I’ve been so busy packing and dealing with administrative tasks that I have not had enough time to prepare emotionally.
Stepping into my quarantine room and closing that door to the world, I finally had permission to digest the fact that I was here without my husband, and to grieve all the things that I am leaving behind, while looking to the future with all my hopes and dreams.
And so, I started journaling again. Having recently gone through the process of digitizing all my old journals, re-reading entries about falling in love, getting married, moving overseas, having my first child, and so on, I have come to realize again just how good it is to journal. I was beginning to see how each event doesn’t just shape me to become who I am today, but also sets me on a path to who I want to be tomorrow.
My goal during quarantine is to take advantage of this time in between worlds, to ponder the unanswered questions of my life, and to intentionally process through the good and the bad parts of me and see what I can learn. It will take time and courage, but I believe it will be time well spent. May I come out of this time stronger, healthier, and in a place to give more of myself to others.
We ourselves are “saved to save” – we are made to give – to let everything go if only we may have more to give. The pebble takes in the rays of the light that falls on it, but the diamond flashes them out again: every little facet is means, not simply of drinking more in, but of giving more out.
FAR AND WIDE 