彩虹山、兰州拉面和好心人：华裔旅人甘肃独行记

Our columnist, Jada Yuan, is visiting each destination on our 52 Places to Go in 2018 list. This dispatch brings her to Gansu, China, which took the No. 17 spot. It is the 47th stop on Jada’s itinerary.

我们的旅行专栏作者杰达·袁(Jada Yuan)正在访问“2018年最值得去的52个地方”的途中。下面的报道发自中国甘肃，甘肃在最值得去的名单上名列17，是杰达行程的第47站。

She spoke first, a series of words in Chinese that I couldn’t understand and then one that I did: “Lanzhou?”

她先开口说了一连串我听不懂的中文词，然后说了一个我听懂了的：“兰州?”

“Dui! Dui! I am going to Lanzhou, too,” I said, nodding vigorously to the kind-faced woman in her 40s, as we established that we were both alone and flying to the capital of China’s Gansu province — a spot in the country’s interior along a northwestern part of the ancient Silk Road trade route — and that neither of us spoke the other’s language.

“对!对!我也要去兰州，”我说，我对着这位看起来友好的40来岁的女子用力点着头，我们很快就发现我们都是独自旅行，都要飞往中国甘肃省的省会——那是中国内陆西北地区沿古代贸易路线丝绸之路上的一站，以及我们都不会讲对方的语言。

I had taken notice of Wei Zhao Han in the Beijing airport when she started listening to Chinese pop music videos next to me without headphones. This was my sixth or so visit to China, but my first without my relatives, who mainly hail from Shanghai and Beijing, and I’d been missing that familiar element of noise and chaos: everyone talking over each other, picnic spreads of steamed buns and fruit laid out across airport waiting room chairs.

我是在北京机场注意到魏昭寒(音)的，当时她坐在我傍边，开始看中国流行音乐视频，没有戴耳机。这是我大概第六次来中国，但是第一次没有亲戚陪伴，我的亲戚们主要住在上海和北京，我一直怀念那些已经熟悉了的热闹气氛：大家同时说话，嗓门一个比一个大，候机厅的椅子摆上了馒头和水果，像野餐一样。

Wei, who runs an architectural business, and I bonded quickly. As we boarded the plane she got the man sitting next to me to switch seats with her. “Let’s be friends,” she said through her Baidu translation app (China’s version of Google, which is blocked), and followed that with a declaration that she would give me a ride from the airport to my hotel.

魏昭寒经营一家建筑公司，我跟她很快就有了好感。我们登机后，她跟坐在我旁边的人换了座位。“让我们做朋友吧，”她通过百度翻译应用(百度相当于中国的谷歌，谷歌在中国被屏蔽了)说，然后又宣布，到机场后，让我搭她的车去旅馆。

“You can trust that I am a good person!” she wrote into Baidu, and laughed as her friend drove us down a dark highway toward Lanzhou after midnight, which might be the midpoint of a Stephen King novel under other circumstances. But she was just one in a series of people who jumped in to help me — ordering for me at restaurants, getting me safely to my hotel, as Wei did. Most of them didn’t realize I was Chinese-American at first; they just seemed to see a woman on her own in a strange land looking rather lost.

“你可以相信我是个好人!”她在百度应用上写道，然后笑了起来，当时时间已过了午夜，她的朋友正沿着一条黑漆漆的公路，把我们拉向兰州。在别的情况下，这可能是一部斯蒂芬·金(Stephen King)小说的中间部分。但她只是众多主动帮助我的人中的一个——他们在餐馆帮我点餐，像魏昭寒那样把我安全地送到旅馆。他们中的大多数人一开始并没有意识到我是华裔美国人;他们似乎只是看到了一个女子独自在一个陌生的地方，看起来好像有点迷路。

A magnificent stretch of desert sandwiched between mountains, Gansu was once China’s Wild West, containing the westernmost structures of The Great Wall, built to ward off attacking nomadic hordes, and legendary shrines dug into cliffs for the westward spread of Buddhism.

位于群山之间的甘肃省有大片的壮丽沙漠，这里曾经是中国的“蛮荒西部”，是用来抵御游牧民族袭击的长城的最西端，这里还有著名的石窟，那是随着佛教的传播，在悬崖峭壁上挖出来的神龛。

It had made the 52 Places list for 2018, because the opening of high-speed rail lines had made its treasures, including the rainbow-striped mountains in the Zhangye Danxia National Geological Park, easier to get to.

甘肃入选了2018年的52个旅游目的地，是因为高铁开通后，人们更容易前往当地许多宝贵的旅游资源，其中包括张掖丹霞国家地质公园的彩虹斑纹山。

But easier is relative and Gansu in November was not easy. Temperatures were below freezing in a landscape so beautifully barren it’s hard to believe it can sustain life. There were few foreigners; almost no one spoke English; and I couldn’t read menus or street signs. (I speak only basic, familial Chinese, like “I already ate,” and “no, really, I can’t eat any more.”)

但容易是相对而言的，11月来甘肃并不容易。这里的气温在零度以下，这里的土地美丽、贫瘠，让人很难相信它能维持生命。这里几乎没有外国人;也几乎没有人说英语;我看不懂菜单和路标。(我只会说一些基本的家常话，比如“我已经吃了”;“不，真的，我再也吃不下了”)

My lungs were burning from the cold, dry air (and a decent amount of pollution) after climbing a mountainside near the city of Jiayuguan. I was standing on the Overhanging Great Wall, so named because it appears to cling to a ridge of the Black Mountains by some feat of wizardry. Ming dynasty tacticians built it in 1539, and from the peak there were views of the Gobi Desert in every direction, marked with bare mountains, oases, and in the distance, a steaming industrial plant.

爬上嘉峪关市附近的一个山坡后，寒冷干燥的空气(还有相当多的污染)让我的肺有一种灼烧的感觉。我登上了悬臂长城，之所以这么叫，是因为这段长城好像是用某种魔法牢牢地贴在黑山山脊上的。明朝的战术师们于1539年修建了这段长城，从其最高处往所有的方向看都是戈壁，其间点缀着光秃秃的山脉和绿洲，远处还有一座冒着烟的工厂。

It was hard not to marvel at sheer human will up there, including the amount I’d had to employ just to get to the view.

站在这里很难不去赞叹强大的人类意志，包括我为看到这个景色而付出的那点。

The afternoon after my dinner with Wei, I had boarded a 6.5-hour train to Jiayuguan, which was the shortest I could find from the downtown Lanzhou train station — after I learned all the high-speed trains were sold out and left from a new train station, Lanzhou West, on the outskirts of the city, anyway.

在我和魏昭寒一起吃饭之后的下午，我坐了六个半小时的火车来到了嘉峪关，那是我在兰州市中心的火车站能找到的用时最短的车次，之前我已经了解到，高铁票都卖光了，而且高铁是从郊区的一个新火车站——兰州西站上车。

Onboard, a police officer introduced me to Jo, an English teacher from Jiayuguan. She not only woke me up when we had to get off the train at 2:30 a.m., but had her husband drive me to my hotel, where she negotiated my rate down to $29 for two nights (as opposed to the $90 I’d booked online). I showered and huddled under my covers with all my winter clothes on because I couldn’t figure out the heater. But I sure was glad I wasn’t paying $60 more for that.

在火车上，一名乘警把我介绍给了来自嘉峪关一名姓乔的英语老师。她不仅在我们需要凌晨两点半下火车时把我叫醒，而且还让她的丈夫开车送我去旅馆。到旅馆后，她把我的房价砍到了两晚29美元(而不是我在网上预订的90美元)。我冲了个澡，穿着所有的冬天衣服钻进了被窝，因为我不知道怎么把取暖器打开。但我很高兴没有多花那60美元。

The next morning, at Jo’s suggestion, I walked on Jiayuguan’s wide, relatively empty boulevards to a local restaurant, Wu Mai Er, to try a regional specialty: Lanzhou hand-pulled beef noodles. When I couldn’t communicate my order, a man in line bought my bowl for me and showed me how to pick it up, put chili sauce, or lajiao, in it, and then sit at a counter to slurp the noodles from the steaming broth.

第二天早上，按照乔的建议，我沿着嘉峪关宽阔而相对空旷的街头，来到了一家名叫吾麦尔的餐馆品尝当地的特色食品：兰州拉面。当我无法与人交流我要点什么时，一个排队的男子替我买了一碗面，还教我如何把面取来，加上辣椒酱，然后坐在柜台边，把面条从热气腾腾的面汤里用嘴吸起来啧啧作响地吃下去。

Jo had also suggested I charter a taxi for 150 renminbi ($22) to see Jiayuguan’s three Great Wall scenic sites. We drove through the Gobi Desert outside the city to the mound of mud that was once The First Beacon Tower of the Great Wall, or the westernmost end of the western defense. It was part of a system of 54 beacons that sent smoke signals down the wall to warn of enemy movements.

乔还建议我以150元人民币(22美元)租一辆出租车，去看嘉峪关的三个长城景点。我们开车穿过城外的戈壁沙漠，来到一个土墩，它曾经是长城第一座烽火台，或者说这个西部防御的最西端。像这样的烽火台有54个，沿着长城发送烟雾信号，警示敌人的行动。

On the shuttle bus around the site, I met another female traveler, Wei Gong, who had come by herself from Sichuan, and an English-speaking businessman from Nanjing, Yu Lihong, who helped me talk to my driver. The three of us didn’t always keep the same pace, but we kept in touch over WeChat as we circuited the Overhanging Great Wall and the final site, Jiayu Pass, or fortress, which was so huge I had to go back the next day to see it all.

在景点的往返巴士上，我遇到来自四川的女游客魏宫(音)，以及来自南京、会说英语的商人余立宏(音)，他帮我和司机沟通。我们三个人并没有总是保持步调一致，但是当我们游览悬壁长城和最后的嘉峪关时，我们一直用微信保持联系，它实在太大，我只得第二天又去了一次才全部看完。

The fortress underwent an impressive renovation in 2014. The evening I went, as the desert temperatures dropped precipitously with the sunset, I had the entire place to myself, walking up stone ramps used for bringing horses to lookout points and rolling down logs to crush enemies. At the exit, I caught up with Wei Gong, who was waiting for her taxi. A man who ran a shop selling tea sets made out of a local stone invited us to sit inside next to his wood-burning stove to warm our freezing hands.

嘉峪关在2014年经历过一次大修。我来到这里的那个晚上，沙漠气温随着日落而急剧下降，整个地方只有我一个人，我走上石头坡道，它可以用来把马牵上瞭望台，也可以用来滚下原木，冲垮敌人。在出口处，我找到了等出租车的魏宫。在一家出售用当地石头制成的茶具的商店，店主邀请我们坐在柴炉旁边烤火，温暖冻僵的双手。

The UNESCO-recognized Caves of a Thousand Buddhas, known as the Mogao Grottoes, hadn’t been on my radar, until Wei Gong invited me to come with her there. She was taking an overnight train hours after we’d left Jiayu Pass and I just couldn’t do it. But I also couldn’t get the idea out of my head. The 492 devotional caves, hand-carved into sandy cliffs, house the world’s largest and longest-used treasure of Buddhist art in the world, to paraphrase UNESCO. They were also a tempting 4.5 hours west of Jiayuguan, in the desert oasis of Dunhuang, and I never knew when I’d be this close to them again.

我本来没有计划去莫高窟，也就是经联合国教科文组织认证的千佛洞，后来魏宫邀请我和她一起去。在离开嘉峪关几个小时后，她就要连夜坐火车去那里，我可做不到。但这个念头，挥之不去。据联合国教科文组织介绍，那里有492个窟，都是手工在沙质悬崖上刻出来的，是世界上最大、使用时间最长的佛教艺术宝藏。它们位于嘉峪关以西4.5个小时车程的地方，一个名为敦煌的沙漠绿洲里，这个距离很诱人，我也不知道下次什么时候才能再离它们这么近。

With the help of Yu Lihong, I booked a 2 a.m. train from Jiayuguan. I’d sprung for a luxurious “soft sleeper” car, with a comfortable bed and a door that closed. After four glorious hours of sleep, and a couple more waiting around in a taxi for the site to open, I walked into my first Mogao Cave to see 1,400 year-old Buddhas from the Tang dynasty.

在余立宏的帮助下，我订了凌晨2点从嘉峪关出发的火车。我选择了豪华的软卧车厢，它有舒适的床和可以关上的门。在美美地睡了四个小时，为了等开门又坐出租车兜风几个小时后，我走进了第一个莫高窟洞穴，去看1400多年历史的唐朝佛像。

You can’t get into the caves without a guide. After a bit of asking around I found an English-speaking tour, which had three people on it, including me.

没有向导就无法进入洞窟。经过一番询问，我找到了一个英语团，加上我一共三个人。

The caves, whose ceilings are covered in hundreds of little Buddha portraits to convey Buddha’s infinite nature, date back to the year 366, when a monk named Le Zun went for a walk in the desert, had a vision of a thousand Buddhas bathed in a golden light, and was inspired to dig a shrine out of sandstone.

洞窟的天花板上画满了几百个小佛像，表明佛法无边，它们的历史可以追溯到公元366年，当时一位名叫乐尊的僧人在沙漠中散步，看到一千尊佛像沐浴在金光之中的幻象，于是有了灵感，在砂岩上凿出石窟。

For centuries, devotees would dig caves and decorate them with enormous Buddhas, until the Silk Road declined, and people stopped coming. The caves remained intact and untouched (save for the work of a few shrine robbers) only to be revived over the last century with the discovery of a huge trove of Buddhist documents from the 11th century.

几个世纪以来，虔诚的信众会开凿新窟，并在其中雕出巨大的佛像，直到丝绸之路衰落，人们不再到来。洞窟一直原封不动(除了一些盗贼)，只是在上个世纪才重新开放，人们在这里发现了大量11世纪的佛教文献。

The centerpiece of the site is a five-story pagoda-like structure. As I walked in, a crowd of people were leaving and the light was so dim it was difficult to see. There was something big ahead. Was that a foot? I looked up to see a 98-foot-tall Buddha.

莫高窟的核心是一座五层宝塔式结构。我进去时，一群人正走出来，光线很暗，什么也看不清。前方有什么庞然大物。那是一只脚吗?我抬头看到一尊98英尺(合29.8米)高的佛像。

There are bigger Buddhas in China and the world, but likely none feel as intimate as standing inside a building that’s basically the same size as the Buddha, forcing you to crane your neck up to look at him and stay always in a supplicant position. The feat of human determination and faith that brought this massive statue into existence is overwhelming to contemplate. I think about that Buddha a lot and how close I had to stand to him to see him, and how tiny I felt in that moment.

中国和世界上的其他地方还有更大的佛像，但可能不会有这种亲密感——站在一个与佛像大小基本相同的建筑物里，迫使你仰起脖子看着他，令你始终处于一个乞求者的位置。决心和信仰使人类把这个巨大的雕像变成了现实，这种壮举令人无所适从，不知所措。我经常想起那座佛像，我得站多近才能看到他，以及那一刻我觉得自己何其微小。

For my last day in the country, with a flight to Japan at 9 p.m., I had concocted a harebrained plan to spend the morning at Zhangye Danxia Landform National Geopark, or the Rainbow Mountains, then hop on a three-hour bullet train to the Lanzhou West station, and take another 40-minute train from there to the Lanzhou airport. But the trip was going to require precision engineering.

在中国的最后一天，晚上9点我得飞往日本，我突发奇想，计划在张掖丹霞地貌国家公园，也就是彩虹山上度过一个早晨，然后坐三小时的子弹头列车前往兰州西站，接着再乘坐40分钟的火车从那里前往兰州机场。但这一路需要精准规划。

First, Lien Shao-Yong, a fellow eastward-bound traveler I had met at the grottoes, struck a deal for me with the conductor. I had a ticket for only part of the journey because the final leg to Zhangye had been sold out. The solution: pay cash for the difference and the staff would wake me in the middle of the night to move me to an empty slot since my bed was already spoken for.

首先，我在石窟遇到的东行同伴连少勇(音)为我和售票员达成了协议。由于去张掖的最后一段行程已经售罄，所以我只获得了部分行程的车票。解决方案：现金支付差额，工作人员会在半夜叫醒我，把我移到空位上——因为我的床位已经售出。

Next on the scene was Song Xu, my bunkmate and a businessman with excellent English. He began plotting my day backward from my last possible arrival time at the airport. A college student, Liu Haocheng, joined us, as did another businessman sitting nearby. The family of three whose bottom bunks we’d commandeered listened in with bemusement as Liu translated the action into Chinese. “You’re doing this by yourself?” the mother said, nodding with approval. “Very brave.”

接下来出场的是宋旭(音)，他跟我同卧铺，也是一位英语很好的商人。他从我最后可能到达机场的时间开始倒推，为我规划行程。一位名叫刘浩成(音)的大学生，以及一个坐在附近的生意人，也加入了我们。我们占用了一家三口的下铺，当刘浩成把我的行动翻译成中文说给他们听的时候，他们不无疑惑。“你一个人?“那位母亲问;我点点头。“很勇敢。”

With the four of us checking websites and making phone calls in both Chinese and English, we nailed down a plan in a mere two hours. A driver named Tao Hong-Bing would pick me upwhen the train got in at 2 a.m., help me buy tickets for the legs back to the Lanzhou airport, find me a cheap by-the-hour hotel for a quick rest, pick me up again at 7 a.m. in order to get me to the geopark before sunrise, and then return me to the Zhangye train station to make the bullet train to Lanzhou that was holding this whole Jenga schedule in place.

我们四个查看网站，用中文和英文打电话，在短短两个小时内敲定了一项计划。当火车在凌晨2点进站时，一位名叫陶宏兵(音)的司机会来接我，帮我买好回兰州机场的票，为我找间便宜的钟点房短暂休息一会，他早上7点来接我，以便在日出之前把我送到地质公园，然后返回张掖火车站，乘坐子弹头火车前往兰州，那里是我这环环相扣的日程安排的中心点。

Tao picked me up while it was still dark and we drove to the park, past trucks making early morning deliveries, and droves of children riding their bicycles to school. Private cars can’t go inside, so I boarded the first hop-on-hop-off bus of the day, which was carrying all the security guards and park workers, in their fur hats and winter coats, to their posts. The temperature gauge read minus-7-degrees Celsius (19 degrees Fahrenheit).

陶宏兵在天还黑的时候就来接我，我们朝公园开去，一路经过清晨运送货物的卡车，还有成群骑车去学校的孩子。私家车不能进入公园，所以我登上了当天第一辆随上随下的公共汽车，这辆车载着所有的警卫和公园工作人员，他们戴着皮毛帽子、穿着冬季外套，去到他们的工作岗位。温度计显示气温是零下7摄氏度。

After a short drive down red brick roads, a guard shouted something that I assumed meant “Get off!” as we pulled up to the second of four scenic overlook platforms on the route. Along with two other tourists, I raced up flights of steps and along wooden boardwalks just in time to watch the sun peek over a sea of red hills and valleys and pillars and anthropomorphic sandstone formations that rivaled anything I’ve seen in the American Southwest. Then stripes in yellows and greens and whites and maroons began to emerge as sunlight bathed the landscape. They’re the result of mineral deposits organizing themselves during tectonic movements over tens of million of years.

在红砖路上短暂行驶后，我们到达了路线上四个风景优美的观景平台中的第二个，一位警卫喊了一句，我猜测是“下车!”的意思。和其他两个游客一起，我沿着木制步道飞快地向上跑，刚刚好得以看见了朝阳掠过成海的红色山丘、山谷、石柱和好似人形的砂岩层，这些景象可以与我在美国西南部看到的任何东西相媲美。然后，当阳光沐浴大地之时，黄色、绿色、白色和褐红色的条纹开始出现。那是矿藏在数千万年的地壳运动中产生的组织形态。

WeChat messages began flooding in from the planning committee, who wanted to know how it was all going, and from Yu and both Weis, as well as from my aunt, uncle and cousin from Queens who happened to be visiting Shanghai for Thanksgiving but whom I wouldn’t be able to see. The other tourists had gone and I was alone on a freezing cold mountaintop across the world from a life I’d left behind almost a year ago, overlooking what could have been Mars, and I felt at home.

从计划委员会发来的微信消息开始涌入，他们想知道一切进行的怎么样了，余立宏和两位姓魏的朋友、皇后区的叔叔阿姨和堂兄也发来消息，他们正好在感恩节造访上海，但我无法见到他们。其他的游客已经走了，我独自一人在冰冷的山顶上，与将近一年前离开的那个生活远隔万里，看着眼前仿佛来自火星的景色，我感到怡然自得。