China / Kina. Gobi desert. Zhangye Dancia National Geological Park.

30. juli 2024 Mette hjemmeside admin

Rainbow 🌈 mountains ⛰️ in Zhangye in northwestern China.

I have ever only seen this in other parts of the world – Peru on Instagram and myself a tiny version inNauritiua – and I did not know it existed in China as well. Here it is huge. Much as everything else. Colors are strong. Its an amazing natural phenomenon.

It had been training the day before when we visited the Grand Canyon and therefore the colors were at their brightest.

Despite none of these two places of natural wonders are know in Europe, then both places are clearly well know in China through their social media. We came to huge parking spaces, huge ticket and information centres and huge gates behind which were lots of busses and paved streets.

This infrastructure is everywhere in China. As soon as there is something considered interesting to visit as a tourist, then infrastructure is created and dimensioned to handle enourmous amounts of peoples.

The Forbidden City in Beijing has the Capacity for 80.000 visitors per day and still sell out tickets in a few minutes each time they open for sales. Just to put this into perspective.

Visitors here are mostly local tourists . Actually I believe we only saw one foreigner in total these days beside us.

I get overwhelmed by the amount of people once in a while . Getting tempted to take one photo of pristine nature and then turn around and take another of two hundred others on the same platform photographing in all directions.

Actually it’s more the noise level than the people that Once in a while gets to me if I lack sleep or coffee. The people are generally friendly, curious, honest and polite. Nothing is stolen. We are in lots of pictures taken by sweet and curious people and have lots of this types if photos ourselves too. The amount of people seem to be a fact of life and not bothering them. So they take pictures with others in them. They talk out loud with family, no matter if they are in the bus or train or at a sight, and no matter if their mouth happen to be right next to my ear ! I jump frequently for surprise and irritation.

The same with the loudspeakers 📢 that are placed everywhere by everyone, it seems, just to “keep shouting. Even in the beauty of the rainbow 🌈 mountains 🏔️ loudspeakers 📢 informed me of the people selling photos … something that was impossible to miss anyway. Shops selling coffee does it. Police does it. At these sights there are loudspeakers 📢 disguised as rocks 🪨 that change between shouting and playing music 🎵… I would so like for nature to be quiet 🤫 and just listen to its own sounds. I truly dislike more and more, when people imposes their taste in music on me. Earphones are a great invention when those who wish to hear music uses them.

It was still absolutely worth being here, and I would go again and enjoy it. I also have no wish for noice-cancelling headphones with the cocoon I then am in. It’s just the factor that the crows and noise makes me tired at the end of the day.

Then I get to laugh, shake my head and sometimes admire the many many women being dressed up for social media photos. Complete with filters in the photos making them more like manga cartoons – white skin, slimmer, younger, red lips 👄, bigger eyes 👀. Mostly though beautiful dresses from the history of Chinese culture and sometime just belly dancing, manga and role play costumes. It’s big business and it’s everywhere here. I haven’t really felt at ease with it in Tibet. All other places I found it fun. We didn’t ourselves, but in case your wondering, we would have met so much appreciation for doing so, rather than it being seen as cultural appropriation.