the random oracle

One of the more surprising things so far this trip has been how clean and “modern” the cities in Gansu are. Of course we’ve only been traveling to large (Lanzhou) or tourist-friendly (Jiayuguan and Dunhuang) cities, but they have uniformly surpassed my expectations about how comfortable and clean things in Gansu would be.

My biases come from the fact that it is commonly known (or maybe believed is more accurate) that Gansu is one of the poorest provinces in China. But maybe all of the government stimulus money has been used here to clean things up and make them more friendly for visitors?

There was a big push in the last decade to speed up the development of the Western regionsand maybe the modern looking cities are the product of that. On a related note, things are not much cheaper here than in Beijing either.