Tour of Qinghai Lake

This year's international cycling competition, the Tour of Qinghai Lake, finished in Lanzhou province for the first time, with the last two stages ending there. The Saturday went from Xining the capital of Qinghai province to Lanzhou, mostly flat and slowly downhill. It ended as a mass sprint won by the New Zealandese Rico Rogers in from of Estonian Jaan Kirsipuu. The last 500 meters were blocked to spectators. However it was easy to come close to the road just before that place. On Sunday most of the bridges accross the Yellow River were blocked, jamming traffic everywhere to allow the city race to take place with 6 rounds along each sides of the river. I managed to get a good spot to view the race from the bridge of Qilihe. The Italian Sacha Modolo won the race in a sprint, most competitors reached the finish in the same time. The Tour was won by Gregor Gazvoda from Slovenia with a four seconds margin ahead of Dimitry Gruzdev from Kazakhstan.
After the race I went to a trade fair, showing local produces of Gansu province on the ground floor and some products from the rest of China on the second floor, including a small import section with food from Vietnam or Thailand and some jewellry from Myanmar.

Dragon Boat Festival

Happy Dragon Boat Festival!

In China, people eat some glutonous rice and in the South of the country they take part in dragon-boat races. Here in the Northwest, we do not have these competitions, saw some on television. Otherwise, it is one day off work, which gives one more day to relax and prepare some things to be sent back to Europe in the coming days in preparation of my return to my continent of origin.