Eric's Beijing Diary

Sitting here at Leisha's having a yak burger. The yak burger at Leisha's is a delicious sandwich made from yak meat, onions, tomatoes, and other vegetables between two pieces of Hui bread that is very similar to pita bread. And it is huge. In my opinion, the small one for 10 yuan is enough for two people, unless you've just come down from hiking in the mountains, as I did this morning. The large one ("Big Mac Yak Attack") is absolutely ridiculous. I believe anyone would even attempt to finish it, but believe it or not, some of them have. I saw a French guy order one yesterday. Unbelievably, he did manage to finish two-thirds of it.

Leisha's restaurant caters to the large number of foreigners who come through this town. I overheard one of the Tibetan monks saying that there are more foreigners than Chinese in this town. It almost seems that way; so far, every Chinese person I have met in this town has been a tourist. When I decided to come to Gansu Province this summer, I really had no idea which direction to go. I had originally focused on Dunhuang, because it is well known, but a few days before I left for Beijing, I started taking a closer look and realized that Dunhuang is actually quite a distance from Lanzhou (Gansu Province is long and narrow). So I decided to start by heading up into the mountains in the southwestern part of Gansu, because they are much closer to Lanzhou. This turned out to be a good thing, because the country school teacher I met in Lanzhou is from this area. So it was very easy to adjust my plans to include his village. In addition, he was able to give me a lot of information about the general area, since he grew up here.

Whenever I look for places to go in Western China, I try to identify one or two places that are frequented by backpackers, because they will usually have the best lodging and eating options, and also, very often, the best scenery. I latched on to Langmusi for this reason. Well, that and yak burgers at Leisha's sounded interesting. It is no coincidence that Leisha is a member of the Hui minority. I asked one of my Tibetan friends in Langmusi if he would consider the yak burger a Tibetan specialty or Hui specialty. He said definitely a Hui specialty. Tibetans eat yak meat, but not in a "hot dish" type meal. They are much more likely to put a couple slices of yak meat between slices of bread. They yak burger is a mix of vegetables, yak meat and spices that make it an incredibly delicious sandwich. In fact, it's probably not really Tibetan or Hui, because it is clearly tailored to the tastes of foreigners, but it is the type of thing that a Hui would be good at making. My Tibetan friend said, "We have a saying, 'Eat Hui food, but don't listen to Hui teaching.'" (The Hui are Muslims.)