5-Day Gansu Geoscience & Grotto Study: Tianshui, Maijishan & Lanzhou

Morning — The Xi'an Museum and the Small Wild Goose Pagoda
Begin at the Xi'an Museum, where the galleries run from Zhou bronzes to Tang figurines around the Jianfu Temple courtyard. The morning sets up the story the journey west will continue: how goods, faiths and scripts moved along this corridor for a thousand years.

Afternoon — High-Speed Rail to Tianshui
Transfer to Xi'an North and board the high-speed train west, about an hour and a half. Watch the Guanzhong plain narrow into the river valleys of Longyou — the western gateway the Qin guarded two millennia before the railway.

Evening — Arrival in Tianshui
Arrive in Tianshui, check in and rest. Known as the Jiangnan of Gansu for its green valleys, the town is the base for tomorrow's cliff-carved galleries of Maijishan.

Meals
Breakfast, Dinner included.

Morning — The Cliff Galleries
Drive out to Maijishan and climb the plank walkways stitched to the cliff. The caves run from the Northern Wei to the Ming: early figures are gaunt and otherworldly, later ones plump and smiling, and the walkways themselves hang eighty metres above the pine forest.

Afternoon — The Scenic Area and Return
Take the slower path down past the Ruiying Temple and the viewing terraces. Your guide explains how clay, not stone, is the medium here — the sculptures were modelled, not carved, which is why Maijishan's faces are the most human of all the great cave sites.

Evening — At Leisure in Tianshui
Return to Tianshui. Try the city's own dish, guagua — a cold potato paste eaten with chilli oil — and rest for tomorrow's journey.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch included.

Morning — Maijishan's Plank Walkways
Return to Maijishan with the morning light on the cliff. The plank walkways connect 194 caves and more than 7,000 clay sculptures; the great Buddha of caves 13 and 98 looks down over the whole valley. Allow two to three hours on the walkways.

Afternoon — High-Speed Rail to Lanzhou
Descend, return to the station and board the train to Lanzhou, roughly ninety minutes along the Wei River valleys. The capital of Gansu is the only Chinese city the Yellow River runs straight through.

Evening — The First Bridge
Check in, then walk out to the Zhongshan Bridge — the century-old iron crossing the Germans shipped upriver in 1909. Beside it the Yellow River runs tea-coloured and fast; waterwheels still turn on the near bank.

Meals
Breakfast, Dinner included.

Morning — Lanzhou New Area
A briefing in the Lanzhou New Area, the state-level development zone that has shifted the city's centre of gravity north. The session covers the incentive framework, logistics corridors and what the New Area means for companies using Lanzhou as a western-China base.

Afternoon — Enterprise Visit
An afternoon inside a petrochemical or pharmaceutical enterprise. Lanzhou's industrial base grew around the refinery commissioned in the 1950s; today the sector spans catalysts, fine chemicals and pharma. The visit walks the production line and closes with a management exchange.

Evening — Chamber of Commerce Dinner
A dinner hosted with members of the Lanzhou Chamber of Commerce — a working evening of introductions along the Belt and Road corridor, over Gansu lamb and Yellow River fish.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner included.

Morning — The International Land Port
Visit the Lanzhou International Land Port, the rail terminal where China-Europe freight trains are marshalled. The briefing covers volumes, transit times to Europe and Central Asia, bonded-zone rules and where Singaporean logistics and trading houses already plug into the chain.

Afternoon — The Gansu Provincial Museum
The museum's Silk Road hall holds the bronze Flying Horse of Gansu — the image on China's earliest tourism mark — alongside camel caravans in three colours and the bamboo slips of Han couriers. Two thousand years of corridor trade in one room.

Evening — Sunset on the First Bridge
Finish on the Zhongshan Bridge at sunset, when the river turns gold under the white-pagoda hill.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch included.