Today a major transport hub and the departure place for journeys into Xinjiang and Tibet, Lanzhou is the first major city along the Yellow River and has been an important military staging post for centuries. It lies at an elevation of 1600m and is walled in by steep mountains.

There is an excellent museum in the city but the most interesting visitor sights are the Blinglisi Caves. For the past 1600 years sculptors and artists have decorated the walls of these Buddhist grottoes and due to their relative inaccessibility they survived almost unscathed from the Cultural Revolution. There are over 900 square metres of murals and more than 650 sculptures, all of great artistic quality. The site is hidden behind Liujiaxia reservoir on the Yellow River and is reached by boat.