Yin Chuan pictures online

While hiding from heavy rain and thunderstorms I have just uploaded the next bunch of pictures of my recent trip. This time those of Yin Chuan, capital city of Ningxia. That is the smallest province or autonomous region in China inhabited mainly by Hui muslims. I found it a very attractive place, and - again - much bigger then one would have expected. I stayed longer in this area than planned, because on the first day I was approached in the street by a student called Ben, who had been given the task of finding a foreigner to play a part in a new Chinese TV series that was being shot near Yin Chuan. Of course I was interested :-). The TV series, which will be on mainland TV this autumn, is set during the Cold War. I had to play a Soviet scientist advising a Chinese military general on the development of China's nuclear arsenal. By pure coincidence, the actor playing the Chinese general came from Dalian as well! We exchanged phone numbers afterwards and we will be in touch again in September. My lines were in English. Foreigners are a very rare occurrence in Yinchuan, and Russian-speakers even more so. I took the liberty of amending the script slightly as here and there the English was a bit 'too chinese'. Nobody spoke much English there anyway, so I don't think anybody noticed :-) The gist of the dialogue was that the Soviet expert warned the Chinese general that China's short-term nuclear development plans were a product of mere enthusiasm and fantasy, but in reality impossible to achieve: he smiled and said 'Chinese people always want to make the sun rise in the west' .

Unfortunately, a Mongol actor walked off with my camera during the shooting of my scene, so I don't have any pictures. On my Picasa page you can see many other pics now, though, including of the mysterious the Xi Xia Wang Ling.

Ningxia - Yinchuan