Photo: Bernard Gagnon, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Bingling means 'ten thousand Buddhas' in the Tibetan language.. This is a cave grottoes, with the highlight of 27m Maitreya Buddha. Can be visited in 2h on normal walking speed.
The Bingling Temple is a series of grottoes filled with Buddhist sculpture carved into natural caves and caverns in a canyon along the Yellow River. It lies just north of where the Yellow River empties into the Liujiaxia Reservoir. Administratively, the site is in Yongjing County of Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture in Gansu province, some 100 km (62 mi) southwest of Lanzhou. This temple, along with other sites along the Silk Road, was inscribed in 2014 on the UNESCO World Heritage List as the Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an-Tianshan Corridor World Heritage Site.
© OpenStreetMap contributors
兰州水墨丹霞国家公园, Lanzhou Shuimo Danxia Scenic Area 兰州水墨丹霞旅游景区
A park noted for its colorful rock formations known as Danxia. Admittedly it’s not as spectacular as the more famous Danxia park in Zhangye, but it’s certainly worth a visit. The park only opened in 2021 and has good infrastructure, which is specially designed to blend in with the rock formations. A bus is available to take visitors around the park and if you can drive, there is also the option of hiring a small sightseeing car. The highlight perhaps is the 2.5km raised walkway that allows you to walk over the landscape. A pair of animatronic dinosaurs greet visitors at the end of the walkway.
天斧砂宫地质公园
This is the most unique natural landscape in Lanzhou City, located in the Longfeng Gorge east of Renshou Mountain, Taohuayuan, Anning District, is a red sandstone about 25 million years ago, after long-term weathering and water erosion formed a group of Danxia-like landform wonders. It is named because it is natural, such as the sand palace carved by God.
甘肃省博物馆
Silk Road history in one place. The museum is divided into two sections, natural resources and historic exhibits. The main exhibition is on level 2 and 3. Level 1 holds Temporary Exhibition. It houses collections of various colour-painted potteries of Neolithic Age and treasures of ancient grottoes. It's also home to precious linen and silk fabrics, books, wooden and bronze vessels, bamboo writing-slips from the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220), frescoes and many other items. The 4-meter high Mammoth is a replica of one excavated from the Yellow River basin in 1973.
The iconic exhibit is the Galloping Horse, excavated in 1969 in Wuwei County, Gansu Province. A horse gallops with long tail waving and head perking; three hooves are in the air, while the right hind hoof has alighted on the back of a small flying swallow. Bird and horse turn in surprise to try to see what's happening. A small replica from the gift shop is ¥500.
黄河母亲像
Gansu sculpture by the famous sculptor He E creation, 6 meters long, 2.2 meters wide, 2.6 meters tall, weighing 40 tons, from "mother" and a "baby" of composition.
小西湖公园
Metro Line 1 Xiaoxihu Stn. A small park, supposedly to be a (poor) replica of the Xihu (West Lake) in Hangzhou.
Baiyun Guan, 白云观
t is also known as 'Lüzu Temple' because it is dedicated to worship Lü Dongbin. It is on the south river bank, Nanbinhe East Road, one block west of Zhongshan Bridge. It's much less touristy, a peaceful little compound, so the wear-and-tear on the buildings feels venerable rather than run-down.