Shapotou

Shapotou is a collection of desert, Yellow River, mountains and oasis and possessed wonderful scenery of the northwest characteristics. At the same time, it also possessed the elegance of Jiangnan scenery. It is a state-level desert ecology nature protection area. It is where the 11 sand slope of bell locus is located and is one of the three big cry sands in China. It was awarded the title of honor of “the 500 global environmental protection units” by the United Nations in 1994 and is called “the sand city” by the common people.

Outside of Zhongwei there is a large tourist attraction at the small village of Shapotou. The attraction sits on the Yellow River at the point where the deserts to the north-west (towards the Gobi) collide with the waters and form gigantic, steep-sided sand dunes. The tourist attraction operates around the theme of taking money from parents by encouraging children to have fun. Here is a quick run down of how it works:
Playing around on the dunes is technically free, but getting a chairlift to the top is not (and being Chinese, not too many people will be walking up), Stelae inside the TempleAt least some sections of the temple were normal.and neither is sliding down the dunes on a toboggan (20 kuai for that pleasure). Camel rides, horse rides, a swimming pool, a zipline across the river, bungy jumping into the river, a jet boat trip on the river, rafting on the river, or lazily tubing down the river also costs a large chunk of money, as does eating, drinking and most other enjoyable activities in the area. To put it simply, I'd go broke if I ever took a child there as just occupying their time would cost in excess of a weeks salary even if they didn't have expensive tastes.

Thankfully though, it was a rainy day when we visited so the place was almost totally devoid of tourists which meant we could explore the beautiful dunes in peace. We restrained ourselves enough so that we didn't pay for any of the "rides" but we did try running full pelt down the side of the sand dunes (I won the race by a good thirty seconds). Had we been there on a different day then it probably would have been a whole lot less fun.