A medium-sized town, about 450km northwest of Lanzhou and 150km southeast of Jiayuguan,
ZHANGYE has long been an important stopover for caravans and travellers on the Silk Road. Indeed, Marco Polo spent a whole year here. Today it's still worth stopping, especially if you have time for a visit to the Buddhist
Mati Si , 60km south of the town.
During the Ming period, Zhangye was an important garrison town for soldiers guarding the Great Wall , and today the road from Wuwei to Zhangye is still a good place from which to view the Wall, visible for a large part of the way as a slightly sad and crumbling line of mud ramparts. Initially it runs to the north of the road, until, quite dramatically, the road suddenly cuts right through a hole in the Wall and continues on the other side.
Although Zhangye is not generally an attractive town, there are a number of places that fill at least a day of sight-seeing. The centre of the town is marked, as in many Chinese towns, by a Gulou (Drum Tower) at the crossroads. The tower, built in the Ming dynasty (1507), has two tiers and houses a massive bronze bell. The four streets radiating out from here, Bei Jie, Dong Jie, Nan Jie and Xi Jie, are named after their respective compass points, and most of the sights are in the southwest of town in the vicinity of the Zhangye Hotel.
Moving from east to west, the scattering of sights begins with the Tu Ta (Earth Tower), a former Buddhist monastery, located just off Nan Jie and now in use as a local Culture Centre ( wenhua guan), comprising a rather ramshackle collection of flying eaves and a single large stupa 20m in height. Halfway between here and the Zhangye Hotel is the city's outstanding sight, the Dafo Si (Big Buddha Temple; daily 7.30am-6.30pm; ¥22). Built in 1098 and restored during Qing times, this 34-metre-long Buddha is easily China's largest reclining Buddha, and its calm expression and gentle form make a powerful impression. Immediately behind the Buddha are ten disciples, and slightly grotesque-looking lohans (saintly warriors) stand around in the gloom. The temple is located in a pleasant leafy garden which also houses a gallery of Buddhist art.
Just a few hundred metres north of the Zhangye Hotel looms the 31-metre-tall Mu Ta , or Wooden Tower (daily 8am-5pm; ¥12), built as long ago as the sixth century, before being burnt down and then restored in 1925. The octagonal tower is now home to large numbers of jackdaws, and its grounds are used by the local kung fu school. A few hundred metres south of here, and one block to the west of the Zhangye Hotel, the Xilai Si , a small temple complex, is currently being restored in the Tang-Song style. It is also a centre of active Chinese Buddhism, and when you enter you may find a sudden rush of elderly monks coming out to bless you and present you with their name-cards.
Much farther away, about fifteen minutes' walk due east from the Drum Tower on the road to the train station, is the local active Taoist monastery, the Daode Guan . It's a small place of Ming origins, containing a tiny garden and some vine trellises, perhaps more interesting for its location than anything else - right in a jumble of narrow lanes behind a building site on the north side of Dong Jie. You may have to scramble over some rubbish dumps to find it. Finally, twenty minutes' walk northwest of the Drum Tower, you'll reach the shady Ganquan Park . The lake in the park gets rather dried up, but it's a quiet place to sit around for a couple of hours.
