From June – August, most parts of China during the summer become unbearably hot and humid. Historically there were three furnaces (三大火炉) – Chongqing, Nanjing, and Wuhan- cities that were notorious for their deathly summer heat. Then there were four furnaces (Changsha being the forth), then seven… and now thanks to global warming there are like 20+ furnace cities in China.
Luckily for us in the northwest, we have wonderfully tolerable summer days, due to high altitude and low humidity. This makes for great exploration of the vast fields/ plains/ grasslands that make up most of Qinghai and some parts of Gansu. I spent some time in MenYuan and XiaHe to enjoy the scenery and good climate- and was smart enough to bring a jacket, as temperatures plummeted at night.
MenYuan
MenYuan is two hours northwest of Lanzhou by high speed rail. Had I arrived in mid-July, i would have been greeted with endless fields of bright yellow canola flowers. I went a week late (around the end of July) and missed out on peak-canola season, but the vista was still astounding. 
I couldn’t find anything online about how to rent a bicycle, but that wasnt an issue in the end- the plaza outside the MenYuan rail station hosted a bike rental shop for the adventurous traveler. A full day rental costs 100 RMB, and i dropped off my US Passport as a deposit (the guys at the shop had never seen one, and gleefully passed it around for a short while) 
i swerved off the main highway into the small villages to check out the scene. the lifestyle there was still very traditional- people had collected cow dung to burn for fuel, and piled the dried dung into large mounds. (village not pictured, but see cows below)
there were also many beekeepers who come through Qinghai in the summer to let their bees do the work of pollinating the flowers, and collect fresh honey in return. 
the downside is that I must have rode through areas of heavy bee traffic, and a bee got caught in my hair and stung my scalp! (a bee trapped in human hair will recognize the situation to be a bear attack, and sting when it cannot get out of what it thinks is bear fur. i know this from my Redhook community farm beekeeping days! see below for evidence from 2014)
The sting caused lingering pain for a good 15 – 20 minutes. i decided to protect myself by wrapping my hair in my t-shirt for the rest of the day…
Xiahe
I had come here last summer to see Labrang Monastery, and returned again to check out the local grasslands. I rented a bike for 50 RMB and rode south of the monastery.
the views were not as splendid as the plains in Qinghai (mostly because the grasslands here have been fenced off, and no matter how far away from the touristy areas i biked, everything was still enclosed). however, i did see a lot of bored-looking horses; born with the ability to run endlessly through the wilderness, but fated to spend a lifetime sequestered in a few acres of land to pose with tourists for a small sum of money. 
i sent the horse photo to my parents (“oh no! the baby horse is dead!”) but i think foals sleep on the ground… i think…
the street signs were interesting where everything was written three times- in simplified Chinese, tibetan script, and English (or a phonetic translation of tibetan script, more accurately. the tibetan script pronunciation sounds nothing like mandarin chinese)
at some point, the distant dark clouds caught up with me, and on my return journey home i was forced to ride under a patch of cloud that was relentlessly pounding the ground below with rain… i didnt want to miss the bus back to Lanzhou so i had no choice but to speed through the 1km span of angry cloud, and was utterly drenched… but a few minutes later i emerged into the sunshine yet again!
harry rubacuori 