No Foreigners allowed into Labrang April 6 2009

Another day in Xian wandering the streets and discovering some things not on the tourist maps. To my surprise I stumbled on a Catholic Church just a few streets from the Muslim Quarter, it's a nice looking building on a very bare block of land surrounded by a fence of about 2.5 metres with a solid looking steel gate. Inside is nicely painted in pastel colours with the usual paintings of fair skinned Christ, Mary and various other identities of the Christian faith. A small group singers were in there with a guitar player to accompany them.
I ventured outside of the gate on the Western side of the main South gate to walk through the parkland between moat and wall, again it was being well used by families flying kites and having picnic lunches as well as young lovers finding quiet corners to kiss and cuddle.
Heading back into the protection of the city wall through the South gate I ventured into the Antique and Art market. It's so nice to be able to take my time looking at the various wares on display without being constantly harangued to buy something, the shop keepers were pretty layed back about it all.
I'm trying to arrange travel via Lanzhou to Labrang but there is a serious flaw in my plans and that is that all foreigners may have been banned from the area for the time being. I'm making further investigations before buying the train ticket to Lanzhou. My fears have been confirmed late in the afternoon that foreigners are banned from Labrang until further notice, try again after April 15 2009. Extended my Xian stay and will study my Silk Road guide to decide alternatives and with luck will have time to try again on the return journey. Went to the Muslim quarter with a couple of friends for hotpot dinner, walking back past the drum tower we were amazed to see two motorized trikes with enormous telescopes setting up. They looked amazing and were offering views of Saturn and the moon for 10 Yuan. Just as we were about to leave another two turned up and this time one of them was a home made effort and the biggest of the lot. I've tried to capture it on camera but don't think the pics will do justice to the scene. The area around the drum tower was very lively tonight with several strings of miniture kites disappearing into the night sky.