Lanzhou Sheepskin Raft

The sheepskin raft, known as the "paizi," is the ancient vessel by which the people of the upper and middle Yellow River used the current to carry people and goods; it rose under the Qing and spread across Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia and Inner Mongolia. A folk rhyme—"lucky gourd, beef noodles, and the sheepskin raft that outraces a warship"—counts it with beef noodles and carved gourds as one of Lanzhou's Three Treasures. It entered the first Gansu provincial ICH list in 2006 under folklore.

To build one, a whole sheepskin is de-haired, tanned and inflated into a round "leather bladder," and a dozen or more bladders are lashed beneath a timber frame to form a raft of great buoyancy and little weight; the boatman rows with a single oar and rides the current, and today's sightseeing rafts along the river are still lashed and steered by hand by the old boatmen.

The Lanzhou sheepskin raft is a living fossil of Yellow River transport and popular ingenuity, carrying the collective memory of dozens of generations who crossed, hauled and lived by the river, the most vivid folkloric symbol of Lanzhou's Yellow River culture.

Beneath the Zhongshan Bridge (Yellow River Iron Bridge) in Lanzhou one may still ride a sheepskin raft for a drift on the river.