Lanzhou blew me away because I never imagined that a city so immense could be so overlooked (essentially zero FT mentions, and even my China friends don't know squat), but I'll get to that later.

I was pinching RMB because my friends were doing so -- to the extrems -- and, after a while, I sort of got into the habit. While I put my foot down on some of the nastiest of accomodations, I learned that the difference between a y100 room at a crap hotel and a y200 room at an old building at the 3-star across the street, was minimal.

....but, in principle, I agree; the vast majority of travelers that I met out there spent a fortune on plane tickets, then tried to live on $5 per day when they could have just burned miles and done Thailand to the nines.