Role model for the Merely Middle Aged

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August 13th 2011

Published: August 14th 2011

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Laotou

He's a Legend!

Xiang Xu Guo with his no.1 fan

…..I have a new hero & role model. Mr. Xiang Xu Guo. I went for a walk with him & his son last week while I was in Shaanxi. When you read about the walk later in this blog & see the photos you'll see why. ......

…..classic Miss Piggy! She is coming to Yangzhou this morning, Friday. However, after losing her phone the previous day she calls, on her father's phone, to say she will get a bus ticket after buying a new phone. Expect her around midday. Another call. Make that 1.30pm. I go to the bus station on this hot, humid day but then get another call.The bus is slow / late / lost..... I go to get something quick to eat near the Qu Jiang & go back home to practice some songs for tonight's coffee house gig & await a call when she is close to Yangzhou. This time she doesn't call until she's at the bus station! Aaaaargh! I get there around 3.45pm & get her to the hotel as, for various reasons, there is no guest room at the school.....

…..We just have time to practice “Bu da, bu

Railway Station Forecourt, Xi'an

One big waiting room

ai”, a song she knows that I used to play with Chinese musicians in Australia.....

…..I send word around. Dr. Wei turns up with a couple of friends. Paerhat & Sunny. Paul, Evi & John are here. Halfway through Shen Yue & her son, Fan Zi Chen, make a surprise visit after escaping from a piano recital in a hall with no air-conditioning. Between sets I manage to introduce all those who don't already know each other. A Chinese guy arrives to introduce me to a potential singer. We swap details & arrange to get together for a practice after the holidays.....

…..off to Jiangyan the next day to spend a couple of days with Miss Piggy's family. This time we are to stay at her sister's apartment. I'm not sure whether it's nephew Zhi Tian's bedroom allocated to me but it's spacious & has an air conditioner, though I prefer to rely on the fan. The amount of new apartment construction going on in this anonymous little (only a million or so), satellite town is, like everywhere else I've been in China, staggering.....

…..emerging from a karaoke session at KTV with Miss Piggy's Dad, who

City Wall Xi'an

The 14km walk atop the City wall

works there as a security guard, nephew Li Tian Zhi, a hyperactive 7 year old & a old school classmate, we are just being pedalled off in the rickshaw trike when a monsoon downpour hits. There's no escape, the flimsy, worn cover is not adequate. My phone survives, my wallet is soaked but the money stays intact. A good case for Australian style plastic notes, harder to counterfeit & you can take them swimming.....

…..talking of money, notes, especially ¥100, are always checked for the five security features in every transaction. As I've mentioned before as a beginner in a language you don't have to be a great wit to make people laugh. It must be the funny accent. As the young woman at the supermarket is inspecting my ¥100 very carefully I tell her, “Wo zi ji hua”, (“I drew it myself”). Not grammatically correct in Chinese but she burst out laughing & quickly put it in the till.....

…..lost in translation. I asked for a ticket to arrive in Xi'an on Tuesday, 2nd of August. I discover, after the one hour, 2 bus, ride to the station, as I'm about to board the train that I

Terracotta Warriors, Xi'an

Reconstructed warriors

checked everything but the date. It LEAVES on Tuesday. Ah, well, there's no real itinerary or schedule so I guess another day won't matter. I go back to the school to find the internet reconnected & Mike, returned from his holiday in Vietnam. He finds China so much more amenable & friendly, an interesting observation. Thinking North Vietnam would be a good holiday destination his conclusion is the scenery is far preferable to the people.....

…..Tuesday, finally off to Xi'an, in Shaanxi province, 20 hours away by the slow, K, train. Hard sleeper, chatting as best I can with the kids & parents in nearby bunks. It's interesting to meet twins, a boy & girl, in the next compartment. You can be fined for having a second child but, even in China, they don't fine you if you happen to have twins so this family just struck it lucky.....

…..from the window the rail lines look like long zips running across the fabric of China. The slow K trains however trundle, rather than zip, across the land, getting stuck at every little tinpot town of four or five million along the way.....

…..I won't give exhaustive historical

Terracotta Warriors, Xi'an

Small section of the hundreds of warriors in the 3rd pit

details about the city or the places I visited. They're all easily available to those who are interested & very boring to those who are not. Having said that it's worth mentioning that Xi'an, (West Peace), originally Chang'an, (Long Peace), was China's capital in Europe's medieval times. The centre of Xi'an is contained in an impressive rectangular grey brick wall about 12 metres high. I look up the city walls of some other famous walled cites for comparison. Chester, England, about 3.2km. around, York, 5km, Jerusalem, 4.5km. Xi'an, 14km. Then I discover that this Ming Dynasty wall started in 1370 is only about one seventh of the original walled city of a million people. In the days when London, inside the city walls, covered less than one & a half square km. Xi'an was a walled city of 83 square km!......

…..after battling my way out of the railway station, the huge plaza in front of which is an extended & crowded waiting room, I book into the Han Tang Yi Hostel near the centre of the city. The whole place is buzzing with traffic, rickshaws, street traders, food sellers & tourists, Chinese & foreign. It's early. I could

Great Mosque, Xi'an

Interior

go to see the Terracotta warriors today.....

…..the Terracotta army was built around 210 BC, to protect China's first Emperor, Qin Shi Huang, in the afterlife & was discovered by two farmers digging a well in 1974. The experts reckon there are over 8000 life size soldiers, no two alike, 130 chariots, 520 horses & 150 cavalry horses. What you see in the photos is only a fraction of the total.....

…..there's so much history here that there's no point in trying to absorb it all, especially with a memory like mine, so you will see from this blog & the Photobucket photos a collection of almost random things that catch my attention as I wander round. Not scholarly I admit but there's only so much information that I can, should or want to absorb about neolithic pottery or Han Dynasty figurines. I don't spot the ticket office for the Bing Ma Yong, (Clay Army or Terracotta Warriors) so, after walking back through a gauntlet of shops, stalls & street traders on a hot, sticky day to what I assume is the main entrance I am directed back about a kilometre to the first gate to

Big Wild Goose Pagoda, Xi'an

The Pagoda

buy my ticket. ¥180 (Au$27). It had better be good for this price.....

…..I also hadn't realised the army is housed in three large buildings, in a huge park / museum. The first is really an almost empty excavation site, the second a partly excavated site full of fragments & some reconstructed soldiers. The third is built like a huge aircraft hangar. It's difficult to get a photo that shows the full extent of the excavation & building but I hope you'll get some idea. The bronze chariot with horses is an apt image for yet another Chinese attraction that is not only bigger than Ben Hur but makes the latter look like a school picnic.....

…..there are more foreigners in Xi'an than I think I've seen anywhere in China, including Beijing. They are still outnumbered by vast numbers of Chinese exploring their own country.....

…..they are big on fountains in Xi'an, more accurately, big on BIG fountains. The largest musical fountain in Asia is a stepped pool near the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. It's 20,000 square metres, or around three soccer pitches, with what appear to be hundreds of programmed water jets. I don't get to

Drum Tower, Xi'an

Impressive by day, stunning by night

see it at night, which is the most spectacular, if possibly a little cheesy, given the usual choices of music.....

…..a stroke of luck. A random choice of place to eat lunch, a friendly, helpful waitress trying her best to speak English while I order “something with fish”. It's fantastic, huge chunks of succulent white fish in a spicy, but not too hot, sauce.....

…..the museums in China always look sparsely filled compared to those in Europe & even little ol' Australia. Still, Xi'an has a relatively good & well laid out collection of museums & mostly labelled in English & Chinese. The two main museums, the Shaanxi History Museum & the Xi'an museum are conveniently next to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda & Small Wild Goose Pagoda respectively. There's another museum, the Forest of Stelae, (plural of 'stele' – hey I'm an English teacher & I didn't know that!). The steles, sorry, stelae, are upright stone slabs inscribed, in this case with valuable Chinese text & calligraphy. There's also some interesting Buddhist statuary.....

…..the walk all around the top of the city wall is a highlight. It's threatening rain but at least it's relatively cool &

Big Wild Goose Pagoda, Xi'an

Asia's largest musical fountain

not crowded. I mentioned the length of the circuit, more than 14 km. It provides a great view of the city centre & also the rapidly growing city outside the walls. Apart from the length the width is impressive. Jerusalem's walls, as were London's, are about 3m thick. Xi'an's are between 15m & 18m thick. Stick that statistic on the end of your battering ram. A core of rammed earth on a bed of earth, lime & glutinous rice with a skin of grey brick, clay pavers on the top, frequent watchtowers & numerous gates. If you're not up for the walk you can hire a bike for a few kuai. If you're really lazy you can take a motorised buggy.....

…..if you're in Xi'an go to the Moslem quarter. Apart from the impressive Great Mosque the streets are a maze of stalls, an incredible variety of street food & just a riot of colour, smells & tastes. Pictures usually, (hopefully), say a thousand words.....

…..Fox, the Chinese man at the hostel who gives demonstrations of his skills at making cocktails at the hostel, is a master of his art. A pity the photos don't show the blue

Han Tan Yi Hostel, Xi'an

Cocktails with Fox, Master of Mixing

flames licking down the stack of glasses but you'll get the idea.....

…..having kept an eye on the weather forecast on the internet at the hostel I leave the trip to Hua Shan, one of China's five Daoist mountains, for Sunday & maybe Monday if it takes more than a day to get around. It's a collection of five peaks about 150km east of Xi'an, 2 hours on the tourist bus.....

…..up at 5am, I walk the 3km or so to the station to get on the first bus at 6am. By the time I get to Hua Shan & a series of increasingly imposing entrance gates it's after 9am. It starts off as a slope, fairly steep but not too taxing. I say, “Ni Hao” to a fellow tourist who smiles as I walk past. As usual I'm the only foreigner! He indicates the old man behind him who also caught my eye, & tells me he's 80 years old. Can't be that strenuous then, can it?.....

…..wrong, wrong, wrong! Huangshan, the famous mountain in Anhui province which I visited in 2010, is a strenuous walk but Hua Shan is something else. Some of the more

Hua Shan, Shaanxi

A REALLY BIG walk

precipitous & insanely steep paths have been closed & new, less death-defying ones installed. However it's not a walk in the park. The steps, as usual, among the thousands no two are alike. I inspect the chains & iron posts that you have to hang on to. The chains have in some places been worn so that only a third of the material thickness remains. The steps are narrow. Occasionally they slope backwards slightly & almost all are too small for my feet. On some stretches, well, you just don't look down. There are thousands of walkers on the mountain. I don't see any foreigners until we reach the Cable Car station. I assume they take one look at the steps & go straight back as I only see one other during the rest of the day. My plan is to take the cable car down on the way back. My companion is planning to do the same.....

…..Xiang Kuan Yu is a 41 year old Public Prosecutor from Henan Province (I find this out later, neither his English nor my Chinese is up to translating that). It turns out the old man is his father, Xiang Xu Guo,

City Wall Xi'an

An impressive piece of work from the 1370s

who does the whole walk, missing, as we do, only one of the five peaks. There's a lot of cloud even high up but, with frequent, very short, rest stops we carry on up the impossible, crowded paths until we see the sun. It's not a perfect day but still pretty spectacular. Mr. Xiang senior buys a padlock & has it engraved with his name to place with a bright red ribbon, as thousands of others have, as a token of their visit to the mountain. The Chinese walkers are of all ages, primary school kids to the 80 year old Mr. Xiang. I am received with broad smiles by many of them, as apparently the only foreigner today to join them on what is a pretty strenuous stroll.....

…..close to 5pm & my legs have almost had enough. Not far to the cable car. I follow parts of the younger Mr. Xiang's conversation with a mountain porter, (what a job!), regarding the queues for the cable car. Soon I can see it. There are hundreds, if not thousands, waiting. We've been walking, well, mainly climbing, for about seven & a half hours. I know the way down below

City Wall Xi'an

Fortifications and parklands

the cable car is the “Soldier's Way”, the infamous Plank Walk, where two planks are fixed to the side of a sheer cliff face to form part of the path. I'm understandably, given my history, not keen to tackle that, especially now when I'm tired. Mr.Xiang is unstoppable. I am relieved to find the worst parts of the walk have been updated but I'm sure some of you might find some parts of it a little precipitous. I have already warned my sister to have the smelling salts ready prior to looking at the photos.....

…..after another gruelling hour & a half we reach the bus depot at the bottom. Mr. Xiang senior is still going strong & doesn't look at all worn out. He's a bloody legend! I hope I'm as fit as he is by the time I'm 60. Hang on, I'd better start a fitness programme, it's only 2 years away!.....

…..apropos of absolutely nothing, news from the world's tallest building;
“Residents in Burj Khalifa should observe varied timings for iftar, sunset and dawn prayers depending on the level where live,” the paper said, quoting Ahmad Abdul Aziz Al Haddad, head of the Fatwa division

City Wall Xi'an

One of several gates in the 15m thick wall

at the department. He said Muslims living on the 80-150 floors in the tower, the world’s tallest structure, should delay their iftar meal by two minutes while those on the 151-160 floors should break their fasting three minutes late”.

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