Blogs from Xi'an, Shaanxi, China, Asia - page 5

After spending 13 months inShenyang, the first thing I noticed was my new found ability to breathe. It didn’t smell like rotten fish guts, it wasn't overwhelmingly busy. Downtown Xi’an: To us, the buildings had shrunk to an adorable normal size. What a breathe of fresh air, I have to say this again. Welcome back lungs. Little two-storey, simple and obvious shops. These bricks were made with a simple purpose of building a small restaurant, you will notice, recognize and be able to work out that you can eat here. You can even see English here and there. This isn't the China we are used to. At last, China had put away it’s obsession with heights and super-bright redundant signs. It wasn’t as harsh, as in your face, as unruly. There were actual old buildings, some ... read more

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Upon boarding the train from Pingyao we arrived at Xian roughly 4 hours later. We then boarded the metro and made our way to the centre of the city to our hostel which was based within the city walls. Xian, much like Pingyao is an ancient city and is surrounded by a city wall. Xian however, is much larger and more developed, probably on account of the discovery of the Terracotta Army in the 1970's which turned this place into one of the most popular tourist destinations in China. We checked into our room and decided to explore the town a little before a relatively early night as we would be up early the next day to visit the Terracotta Army. It was around 4pm by the time we mobilised ourselves and ... read more

This was one of the main places in China that fascinated us long before considering a world trip or even a trip to China. The famed Terracota warriors - a long forgotten tomb housing a stone army with around 8000 life size soldiers each with their own distinguishable features, discovered in Xi'an in 1974. It was no longer forgotten or hidden as intended. Added to this amazing site, Xi'an also has well preserved city walls surrounding its 'ancient city'. There was nothing more to it, it was added firmly on our list, we had to go. Getting to Xi'an from Zhangjiajie was a 2 part journey. First was a fairly comfortable hard sleeper overnight train (cheapest option) to the town of Nanyang where we sat sleepy eyed at the station for 2 hours until our next ... read more

And so, some two months after I departed Indonesia for a little downtime back home in Singapore, I'm back on the road again, and this time I'm embarking on what I hope will pan out to be the grand East Asian tour that I've been planning in my head for some time. And what better way to start East Asia than of course going straight to the heart of the Chinese dragon, and its ancient capital of Xi-an. So it's been almost two years since I last left China, memories of the daily border crossings I did between Zhuhai and Macau to save money on accomodation still fresh in my head. Having already spent some time in the southern provinces the last time round, I decided this time to pay a visit to what I suppose ... read more

I found out the hard way that the sun rises very early in China. Early as in 4-4:30 AM EVERY morning… So that definitely threw off my sense of time in the morning. I woke up and thought I had slept through my alarm, but luckily I didn’t. It’s really starting to set in now that I’m in China and that I’ll be here for 5 weeks. It is definitely a crazy thought! The first thing we did today was go to a government owned/run terracotta factory. The quality of the work there is amazing. They use the same methods that were used before to harden the clay, but instead of stacking slabs of clay by hand and then carving, they use molds. They make all different sizes of terracotta warriors from full-size to only 4-6 ... read more