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Published: November 28th 2006
Xian - Terracotta Warriors
The line up for tickets was incredibleArrived in Xian in the morning to find it was actually a little colder than Kunming - ah yes now that we're hitting the Northern hemisphere it's Winter right...
Anyway - after acclimatising we jumped on the airport shuttle into the madness of central Xi An and hopped a public bus with our rucksacks and accumulation of crap. I was even offered a seat by an old man...!
After some aimless wandering down random streets we tracked down the hostel only to realise that we seemed to be on Barber Shop street, which was fortunate 'cos the hair was getting a bit long - but we were to find out later that these hairdressers with their bright lights and scantily clad girls were not all they seemed - especially when the sun went down.
Xian city is surrounded by an immense square wall about 14km wide, that has been renovated over the years and I believe you can now actually walk all the way around it?? The urban sprawl spreads well beyond these boundaries though and it was the first real time that we noticed the pollution was starting to get really bad - however you could still
Xian - Big Goose Pagoda
The fountain, music and light spectacular see your hand in front of your face, but your vision was limited to a distance of about 1km down the road.
We ventured out to the Bell and Drum Towers on the first day we arrived, where we witnessed some bloke (could have been a cheeky tourist) strike the thousand year old bell before climbing the drum tower for the afternoon drum performance, which saw some very talented fellows put on quite a display!
We were amazed to find the Western influence was rife in Xi An - having as many as 6 KFC's and no doubt just as many McDonalds scattered around the city at various tourist attractions. We had thought that perhaps China was going to be the last bastion of resistance to the global fast food giants, but apparently not... and yes we did succumb to the fast food, once or twice... 😉
Beyond the Drum Tower was a nice little alleyway of quaint shops and a market that all sold fairly similar stuff (except for one that sold pomegranite pancakes and had a massive queue) where we picked up a few souvenirs and Christmas pressies for you all (well those of you
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Ding Ding... Andrew at the bell tower. that have been good, anyway - you know who you are...). The street was run by mainly Muslim merchants which was kind of strange to see given the predominance of Buddhism in the south. Anyway these guys were clearly the most stubborn bargainers we'd come across to date - One guy starting at 300 kwai for a pair of sunnies, and after 10 mins of bargaining we finally got him down to 25, before not even buying the damn things - ha, the fun is in the sport.
Returning to the hostel as darkness was falling we were talking to a couple from Quebec in the lobby for a while before Andrew's smelly feet drove them away and they were replaced by the crazy, zany, wacky 'hustler' named Tony Wu - a HK expat that spent some time in Australia and now lived in San Fran. Anyway we hit it off immediately and he suggested that we go with him down the road to a little eatery that he'd sussed out that had some local delicacies that only came out after 9pm - at 3 yuan a meal and with beers at the same price who could argue??
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Here come the drums, here come the drums... Soon enough we were labelled the 'Bloody Aussies' and the banter began. Insulting one another until the wee early hours of the morning just as if we were back home. We returned back to the hostel after the equivalent of a chinese feast and turned it in cos Tony was feeling a little sleepy. He was an old man you see 😉
DAY TWO - 10th Nov - MUSEUM & BIG GOOSE PAGODA The next day we got up and headed out on the public bus to the Shaanxi History Museum where we got to see the skull of some ancient man from the area who was thought to be over 1.5 million years old (but in reality he was only about 30 😉 Plus there was heaps of pottery and stuff you'd find in a museum. Coins, old stuff they've dug up throughout the ages, you know the deal... We even got to catch our first glimpse of the Terracotta warriors who had marched all the way from the emperors tomb just to be there. All in all though a pretty interesting day that was followed by a trip to the Big goose Pagoda which happened to
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Andrew's time in the circus was limited as the knife thrower's eyesight got worse... be just down the road (3km walk later...) and featured a KFC, some cool statues a rather huge pagoda that was barely visible from the end of the path due to either pollution or a dust storm - we couldn't quite work out which...
The park seemed to be a magnet for locals as well as tourists and we were mesmerized for a while by a little girl that seemed to have these magical wheels that popped out of the back of her shoes whenever she decided that she wanted to skate instead of walk. In honour of the MontyMania tour which seems to have gone a little flat of late, Richards was asked to pose in a few photos for the locals, one squatting as if using the Chinese toilet (he'd obviously seen me in Adventures in Yakistan) with statues doing a similar thing and the other with some random guy that thought he'd like to look back one day at a picture with some random Australian bloke that was a godd 2 foot taller than him. Coincidentally we decided that we';d do the same and now we have this connection from opposite sides of the globe!!??
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The drum spectacle kicks off live in the Drum tower We also got our charicatures drawn cos it was cheap and vowed to come back one night cos the fountain show was going to be on complete with coloured lights and musically coordinated spurts of water - gotta see this we thought...
Back to the hostel where we met back up with Tony and went back to our favourite street vendour for dinner with another surly bloke from London. Tony encouraged us all to eat larger and larger pieces of raw garlic which kind of burns a little bit like Chilli, is supposedly very very good for you. Yeah sure! just keep the vampires and ladies away right?
We carried on back at the hostel where we were taught an array of tricks that fleeced us of our money and drinks for the veritable hustler... but hey, I now have the license to practise on others I was assured as I parted with my Yuan...
So look out people!
We attracted a few other blokes from the UK and Switzerland who told us interesting stories about their trips to date, especially to the Barber's shop down the road... "I'm feeling very relaxed now" was enough information
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Nunny checks to see if she's shaved her armpits in the last 4 months - Nup! for the time being. Turned it in lateish as the bar girls fell asleep around us one by one.
DAY THREE - 11th Nov - TERRACOTTA WARRIORS Well today was the day that we visited the one and only reason to come to Xi An - The Terracotta Warriors. The warriors were laid to protect the Emperor ....... someone, and protect him through the passage to the afterlife. This was not a new thing to do, but this guy made sure that we took a realistic representation of his entire army (around 20,000) this included individual features on each of the soldiers, horses, and archers and all in complete battle formation.
And may we just say, that is is actually pretty damn cool and very impressive.
Avoiding the "all-expenses-paid" tour offered by our hotel we managed to save ourselves about 200yuan each by catching the public bus (yeah, so down on the local transport) and arrived around midday to the mega tourist attraction.
Kind of weird and sterile from the outside, we wandered up the concrete wasteland to reach the gates with only about 17 individual guides approach us assuring that we couldn't possible enjoy the experience
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Chatting up the birds without hiring their services. Naturally we brushed them away with a well practiced flick of the wrist and headed firstly into the exhibition hall. Inside were the two original bronze chariots that were discovered within the Emperors tomb down the road, along with a great exhibition explaining all the cool bits and pieces they found that demonstrated the advancement of the Chinese people and society at the time - around 500 BC.
Phwa, who needs guides? There are that many walking around leading big groups that you just move onto the back of one until they start to look at you funny then casually walk away admiring the nearest glass cabinet.
Pit no 1 is the largest pit to be uncovered and the sheer size of its hall is enough to take your breath away. This thing is a massive aircraft hanger, and large enough to fit 5 football fields within. HHHHUUUUGGGGGEEEEE.
In this pit alone they have uncovered 10,000 individual warriors (all in billions of little pieces that they then had to put back together again) plus horses and chariots. Considering that they had to put back all the pieces like a jigsaw puzzle using the
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The man- the legend, Mr Tony Wu different shades of the teracotta the workload is astounding and all in all they've done a pretty good job. We did spend a bit of time though picking out the ones that had unusually small heads, or freakishly long arms. Unfortunately there were no midgets.
Pit 3 was next on the agenda and many thought it to be somewhat disapointing after the sheer size of pit 1, but I would ten to disagree as there is something to be said about the intimacy of the pit that they have quaintly termed as the 'Headquarters" of the after-life army. It was in here that some of the better statues were preserved, with the original colour still intact (though now destroyed air exposure)
Pit 2 was mostly underground still but you could see how the wooden beams of the roof that housed the great army have all warped and caved in on itself. This Pit was a good example of how it would have looked when they first discovered it, and I daresay they'll leave it like it is because a) I think we all know what they're gonna find underneath, and b) they've got enough work putting Humpty back
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Our favourite little 3 kwai roadside stall heats up together again in Pit 1 before opening up another can of worms!
So after trampling around all day and Nunny promising to be email friends with a pair of 12 year old Chinese girls - who incidently appeared to five great pleasure in announcing that their school work was much harder than when Nunny went to school, and that Nunny could indeed need some help with her Mandarin because her Chinese was "very bad." - we left this giant interesting hole in the ground to return to our hostel for a quick cat nap before heading back to the Big Goose Pagoda's infamous Water and Light Show!
We nearly missed it admittedly as Andrew was struggling to get up from his beauty sleep and Nunny was too distracted with something else to realise what the time was but pushed on by the realisation that this would be our only opportunity we sped towards the nearest No. 5 bus.
We managed to catch the last 10 mins of this magical spectacular that left Disneyland and Las Vegas to shame. In time with classical music, at least 200,000 fountains and jets would project water over the size of at
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Eating fresh garlic was the Chinese equivalent to squirting lemon in your own eye least 2 footy fields. That in itself is pretty cool, but the fact that you would actually stand along pathways surrounded by these jets of water just made it even more impressive. It was a great atmosphere with hundreds of people peacefully enjoying the free show, then taking their time to get on the subway, or catch a bus onwards. We just don't have these kind of public areas or activities back home. I think they may end up being tainted by the Aussie's need for alcohol anyway.
After getting spooked by a supernatural phenomenon ie. watching a small girl - probably around 8 years old - skate along with her flashing roller skates we realised that she was surely a demon-child as every photo we took of her would only ever capture her flashing shoes but never her body. We thought it was best to leave and retreated back to the safety of our Hostel for the next day we go to Big ol' Beijing and to once again be re-united by our good friend Mr Tony Wu.
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The Real Skip
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Doesn't count!
Sorry Michelle, no money for fake bull-riding. And riding Andrew's Wild Pony doesn't count either! Not even if you send me a picture of that to proof it. (Considering Andrew's small feet there wouldn't be much to see anyway...:-))) Still enjoying your blogs very much. Take care!!!