Xi'an

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The next few blogs are all about my two week study trip around China, I have them all written already, but it is 15 pages long. I will split them up so it's not just one huge entry with 300 pictures, that way people can actually read them in one sitting. The trip started in Xi'an (Terra Cotta Warriors), then we went to Chengdu (Panda Research Center), Le Shan or "Happy Mountain" (Giant Buddha), back to Chengdu (free day shopping and city park), Lijiang (4 days - mountains, shopping, relaxing), Dali (cruise on a famous lake), Kunming (industrialized, dirty, and slighty dangerous city, but they have an airport that flies to Beijing), then back to Beijing, and now I'm home in Minnesota. I hope you enjoy reading about my final adventures in China, at least for this semester!

I had my Chinese final last Friday, that night we had a big group dinner for Thanksgiving. After packing most of my things and finishing my final paper, we went to dinner. It was “Thanksgiving” dinner but it was at a Peking duck restaurant, there are no Turkey and mashed potatoes restaurants in China. The duck was similar to other duck I’ve tried, and since I don’t usually eat meat I only had one bite, not bad, but there were plenty of delicious non-meat dishes. The meal was very delicious and after we ate there was a short show. A couple students from the program announced the winners of the photo contest and gave out prizes. They thanked all the teachers by giving them beers, which most of them didn’t drink because they are mostly Chinese women, who don’t usually drink much, if any. Dinner was very fun because we got to hang out with all of the teachers when they weren’t getting paid to be around us.
After dinner a few teachers and one tutor came out to the bar with us. The last few weeks almost everyone in the program has been going to the Red House bar on Friday nights. It is a very western atmosphere and usually crowded and loud, partly thanks to our program bringing about 50 people to a bar that probably seats about 30. This time we brought the two teachers and tutor. I also called my language partner and she decided to come. The teacher and tutor had been out before and were having a good time with everyone. My language partner is a little more reserved and had never been out to a bar before, especially not one full of foreigners, so she was understandably a little shy. Once she came in and talked to some of my friends she got more comfortable, since here English is very good, and a few of my friends are very good at Chinese, she had a good time. It got pretty cold, and I gave my coat to the Chinese tutor because she was cold…so I had to walk to the next destination in a t-shirt, which was very cold. That place was fun because I taught my language partner how to play beer pong. She didn’t want to drink, which is fine, so we just played for fun. After that we got a taxi back to campus and ended up buying Chinese noodles and bringing them to McDonalds to eat, because McDonald's is the only place open 24 hours, and by that time it was quite late. Since power goes out at 11pm in the Chinese student dorms on campus, she said you can find people studying or playing games at McDonald's a lot during the week. All-in-all it was a very fun night, one of the best so far in Beijing.
The next day we finished packing and moved out of our rooms. The train out of Beijing was that night. We took a bus to the train station and after a short wait we boarded the train. The train wasn’t as bad as many of us expected. It was similar to the sleeper train I took from Munich to Rome. Each compartment had bunk beds, 3 on each side. I was with 5 Chinese people; Mac was in my car but a couple compartments down. Everyone was very social, many people talked to each other and hardly any of them knew each other before the train ride. I didn’t talk to people at first but I went to Zach’s compartment and we talked to the people in his compartment until after lights out. It was a lot of fun and I actually slept pretty well.
The next morning we got to Xi’an and jumped on the bus to the Terracotta Soldiers. The whole area around the soldiers was very full of shops; it was practically a small village of souvenir and food places. The first three buildings we went in didn’t have any soldiers, but they had some really cool sculptures and some information. One had a very creepy giant puppet of a soldier and a little girl, check out the pictures. One of the buildings had a huge pit bigger than the pit that had been excavated, it was in the process of being uncovered. If that place has soldiers it will be very impressive someday. Finally we saw a building labeled building number one, this had to be it. We walked in the exit because we were too lazy to walk around to the front. The building was like a huge green house, but not warm. As was expected, there was a huge area about a quarter mile long and maybe 100 yards across. The far end wasn’t full of soldiers, just a few here and there, the end near the entrance was what everyone has seen the pictures of. It was really cool to see that all the soldiers in fact had different faces, just like everyone always says. I took pictures of a few funny faces, smiling soldiers with big moustaches. We got some pictures and went outside to enjoy the nice day. As we left I bought a delicious pomegranate from some local farmers.
Our next destination was the Xi’an old city wall. We got to the city wall and it was pretty much what you would expect. You could climb stairs to go to the edge of the wall and walk around it, or you could rent bikes or vans to drive you around it. We chose to just walk a bit and then sit on the side of the wall and look at the city. It was pretty relaxing so it was a good time. It was getting kind of cold, and we were getting hungry so we decided to get some food. They gave us plenty of time at the wall so we were able to walk and find a Korean restaurant for a snack before dinner. We got sushi rolls and they were very delicious, much better than sitting in the cold. After our snack we went back to meet the group. We went for a group dinner, it was amazing! We ate at a famous dumpling restaurant. The meal comes out in courses. First a few appetizers, then one type of dumpling comes out at a time and there are 16 different kinds total! They also fold the dumplings in creative ways, for example, the duck one was shaped like a duck.
That night we went shopping on what we called “Snack Street.” It was a lot of fun. In fact, I went out with some friends and walked around, trying the different snack (check my pictures), then when that group was on the way back, we ran into my teacher and one of my friends on their way out. They told me I should come back out with them so I did. It was a lot of fun, my teacher is very funny to hang out with. She gets excited about the littlest things and is very easily entertained. The girl with her is also staying here next semester and was also in our class, so I know her pretty well. On the way back to the hotel we saw giant telescopes, they claim that they are worth a fortune but we all figured they were fake. They were also selling many long strings of mini kites; they let them fly into the sky farther than you can see, I had to buy one. My first impression of Xi’an was very good. After shopping we went back to the hotel and went to bed, not too late.
The next morning we had a lecture on Muslims in China. To be honest I didn’t learn much from the lecture. Some people really enjoyed it because he gave some basic information on Islam, but I had already learned some about it in my theology class as well as my experiences in the Middle East. It was interesting to learn how Islam came to China. There used to be a road called the Silk Road that went from Xi’an to Europe, I think Rome. The road was for trading so many Chinese people traveled this road, through the Middle East, where Islam is dominant. This led to conversion of Chinese and bringing Islam to Xi’an, from there it spread to some other parts of China, but Xi'an still has the biggest Muslim population in China. After the lecture we visited a mosque. There were people praying and the mosque was very interesting because it had both Islam and Chinese traditional architecture. That night we had a flight so we had dinner and left before dark. We caught a bus to the airport to fly to Chengdu.

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Photos

Close up of some of the faces
I was told all the faces are different because they are based after all different real people