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Published: April 27th 2013
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short pause during our bike ride along the city wallsOur first blog post after a heartfelt departure from Dunhuang finds us in central China in the city of Xi'an, the ancient capital for over ten dynasties and home of the famous Terracotta Warriors. Our train took 24 hours to get here, and with all of the luggage we had to bring to accomodate both winter in Dunhuang as well as early summer in Taiwan, train travel will definitely prove to be a challenge. Train travel in China has several options, but for overnight trains the only real way to travel is by sleeper—unless you wait until the last minute and want to stand for the entire trip, but luckily we planned enough in advance to avoid that. We opted for the soft sleeper, which has four people in one cabin and you can close the door at night; in hard sleepers, the entire compartment is open and each room sleeps six people. With all of our luggage, we needed the extra space. The cabin was a bit claustrophobic at first, but overall very comfortable and the time seemed to pass quickly. Our cabin-mates were an extremely nice Chinese couple, so it was a successful initial exposure to train travel in
a good view of the city walls with the Xi'an Lama temple in the background (Tibetan Buddhism)China. Hopefully we'll feel the same after three more trips.
We arrived in Xi'an at 9:30 am on Friday morning and proceded to our hostel from there. After dropping our bags, the first thing we did was head to the ancient city walls of Xi'an to ride bikes along the entire perimeter. It took about an hour and a half total, and the weather was perfect. We were able to see the juxtaposition of ancient Xi'an on the inside of the walls and new, modern skyscrapers on the outside. Afterwards we headed to the Muslim district and sampled all kinds of street food: glutinous rice cakes with honey, spicy tofu, pastries, and stinky tofu. (For the record, Danny loves stinky tofu and has for some time. Apparently it was good, but not the best.) As of yesterday, Mercedes thinks it tastes like garbage and will never ever eat it again. On our walk we also saw the Drum and Bell Towers, the City God Temple, and the Xi'an Mosque. Eventually we headed to dinner at First Noodle Under the Sun, which came highly recommended from several sources but ended up being a disappointment. We checked out the Big Wild
tofu!
damn fine street food in the Muslim Quarter Goose Pagoda afterwards and saw hundreds of locals dancing in a crowd. It was definitely strange.
Today (Saturday) our plan was to see the Terracotta Warriors about an hour outside of the city. After a few public transportation missteps and three hours later, we finally made it. The area is composed of three pits, which we were told to visit in reverse order starting with Pit 3 to save the most impressive one for last. Pit 3 had a few dozen warriors and some horses, but much of it had been destroyed and it was quite small but still impressive. Pit 2 was even larger but appeared to be largely unexcavated, with some warriors and horses exposed but mostly showcasing the structure that housed/still houses many warriors. It was built to resemble an ancient palace. Pit 1...we definitely saved the best for last. Around 2,000 life-sized warriors are excavated, with another 4,000 thought to still be buried there. The Pit was as large as an airplane hangar, and it was amazing to see how each warrior's face was different from the others. There was some conservation and excavation work being done at the time of our visit, so it
Pit 3was interesting to get a behind-the-scenes look.
When we returned back at our hostel, we went to dinner at a place down the street that hostel recommended that was delicious, and made up for our subpar dinner last night. Currently, the bar in the hostel's basement is playing Happy Birthday at what sounds like an open-mic night... So there's that.
Tomorrow our plan is to go to the Shaanxi History Museum, Xi'an History Museum, and the Stele Museum. Our train doesn't leave for Chengdu until 10 pm so we'll have the whole day to explore again. Our initial plan was to go to the Tomb of Emperor Jingdi, but we don't want to risk going out of the city on public transportation again with a train to catch at night. There's still plenty to see and do in Xi'an so we'll write more tomorrow!
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