Xi'an: The City of Perpetual Peace

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Hello dear blog followers, it has been a long time.



I have had a few minor adventures since coming back from Laos and Thailand over the winter, but I didn't feel any of them were blog worthy. Then, I went to Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi province and the former capital of China itself. A bit of background before I jump into the adventure: Xi'an was chosen by Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, to be the site of the capital of his country and served as the capital of China for a millennium. It was the starting point of the great Silk Road, is nearly 3000 years old, has had settlements in the area for nearly 7000 years, and is nestled in a region where the Lantian Man was discovered (500,000 year old man). To say the city is historic or ancient is a vast understatement. Population today: 8.5 million. China loves its numbers.

The adventure begins with me landing in Xi'an around 1am and catching the last bus into the city. The bus dropped everyone off at some hotel in the middle of town and so I took a cab from there to the hostel where our long, dear friend Gavin was waiting patiently. The bar had been the site of some drunken baffoonery just minutes before I arrived. I was happy enough to find a quiet guesthouse to call home for the next 5 days. Gavin and I stayed up past 3am talking and catching up. Way too much to get through in one late evening so we saved the big topics for the following day. Gavin has been living in Japan for the past year and some months searching for worms that live inside figs that seem to exclusively grow in tropical environments. He has visited some parts of Japan that few foreigners have seen. He found his figs and his worms and is currently stateside awaiting further instructions from this thing we call "life".

The following day we woke up a bit late and started wandering. The aim was to find breakfast and the Shaanxi Museum. After an hour walk, we found a street full of food carts that were shoveling vegetables and meat into buns and serving them out. Looked like a winner! We each settled for the vegetarian option and were very satisfied. Potato, tofu skin (tastes way better than it sounds) veggies, stuffed into a good sized bun. Good, high carb way to start the day! We found the museum after missing a few cross streets (conversations had me distracted) and waited for it to re-open after lunch. Admission only cost us our time spent in line at the ticket office, but was otherwise free. The tickets are to limit the number of visitors. Apparently the "best museum in China" has a tendency to get a little crowded. The Chinese love free things, and they being in a huge mass just as much, so a free crowded museum is a dream come true. Anyway, the museum was really well done. Gavin and I decided to do the museum in reverse order, thinking that the post-lunch rush would go the correct way. Didn't really matter, a crowded museum is a crowded museum. Nevertheless, it was a really nice museum. Good English descriptions and some really REALLY impressive artifacts that were in excellent condition. We're talking thousands of years old, some of this stuff. We also got our first introduction to the Terra Cotta Warriors that day. The museum had a few on display and we were able to get really close to them. We were very impressed and very excited for our trip out to the Terra Cotta Warrior site the following day. The evening took us to the Muslim Quarter in Xi'an just 10 minutes or so from our hostel. Great night market and street food and various stalls selling all kinds of things. The Arab and Persian traders on silk road brought Islam with them to China and it has stuck around in places to this day. It is nice to see such traditions remain, especially in an ever changing place like China. We had some nice noodles served boiling hot in these black pots with the handles attached. Gavin hadn't seen it before, and for me, Yunnan only uses these kinds of bowls for rice, not soups, so it was new for me, too. Tasty and spicy dish! No beer for sale at the restaurant, as it was indeed Muslim. Wandering through the Muslim Quarter we see guys pounding honey and nuts into a nice gooey dessert, a few guys pulling HUGE things of taffy on a hook to soften it up, various animal parts hung up from the rafters of shops, instruments, tourist crap, yelling, horns. All the good stuff that comes with Asian markets.

The next day was the big day. We got on a bus in the morning for the Terra Cotta Warriors and an hour or so later, we were there! After buying the entry tickets and wandering through the fanfare, we finally got into the enormous hanger-like structure that houses our famed warriors. Now, I've been in China for a few years now, and I've seen a lot of stuff in this country. This might be THE site to see. I was very impressed. All life sized, all different, all spectacularly detailed, and most were, again, in unbelievably good condition! Something like 6000 warriors were sculpted out of terra cotta over 2000 years ago. That was the statistic of the day. I had no idea they were so old! We wandered around the grounds for a few hours taking everything in. There was a small museum attached and it had a few of the warriors in glass boxes set up so you could really inspect them closely. The carvings were so cool. The details in the faces with mustaches, hair, texture in the clothing materials, armor plating, soles of shoes (there were archers that were kneeling so you could see the bottoms of their shoes). Some warriors were tall, some short, some hefty, some thin. There were generals, various commanders of all ranks, archers, soldiers, pikemen, charioteers, and so on. There were even jesters! The king WILL be entertained at the end of a long day in eternity. Another interesting fact of the warriors is that they were painted. They looked about as real as could be using technology from 2000 years ago. There were a couple of models that had been painted to how they would have looked the day ol' Qin Shi Huang passed away. Really cool!

The warriors took the better part of the day, but we still had time to ride bikes around the city wall after we got back to town. The Xi'an city wall is also a feat of engineering. It is the largest city wall on earth in terms of what, I'm not sure, but it is 13m (40ft) high, 15m (55ft)thick, and 8.5 miles long. That's a pretty big wall, guys. You can drive a truck on top of it. Gavin and I rode bicycles around it instead. Decent views from the top, though Xian is quite polluted, unfortunately...

The travel continues on Saturday with a trip to Hua Shan, one of the 5 grand mountains of Buddhist significance in China. Gavin and I were joined by a Mexican traveller from our hostel for the day. It would prove to be a test of our physical abilities as I think we ended up climbing over 10,000 stairs throughout the day. The mountain was really nice. A tour hour ride from Xian made us take an early start, but it was good to be there. After a 20 minute instructional demonstration about the dangers of the mountain, we headed up! The mountain is ancient and has been a site of pilgrimage for over a thousand years. There were temples dotting the hillsides and plenty of gazebos and pagodas to look at. Hua Shan has a pretty unsusual geography, too. It tries to be tree covered, but the tan granite cliffs don't offer much soil for vegetation. There were several Chinese carvings in the cliffsides as well. Added to the intrigue of the mountain. We stopped for lunch at the North Peak. Yesterdays rice and OK dishes for ridiculous prices. Whatever. Hunger needs to be taken care of. After lunch, we felt refreshed and continued our hike. We hit the four other peaks: East, South, West, and center of course! Each peak offered a unique view, too. Some were on sheer cliffs that went a thousand feet down. It was a great day for hiking, too. We were fortunate with weather and crowds. We were exhausted by the end and opted for the cable car on the way down. I'm not a supporter of cable cars on mountains, but I gotta say, this was quite a feat of cable car engineering! It came out of a giant hole in the cliffside before descending into the valley below. Our Mexican travel companion was not a fan of the heights, but Gavin reassured him by bringing up possible recourse options should we fall to our deaths. Anyway, we survived and got back to Xian exhausted. Thankfully we got off at the wrong subway stop and walked back to the hostel, because we found a fantastic restaurant that was open late. We had a feast! Chicken, pork, vegetables, soup, beers, delicious! We even got seconds. Thirds on the beers. The meal saved what could have been a very cranky evening haha.

Gavin and I made a good night of it and woke up late the next day. Sunday was planned to be a relaxing day. We wandered Xi'an a bit more and went to another museum. It was a museum housing all of the carved stone tablets that were illustrating the history of China, Xi'an, Buddhist texts, Islamic texts, poems, stories, biographies, all carved into stone. The museum had been a museum for nearly a thousand years apparently. Always housing these stone tablets, called steles. It was a cool place to wander around and not really have to pay that much attention. Glad we went though! We had a really nice lunch of friend noodles that had a LOT of flavor. They were some of the better noodles I've had in China. Gavin was pleased as well. Chinese cuisine did indeed prove to be far different from the Japanese food he had grown accustomed to. After the noodle shop, we found a small beer shop/bar that specialized in imported beers. They had an entire fridge for American beers (I haven't had one since America. Budweiser doesn't really count). So we had a couple of drinks in there and chatted the afternoon away. Exactly what we had in mind after a busy trip. As the daylight faded away, we walked outside the city wall to the the main gate and took pictures. They light up the city wall at night and the main gate is especially beautiful. There is even a drawbridge.

The following day Gavin and I said our goodbyes and he set off in the hotel car for the airport. I had the day to myself, so I did not know what to do except see the Banpo Ancient Village. I was expecting an empty field or maybe a small museum or something. I hadn't heard of this place before coming to Xi'an. Turns out it is considered to be one of the best preserved and best examples of a Neolithic village anywhere in the world. Again, I was impressed. There WAS indeed a museum at the site and it was much much better than expected. Ancient artifacts in outstanding condition. Some were over 7500 years old. Holy cow! The usual pots and vases were on display, but they had paint on them and seemed flawless. Unbelievable for something so old. Also at the site were the foundations of the village huts. The site was housed under a giant hanger-like structure similar to that of the Warriors. Cool place to wander around. They even had skeletons on display in glass cases below the surface. Again, excellently preserved skeletons 6000 years old. It was quite a place, really. You don't get to see a 6000 year old kiln every day either. The museum was wonderful, too with English explanations, good video (also in English), and good displays.

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Photos

Muslim Quarter
Gavin admiring the goods at the night market

Terra Cotta Warriors
The main hall

Kneeling Archer
Note the detail from his hair and headpiece all the way down to the sole of his shoe

Archer
That face

Hua Shan
View on North Peak

Hua Shan
View on West Peak

Hua Shan
Crazy cable car. The station is IN that hole!

Hostel in Xi'an
One of the many common areas in our hostel

The Grand Mosque
Check out that architecture

The Grand Mosque
The largest mosque in Xi'an

City Walls
Gavin in front of the main gate

Banpo Ancient Village
One of the artifacts. This one is 7000 years old

Skeletons in Banpo
An unusual shared burial plot near the village