Advertisement
Published: February 14th 2007
Xi'an drum tower at night
Every night in Xi'an, we could see this drum tower from our hotel window. It's a beautiful place, both from nearby and from afar.Four of us traveled to Xi'an for a week at the end of January. My sister, Sally, sent an email summary home to her family, so with a few edits I'll make that the Xi'an description. I have been reading about the terracotta army for many years and this trip was one of the few I put at the top of my China agenda. The museums, the digs, the warriors and the chariots lived up to my expectations. It's truly awe-inspiring.
Here is Sally's description of our trip. We returned from Xian last night. It was about 11:00 pm by the time we hit the apartment, both with bad colds, Susie's about a day ahead of mine. So today I've stayed pretty close to my bed and am feeling much better now. Susie went out a short time ago to get us some eggs, etc.
The trip was really interesting. We left Nanjing on the night sleeper, ate the food we each brought in our 4-person soft sleeper compartment, and turned in to our bunks. It was very, very hot in the compartment and the window did not open.
The field of warriors
We each came to Xi'an to see these warriors. Each face is different. This archeological site is phenomenal. I woke in the night and used my Teller reunion flashlight to find the toilet at the end of the car. Got back into bed without disturbing anyone and watched out the window for quite a while as we went through snowy countryside and the wind whistled as it swirled the snow and pushed against the train. There was a small draft where I had the curtain pushed back, and I cooled off enough to go into a deep sleep.
The conductor woke us all about half an hour before Xian, and we scurried to get redressed in all the layers we had taken off to sleep in the hot car. We ate most of our remaining food, and were ready in time for the scheduled 6 am stop. But then we waited another 35 to 40 minutes to actually arrive. We got off in the very dark morning (all China uses one time schedule so the west is dark late in the morning and light late in the evening by the clock), stayed together through the crowds of people disembarking and those awaiting their arrival, and found a taxi to take us to the hotel. Dai had arranged
for us to check in on arrival, and our rooms were ready.
We got washed and redressed and went out to explore the streets and alleys of the Hui section. These are Muslims. The men wear hats, usually white cotton with no brims, and the women wear scarves tied in various ways. There are no veils. The entry to the street has an arch shaped like the old Mongol tent tops. We looked at tons of merchandise, under a lot of pressure from the owner of each stall to buy. We rapidly learned that Dai could get far better prices than we could, especially if she went back without any of us. We had what tasted like corned beef sandwiches from one place, than ate a mixture of rice and dates from another. Our walk along the alley took us to an incredibly ancient mosque, the Great Mosque, one of the largest in China, first established in 742 AD (according the its own statement but not necessarily true), and added to many times. We had a wonderful time exploring it. An Islamic Brotherhood organization is raising money to restore it (this is now allowed, religion is no longer outlawed),
Ban Po sign
This was a matriarchial society and they have a very challenging time ahead of them.
While there we met a young American girl who is taking a gap year to travel before starting at the U of Chicago in September. She has been teaching in a small village to the north, living with a Chinese family. Dai helped her with her cell phone so she could check in with that family to let them know she had arrived safely. She has been teaching English in a middle school in the village, where only four other people speak English. Now that the term is over she is going to France. Her first visit was to Australia. She is a seasoned traveler, but nevertheless seemed very young to me to take on this adventure alone. She caught up with us again as we were going into a restaurant for lunch and joined us to warm up and grab a bite. (We were all very cold by this time and were getting hot tea.) She left as soon as she had had some food to get a bus out to the site of the Qin tomb. The rest of us ordered what seemed to be the specialty
These are common soldiers
Notice the hair style on these common soldiers. The officers are wearing hats. of the place--a bowl of mutton soup/stew to which we added broken up bits of four small pieces of bread. The bread was about the size of kaiser rolls but the texture was different from anything else I've ever eaten. It was the same bread that the corned beef sandwiches were made with. The stew was delicious.
In the afternoon we went to the Shaanxi History Museum--one of the best in China. This was an excellent orientation for the trip we made the next day. Linell told us that the labeling had improved considerably since her earliest visit, although still not totally scholarly. Earlier the labels had all been written to be consistent with a Marxist interpretation of history, but the new labels were much more objective.
Susie and I ate in the hotel's Chinese Restaurant, while Linell and Dai went back out to the market and ate on the street. The hotel is in a terrific location--next to the market, with a beautiful view of the Bell Tower, the centerpiece of the town, just one block away, and next to the Drum Tower. Both of these date back to the Qin emperor who unified the country. (Qin
These are officers
See the hats on these soldiers. Officers who stood behind the common soldiers. is pronounced Chin and is the reason for the name China). The wall he built is still mostly standing (and well restored) since after a couple more dynasties, Xian went from being the center of empire to a west country backwater--very good for historic preservation! From the air, on the flight back to Nanjing, we could see the pattern of the old city center, with the two towers surrounded by the wall.
Dai arranged for a car for us the next day, and we went first to Ban Po, an incredible dig dating to thousands of years ago. Here the labeling was totally scholarly, unlike Linell's earlier visit, and the dig was extremely well done. We had seen a model of the village in the museum, but the dig itself displayed the changes in the house structures over time and the techniques that were developed to build well above ground. There were very good displays of the various kinds of burials they had uncovered. They had also found an image of a face or mask which is unique to that dig.
The car took us on to the tomb of the Warriors. It is incredibly impressive. It has
Replica of the emperor's chariot
Imagine the work required to piece together all the parts for the original emperor's chariot! This is a replica. also totally changed the economy of this small western village. Our driver insisted that it was too far for me to walk and we had to rent a wheelchair. I absolutely refused, and this infuriated him since he would lose out on a kickback from the wheelchair concession. He insisted that he could take us no further than that spot, but we observed other cars driving in. Our driver insisted they were all residents. A girl from the new housing that is part of the elaborate new construction leading to the tomb said she would lead us in on her bike and he could follow her in his car. This shamed him, and he complied, taking us to the first set of steps. We thanked the girl, and arranged to meet the driver at the exit gate at 3:00 pm (15:00 in China). He was angry because we would not stop at any of the places along the road where he could get a kickback for anything the merchants might sell to us, and we only wanted to go to these two sites!
At the tomb, which is nationally run (as opposed to the long approach which is locally
Fixing the statues
In this area of the display, you see the work being done to put the statues together. Not all the statues are being excavated because the paint turns black instead of staying the bright colors when they are first exposed to the oxygen. run, still under construction, and will be full of thousands of small shops when finished), we hired a guide, Zhang Fenghua, who speaks both English and Japanese. (For readers who want to contact him send email to zhangfh6289@yahoo.com.cn.) He took us to the lovely on-site tea house for a break where we ate the lunch we had brought while our tea table hostess demonstrated some odds and ends of china. At the end of the tour he took us to the museum shop where the farmer who found the site while digging a well, and reported it to the authorities, was sitting, autographing books about the warriors. Susie bought one. We then watched a very well done movie about the tomb. It was hard to leave in time to meet the driver, but we managed.
We went back to the market street in Xian and ate in a noodle shop. Highly spiced shish kabob, a big bowl of noodles, and nothing to drink, not even beer because it was a Muslim place. The noodles kept growing as I ate them, absorbing all the soup in the bowl! It was good, but the restaurant wasn't clean enough to whet my
pictures of the individual faces
The statues have individual faces. Each one is different. Look at all these photos. appetite and there was a thick cloud of smoke. People smoke almost everywhere almost all the time. It's pretty uncomfortable to me now, but very much like the world of my youth.
On Thursday Susie and I had a western breakfast at the Chinese restaurant. Dai went out to the market to bargain for some of the things we wanted. To give you an idea, when I asked a price it would be 80 Yuan. When Dai asked later, it might be 12 Yuan which she would work down to 8. The original price is known as the "foreigners' tax" and they do get away with it many times. A foreigner like myself bargains down to 40 and thinks she's done a good job! I've learned a lot about bargaining from Dai.
We ate at a Jao-Zi restaurant--an incredible lunch with four cold dishes for starters, 18 Jao each, each one different from the others, followed by two platters of hot Jao, and a plate of fruit , all accompanied by a flavored tea. And I ate it all with chopsticks. The Jaozi are a lot like a cross between won ton, ravioli, and pierogies. Absolutely delicious.
New area of officers and horses
Here a new area is opened with horses and officers. In the afternoon we went to a very famous Buddhist temple, the temple of the monk (Xuan Zang) who brought Buddhism to China. There is a very tall pagoda there, built to house the Sanskrit texts that this monk brought from India and then translated into 1335 Chinese volumes. We saw replicas of some of these in one display. The walls of the temple surrounding the pagoda date from the Qing dynasty and are Ming-style and beautiful. The inside walls are covered with a variety of murals telling the story of the monk and his travels, and showing the life of the Buddha. A great deal of money is being poured into this temple on both restoration and new building projects. Apparently it is favored by the national leadership, and is being cultivated as a major tourist attraction. The pagoda itself dates from 652 AD, is now 64 plus meters tall, and has been renovated and restored many times. It is called the Big Goose Pagoda, probably because its shape is like that of a goose's long slender neck.
Xian was the eastern end of the great Silk Road, and the center of many early dynasties--a great city two
museum piece
Here's a mythical gold animal from the museum, excavated from the warrior dig. hundred years before Homer. It was surrounded by a wall, and on our last day we climbed up and walked the wall. The emperor who built the original of this wall was the same one who started the construction of the Great Wall of China. It was rebuilt by the first emperor of the Ming dynasty. The view of the city from the wall was well worth the climb. We walked to the next gate, passing a huge number of workers welding together frames, wiring them with strings of light bulbs, and covering them with silk for the Lunar New Year on Feb.18, also known as Spring Festival. We saw the funeral wreath street, and a Confucius temple, and once off the wall, the calligraphy street and another couple of hundred shops and vendors. Dai bought us candy apples--each a stick full of small haws, like crabapples, covered with sugar syrup. We ate lunch at a Taiwanese chain restaurant--beef, noodles, and one flourette of broccoli. The noodles were actually corkscrew pasta.
We had already checked out of the hotel, leaving our luggage there. We returned to the hotel. We had not been able to get train tickets home on
Tang figure
Here is a model of female beauty from the Tang dynasty. She's chubby! I like that! the soft sleeper, so had decided to fly back (far more comfortable, though much more expensive). We got a car to the airport, boarded the cigar-shaped commuter to Nanjing, took the shuttle bus to our neighborhood, and a taxi home. And were very glad to be here, cold as Susie's apartment was. I crawled into bed, and Susie began catching up on her email.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.243s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 18; qc: 82; dbt: 0.0965s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
Gailey
non-member comment
Stupendous!! You have some wonderful and artistic photos, Susie! Your trip sounds so fascinating. How long did it take to prepare all that for the burial? Was it done during his whole life in preparation for his death? And the gold figurine is beautiful. Thank you for the great "tour."