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Published: February 26th 2006
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The Group
Taken outside the warrior museum.
L-R: Guide, Drew, Richard, Bill, Alex and Joe.
What a bunch of tourists!! I have managed to survive a whole week of hanging out at House Club, playing dice and having small people attached to me for four hours a day. We attempted to socialise at another bar where Richard met up with some of the girls who work at the museum with him, but after half an hour, we got a bit bored of just being four more faces in the crowd, so stopped off at House on the way home to wallow in the adulation. Joe learned how to flick the dice shaker, and really impressed the manager. What was even more remarkable is that his arm is all bandaged up at the moment, courtesy of a bite from a brown recluse spider before he left Florida. It got all yucky, so he got taken to hospital, where it was operated on. Well, sliced open, and all the gunk taken out, with no anaesthetic. He told us about it in great detail. He’s since discovered another bite on his leg, but is keeping quiet about it, hoping the drugs will kill it before the doctor butchers him again.
We had a dumpling lesson, which is more difficult than it looks. Then
we were made to eat them for dinner, Chef had fixed most of the ones that had fallen apart. They tasted pretty good, but I don’t think any of us are on our way to become professional dumpling makers.
Thursday was the coldest day so far. And our fusebox went. About 2 am, I heard a funny zinging noise, then a big pop. I grumbled and rolled over in my safe, warm cocoon. My alarm went off at 7. I swung my legs out of bed, then leaped back in. I fumbled around for some clothes and got dressed under the duvet, a skill perfected in boarding school, and probably the most useful thing I learned there. Our hot water supply is erratic at the best of times, and I was not going to subject myself to a potentially cold shower, lit only by the light of my mobile phone. I put on so many layers of clothes, I looked like the students, only the tip of my nose was visible, and it becomes awfully difficult to write on the blackboard when your arms are stuck at right angles to your body, with no ability to bend at the elbow. Still, I was warm, and the teachers think that is the most important thing - health before duty is their mantra. There was also snow on the cars that come from outside the city walls. This also meant that this evening’s English Corner - a rough and tumble of university students desperate to practise their English with native speakers - was cancelled. We went out for dinner - a regular Thursday thing apparently - to the ‘Favourable Wind Soupoxen’, a restaurant specialising in the Shaanxi province speciality - hotpot. We had a private dining room, a big lazy susan piled with platters of meats, noodles, vegetable, tofu, and sauces, and our own burners with a bowl of broth bubbling away on top. They gave us the foreigner version, usually there’s one big hotpot in the middle as well, but as we were all a bit hungry, it could have got nasty, ownership of a particular piece of broccoli could potentially ended in tears. Bill didn’t enjoy it, as he can’t use chopsticks, and despite our help, remained fairly unfed. He attempted various chopstick combinations, including the classic ‘two-handed stab’. We’ll bring a fork with us next time.
Instead of the planned cultural and intellectual exchange with university students, we ended up playing pool for five hours. Joe has decided he’s going to teach me how to play, than we’ll clean up. We’ll see.
Saturday afternoon we were taken to see the Terracotta warriors, which are quite impressive, but guides always seem to focus on the things that, while being historically important, aren’t the fun bits! We’ve just finished watching some random Jackie Chan film, in which he visited Xi’an and saved an ancient sword. Anyway, they showed some clips of the warriors, they look a lot more impressive on TV. Maybe it’s the lighting. They are amazing; I’m not sure why I’m not more animated about them. 6,000 clay warriors - is that all? Each one takes two months to make - that’s not very efficient. Each one has a unique face - I would expect no less. The guide, though she is their celebrity guide who showed Bill Clinton around when he was here, didn’t particularly enthuse us. Though it is difficult to focus a tour when there’s an octogenarian at the back shouting about how in America they have soldiers, and asking why they changed the name of Peking to Beijing completely unprovoked. I think he picked up on the wrong reason why we were there, he has spent a week in the Shaanxi Musuem helping the guides there with their English, and I think he may have thought he was at the Terracotta Warriors for the same reason, as whenever the boys tried to get him to listen and stop interjecting random facts about America, he said that if she were an intellectual, she’d want to be educated.
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