2nd August : Xia'n

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Catching the second of the high speed CRH trains from Pingyao was easy the second time, and we sped thru the countryside on our way to Xia'n Nth railway station. Landscape was 'flat as a pancake' for most of the trip with the realities of rural China being pretty obvious - that and being enclosed in the all- encompassing layer of smog/fog that prevented distant landscapes being seen.

I had anticipated Xian being this 'little' village with the Terra Cotta warriors being its main claim to fame, but was shocked to discover that in fact Xian was a huge industrial city with a population of over 8 million people - like two NZ's in one city !! Luckily there was a metro line that whisked us into the city after we negotiated the frenzy of the station with what felt like most of the population all racing to and from the station.

Next morning we set off to visit the Tomb of Emperor Jingdi. Never heard of him I hear you say - well he just happens to be a Han dynasty emperor (188-141BC) who based his rule of the policy of nonIntervention. But he did have the wisdom also to plan his burial in advance by creating over 50,000 1/4size terra cotta models of his entire army, servants, eunchs, farmyard animals , even female cavalry on horseback. They were all buried in 81 pits radiating out from the centre tomb where I presume he was buried. We could observe some of the models by glass roof over the pits, and some in the museum which was attached to the site. Pretty impressive, and with the added bonus of very few tourists jostling for position.

Back on the bus and back to Xian before setting out to check out the Big Goose Pagoda to the STh of the city. Being intrepid travellers we decided to catch the local bus - well that proved exciting as we hurtled thru the city not knowing where to get off. So we did get off at the wrong spot and we did have a long trudge in the blazing heat to find the Pagoda. One of China,s best known Tang Dynasty pagodas was built in 652AD to house the Buddhist sutras bought back from India by monk Xuan Zang. It was pretty spectacular, but again overrun with tourists and that damn heat !!

After all this, we ventured into the Muslim Qtr for dinner where John had great fun sampling many of the offerings without actually buying much. Oh yes we did find plenty of tried Kiwi fruits !! Which we tried to explain to the shopkeeper that these were NZ in origin, but they insisted apparently that they came from China -go figure !

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