Trip to Xi'an

Last week we took a short vacation and headed to Xi'an, once the capital of China. Now the city is capital of the Shanxi province. It is west of Shanghai, it lies in the central part of the Guanzhong Plain and between the Wei River to the North and the Qinling Mountains to the south. Also home to the Terracotta warriors. We flew out from Shanghai on Wednesday and back on Saturday. The flight, on China Airlines, was nice. A meal was served even though it was only a two-hour flight. Decent for airline food! The hotel is about a 45 minute taxi ride to the north. The first thing we saw was the City Walls which is a large square which surrounded the original city. The walls are about 40 feet high, are about 8.5 miles, and were built originally We stayed at the ANA Grand Castle Hotel which is right outside of the South Gate, Yongning, of the City Walls. The hotel lobby was nice (as we hear they all are), but it was not a five-star. We went for a decent price and location. The only thing was that they only had rooms with two single beds and they had no cots. Luckily the beds were bigger than a normal single, though not as large a full-size in the states. So, Tom got to spend the holiday sleeping with the rubber band kid (she ends up on top of you in the weirdest positions!). We didn't do much after we arrived. We walked through the city gate and just looked around. We ate at Pizza Hut for dinner and headed back early to the Hotel to ensure we all got a good night of sleep.

Thursday morning we got up and Natalie and I had breakfast in the "Cafe". I fixed her a plate of pancakes and then went to get an omelet for myself. All of a sudden she was tugging on my shorts, "Mom, there is a man sitting with us! C'mon!". I thought she meant 'near her', but peeked around the corner anyway. Low and behold, there was a man sitting and eating at our table. Turns out he was French. I asked him why he was sitting there and he said "This is where they sat me". I looked around at the numerous empty tables and said "Interesting." I went and found the manager and asked if there was a reason they had sat a strange man with us. He said "Oh, he is not with you?" "No, he is no" I replied. And then they moved him to another table. After breakfast we headed to the City Walls. The first challenge was crossing the large, 6 lane round-a-bout that was in front of the entrance and between the hotel and the entrance to the walls. I never thought I would willingly place my child in front of traffic that was within 3 inches of her toes, but we did! Once we navigated across, we headed up to tour around the city walls. We were going to rent bicycles, but alas, no child carriers and Natalie was afraid to ride on the "bicycle build for two". So we paid for a trip on a small tram that travels around the whole thing. Of course it stopped at all of the key shopping areas. That is one thing here, you can be sure you will be lots of opportunities to buy all sorts of things at the tourist sites! The trip around took about an hour an a half with the stops. From the city walls, we headed to the Bell Tower, which is right in the center of town. There was a nice music show there, you can check out the You Tube video we uploaded. After the Bell Tower, we headed to the drum tower, just a few hundred meters away. We did not wait for the drum show as there was no sign, and we weren't sure how long it would take. And we broke down and ate at McDonald's for lunch, which was our first time eating there since we moved here. Then back to the hotel for naps and showers. We ate dinner that evening at the hotel next door, the Howard Johnson's, as they had a really nice international buffet. It was nicer than our hotel's buffet and cost less! Natalie loved the piano player in the lobby of the Howard Johnson's, and ended up spending about 30 minutes watching her play. Natalie spends quite a few hours at home playing on her battery operated piano which can play both songs that are recorded and real music with keys that work, so we know she loves pianos. She did say one funny thing. She said "That lady has to use music that it is written on paper, but I don't have to." Guess she feels she plays better! That night after dinner, we headed to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, which was build int 652, for a musical and water show that night. In the video I uploaded, you can hear us say "Better stand up" as it turns out we were sitting right in front of a nozzle that shot out water as a part of the show. It was only about an inch from leg. Funny! The water area was huge (110,000 square meters) and it was packed with people, many locals who probably come 1-2 times per week. It was a really nice park, I wish had had time to go back to it.

Friday we went to see the Terracotta warriors. We rented a car from the hotel, which cost about the same as taking a taxi, and headed out. Once there, we hired a guide, Bobby. He used to be an English teacher and now does the tour guide thing all of the time. It costs 15o RMB (~$20) for 2 1/2 hours. It was very interesting. The first building, which houses most of the main part of the soldiers, was very impressive. Just the shear size of the undertaking takes your breath away. We had heard lots of complaints about the crowds, but we didn't think it was too bad. Bobby did a nice job of explaining, and that helped a lot. We ended up purchasing 3/4 size replicas for ourselves. I would have settled for the 1/2 size, but Tom thought we should go all out! I am surprised we didn't end up with full-size! Also, one of the farmers who originally found the warriors while digging a well, was there and signed our guide book. On the way back we stopped at the Hauqing Hot Springs, summer home of the Emporer Xuanzong (685-762) and his concubine Yang Guifei in the Tang Dynasty (618-907). That was ok, but not great. We were pretty tired by the time we stopped. Plus we bought a ticket for a tram service that runs through, but every time we go on after stopping, we seemed to go right back to where we started. But we had enough history for the day anyway. Back to the hotel for our naps and showers. Then back to buffet at HoJo's. That night we headed right across the street to see the musical, dancing, and carnival like show that takes place every night on the square outside of the South Gate. Every night we could hear the drumming and we had seen some bits of dancing, so we decided to check it out. It was very interesting. The video we uploaded shows that most of the dancers were women over 40. A few men and younger women, but mostly the women. They were out there for HOURS! The drummers too. There was dancing and music at both ends of the square. In between there were all sorts of of carnival like games. I sort of got chided in Chinese for videotaping some of the gambling ones. It was a very interesting look into what life is really like living in one of the huge Chinese cities. We hung out until Natalie almost fell asleep.

Saturday we walked on the inside of the wall and shopped a bit and then headed to the airport. [A note to future travelers: Xi'an has primarly Chinese toilets. They do have western-style toilets but the stalls were locked. Take something with you into the bathroom to jimmy the stall opens! We didn't do that so Natalie had to forgo the potty before the trip back. Luckily Shanghai has all western!] In all, we all agreed we had a good time, but that we missed Shanghai. The smog and pollution were a lot worse in Xi'an. And there was a lot of dirt and sand which make it sometimes hard to breathe. There were other differences too. The local food is pretty bland. Nothing exciting and certainly nothing international. There was decent street food in the Muslim section of town, but Shanghai's selection was much better. I did notice the noodles were much wider than Shanghai. Apparently each region has it's own style. The traditional singing that they do Xi'an is also not what you would call "relaxing". For some reason their opera style sounds more like howling wolves than beautiful warriors singing. And the final difference was the people. Xi'an has a very high Muslim population. I am not sure if that is the explanation, but generally the clothing and general look of the people is a lot less sophisticated. It did not appear to me that there was any "middle-class" to speak of in Xi'an. This is probably due to the fact that the industry that Xi'an attracts is more along the raw materials processing side as opposed to manufacturing. All I know is that we all missed Shanghai!