Exit Xi'an

Wow, I’m actually getting caught up. At the moment, I’m on the overnight train from Xi’an to Shanghai and I’m up to today in my writings. Of course, I still am not sure when all of this will get posted, but I’ll see what I can do when I get to Hong Kong.

I intentionally played it slow this morning. I got up early, had some breakfast and then retired to watch some baseball and start packing. I finally left the hostel around 10:30 and started looking for a grocery store so I could get supplies for the trip to Shanghai. It took me longer than expected but I finally found one and bought some instant coffee and some Lay’s potato chips. But not the normal Lay’s potato chips. These were in a can. And they had a picture of a Chinese lady eating potato chips with chopsticks. And they were “Hot & Sour Fish Soup Flavor.” Good times . . .

After checking out of the hotel and moving my stuff and my roommate’s stuff into the day room that we had, I ventured out again. My first stop was to Starbucks because, you know, I like Starbucks.

After Starbucks, I decided that my last tourist stops of the Xi’an leg of the trip would be to the Drum and Bell Towers. These “sister-towers” are centuries old and, as you probably could have guessed, one of them features drums and the other features bells. I’m not going to tell you which is which.

The Drum Tower is in the Muslim Quarter and the Bell Tower is in the center of the city, though both of these sites are very close together. Both are about eight or ten stories high and give great views of Xi’an. Once again, however, the views were extremely limited by the smog. I have lots of pictures, but there’s not enough space here to post them. Eventually, I’m sure, however, most of them will end up on Facebook, so you can check them out there.

I took the rest of the day easy, watching some television (CCTV 9 is in English) and had some lunch. My main goal was just not to eat anything that might make the 16-hour train ride unpleasant. (I’m on the train now and so far, so good – knock on wood.)

We took the shuttle to the train station, but because of a severe lack of traffic, we got there early, so we hung out in a nearby hotel lobby because the train station was crowded. Some of the group went shopping and I tried some tiny crab snacks. They were chewy and sweet and spicy. A little too fishy for my taste, though. I thought I’d share that story with you because I have a picture and because I’m running out of things to write about. I just had a little Chinese lesson and I’m getting ready to go to bed. That’s it for me tonight. Later!!!

Bring on the Terracotta Warriors!!!

On my second day (first full day) in Xi’an, I woke up early and got some breakfast. Then I had to watch Roy Halladay finish his no-hitter against the Reds. (Phuck the Phillies!!!!) Then it was time for me to go out and do something. But what you ask? And thanks for asking because otherwise there would be no reason for me to continue this blog.

Since this was our only full-day in Xi’an, this was the day we chose to go to see the Museum of the Terracotta Warriors. The Terracotta Warriors are one of the oh, let’s say fifty sites that I’ve been to that claim to be the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” A little background is that some great emperor died around two thousand years ago and decided to have buried with him terracotta statues of around eight thousand soldiers, including generals, archers, chariots, horses and all kinds of other little trinkets. This fake army laid buried for centuries until a farmer trying to dig a well happened along them in 1973. Now, it is a huge tourist attraction.

To get to the site of the Terracotta Warriors, we needed to take a bus to the train station and then catch another bus out to the site. Getting out there wasn’t much of a problem, though the bus to the site doesn’t go directly to the site and we had to walk a bit to get there. No biggie, though.

The site itself is impressive, but I have to say that I was a little underwhelmed. There are three pits. Most of the soldiers in the smaller pits, Pits 2 & 3, are still buried because as soon as they uncover them, they have a habit of losing their color and they are trying to prevent that from happening. In Pit 1, you actually see an army of warriors standing guard for the fallen king. Don’t get me wrong. It is definitely one hell of a sight. I think that, maybe, I was expecting a little more. I shouldn’t hold that against them. It wasn’t their fault.

Getting back wasn’t a big deal, at least with respect to the first bus. Catching the bus from the train station to the hostel, however, was reminiscent of the evacuation of the American Embassy after the fall of Saigon. It was hundreds of people trying to rush onto busses as soon as the doors were opened, with pushing and shoving and probably some obscenities being uttered, though I don’t know enough Chinese to confirm that.

In the evening, I went walking around Xi’an with some folks and we came across a bar/restaurant-infested area. We decided to stop in an interesting-looking restaurant for dinner and it turned out to be a good idea. We got the menu and it was in Chinese with English-ish descriptions. None of the translations made sense and we ended up ordering “Hemp Flame Beef” along with another beef dish and pork dish. We didn’t know exactly what we were getting, but it turned out to be the best meal I have had in China so far. The Hemp Flame Beef turned out to be a cold, thinly-cut beef dish in a spicy pepper sauce. My favorite, though, was the pork dish, which was sort of like boiled bacon in a salty/sweet sauce with twisted bread sticks, onions and other vegetables. I was very, very pleased.

After dinner, a we walked into the Muslim Quarter, which is fun at night because it’s full of stands selling traditional street foods and a lot of stands selling touristy stuff. It reminded me of San Telmo in Buenos Aires a little bit except that food is much more important at the street market in Xi’an. I bought a souvenir or two, though I was full and didn’t try any more local foods.

That was pretty much it for the only real full day in Xi’an.

Welcome to Xi'an

I think I’ve come up to Xi’an in the trip stories. I am going to be on many overnight trains during this journey and the train from Beijing from Xi’an is the first. At this point, I’ve been on trains in over twenty countries but this was only the third time I’ve ever been on an overnight train, the other two times being in Egypt back in January.

On the trains in China, we are sleeping in cabins that sleep six. There are two rows of bunks that sit three high. I was in the bottom bunk and, even though I tend to be claustrophobic, there was plenty of room for me to stretch out and I was even able to get about five hours of good sleep, which is as good as I ever hope for on a train. All-in-all, I can’t complain about the ride. I guess I could complain about the semi-clean squat toilets, but there’s not much point.

When we arrived in Xi’an, we were shuttled to our hostel, which took around 45 minutes. It was still morning, so we met in the hostel restaurant and had breakfast and discussed what was in the city for us to do. The hostel was pretty nice and in a decent location and I was pretty happy with the food in the restaurant, though it was very westernized. There also was a bar in the hostel but, believe it or not, I never visited it. We only spent a few nights there.

We took a walk around the area in Xi’an in which we were staying and got oriented. We were pretty close to the City Wall, the Drum and Bell Towers and the Muslim Quarter, all of which I will discuss later.

After the walk, we were left alone to do what we wanted to do. Since the walk finished in the Muslim Quarter, I started my touring at the Great Mosque, which is one of the oldest and more famous mosques in China. It did not compare to the fantastic examples of architecture that I saw in the great mosques of Egypt, but it was certainly worth a visit. After the Great Mosque, I went back to my room at the hostel and rested for a little bit.

Xi’an has a wall that surrounds the old city. It is rectangular, sits around twenty-meters high and is eight-and-a-half miles in circumference. A popular past time is to go to the top of the South Tower, rent a bike and drive around for great views of the city. The problem with this plan, for me, is that I never learned to ride a bike. That didn’t stop me, though. I climbed to the top of the City Wall and walked around the entire structure. All fourteen kilometers. It took about three hours. Sadly, however, the beautiful views that I was promised were obscured by horrible, horrible smog. It was even worse in Xi’an than it was in Beijing. Oh, well. Mission accomplished as well as it could have been, I guess.

When I got back to the hotel, we went out for a traditional Xi’an meal. Xi’an evidently is famous throughout China for its food. One dish in particular is a mutton soup with pancakes in it. If I think of it, I’ll look up the name of the dish because I can’t remember it off the top of my head. (I looked it up. It’s called Pao Mo.) We had that and about a half-dozen other dishes along with some homemade pomegranate juice. It was really good, but . . .

After dinner, the group went out to a karaoke bar. Unfortunately, something attacked my stomach on the way over and I decided to forego the alcohol and singing for a trip back to my hostel and some relief. I hate to blame the Xi’an food, but the only other thing I had to eat that day was scrambled eggs and toast. All things considered, though, I’d do it again.

Some Random Passing Thoughts On a Train

I think I’ll finish off the Beijing section by combining it with the Xi’an section because I didn’t do a whole lot more in Beijing that I haven’t mentioned. The big thing was one thing I ate and I’ll try to transition that into some general thoughts that I have about China so far. (At the moment, I’m at the end of Day Nine in China and I’m on an overnight train from Xi’an to Shanghai.)

Food: This is a good place to start because the last thing I did in Beijing was to finally have Beijing Duck. You might call it Peking Duck, and I’ve seen it called both here, so I guess either are right. The Beijing Duck that I had was . . . you know . . . Beijing Duck. It had the sauce and the celery and the sauce and the duck. It was good, but I like duck and I don’t think it could have been bad. Generally, I have to say that the food I’ve had here isn’t significantly different from American Chinese food, but I think I’ve been a little shielded by the tour leader. The best experience I’ve had is when I have just randomly chosen things on a menu and tried those things. I’ll have a story about that in the Xi’an portion of the blog.

Traffic: I used to say that traffic signals in Buenos Aires weren’t rules, they were suggestions. Well, in China, traffic signals are dares. A red light in BsAs says to the driver: “I’d stop if I were you. But, you know, do what you want. I ain’t your mama.” In China, the red light says to the driver: “I don’t think you have the balls to keep going. Pussy. What are you going to do? Huh? What are you going to do?” People in China go through red lights like they’re offended the light is trying to control them. I assume its some communist protest thing. Seriously, here it’s legal not only to make right turns on red, but also to make left turns on red. Add to that an assumption that all pedestrians know the deal and you get really dangerous street crossings for those of us who have not been indoctrinated into the system.

Staring: People stare at me a lot. It hasn’t been done in a threatening way or in a way that’s offensive. I seriously get the impression that people are surprised to see an old white dude with a ponytail in their neighborhoods. It’s more funny than anything else.

Tourists: Beijing was full of tourists. There were a lot of foreign tourists, but the majority of tourists were Chinese tourists who were visiting Beijing for the national holiday. The holiday lasts for a week and travel is encouraged. In Xi’an, the big tourist attraction is the Terracotta Warriors. I’ll write about those later, but at that site, there were many more American/European tourists. We’ve also run into a lot of those at the hostels at which we have been staying. I can’t say that I like them very much. The tourists, that is, not the hostels. Maybe it’s because they’re young, but I think it’s because they tend to be spoiled and ignorant. Yeah, I’m going with that.

Okay, that’s enough of the random thoughts for now. Next up will be the continuing saga of Sheldon in Southeast Asia.