Xi'an

Well, I think I made a tactical error in my weekend travel plans. As I said last weekend, I probably gave myself too much time in Shanghai, and this weekend I didn't give myself enough time in Xi'an.

The trip definitely started off better than Shanghai - for one the plane took off on time so I got in around teh tiem I should have, and then I discovered that China Northwest Airlines ran a minibus service from the airport to town for Y25, so I dind't have to worry about getting fleeced by taxi drivers. the bus drops you in the heart of the city, right beside the Drum Tower, so all I had to do then was a 5-min walk down to the south gate to my hostel! I was booked in and back out on the street for a bit of a wander by 8:30pm, by which point the week before I hadn't even boarded the plane in Beijing!

Again, compared to last week where Shanghai didn't leave me with much of a good first impression, Xi'an was the opposite. Where Shanghai had been dead, Xi'an was buzzing! I went out to see what the South Gate (nan men) looked like by night, and it was pretty impressive.


Lots of people around, even at 10pm!

I wandered around a bit then, up to the Drum & Bell towers, up around the Muslim Quarter, and then managed to find a restaurant which had an english menu. I decided to see if Xi'an hotpot was as good as Beijing hot-pot, and it's pretty close all right. After stuffing my face on semi-identifiable meats, I left the restaurant intent on more sightseeing, but by that stage a dust storm had blown up. Within a few mins it was blowing pretty string, and ppl were scurrying for whatever cover they could find. Nasty stuff dust storms, gets in your eyes, your mouth, up your nose, so I decided at that stage to call it a night and go back to the hostel.

Next morning I was up bright and early (ish), and decided to head and see the Terracotta Warriors. I decided to decline the Y165 tour that the hostel was running and instead went for the slightly cheaper option of taking the locla bus for Y8 return! As I've done so many times in Beijing tho, I misunderstimated teh distance between the south gate and thetrain station, and what looked an easy stroll on the map turned into a 45min hike. I eventually got there anyway, and after literally having to fight my way onto the 306 bus out to Bingmayong I made it out to the museum by about 11am.

The first thing that struck me about the museum was that they could have put the car park about 500m closer to the museum entrance than they did, but i guess what would mean the tourists would have less distance to run the gauntlet of souveneir hawkers and freelance tour guides (Y150 for an hour's tour apparently), and you have to support local enterprise I guess. he second thing that struck me was that you come a liong wayt o see not very much, as in the first pit I went into (pit 2) they stll hadn't uncovered the roofs of most of the chambers holding the figures, so all you could see was a few trenched dug in the dirt and a few fragments of figurines. I'm sure it'll be impressive enough in a few years when thy aactually dig all the guys out tho.

And then I got to Pit 1, and the real deal.

There's apparenly over 6,000 in the main chamber, and they reckon they could find at least up to 10,000 when they dig them all out. What got me was tho that rather than taking the easy way out, having 1 or two moulds and churning out 6,000 near-identical figures, it looks like every figure has different facial features and expressions, and are slightly differnt sizes, just like a real army would have. Now that's attention to detail!

After soaking in the sights for awhile, I headed back to Xian city where I had a lot to do and not mcu time to do it in. So, after already been walking around all morning, I went to see the drum tower, the bell tower, the mosque (walked by but didn't go in, not that impressive apparently), the Forest of Stelaes museum, and the market place by the south gate. After that, not being content with the paltry amount of exercise I'd gotten, I went up on the city walls, where you can hire a bike and ride along the top of the wall around the whole city! So, i did just that, and did the 14km round trip in about 70mins. The wall is damn inpressive, about 12m high and 15m at the top - you could stick a road along the top if you wanted to.
It was 700-year-old paving stones tho, and on the high nelly bike I had it was definitely a teeth-rattling ride!

After that, I decided enough was enough for one day so headed out to get some food from the street vendors. I don't know what I had, but it was tasty and one of the deep-fried things I had on skewers could have been chicken. I had every intention then of heading out to see the Xi'an nightlife, but when I hit the hostel I got chatting to a few other travellers and ended up drinking beer and playing pool in the hostel bar until 1:30am.

Four hours later I was up and about again, to check out and get to the airport for my 8:30am flight (which is what I get for choosing cost over convenience). I'd been a bit wary of how to get back to the airport, as I'd heard stori aboutt eh Xi'an taxi drivers offering you what seems like a reasonablly cheap price to get there, but then stopping the taxi half-way out the motorway and threatening to dump you htere if you don't pay at last double. Luckily, the same bus I'd gotten into town started its return trips at 6am so I was spared discovering if that were true. Things passed uneventfully and I was back in my flat in Wudaokou by 10:30, or about the time I'd be waking up normally!

So, Xi'an, lovely place, so much to see and do that I only covered less than half. Anohter place to add to my list of "must see" next time I come back to china!