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This morning we flew to Xian, home of the Terracotta Warriors. 2-hour flight, so I guess it's not as close as I figured. I'll have to look at a map when I get one. We left the hotel in Beijing around 7 AM, and pulled into the hotel here at 1. Airports here are pretty far out of town.
So far, we haven't done much in Xian. We came in from the airport, settled into our room, took a taxi to the Shanxi Historical Museum (one of the best museums in China, according to the guidebook) and had some lunch. Tricia ordered a pizza -- you get your choice of toppings: green peppers, salami, ham, black olives, anchovies -- and she ordered black olives. They must had thought she meant everything EXCEPT black olives, because it was loaded with the other stuff. They were nice about fixing it, though. |
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| Pottery at
the Shanxi museum |
Ancient
Chinese script |
Art for
sale on the street |
Speaking of vegetarianism, last night we went to a very interesting restaurant. It was the Green Angel Vegetarian Chinese food restaurant, and it's very close to our hotel. When I was planning our trip, I made sure to note the name, and it was easy to find. They make all sorts of traditional Chinese food, but completely out of fake meat. They do some vegetable food, but mostly it's "lemon chicken" and "sizzling pork" but done up with tofu and wheat gluten. Really, you can hardly tell. Which is kind of gross. I'm all excited about eating Chinese vegetables, and I do enjoy chewing now and then (like a veggie-bacon BLT or a veggie burger) but the thought of meat kind of sicks me out. So I got the Peking Duck, which is totally famous and one of those things you're supposed to eat in Beijing. I can't imagine the trouble they went through to make this. The outer layer was crispy skin, imprinted with the actual texture of a roasted duck (maybe a thin layer of fried tofu?) and then the opposite layer was "duck meat" which was probably gluten or soy protein -- but then in the middle was an awfully realistic layer of duck fat. The best guess I could make would be hydrogenated soybean oil mixed with seaweed gelatin. Ugh! But when you eat it in the traditional way, with little "pancakes" (that are more like tortillas) and bean paste, it's pretty good. We ordered way too much food.
We had no idea how big the portions were until it all came. I got the house special herbal tea, which was mint and lemongrass in a
kool-aid pitcher filled with hot water. Looked like grass clippings, but tasted pretty good.
After dinner we wanted to go to bed early so we could get up for our flight, but weren't' all that tired, so we watched HBO. Night of the sequels:
Balto 2, MIB 2, and Scorpion King (which is essentially
The Mummy 3, but without Brandon Frasier.) At least we hadn't seen any of them before. Not watched them, anyway -- we've seen them for sale at the bootleg DVD place for 50 cents, but always passed on them, which shows you how much we wanted to watch them. Oh well. They
weren't that bad. (Balto 2
was. Awful. I liked cartoon movies much better back when Disney had the monopoly and kept the quality up.)
Tomorrow we're doing a big day of sightseeing around Xian. Terracotta warriors, pagodas, tombs, hot springs, and the remains of a Neolithic village. Then Saturday we'll tour the city, climb the old city walls, see the bell tower and Taoist temple, and just wander around taking pictures.
We need to find some internet access to check email and stock prices. I haven't been without internet this long in a year. Or two. It's been almost 5 days now.
Friday June 4th
The weather's been great so far. We left the sweltering heat of Delhi for the every-day-tropical-85-degrees-and-humid Malaysia, which is nice for a day. Dave is tired of the lack of seasons, but I enjoy it. Beijing was cooler -- perfect jeans and t-shirt weather. Xian has been rainy so far, but we're hoping it'll stop raining for some good photos today. Either that, or the rain will add a neat "Oriental" effect to the pictures. Maybe the valleys will fill with fog or something Asian. I'm glad now that I bought that North Face jacket -- without the lining, it's a great raincoat. With the lining, it'll keep me warm in Siberia. |
Oh, things in China are pronounced differently from the way they're spelled. Xian is pronounced
Shian, because X's sound like Sh's. Z's sound like J's. In the most confusing one of all, T's sound either like D's or Ch's, but almost never like Ts. So Tsing Tao beer is pronounded Ching Dao. If they spelled it
"Ching Dao" Americans would get it right the first time. I think I'll blame the British for that one. They like to
mis-transliterate other languages. That way they can correct you, since they know the secret and you don't. I suppose if Americans had visited China before the British, we'd spell it the same way, but we'd force them to pronounce it our way. "You're going to call it Sing Tao beer from now on!"
We get breakfast included in our room rate, which is good -- but I haven't seen what's on the menu yet. The hotel in Beijing had a really good breakfast. I had banana pancakes and Tricia had an omelet. Better than Indian hotel breakfast! We leave to see the Terracotta Warriors at 9. Can't wait!
Saturday June 5th
The terracotta warriors were truly spectacular. Definitely lives up to the hype. Two-thousand-year-old statues, perfectly realistic and totally detailed, each one unique -- as if they were all modeled after individuals in the army, which is what the theory about them is. They're a lot like Egyptian ushabtis; an army of warriors in your tomb that do your bidding after your death. They weren't discovered until the 1970s, when a farmer digging a well found some statue parts. Then they excavated and started finding giant pits of life-size warriors and horses. They built a really modern museum enclosure on top of the pits and put together a decent 10-minute film introducing the whole thing. |
Our guide for the day was Ryan, the guy who picked us up at the airport. We figured it would be hard to arrange for a ride there and back (it's about an hour out of the city of Xian) -- not to mention that no one in China speaks English -- so we hired Ryan and the driver (Mr. Lee) to haul us around yesterday to see all the big sights. "Ryan" can't possibly be his real name, since he's Chinese. I think he adopted a Western name to help with business. Tricia was calling him
"Tashi." (I think her quote was "he's my guide, I can call him what I want to.") I don't know if she picked that name because our Tibetan friend is named
Tashi, or if it's short for the only Japanese phrase she knows:
Watashi Mo, which means "me too." Cute, though.
Ryan/Tashi was a decent tour guide. We got the impression that he could speak more English than he could understand -- he had memorized little phrases about each place, and could pop them out when you asked questions. But if you asked one he didn't understand, he'd just give it a shot.
"How long ago did they build this?"
"35 kilometers from the West end to East end."
"Oh, I see." |
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But between Tashi and the guidebook, (and the signs -- compared to Egypt and India, China really does a good job with tourist signage. Nice little signs everywhere explaining the history and significance of things you're looking at) we got around pretty well. |
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After the warriors (Or as Tashi called them "The Terracotters") we visited the Huaqing Hot Springs palace, where the Tang dynasty emperors would go for weekend retreats and bathe in natural hot spring
pools, in water with supernatural healing powers. In modern Chinese history, Chaing Kai Shek was attacked and nearly killed there
in his office during what's called "The Xian Incident" which I don't know much about. The signs there didn't explain much about it -- I guess if you went to school in China you'd know all about it. Not to mention they sometimes spell his name Jaing Qi Cxek so I didn't even know who they were talking about for a while. Very lovely palace, though, and the rain did in fact make for a nice foggy Oriental scene with cypress trees and mountains and hot springs. I hope the photos make it look as lovely as we thought it was. |
After the hot springs, we had lunch in a nice little tourist place that's included with the tour. They make their money from selling souvenir knickknacks, so they can give away a lunch buffet. We've been to similar places in Burma and Egypt, and we usually do buy stuff. But this time around, we can't buy anything! We're already overstuffed for our train trip. After we get back from Russia, we'll have one day in Beijing, so we can buy Chinese stuff then. You have to imagine how seriously this is killing Tricia. She wants everything she sees, and can't have any of it. I'm surprisingly restrained. Today we saw some temple rubbings that would look great on our wall, and there are a bunch of fake antique dealers. If no one can tell it's not a thousand-year-old vase, then why not pretend it's real? Because you can't cart it through Siberia, that's why.
Lunch was good -- Tashi was able to explain about the vegetarian thing, and they made special versions of the buffet food that didn't have meat in them. Quite nice of them to do that for us.
We stopped at Banpo Village, which is an excavated Neolithic site. People around 6000 BC were living between this hill and river, in a perfect spot for hunting, fishing, and farming, and settled down into a little community. When they discovered the site in the 1950s, it was an archeologist's dream -- almost undisturbed site where people lived and worked for a couple of hundred years. There's a museum on site showing off some of the best of the ten thousand relics they unearthed. Some great pottery and tools, bones, diagrams of houses, all that. The actual site is closed, though -- they're building a new roof on it, so it'll be shut for a few years. Dang! But that's OK. Maybe we'll come back someday. Next time I'll buy a temple rubbing.
Then it was back to Xian city, for a tour of the Big Goose Pagoda. Large pagoda, 7 or 9 tiers, like a big wedding cake. Legend has it that a holy man was praying here and a goose dropped out of the sky as a symbol of Buddha, so he built a pagoda there. Or something. |
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| Big Goose
Pagoda |
Inside the
Big Goose Pagoda |
Burning
incense at a pagoda |
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Today we went on a self-guided tour. We took a taxi to the Bell Tower, which is the center of Xian's ancient city. It's the only city in China that still has its city wall. At the time of Xian's height, it vied with Rome (and later with Constantinople) as the Most Important City in the World. I imagine most of the judges of that contest were European, and so it never got the gold medal. But still. Big ancient city with great things in it, for sure. The streets are all laid out east-west and north-south, in a big rectilinear pattern, for Feng Shui purposes (unlike Rome or Delhi's mishmash of windy alleys.) The whole thing is enclosed by giant battlement walls. I am not exactly sure what the Great Wall will be like, but I imagine pretty similar. The bell tower is in the center of town, where the four large streets intersect. They used to have a water clock in the tower, and ring big bells to tell the time. Nearby is a drum tower, also for banging the time out. |
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| Drums at
the drum tower |
Bell Tower
square |
Inside the
drum tower |
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| Drum Tower |
A fountain
near one of the places we visited. |
Bell Tower |
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The west side of town is the Muslim quarter. There are about 180,000 ethnic Chinese Muslims in China, called the Hui. That's not including the Muslim descendants of Central Asians who live in China, but are ethnically Turkic, and not considered "true Chinese" even though they've lived here for generations. Anyway, the Muslim quarter is really interesting -- old alleyways, weird Muslim/Chinese food, street vendors, old men with skullcaps and wispy Fun Manchu beards, and Chinese Mosques. We saw the big one -- the Great Mosque Daqingzhen Si (which I think means "Great Mosque"). Like the Hot Springs Palace, it was much more attractive and photogenic than the Forbidden City. Lots of great little pagoda-shaped buildings with
blue tile roofs and carved dragons. Some Islamic elements -- Arabic script, prayer hall, etc. Even a Chinese calligraphic sign
saying "One God" -- analogous to the Arabic saying La Allah Il Allah.
That's the "One God" sign on the right. See if
you can figure out which of the two Chinese characters means
"one." |
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| A gate in the old
city |
The Great Mosque |
Inside Xian's Great
Mosque |
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| A Chinese Hui Muslim
outside the prayer hall |
On top of the
ancient city wall |
View from the top |
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We walked around the streets a little more, seeing the character of the old city. It was the first time I'd really felt "in China" --Beijing is so modern, and the tourist attractions are wonderful, but not really "Chinese." These little alleys, with caged songbirds and people making ramen by hand, and old stone houses that people still live in -- that's what I imagined when I thought "China." I took a bunch of pictures there. |
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| Streets
of Xian's Muslim quarter |
Steaming
dumplings |
An
opium-smoking beggar (I think) |
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| Lucky
red globes |
Ancient
traditional hamburgers
(actually, this was downtown by the bell tower. I
just thought it would be funny to stick in it here.) |
Making
ramen by hand |
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| Fresh
fruit for sale |
Mobile
lunch cart |
Dried
things to eat |
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| Wouldn't
this make you a vegetarian? |
Dried
tea leaves |
These
are called "jujubes" but they are some sort of
weird dried plum-like fruit |
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More dried fruit |
Mahjong players |
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Then we saw the World's Heaviest Collection of Books -- a claim I
kind of doubt. It's cool, though -- 2300 giant carved stone tablets, each one about 10 feet tall and 3 feet wide. Proclamations, Confucian doctrine, a tablet detailing the history of Nestorianism in ancient China (an ancient tablet -- written at the time by a Nestorian.) But I think the collection of books at either ASU or UC Berkeley would weigh more. And the Buddhist Doctrine in Burma (in Bagan or maybe
Mingun?) is in the Guinness book as Largest Book and I think it's more than 2000 giant stone tablets. Still, impressive. |
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Then we climbed the city walls. You get a ticket anywhere there's a staircase, and clamber up, then walk along as far as you want. Later we found out you can rent bikes. (little purple girl's bikes, but what can you do?) but we had already walked far enough that we figured we'd keep walking. The walls are about 5 kilometers on a side, and we walked from the southern gate to the Eastern gate -- about 2.5 miles I guess. Then caught a taxi back to the hotel. |
Tonight we're going to a cheesy-sounding tourist trap -- The Tang Dynasty Dinner and Floor show, where "authentic" Chinese musicians play music while you eat dinner, then put on a two-hour show of ancient dancing and singing. I'm hoping it's wonderful, but expecting cheesy and over-the-top Vegas style. Either way, it'll be fun.
Then tomorrow we wake up (not too early) have breakfast and hop on the plane back to Beijing. Then we've got about 6 or 7 days in Beijing before leaving for the train. We still have so much do see and do! A day trip to the great wall -- that's the biggie. Then museums, Tiannenman Square, the ancient observatory -- so much! Glad we scheduled as much time for Beijing as we did.
Sunday, June 6th
We just finished breakfast, but we have 2 hours until we need to leave for the airport. Tricia's reading
Fiery
Cross, the latest in her series of time-traveling Scottish romance novels. I'm reading Colin
Thubron's In
Siberia, in preparation for our trip. He spent a lot of time exploring various parts of Siberia, right after it was opened for tourism, but the picture he paints of it is bleak. Survivors of the gulag, drunk on vodka, poverty-stricken under the new capitalism.
Uhh. I hope later in the book things get prettier. I haven't got to the chapter on Irkutsk, which is where we'll be visiting. It's supposed to be lovely. They call it "The Paris of Siberia." But then, Siberia doesn't have too many cities in it, so I guess competition for "the Paris" isn't that stiff.
The dinner show last night was great! I wasn't expecting much. The hall seats about 700 tourists, and I guess it's packed every night. We were one of the only people not in a big group of 50 or 100. Buses just unloaded flocks of elderly tourists on package tour deals. It is a pretty expensive dinner if you just book it through the hotel, but I don't know how much the travel group rate is. Anyway, I can't imagine doing one of those tours. The whole time you're in the country, you're being led around by a tour guide with a colored flag. At some of the sights we saw yesterday, the guides had bullhorns so they could explain the religious significance of this particular pagoda to a group of 40 people. We even saw one with a Madonna-style telephone operator headset and belt-mounted loudspeaker for hands-free voice amplification. You shuffle along with your group of geriatric tourists at their pace, then head back to the bus for the next site. Couldn't do it. |
The dinner show was supposed to be based on Tang dynasty ceremonies -- choreographers, musicians, and costume designers worked with old manuscripts and paintings to re-create as authentic an experience as you could get. Then they cut each part down to a 3-or-4-minute skit and strung them together like a variety show. Which sounds awful, but it worked really well. Beijing Opera is like 2 hours long, and Westerners just don't want to sit through that much foreign culture at one time. But this was a nice fast-paced mix of music, dancing, singing, ballet, swordfighting -- and the theater it was in was first-rate. It really made me feel like we were -- not in the 1300s, exactly -- but in the 1940s or 50s, at one of those Copacabana style dinner shows. Like in the opening scene of Temple of Doom, where she's singing in the Shanghai nightclub. Like that. Oh, and the food was good, too. It's a 5-course meal of "authentic Cantonese cuisine" but we asked them if they could do something vegetarian for us. They were amazingly accommodating. Considering that they're doing a simultaneous set menu for 700 people, they whipped up a first-class gourmet vegetarian meal for us. Maybe they make 10 of them just in case, or maybe the chef had to get last-minute creative. I don't know. But it worked out nicely for us. It's been tough explaining vegetarianism in China, so we are missing out a bit on Chinese food. Here, if you say "no beef, no pork, no meat, no fish" you're likely to get duck or shrimp. The list has to be exhaustive for them to understand that you don't eat animals. "How about rabbit or turtle?" But when they do understand, they go to extreme efforts to make you happy. (Unlike New Orleans, where they understand, all right, but can't figure out what to give you. How about a big
ol' plate of hush puppies and fried dill pickles?)
For dessert they had "taro and sago pudding" which was just like tapioca. I've had sago pudding in Sri Lanka, and it was just like tapioca. Which makes me wonder if tapioca comes from the sago plant. Maybe it really IS tapioca, which would explain the similarity. The pudding had an orange-flavored sauce, which tasted familiar -- I said it tasted like Orange Tang, but it wasn't until the taxi ride home that I realized the pun. Tang Dynasty restaurant, Orange Tang flavored dessert. I wonder if the chef knows that one.
This afternoon Tricia wants HRC Nachos again. Then we'll walk through Tiannenman Square and maybe see Chairman Mao's Mausoleum. (They should call it
"The Mao-soleum" for short.) |
|
Malaysia
- Beijing
(pg 1) - Xian -
Beijing
(pg
2) - Train to Mongolia -
In
Mongolia - Irkutsk - Moscow - St.
Petersburg
|
