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May 16, 2009

Day Fourteen - Side-trip to Xi'an

[Since my BlogSpot blog is being blocked by the Chinese Firewall, and I can't seem to make those proxy's work for me, this is where my posts will be located temporarily.]

My day started at 4:30AM. I had signed up for the optional weekend trip to Xi'an, motivated by the thought of being able to see the Terra Cotta Soldiers from the Qing Dynasty. About 24 of us went, and it resulted in a pretty unique experience overall.

We boarded the bus and head out to the airport. Once there, we handed our passports to Don, the "group leader" for the trip, while Anup realized he forgot his passport in the hotel room. Don managed to put him on the next flight, so we got on the plane as a group of 23. We flew China Eastern on an unusually large plane for an under-two-hour flight. The service was unexpected as well - they even served breakfast and had excellent coffee. However, we ran into really extreme turbulance. It literally felt like a rollercoaster in the air...so that had us all a little bit rattled.

Once in Xi'an, we had a bus, equipped with our tour guide, Gao, awaiting our arrival. The bus immediately took us to our first site, which was the remains of an underground "imperial village." We were required to cover our sneakers with blue plastic bag-like shoe coverings before entering...which we concluded must have been for sheer entertainment for the workers and locals. The museum was pretty exciting - it was dark inside showcasing the burial grounds of the first emperor of the Han Dyanasy, which consisted of rectangular pits surrounding the tomb. The pits were filled with mini terra cotta soldiers, pots, cavalry, chariots, utensils (all handmade from natural materials)- everything the Emperor would need in the afterlife. Outside of the main exibition they had showcases of the smaller objects; some of them were handcrafted to be as small as a couple of centimeters long! I loved it.

Inside the museum there was an informational video, which I expected to be as informative as any other...but instead it was an inconcievable three-dimensional illusionary video. It literally looked like there were tiny people on the stage. I think I focused all my attention on figuring out how the video worked instead of listening to the audio headset.

We headed to downtown Xi'an, which was a lot more developed and expansive than I had imagined it to be. We drove past a few impovershed streets, followed by an affluent shopping mall and assorted complexes, reinforcing the concept of the Chinese income-gap, as we went to check into our hotel. Speaking of income-gap, our hotel was located at the end of a shady alleyway (The Bell and Drum Tower Hotel. It was located in-between the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower). Apparently it was a "three star hotel." Hardly. We were uncomfortable even sitting on the beds in our rooms (they were rock-solid but springy with dingy sheets). The bathroom wasn't much better, but the hotel's location was fantastic. Katie went to take a shower before we went out to the next museum and said that the waterflow reminded her of the hoses the locals use to water the grass. At least our water didn't get rusty like some other people's...

The next stop on our full-fledged tour was a Tibetan Buddhist Temple. It showed some similarities to the Lama temple I visited last week, except this one was a lot smaller and consisted of the types of Buddha statues that I am more familiar with. I took lots of pictures, of course. I got separated from the group for a few minutes and wandered through the small garden, which consisted of statues, engraved stones with inspirational sayings, and people relaxing in the Temple grounds. I even spotted a group of monks as they entered into a distant room. As we were leaving we saw them board a similar tour bus. The "Monk Bus," we called it. I loved the visual juxtaposition.

We then went to a Confucious Temple, which was filled with intricate stone tablet teachings in forms that were much different from the tablets Eric and I had seen at the Confucious Temple last week. These tablets housed the original "book" of Confucious, in which students had to visit to check their written notes against the original text in order to prevent errors in their curriculum. There were even tablets that had carved pictures, along with others that contained the older style of Chinese writing: written from top to bottom and read right to left. There was also a small garden in the central location of the temple that was surrounded by watercolor art. I loved the traditional Chinese style of the paintings, and took pictures of a lot of them with hopes of being able to replicate that style at least once this summer. Watercolor is definately more difficult than it looks.

We had dinner at a "hot pot" restaurant near-by, which is similar to the Melting Pot, except everyone sits at a round table with a Lazy Susan, and everyone has their own cooking pot. Oh and the service is not as good. I was really excited to be able to participate in a meal...I asked a waitress for a pot of just boiling water and made some rice noodles with tofu and egg. Finally a break from Clif bars...

After dinner we went straight to "bar street" to scope out the scene - which was gorgeous. I kept stopping to take pictures of the street, and people kept worrying that I fell too far behind. haha. The street was paved with cobblestone and draped in bright lights and charmed with light music streaming from each of the bar/coffee shops. We ended up roaming around for a while until finally settling down at an outdoor table. I tried some "Great Wall Wine," which I thought was both funny and surprisingly delicious, though over-priced and under-filled. After a little while, some of us left holding hands and walking down the street and stumbled upon a lively night market. The streets were filled with vendors, all of which were selling unique items. We found a vendor selling straw shoes, which we had heard was common in Xi'an. Eric actually bought a pair, though they were pretty uncomfortable. Some others bought a couple of trinkets (I think I have accumulated enough by now) and we wrapped up the night in a McDonalds. For some reason they ran out of ice cream (although they are open 24/7) so I settled for fries.

After a little while, Katie and I agreed that we were finally tired enough to mildy desire to go back to our hotel (upon seeing it and leaving the room for the first time, I told her that I didn't want to come back to the room until I was tired enough to WANT to be there haha), so we got ready to go to bed and fell asleep mid-conversation.

Love,

Karen

Posted by rockwood at May 16, 2009 11:25 AM

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Posted by: tbruens at May 18, 2009 04:55 PM

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