Xi'an

The ancient civilization city dating back to the beginnings of human society is still walled by a 20-meter tall and 14 kilometers in perimeter wall surrounding the old city. Of course like all of China outside the wall has dwarfed the original city and its five million inhabitants live luxuriously in skyscrapers and drive Porsches. We arrived in Xi’an after a fifteen- hour overnight train ride – where Jimmy and I were in separate compartments. We left the station and were immediately hassled by people who wanted us to stay at their hostel or hotel. We had already booked ahead and reserved a dorm room at the Shuyuan Hostel on HostelWorld.com. I did not feel so well when we got off the train, I didn’t sleep and I had an upset stomach, but Jimmy and I needed to find our bus to the hostel, even though we had no idea where to find it and people kept pestering us whenever we looked at the guidebook. Finally Jimmy couldn’t take it anymore, a woman came up to us and said we should stay at her hostel, Jimmy said no, but she persisted, finally she grabbed Jimmy’s arm and tried to pull him in her direction, then Jimmy turned to her and said “we are not staying at your fucking hostel, go away,” and then the woman started screaming at us “fuck you, fuck you” Jimmy and I quickly hurried in the opposite direction of this very angry Chinese women and a moment latter found our bus. We stayed at a quaint youth hostel with a beautiful set of three courtyards and a pleasant café that served the best café latte encountered in China thus far as well as French toast, which Jimmy and I had everyday for breakfast. When we arrived I didn’t feel so go we upgraded to a private room and I took a nap. When I woke up Jimmy was there with fresh soap, the knowledge that the hostel does laundry and a orange juice, it was everything I wanted in that moment and Jimmy, my hero, got it for me! Xi’an provided a peaceful escape from the bustle of Shanghai. We spent an afternoon touring the top of the wall via bicycle, and the other days were simply spent just lounging and reading. I started to feel better after a couple of days but then Jimmy started to come down with something. We ate a fabulous meal the first night we were there at a Muslim restaurant in the Muslim quarter, peppered beef, flat bread and mixed vegetables. The second night however was a total disaster, Jimmy was taking a late late afternoon nap and around 7:30 I woke him up and said we should go get food, I said it was a little place I found in the guide book just around the corner and it was suppose to be great. So we walked out of the hostel and 45 min. later we finally found the restaurant. By the time we sat down we were both starving but alas the menu was not in English, so we had to rely on pictures, I ordered corn as our vegetable and Jimmy ordered, beef on a stick, well what we thought the waitress said was beef, then we ordered bread, but the bread was in a picture with soup and deli meat we tried to tell the waitress that we just wanted the bread. First the corn came, which tasted amazing then about 20 min. later the “beef” came, which ended up being large shrimp that you had to peal of a stick. Being from Alaska we are not scared of Alaskan seafood but when you are in interior Chinese miles and miles away from the ocean, seafood is probably not the first thing you want to be eating. Then the bread came, but it also came with the soup and the deli meat, the soup ended up being in a bowl the size of a large salad bowl, enough to feed at least 15 people and the deli meat was defiantly dog! Jimmy was a good sport and tried to eat it but there was so much food we couldn’t have finished it all. Looking around everyone in the restaurant was twice our size and looked like sumo wrestlers. We finally decided this was the place where you come if you haven’t eaten in a week or you weight three hundred pounds, neither, of which were Jimmy or I. Then Jimmy looks at me and says very seriously I don’t think they are going to let us leave with all this food on the table still eat up! I couldn’t eat anymore – but I was a little nervous what Jimmy said might be true no one was coming over to ask if we were done. I also felt so bad for wasting all the food, and I was really worried it was going to coast a fortune. Finally we called the waitress over and broke the news, she quickly brought us the bill and several doggy bags, the meal was only $8 US and our food was neatly packed up for us to take home. When we left we gave the food away to a homeless person and went back to the hostel, it was around 11 pm, so much for a quick dinner around the corner. The highlight of our time in Xi’an was in a way the Terracotta warriors, located about an hour and half outside of the city. The warriors were built to protect the tomb of the first Chinese Emperor, the man who united China, Emperor Qin Shi Huang. The warriors that remained fully intact, though few were amazing in detail and would have been truly fascinating in their peak of existence. It is thought by some that each one of the warriors actually represented a individual soldier because each worrier is different, has some distinguishing feature all his own, in addition the horses that accompanied the army are also uniquely different as well. The army has no official writings dating before the accidental discovery in 1974, when a peasant found the tombs when he was digging a well. Its existence was never supposed to be known to the public. But today the Terracotta warriors are a leading Chinese tourist attraction and so Jimmy and I went, even though we were quite enjoying our down time in the cafes of Xi’an. We took the city bus, number 603 that we caught from the train/bus station. We entered the bus and it appeared we were the only foreigners who would venture to the warriors today, on the cheap. Most people according to the guidebook hired a minibus or a taxi to travel to the warriors but Jimmy and I wanted to save a little money so we thought we would just wing it on the local bus. After taking our seats the attendant came over to us and started speaking to us in what seemed like very fast Chinese, after about a minute our first guardian angle of China came to rescue us, he asked us were we wanted to go and then spoke in EngloChinese to his very young wife who then told the attendant that we wanted to go to the Terracotta warriors. After we received our tickets we thanked the man and his wife and struck up a conversation with him, and you’ll never ever guess where he use to live, Kodiak Alaska! Now he lives in Florida and he had recently married his wife, who still lived in China, there was apparently something wrong and she was unable to get a visa to come to the United States, even under the Obama administration. Jimmy was convinced she was some kind of criminal. She was about our age and the man was about sixty-five – this was something we encountered quite often in our following weeks in China. Anyways when we said goodbye to our helpful friend from back home, as we existed the bus, I looked up and the bus had dropped us off at a KFC, yes a Kentucky Fried Chicken! Then we had to walk pass the KFC up a newly constructed mall where vendors were hawking their goods, everything from mini Terracotta warriors to Chinese candy. Jimmy bought an orange juice and it was triple the price it would be in Xi’an. After we made it through the hordes of sellers we finally made it to the entrance. Once inside we entered the first of three airplane hangers, the first one was the biggest and the warriors were the most intact. It was an amazing sight – more then 100,000 figures. The next two vaults as they called them were smaller and less in tact, vault three was the home of the elite guard – all the soldiers were lined up in battle formation, however interestingly the Chinese had taken all their weapons away and put them in a secondary location. After taking several pictures and seeing all that there was to see we braved the vendors once more and traveled back to the bus. Once back in Xi’an it was around dinnertime and so we had a quite dinner and the next morning we left on the train the Chengdu to see my mom.

Terracotta Warrior
A lot of Terracotta Warriors
Biking around the big wall of Xi'an