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Greetings from Xian. We are spending a couple of days in the ancient capital of China, which was the imperial capital from 1000 BC to 1000 AD. It's the only remaining walled city in China (and it's a very big and impressive wall too).
We had some fun catching the overnight train from Beijing. Our guide book (now thoroughly discredited) told us that bus 122 went between the Beijing central station (where we ended up) to the West station (a distance of about 10 km due west). Well, bus 122 promptly decided to start heading about 15km south east instead. We found that we were on the Beijing equivalent of London's M25 and not only were we now running out of time, we were headed in completely the wrong direction.... A quick decision was made to hop out and trust the cheap and speedy Beijing cab system to rectify the situation. Our cab ride took about 25mins at an avergae speed of about 60mph. We showed him our train ticket to ensure we were headed for the right station, although he kept chuntering to himself under his breath (we are pretty sure that he was aware of the need to get us there in time!) Anyway, he refused a tip at the end of it which was pretty noble (as Beijing cab rides go, the 42 Y fare was a monster - although only equivalent to 3 GDP)
Our hard sleeper train was good, although our top bunks were a little on the 'close to the roof' side. The trolley service of fine Chinese lagers helped to calm our nerves after rushing round the station grabbing last minute snacks and finding our train.
We checked into our hostel in Xian, conveniently located across from the historic bell tower. Our en-suite shower freshened us up and we headed off to see the sights, including 'Big Goose Pagoda' which looks out over the city. We then accessed the city walls and were transported to a more serene and peaceful view of the city. China has amazing contrasts in that way - there is so much hustle and bustle, but you never seem to be far from a park or somewhere of great tranqility.
Another thing we have noticed about Xian is it's legendary air pollution. Some days there has been some fog (we think) - as otherwise the whole city and its surrounding area up to 120km away are always covered in some kind of smog. You don't watch the sun go down - it just sort of disappears in the haze...
China has water shortages in some cities, we read. Perhaps not in Xian? We saw a truck going slowly down the main drag spraying water out behind it to clean the road....playing a 'happy birthday' jangle as it went...
For dinner we had a tasty meal in the 'muslim quarter' of the city. There was a hole in our table where a bowl of boiling water could be placed (it kind of fitted in like a kitchen sink). A burner kicks in underneath so that your bowl is constantly boiling. In it is a kind of broth which you have selected. Then you toss in small bits of fish / meat / veg and scoop them out when they are cooked to your satisfaction, and then dip them in your selected sauce (satay). Alas we seemed to have found a restaurant without a licence, as we had to have Sprite to wash the meal down.
Yesterday we headed to the popular Chinese place of pilgrimage 'Hua Sha', which is 5 mountain peaks close together. It is a sacred Taoism site. We had booked on a tour where we knew no English would be spoken (it's not that popular with backpackers). We hadn't realised that we really would be on a 'tour' for some elements of the trip (eg following someone carrying a 'flag' for our group, listening (if that's the right word when you don't understand anything) to a man with a microphone at the front of the bus chatter away for about 1 hour at a time. Thankfully the man set next to Dave was from Shanghai on holiday, and aided us with the key salient points (eg 'we are stopping for the toilet'). We weren't too concerned as all we really needed to know was what time we needed to be back at the bus once we got dropped off (ie how long we had to climb the mountain). But it was very interesting to see that Chinese tourists got treated much the same as we might have expected if we had gone on an English speaking tour. One highlight was when the whole group got corralled into a kind of warehouse, and then a woman in a lab technician coat stood at the front and held up various herb type things, and seemed to be extolling their benefits. We then shuffled into a room where lab technician types stood behind counters trying to sell their magical wares. There was some very odd looking stuf in that room....
We yomped up and around all 5 peaks (very hot work) and managed to be back before quite a few of the Chinese, which was satisfying. We popped into a Chinese 'fast food' restaurant for tasty noodles, sushi, alphalpha beans and a tuna roll thing, with TsingTao cleaning the palate nicely between mouthfuls.
The next day we checked out the Terrracotta Warriors. We did not have quite as much time as we might have hoped to look at these, due to some logisitcal problems largely of Dave's making (note that the '603' bus will not neccessarily take you to the same places as the '306' bus...). However we had enough time to take in the Terra wonders, and to muse on the effort that must have gone into putting all of this together... jut to be covered up and guard someone's grave! It was also pretty amazing to think that all this had gone undiscovered up till 1976. There is still loads of the site to be excavated, although there didn't seem to be much hurry on that front as far as we could tell.
Back at Xian station, we boarded our overnight sleeper to Chengdu. We were only sharing our cabin with 2 other people this time. The 2 Chinese gents seemed harmless enough, and after a while dished out some monkey nuts and sesame seeds and encouraged us to dip in. As nut lovers, we were happy to take up this hospitality. Alas, they encouraged us to share their tea leaves too. There were 2 disadvantages to this: i) the tea was minging, but of course having accepted such hospitality, we felt we should continue ii) the leaves floated on the surface, making sppedy drinking (to expedite the consumption) almost impossible.
At the next brief stop, Dave popped off the train to get some drinks in. 'Blue Ardour' lager is very malty, and did not raise any ardour at all. The gents were asked if they wanted any procuring, but it seemed that they already had their own drinks. In fact they upped the ante now. They produced 2 small bottles of spirits (one for us, one for them) and some very tasty filleted beef. Our Chinese has not progressed all that well on the trip, so we were trying to get them to tell us what the word for 'tasty' was, as signified by the very tasty beef. Due to some spirits / Blue Ardour confusion, we worked out (about 30 minutes later) that Dave spent the next 30 minutes pronouncing all the goods that they had offered us as 'tasty beef'. Eg pick up bottle of spirits, point at it, and say 'tasty beef'. They must have thought we were mental. Perhaps you had to be there.... Disappointingly, all we could offer to 'share' in return was cookies, as we had only brought stuff like noodles along. [Afterwards we remembered that we did, in fact, still have a bottle of vodka that we have been carrying arond for weeks and keep forgetting about....]
Alas the old boy snored like a trooper so little kip was had once the festivities had been superceded by attempts at slumber.
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