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Beijing Part Deux
The night train!! Wow what an experience. We genuinely watched a women eat her entire body weight in seeds. She'd bite the shell off first and then eat the seed, by the end she had disappeared under all the shells it was truly strange, but she seemed happy with life.
So we were on the night train heading hundreds of miles away from the city to one of the remotest parts of China, Xi'an. We were heading to Xi'an to visit the legendary Terracotta Warriors. When we arrived in Xi'an we were miles away from the warriors but luckily Noels excellent Chinese haggling skills paid off and we got ourselves a driver for the day. The driver took us to the site well before opening but also, well before the crowds!!
The Terracotta Army isn't just Xī'ān's premier site, but one of the most famous archaeological finds in the world. This subterranean life-size army was guarding the tomb of the First Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang di, who lived over 2200 years ago. He became famous for unifying the warring states into what is now China, and for becoming the country's first emperor. He is remembered for instigating the building of the Great Wall of China, and the fanatical fear of death and an obsessive quest for the secret of immortality. Either Qin Shi Huang was terrified of the vanquished spirits awaiting him in the afterlife, or, as most archaeologists believe, he expected his rule to continue in death as it had in life - what a nut job, but fair play to the kid he got s*** built!!! He started both the wall and the terracotta army projects off when he was 14, someone get the kid some lego!
The discovery of the army of warriors was entirely fortuitous. In 1974, peasants drilling a well uncovered an underground vault that eventually yielded thousands of terracotta soldiers and horses in battle formation. Throughout the years the site became so famous that many of its unusual attributes are now well known, in particular the fact that he hands and the heads of the terracotta warriors were made separately, and each head is totally different and individual.
The site is made up of three pits and a large museum. The largest pit, Pit 1 , is the most imposing. Housed in a building the size of an aircraft hangar, it contained 6000 warriors (only 2000 are on display) and horses, all facing east and ready for battle, when we walked in it was quite unnerving. The vanguard of three rows of archers (both crossbow and longbow) is followed by the main force of soldiers, who originally held spears, swords, dagger-axes and other long-shaft weapons. The infantry were accompanied by 35 chariots, though these, made of wood, have long since disintegrated. At any point we feared they could come alive and this kept us all trembling, although the freezing temperatures of the hanger didn't help things either. The detail in the soldiers is awe inspiring; it really does have to be seen to be believed.
We trundled on to Pit 3, containing 72 warriors and horses, which is believed to be the army headquarters due to the number of high-ranking officers unearthed here. Almost as extraordinary as the soldiers is a pair of solid bronze chariots and horses unearthed just 20m west of the Tomb of Qin Shi Huang. These are now on display, together with some of the original weaponry, in a small museum .The digging team had even uncovered all the special ramps the army were going to use to 'climb' from the pits. It's as though they thought there would be some huge battle taking place in the centre of China. In the next pit, Pit 2 , containing around 1300 warriors and horses, we got to examine five of the soldiers up close: a kneeling archer, a standing archer, a cavalryman and his horse, a mid-ranking officer and a general. The level of detail is extraordinary: the expressions, hairstyles, armour and even the tread on the footwear are all unique.It was then that the totally unbelievable happened. In a matter of seconds Roisin went from a lowly tourist to the most famous person in Chinese history!!How? Why? No one knows. All we know is that she was looking at some of the warriors minding her own business then.....wham.
An entire Chinese family descended on Le Rosh and mobbed the b'Jesus out of her!!! It was like she was Beckham, they were pulling her in ten different directions all clamouring for a photo with her, it must have been her glowing white skin!!! When they realised we were a family they dragged us all in and started snapping like crazy, one was even videoing the whole event, 20 minutes and 200 photos later we finally managed to wrestle our way into the Terracotta museum and learned abit more out the warriors and their origins.
After our morning tour of the warrior site we headed off into the city with our lovely taxi driver. Noel got us some samples of some amazing street food that the province is famous for, some of it was so good that fussy old Declan even went back for seconds!! We trundled through the markets picking up some trinkets along the way and gradually made our way back towards the train station for our lovely night train back to Beijing. Before we boarded the train however we came across and huge City wall. Xī'ān is one of the few cities in China where the old city walls are still standing. Built in 1370 during the Ming dynasty, the 12m-high walls are surrounded by a dry moat and form a rectangle with a perimeter of 14km.Most sections have been restored or rebuilt, and it is now possible to walk the entirety of the walls in a leisurely four hours. Did we have 4 hours? Yes. Did we want to walk 14km all the way around the city? Yes (in theory). After a very quick debate we decided we couldn't really be bothered walking the entire way round so we walked from one corner to the other and it was still a big walk. The wall was as wide as a dual carriage way and easily 3 storeys high, seriously when the Chinese go building walls they don't do things by halves!! The wall wasn't even built to keep out an actual army, just the occasional raider after some extra vegetables!!
After another lovely night train we spent the rest of the day recharging the batteries, watching films and eating food, Noel went to work!! Hahaha!
Back to our tourist adventures the following day and we had a massive day planned. As many will know Beijing had itself an Olympics a few years back, 2008 to be precise, so with Declan being a connoisseur of Olympic venues (Sydney and London) we went off to see how the Chinese Stadia compared to the others. After a quick hop on the tube we came across Beijing's incredibly modern architecture at the Olympic Park. We explored the site of the opening and closing ceremonies at the Bird's Nest and saw the site of the aquatic competitions at the Water Cube. The National Aquatics Center, also known as the Water Cube was the first building we came across in the massive park. This site hosted the swimming, diving and synchronized swimming events during the 2008 Olympics, and has since been converted into a water amusement park however it was far too cold to put a swimming cossie on!! Opposite the Cube was the Birds Nest, the Swiss and Chinese architects who designed the stadium intended it to look like a large nest with exposed steel structures. We intended to venture inside the Bird's Nest and see the massive interior with a capacity for 91,000 spectators, however it was quite simply the coldest windiest day Beijing had ever had. The park was quite a large expanse with very little cover, so when the wind blew, you knew about it, there was nowhere to hide and after a while it was blisteringly arctic. So we went and found a little cafe, McCafe as it was called and we attempted to get a warm drink.
After a walk around the Olympic village and the shopping centre we came across the National science museum complete with a huge shiny mirror ball the size of well a huge shiny mirror ball. We then re-boarded the tube and headed for the dead centre of the city.
Our tube ride was standard, and as every underground tube travellers knows the crucial part of the journey is getting on and off the train, and by proxy letting others get on and off the train. This is not something that is acknowledged in Beijing. As we were trying to get off or alight as its know, at the busy central platform there was a rush of people getting on. In any normal situation you wouldnt expect there to be victims but in this case there was. We were trying to disembark from middle of the train and got damn close to the doors before the beeping started. It was at this point a mere bystander, happily minding his own business, was forcefully pushed out of the carriage just as the internal doors shut. He was furious. Ranting at the glass as the outer doors were slowly shutting, then just as the train was pulling away from the platform, his head dropped and he was utterly devastated about being left behind. We on the other hand were fuming we had missed our stop and it wasnt for a full minute before we realised how funny it was that the man had been pushed off for no reason. We then erupted in to fits of laughter and it just didnt stop. Even now its hilarious, that poor man was just trying to get home!!
Our next stop was to have a look at all the weird modern buildings in the city centre including the CCTV building. Shaped like an enormous pair of trousers, and known locally as Dà Kùchǎ (大裤衩), or Big Pants, the astonishing CCTV Tower is an architect's wet dream. Its overhang (the bum in the pants) seems to defy gravity and is made possible by an unusual engineering design which creates a three-dimensional cranked loop, supported by an irregular grid on its surface. (Technical details for those that care!)
After a very quick lap of the inner city we went and found an absolute gem of an attraction, the Chaoyang Theatre Acrobatics Show. This breathtaking show performed twice a day, with its precise and daring action is the most popular acrobatic show in Beijing. The Chinese have developed their acrobatic skills for years and this show is a landmark of the evolution of acrobatics in China. Traditional lion dancing, stunning bicycling, fire stunts and contortion acts are just some of the highlights of the show. We might have expected some plate spinning, tumbling, daredevil trapeze acts and at a push balancing acts of up to nine acrobats riding a single bicycle. But the finale was utterly ridiculous, 9 motorbikes inside a steel cage all whizzing round not crashing or bashing into each other with half the men on fire!!!!!! Aside of all the jaw dropping acts we saw, the pinnacle, the jewel in the crown, the apex of modern entertainment was an act simply called 'Jumping Hats'. It cannot be described adequately with words so I won't try, there's a video!!!!
That night we went to a swanky area of Beijing situated round a lake, the Hutong was chocca with shops, bars and restaurants all buzzing with activity, so we found Noel, found a reggae bar and drank like fish!!
And so came our last day together in Beijing, Noel took the day off and took us all about town to all the best markets. One of those said markets was Wangfujing! Wangfujing Street is a 700-year-old commercial street 810 meters (0.5 miles) long and 40 meters (43.7 yards) wide. It is the busiest street in Beijing and there are some 600,000 people every day coming and going along the street and on holidays, the number can rise to 1,200,000. The first famous business zone in Beijing houses a wide variety of shops and boutiques where you find commodities, some of which are of world-famous brands....others are insects on a stick. Wangfujing is like the Bullring on drugs, the noise, the hustle, the bustle, it was all quite intoxicating, the smell of random animals on sticks however was quite off putting, boiled sparrow anyone? After Wangfujing we went to see Noels trainer guy and got hooked up with some new laces, the girls went off looking for trinkets and Rosh nearly got killed by a women who went OTT trying to sell her a fan!! The women actually shouted and chased them through the market!! Our last stop in Beijing was ..................... for the best burger in Beijing. We had been eating quite a bit of Chinese food, for obvious reasons so we thought as a little treat we'd go for some good old American burgers.
The following morning Noel and Rosh went off towards the airport while Dec and Mel headed towards the bullet train!
The next and sadly final stop on our list was Shanghai.
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