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"I love the Muslim Quarter! "
In the reception of the hostel, a cozy hangout area that would later be full of backpackers from all over the world, I met a German guy who came with the same train as me. We decided to hang out in Xi'an. He had not slept very well on the train and needed to lie down a little. I decided to try to catch up on some e-mails and the blog. It was already 6 in the morning.
When we went out I was really hungry. We had some street food, and started walking to a couple of the attractions in Xi'an. "The Bell Tower" is the oldest still standing of its kind in China, and it rings a bell every morning at dawn. It was interesting to see it, with a hyper modern, huge shopping mall right behind it. Further down was "The Drum Tower". Here they played on huge drums at dusk. We did not bother paying to get inside, but rather walked around to see if we could find anything interesting. They were actually filming a fighting scene on the outside of the top floor, and judging from what we saw, this movie would not set new standards in Chinese movies.
Chinese movies do not at all show high standards, from what I have seen. But it is a business in huge growth, right now, one of the large releases this year, "Confucius", is playing in Chinese theatres. The Chinese government still screens most of the scripts before the movies make it to the screens. And they only allow 20 foreign movies a year shown in the theatres. And they even decided that "Avatar" only should be released in 3D here in China. This many say, is to give the Chinese "Confucius" an advantage, since it was released about the same time.
After many a street with interesting shops and people, we ended up at the south gates of the city wall. The Xi'an City Wall was built in the Ming Dynasty, and is very impressive. As we were buying tickets to get on top of it, we met a couple Dutch guys. We walked up on the wall with them, and decided to rent bikes up there. We could bike all around the inner city, on top of the wall. It was 14 kilometers, and we had to return the bikes within 100 minutes if we did not want to pay more than the 20 RMB we had already paid. I also had to give them a 100 RMB deposit. It was either the money or my passport. Easy choice.
The old wall was of course very bumpy, and we were pretty shaken after just a few minutes. We stopped many places to look at the view, and went inside one of the temple buildings on top of the wall. These were used as guard posts back in the days. They were all in the typical Chinese architecture, with red, blue, green and gold colors. We kept a good speed, and even raced the last couple kilometers, but when we came back we had spent 85 minutes. This was for sure a certain tourist trap. If someone older had rented the bike, they would have had to pay up. We actually made great time, considering the bad bikes and the rough surface. It was a bit cold up there, but the bike ride was very fun. We could see the crazy traffic from above, and the construction of all kinds of buildings, most of the work done by hand.
We had a lot of good food all around, and soon figured out that people in Xi'an did not eat a single meal without eggs. Whatever we got, there were eggs in it. We had noodles, and they were served with a fried egg on top. We had some kind of a pancake that they make from a thick batter, spread it out to cover the whole, large, round cooking surface with a wooden stick, cracked an egg and spread it out, put on some cilantro and folded it up as a square. A snack like those pancakes usually cost around 2 or 3 RMB. Everywhere in the streets, people were selling eggs. They were in all colors and sizes; I am actually surprised they did not have different shapes also! Many of the street shops had small birds in cages. This has been Chinese tradition for a long time, and birds are as common as pets here, as dogs are in the west.
During communist times, people were encouraged to have birds as pets, and not dogs. Dogs and other mammals need a lot of food, and considering how many Chinese there are, the quantity of pet food would be much larger than the starving population could have handled.
Xi'an is home to more than 60 000 Muslims, the densest Muslim population in China. It has traditionally been even more, but after the communist times, the number has decreased a lot. What still remains though, are the Mosques. The Great Mosque in Xi'an is really amazing. We went inside the walls, and passed a large gate. Then we walked through several gardens, all in Chinese style. All buildings looked like they could have been places in the Forbidden City. Even the Minaret was Chinese architecture. There was a Koran school with a huge picture or Mecca on the wall, but other than that, only the praying areas, covered with the typical Muslim carpets would reveal themselves as being an Islamic place of worship.
The area surrounding the Mosque is called the "Muslim Quarter", but it really is a larger part of town. Here you could find anything your mouth could desire, and I could literally walk around eating the entire day. There was a lot of dried fruit, and all the goodies could be haggled down to satisfying prices. The best part of it is that it is so unlike Beijing. You don't hear the "Hello!" and even if I entered peoples shops to look at their goods, they were more busy reading the newspaper than to force me to buy their things. What a pleasant and good atmosphere!
I also spend some time with a Danish girl, and an American old woman. The American was fed up by America, and traveled around as an English teacher. She had been all over Asia, including Korea, Japan and China. So there are not only the young people teaching English around here.
We found a noodle place right across the street from the Han Tang Inn hostel, a very new, and very nice hostel, not too far from anything. We had three meals there, and the price was simple: 8 RMB, including a beer. This is just above 1 USD!
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