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I'm now trying to desperatly think of what has happened since the last blog. Again i have tried to upload photos with no luck. I got futher than i have done before though so mnaybe the next place i go it may actually work. Still got a tiny thread of hope to hang onto.
Well the next city along from Zhong Wei was... errm let me think, Xi'an. Although my back was still hurting, i never did wake up a whole new person, I wnt cycling along the city walls. Although unfortunatly the city is now so built up you can't see as much of what you would have done from the walls it was still really good fun. We all got an these massivly rickerty bikes and proceeded to cycle the 16km length of the wall. All i can say is thank god it was flat, my legs were tired after going along flat all! But my arms felt nicely refreshed after being jiggled for an hour and a half becuase of all the cobbles.
The next day we all went to see the terracotta warriors, which we well amazing to see concidering the age, they were made in 221 B.C. and only discovered in 1972!! The farmer who discovered them is now employed by the museum to sit there so people can meet him, what an odd job! Anyway yes, I can't really give you much of an insight into because well its something you've got to see. I wish there was a way to see the coloured ones though. However they haven't been excavated because the chinese have no way to preserve the colour.
Then onto yet another train, all good, but had to get up at half 4!!! Then arrival in Chengdu and straight away went to see the pandas! It was really weird seeing them, just becuase they look exactly like a big teddy bear. They even move how you imagine a teddy bear would. This was especially true of the babies. We were lucky enough to see baby pandas of a few months old, and they were teddy bear sized! We got to see them being fed to and one was in an incubator and only about 30cm big! There was the option the next day of going to see the biggest stone buddha in the world i think it is, certainly china. But after finding out it was a 2 hour bus journey plus two lots of entrance fees on a cloudy day with hangovers, it didn't seem like a good thing. I ended up going shopping with 2 of the other girls becuase the laundry place in Xi'an had managed to rip my only trousers that weren't jeans! And these typically being the sort of trousers that as soon as you mend them break in another place about a cm along. Next to yet another massage place, where i was tempted by the extras which you could get (nothing seedy!) and got hot cupping done. They heat up a glass bowl with a neck on and then place it on your skin. It sucks up the skin and is meant to get rid of toxins in your system. But it leaves marks on you skin for weeks (which i did know before hand). Its really hard to explain so look up images on google. It looks worse than it is and doesn't really hurt that much. It just feels abit weird.
we then went to the Chengdu opera which consisted of various things. The best part i though was a guy who did shadow puppets on a screen to music, but nothing amateur about it. He did a bird which ate his hair and flew, a horse that galloped, a rabbit, a dog eatting a rabbit and i can't remember what else. The last bit was the famous changing faces and fire eating. The changing faces was really good, you couldn't see where the masks went, we agreed in the end it wa somewhere into their hands. The masks swapped in an instant though. The one we couldn't explain was the first guy chnaged his clothes as well as his mask. Although there was a screen behind him he still chnaged in a mili second and you just couldn't spot what had just happened at all, even watching beck on film!
Then yet another train, which we nearly miss (well not that almost.) But me and bex, the girl im sharing my room with, had to be woked up at had 10 mins to get everything packed and get downstairs after only having 2 and a half hours sleep! It was a hectic morning. But actually thankfully the train took all day beacuse i hadn't got much sleep over the last few days and i just slept on and off the whole day! Now in Kunming, which i haven't seen much off becuase i had to go trouser searching again. Our group splits off here 4 people leave and 5 people join, and then were off to tiger leaping gorge. And that's the story so far. I shall fill you in on more in the next few days.
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