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We departed Beijing this morning to arrive in Xi'an (pronounced she-ann), a surprisingly large town of eight million people located in China's North, most notable for being the home of the Terracotta Warriors, as well as having being the end of the Silk Route in the middle part of the last millennium.
We hop into a cab and "Thud!" as the taxi driver proceeds to reverse hard into the kerb. The driver, a spotty man in his early 20s, quickly corrects, drives the wrong way round the roundabout, and carries on…It doesn't bode well. Our suspicions are added to by the fact that the driver says it will take "one hour" to reach the town, and we appear to be sharing with some sort of friend of the driver's. To be on the safe side, Stephen checks with the toll booth attendant on the freeway which direction the town is in. Somewhat inevitably, the taxi turns in a different direction and Stephen demands that we get out. The driver doesn't quite stop until a bit of shouting in English gets going when he finally does - proving the "if they don't understand, shout in English" rule also works in China. It leaves us with the rather sorry scene of two Englishmen looking rather bemused on a sliproad in the middle of nowhere, watching two Chinamen argue over roughly £6. In turn we are all being watched by a group of peasant workers, who no doubt fine the incident an amusing interlude to their day. I manage to flag down another taxi, and after about 20 minutes further of arguing in Mandarin and general fisticuffs (two subject that I don't specialise in) we move on in the other taxi toward Xi'an.
The drive goes on through Xi'an's dull and dilapidated suburbs. I get the feeling that even if the other driver hadn't started going the wrong way we probably would have thought he was at this point - the surroundings are unsightly
Our hotel is located in Xi'an's centre, which, as is the case in many Chinese cities consists of a square containing a Bell and Drum Tower. The history behind it is that as early as the Han Dynasty in 200BC, time was told by bell and drum, with the 'morning bell' and 'dusk drum.' Naturally, everyone needs to know the time of day so towers were built, one dedicated to the Drum and another to the Bell. We climb to the top of the Bell Tower, from which Xi'an is barely visible through the smog.
We later take a walk through Xi'an's cultural heart - the lively Muslim quarter. The air is rich with exotic smells, from grilled kebabs to bubbling cauldrons of indeterminable stew. Rickshaws squeeze through the non-existent gaps in the crowds and the stalls. It has very much more of a traditional 'Oriental' feel to it than Beijing. The food is very tempting, but seeing as I don't have an iron stomach, I decide to stick to enjoying the smell - and opt to find a restaurant later. We pay a short visit to the 'Great Mosque' which is interesting mainly to see the Arabic lettering written all over the Chinese architecture buildings.
Our evening meal is a little bit DIY. First a stiff round piece of bread is brought out with a bowl. We then proceed to break it into small pieces into the bowl. The waitress takes the bowl back and adds a mutton stew to it. It makes for a very hearty dish, not one that one used to 'Chinese' takeaways would ordinary associate with China, it seems almost Northern European.
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