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Xi'an, 17th - 22nd October -
After our manic journey, any place would have looked amazing but Xi'an really was. Debbie was there waiting for us when we strolled through the packed train station, huge packs on back and front, with a welcome banner for 'sissy, blondie and the pretty girl...' a long story but basically names we aopted in Beijing! Deb had already booked us into a hostel as she had arrived the night before - the 'Seven Sages Hostel, Xi'an'. Less then 1km and a few minutes walk from the train station the hostel was perfectly located inside the city walls near to everything worth seeing and a really well kept place. It was actually named the 6th most interesting hostel in the world,mainly due to the complex being built in 612ad! You go through huge wooden doors a the entrance to find a maze of courtyards and buildings, all integrated and containing dorms or private rooms, a good restaurant and outdoor chill area. 3 or 4 dorms all face into small individual courtyards with table tennis tables, card tables, water features, huge plants, and terra-cotta warriors everywhere, and the whole place enclosed in its own little wall away from the city, for 50yuan a night i would recommend in to anyone.
I think Xi'an itself is my favourite city so far (im sure i'll say that about pretty much every new place!) Its a walled city and actually th first location of the forbidden city, now found in Beijing. The wall surrounding it is 14km around, 16-18 m wide at the bottom and built in 582ad! Insinde the wall is like the old town anad where we spent most of our time, quite traditional in places but still full of huge hotels and 7 storey department store. Outside the wall is much like every other shinese city we've seen on our travels, very built up, very noisy, very busy and people everywhere!
On the day we arrived Debbie had the whole day planned out for us, we got there about 10-11 oclock and needed to stretch our legs so dropped our bags at the hostel and made our way to the north gate of the wall, where we got up onto the top and hired bikes to cycle around it. It was agod laugh and a great way to see the city, o, and we were joined by 'simon' the swiss guy from the summer palace in Beijing, and that Debbie had happened to bump into in Xi'an. We went for food and found it unbelievably good and unbelievably cheap! In th whole stay we never spent more than £1.20 on a meal tat over-filled us and was the best food we had tried yet. Adam in Qingdao had told us to look out for muslim, chinese restaurants and found out for ourselves that they do the best food, at the best price and give the best hospitality we had experinced yet/ Even now, im pretty sure we have'nt been in a chinese run restaurant without feeling a bit un-easy and like an outsider. They tend to look down on you a bit nd dont give you the same treatment as locals, but the muslim chinese were different, free gren tea is on tap, soup is brought to yoou without asking and the owners actually have smiles on their faces!
I can tell you how amazingly good this food is, how nice the people are and how incredibly cheap the priviledge is but im 99% sure that if you saw where you had to eat the food you'd think twice before indulging! They're not 'restaurants' im talking about, more like tiny rooms on the sides of roads where you usually sit on a plastic stool 8" off the ground on the pavement, or on one of the 3 maybe 4, 6 if your lucky, tables inside the dingy rooms, smoke stained ceilings, concrete follrs, peeling paint and drinkfs stacked in plastic crates in the corner. Im painting a horrilbe picture here and back in England even a building like that would be demolished, but we never had any problems, the food was consistently fantastic, plates clean and chop sticks plentiful. Its just usual everyday life here and there are literallly hundreds of business ' the same. You can always tell its a restaurant because there's a guy standing in the street out front making noodles by hand and cooking the expertly prepared noodles in huge cast iron cauldrens, at least 2 foot wide, over coal fires that look like they have'nt been moved from the pavement for years, just the way it should be!
The 'shops' and stalls that line the backstreets are similar, theres hundreds of them, all selling pretty much the same thing (cigarettes, warm drinks, random ornaments, knives or decks of cards, packets of food and normally some dodgy street food) all sold on what are effectively pasting tables in their front fooms. On averag they're no more than 3msquared, usually less and i you look behind the 'counter' the rest of the family is eating or washing, theres a bed acros the back and thats it, their wole life, shut ehind sutters come 10 - 11 at night. Aside from the backstreets and brothels there is electronic shops, super markets and department stores, a lovely up-to-date city not dissimilar from the nicest parts of london, where theres designer shops like burberry, prada and cartier, nice cars drive around and posh couples walk theire stupid little dogs, bizarre!
Obviously the main reason for visiting Xi'an was to see the terr-cotta warriors not far away from the city. We loked into making our own way there and avoiding the tours but it worked out expensive and the hostel ran a good tour from the doorstep for 220 kwai so we opted for that. In true tour group style we stoppd on the way at a factory that shows you how the warriors were made, this sounds interesting but it transpires that all they show youis how they make the minature ornaments and then try and flog them to you!
I had heard mixed reviews about the warriors so went with no expectations but i can honesltly say that i was absolutely amazed and completely enthrawled by the whole story of how and why they got there - Basically, an empereor over 2000 years ago decided he wanted this terra-cotta army built to protect his spirit in the afterlife, sleves spent years and years making every warrior by hand (to surprising detail) and painting them full colour to look real. The heads and bodies were built seperately and every one was provded bit hand made bronze weaponry. They were placed in channels underground, held up by a series of huge wooden beams, making the walls and supporting the ceiling which was jus mud and earth when re-covered so that it would never be found. When buried over 3000 women children and horses were buried too, his hundreds of wives that had not yet given birth to a child of his were buried alive, so they could do so in the afterlife.
Years later an ememy army found the warriors and destroyed everything they could, stole all the bronze weaponry and burned the chambers to the ground, due to it being almost entirely made of wood, it was razed to the ground and left undiscovered, deep underground and mostly in ruins until 1974 when a farmer digging for a well in his field stumbled upon it. That very farmer still sits at the site, everyday, posing for pictures and signing books looking very unhappy. I didnt get the full story but it was something like the state forces him to do so to attract tourism, doesnt pay him (or hardly) so he charges people to have their picture taken with him for money on the side! communism at its best.
The whole site is now undercover in what are effectively 3 bi warehouses and a large building. In fairness its all been tastefully done, the buildings wer'nt just thrown up and the site is well laid out, but i cant understand why they have paved over what is an area probably bigger than a squaremile around the warehouses to make for shops, kiosks and features, when only 158suare metres have been uncovered, and potentially, there is close to 13000 square metres containing terra-cotta armies. I suppose they found what they needed to make them some maney in tourism and the excavation stopped.
You can still go and see nearly 6000 warriors though, the first warehouse is the largest and home to the most famous pictures of the warriors, 4000 in rows and rows, some still whole, mot restored and some left in heaps and piles set in the earth. Theres still evidence of skeletons of people and horses there too. Its amazing to see and you have to take a minute to sit back and appreciate what they actually acieved, with their bare hands over 2000 years ago, each soldier absolutely perfect and when you see the vastness of them all together it really does stoip you in your tracks. One of the most amazing things i have ever seen and being able to appreciate digging big holes in the hot sun under the reign of a mad boss, and carrying huge bits of timber on my shoulder makes it all the more special! ( hi Jim... only joking haha )
The next 2 warehouses are excavation sites tha never really move on very far, in number 3 you can just make out the trenches and a few ruins of warriors set in the walls and ground. Number 2 was a bit more interesting, its only small, the actual digging site only overs about 12 square metres but is the depest of them all at about 8 metres deep. Is almost as if someone had been playing with lego and made a play scene. The soldiers are in perfect condition and different ranking sodiers stand facing each other as if in conversation in real life, (theres only about 20 - 30 warriors in the whole site ) and the site even features walls and rooms, theres a long slope that goes all the way down from ground level and originally invaders would have been met by 4 tera-cotta horses and a carriage, only the horses remain as the carriage was made of wood. The forth building is more like a museum, shows 4 soldiers, perfectly preserved in glass cases up close and are the only examples where some colouris still visible. You can stee some bronze weaponry they dug up on the site and and the main feature, two sets of horses and carriage made completely from bronze and half-human sized.
I was seriously impressed and had a really good day, i dont know how anyone could not be to be honest, i got some amazing pictures and memories that will last forever.
A few nights in, drinking and playing cards at the hostel, me, az, smera and debbie got chtting to two (absolutely stunning) girls from Iceland. We taught them some card and drinking games and they returned the favour by teaching us this amazing drinking game that gonna travel the world with us ( we didnt get the name so i called it 'Topa' after the gorgous blonde who taught us it) Drinks went down nicely, jokes were had and me and Az were gettin quite excite, that was until they anounced that they were raging lesbians travelling together. haha! It was friday night, the girls had gone to bed so with a few drinks in us, Az and I decided to head out into the city to find some nightlife, only to find it non-existent and ourselves ina very haury situation in the depths of some deserted chinese ghetto at 2 in the morning, an interesting/ scary night followed, there was a chase, a taxi, a gang, more beers, 2 stupid drunk english guys :) and a narrow escape (again, next time i see you in the oub, and after a few beers yo'll get the full story, its a good one!) haha
As im sure you've gathered by now we all love hitting the bikes and putting our lives in the hands of the mental chinese roads, its always a buzz and now Debbie had finally been re-united with her beloved 'jane' (her bike) after having it sent by train from Beijing, we went to explore the city. Had a qualtity day dodging the traffic, seeing new and different parts of the city and had my first near death experience! You have to get amongst it, be ballsy and take chances and after a whole day on the roads we were pretty confident, Az and I were crossing a a road (3 lanes either side) and got a bit complacent, made it across the first side fine then just went for the next 3 lanes whilst we were on a roll, didnt look properly and biked straight into the path of a couple of 4x4's, they slammed their brakes on, we peddled for our lives, horns blared and my life flashed before my eyes! haha we had to stop for a minute the other side, maily to stop shaking, but laughed it off as usual and carried on particuarly cautiously with our journey. The problem is, lights dont matter, zebra crossings dont matter, and they pretty much drive in any direction on any side of the road whenever they feel, i wouldnt like to be driving round here!
Cycling back to the hostel it started getting dark and by chance we stumbledd upon the 'muslim quarter', we'd been out searching for it the previous day but with no luck so were pretty pleased to find it (the wanders of the bicycle!) Its like i imagine morocco or some rural area of thailand to be like, a maze of market stalls, lining either side of the even bigger maze of little backroads. All different types of food, spices, vegatables, fruits and amazing smells come from every direction and the hustle and bustle of tousands of people squeezing past each other, sampling food or sitting in the road on plastic stools at the end of BBQ meat stand. I could have spent hours there just taking in everything that was going on around me, you just need to see the pictures, trying to explain just doesnt do it justice!
We returned the bikes to the hostel and headed out in a taxi to go and see the worlds largest music and light fountain show, the other side of the city. The man at the hostel had told us, in broken english, that it starte at 9oclock but typically as we arrived at 10 too the woman over the tannoy was just announcing the end of the display and thanking people for coming! The place was still electric though and based at the bottom aofa huge pagoda, it was saturday night and people were out having a good time, older chinese couples danced in unison to classical music in a park lit by huge flod lights, street artists showed their skills, little stalls flooded the area and in true chinese style everything was lit up multi-coloured.We had'nt eaten yet and nothing seemed as appealing as the tiny street stalls in the muslim quarter so we made our way back there for dinner and a wander. It was still alive with music, smells, people, lights and food and we all just grabbed small tings to try whilst walking through like qualils eggs, chicken kebabs and squeezed date juice, then headed back to the hostel for a few beers and a hard earned rest! (we went back at 12am the next day to catch the fountain show which was actually pretty good, went on for ages and was outrageously big!)
Since arriving in china we've not been shy of adopting their way of life, i think the time is finally coming for me and Az to be fully Chinalized. A word that seem to be used a ridiculous amount of times in just about every conversation we have, and is something that us 2 aspire to be! haha I've mastered the squatter, got wasted on the qingdao local beer, spent days on trains and even brought flasks so we can carry our green tea with us everywhere we go (jus like everyone else) and actually look forward to eating noodles for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The chopstick skills are down and the chinalization process is fully underway... :)
On our last day in Xi'an it was also debbies's and we all got up early to see her off, i had had to fit a cycle computer the nigh before and when she came to load up he bike found that the clip on one of her paniers had broken, i fixed it up with some cable ties and she was on her way. It was the coldest temperature we had experienced yet but it didnt phase her in the slightest. It was sad to say goodbye but we arranged to meet again in Vietnam for christmas and new year so hopefully all goes to plan! The rest of the day was pretty chilled before our next 19 hour hard sleeper to Chengdu, much like the rest of the week had been! Our days mostly consisted of getin up late, playing ping pong, pottering about the city, eating at different restaurants, trying local delicacies at least twice a day, playing cards, drinking 'Hans' amazing beer that was 25p for a 600ml bottle and happened to give us all amzing dreams ecerytime we drank it?! and sitting outside starbucks with an iced coffee watching the world go by...
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