Hi all!

Well we're currently in Xi'an which is situated about the middle of China and you may have heard of it because the Terracotta Warriors were discovered here. We made the journey down by night train which took about 11 hours. It was actually a really enjoyable experience as we chose the sleeper cabin which had comfy beds to sleep on. After tea we went to sleep, woke up and we were there so it was pretty good. However, as soon as we got on the train we upset this little old woman by having a go at her through hand gestures! We accused her of stealing someone's bed, because we though someone else had her bed already. Turns out we were wrong and we ended up feeling really bad because she was really old and just wanted a quiet journey without two gobby westerners in her face whoops! She got her own back though as she kept us up by talking to herself in her sleep and laughing hysterically. In the morning, we had to try really hard to not laugh because she started doing some weird exercises and was jumping up and down in this tiny train carriage. Oh the fun of overnight trains!

The hostel we were staying at picked us up at the train station and took us to the hostel. When we checked in they told us they were going to upgrade us for free, so we got a big ensuite room for £6 a night! The hostel is great so we might end up staying a bit longer here than planned. Xi'an is so much nicer than Beijing. It's a lot smaller but it's cleaner and there seems to be a lot more going on. It's also pretty cheap, as we had two noodle dishes a drink and a beer today for lunch and it costed £2.20! Looks like we'll have more daily budget left to do some shopping :)

On Friday 6th March we went to see the Terracotta Warriors. The story is that the emporer at the time (210 BC) wanted a full size army building so he could be be buried with it and therefore protected the afterlife. It was buried underground with the huge logs placed on top of them, to keep the earth from crushing the warriors. The emperor wanted to keep the army a secret as he was worried that people would try and destroy it, so he killed every man that was involved in making the warriors (around 700,000!). It was discovered by a farmer who was digging a well and unearhted one of the heads. This then prompted archaeologists to invstigate the site and restore it back to how it was. Out of 8,000 warriors, only one was found fully intact.

There were three pits that had been excavated, however only pit 1 had been finished. It took 30 years for them to piece the warriors back together so it will take forever to finish them all. Also when piecing them back together, they look for the original piece instead of just filling the gaps in, which is why it takes so long. They have also recently found pit 4, but this is new so is not open to the public yet.

Every warrior is unique with a different hairstyle and facial expression. They were also painted all different colours, but these faded but these have all faded. The emperor had the army built and buried in order to take over an empire in the afterlife. The emperor is buried 1.5km away on a hill but he has not been excavated due to them not being able to preserve him and also due to the high levels of mecury that they believe is down there.

Phew, thats the end of the history lesson for you!

On Sunday we went to a Panda reserve which had some really cute pandas there including two baby ones which were about 6 months old. Some of the animals were similar to Beijing Zoo as they were kept in small enclosures, which we thought was unusual to say it was a rescue centre. The guide assured me that the Black Bears were only in a dirty cage 'temporarily' until they were moved back to the wild. When i asked how long that would be, he replied 'about 2 years!' The pandas seemed well looked after and the mountain behind the centre is were the pandas live in the wild. Driving back to the hostel the streets were filled with rubbish absolutely everywhere. The locals were sweeping it up into little piles and burning it but there was so much it would have taken a few days at least. The guide told us there had been a big party there the day before and i guess people just decided not to use bins that day!

We found a street in Xi'an where there was a few bars, mainly for karoke where Alistair was told, 'you're welcome in here white boy'. Its so nice to feel welcome! There wasn't that many sights in Xi'an apart from the Warriors so we just chilled out and walked around the streets to see what it was like. I decided to risk it and use a public toilet down an allyway. I was doing ok until i walked in and saw an old lady squatting on the floor. She had left the cubicle door open and seemed ok about it! I made a hasty exit and just stopped drinking water until we got back to the hostel.

The food here is really cheap and nice but we're struggling to order things or even know what they are because there is no english menu anywhere. In one place we thought we had ordered chow mein until it arrived. It was cold and we realised it was long strips of something but not noodles. We narrowed it down to either strips of bean curd or liver, but we had to eat it anyway because we felt rude to just leave a full plate.

There is also a place here called the muslim quarter which had really narrow streets selling all sorts from art supplies to fake goods. We did a lot of haggling down here and we enjoyed it. The problem with haggling is it ends up making you really tight. A woman wanted 2 yuan for some hair bobbles which is about 20p but we weren't prepared to pay it so haggled it down to 10p! She didn't actually agree to this but we just gave her the money and walked off which seemed to work. Maybe we should try that more often! The worst thing about this street was the amount of cow's insides were sprawled about drying in the sun. It was really dirty and we saw a shop floor with a mountain of cow's stomachs just sat in the grime! This is the place that we also discovered that the 'noodles' we ate the other night were actually some kind of offal! Oh well if it doesn't kill you it makes you stronger eh?

The next stop after Xi'an is Chongqing and we have decided to take the hard sleeper train instead of the soft sleeper we took before. The only difference is that there are 6 beds in the cabin instead of 4 and there isn't a door. It can't be that bad and it's quite a bit cheaper so we'll see!

Hope everyone is well, we'll update as soon as we can!

Lots of love Shem and Al xxxxx