the rest of our time in Xian

Hello everyone…. I’m writing this from the Sheraton hotel in Jiuzhaigou. We spent the last day and a half traveling from Xi’an, via overnight sleeper train, which is pretty comfortable (except for all the people smoking), then an all day bus (which was surprisingly comfortable). But before I go into that…

… I’ll just go through the rest of our time in Xi’an.

We got a free ride to our hostel on the first day and when we got to the hostel, our guide took us through what I can only describe as a construction site. The whole hostel was being remodeled and I can tell you these guys had not done their construction industry safety induction training. We had to look up for falling objects every time we walked through the door. Anyway after we got through the building works we found the hostel was a really beautiful converted courtyard home, open on the inside with a whole lot of skylights and traditional chinese detailing. Our bathroom smelt like sewerage, and I toyed with the idea of trying to get a new room, but then we realised it was the whole neighbourhood. About an hour after that, we realised it was most of the city. So we just kept the door closed instead.

Unfortuantely I didn’t get a photo, so here’s one of Penny out the front.

 

 On our way to the Terracotta warriors I got this photo of Xi’an from the bus. You can see the original city siege walls are still intact for the full length of the city, which (alert… upcoming wankery) highlights the stark juxtaposition of china’s historical background, with the…. bah I just thought it was a nice contrast between the old and the new.

Anyway we got to the Terracotta warriors and were appropriately impressed. They are actually quite far away from the main city centre, but they’re definitely worth the trip. For anyone that doesn’t know, they were only discovered in ’74 when a peasant (who now sells autographed copies of his biography at the museum shop) was digging a well and accidentally discovered them about 5m below ground.

 

They’re totally smashed to pieces though.. most of them anyway… the ones you’ve seen photos of are mostly restored (painstakingly). If anyone’s interested let us know and I’ll put up more photos or show you when we get home… but it was quite amazing. I’m not sure if they will ever restore them all, but I think it would be a truly amazing site to see them all restored to their original condition, standing silent in their underground city.

Here’s a photo of the dog Penny mentioned yesterday…. who seemed to be the waiter in the restaurant we ate lunch in… as Penny mentioned they had dog on the menu so it’s lucky for him we weren’t more adventurous with our lunch selections.

 

Ok… next up, the Muslim quarter. Penny already wrote about it, so I won’t say anything else… it was as awesome as she says… here’s the proof:

 

 

 The next morning we got up and walked the city walls, which Penny wants to talk about:

Well, the original plan was to walk the city walls but we thought it would be a great idea to hire bikes and ride around instead. In line with what usually happens when we hire bikes overseas, there were some regrets regarding this decision…we hadn’t give too much thought to the condition of the thousand odd year old wall and the clunky two hundred year old bikes (for $3 for 2 hours).

The pain was worth it though – if only to see the local Xi’anians going about their daily exercise as we peeked over the wall to the parks down below. There was ping pong, tai chi, vigorous stretching, badminton…the highlight was the aerobics, Chinese-style…not quite as energetic as Body Attack but no one was in actual workout clothes (I don’t think they do workout clothes in China – all sporting activities seem to be done in jeans/suits etc). Josh tried very hard to upload the hilarious video but with no luck (Youtube is banned here)…Adrienne will be familiar with the moves from our time in Vietnam on the Amazing Race. The Chinese are hard core though – it was freezing at 8:30am but they’re still out there working it…

We then came across a marathon on the City Walls which we named ‘The Gate to Gate”…we were laughing at their shuffling running style (as we commented, the Chinese probably aren’t known for their achievements in the running arena) until some of the lead guys passed us coming the other way (and we were on bikes…)

There has been some progress made towards understanding traffic here – basically there are crossings where the cars don’t actually give way to you, you’re just supposed the weave your way through. A helpful local man with a wheely bin (who was showing us where to get up on the Walls) helped us through the traffic…let’s just describe it as harrowing. I’m a big fan of underpasses…

After a slightly traumatic bus ride to the train station (again, crowded, shoving, hate vibes, but no vomit in a bag) we got to the chaotic Xi’an train station. Being tightarses, we had the top bunks (out of three) and had a rockin New Years Eve asleep in our coffin like beds.

We then needed to get from Chengdu train station to the bus station…sounds easy but giving the taxi helper men a piece of paper with “long distance bus station” written in Chinese still drew blank stares. We battled on and with some map circling and repetition (and help from a policeman) we made it to the bus station. We bought our tickets without total confidence that we were going to end up in the right place, but luckily Josh’s interpretation of the Chinese symbols for “Juizhai Valley” were close enough.

The bus ride took us through some pretty impressive mountains…my highlight was discovering the toilet style in this province…a long narrow trough which you squat over (with feet either side), and each lady is separated by a low concrete divider so we’re not staring at each others butts…

Josh declared (after 20 odd hours of travelling) that he would punch himself in the head if Juizhaigou wasn’t worth it (well actually, the true uncensored version was that he would punch himself in the groin). So we will see tomorrow whether Josh sustains any injuries or not…