Epic China Advenure Day 1: Xi'an

Got back from my trip at 6 a.m. on Saturday, but have been too lazy to update the blog. I took a hard seat back from Beijing, which is the least comfortable of the four classes (soft sleeper, hard sleeper, soft seat, hard seat). So I didn't get much sleep. My sleep schedule's been pretty erratic since, with a two or three hour nap punctuating every day.

That said, here are some pictures:

Xi'an
Left for the first leg of the trip on Thursday at 4 p.m on a hard sleeper train. I went with five other people from my program (Mei-Chun, Kari, Ben, Tom, and Kyle), so we took up a whole compartment to ourselves. So we spent the first seven or eight hours chilling on the bottom bunks and eating from a tremendous pile of snacks. Talked to this Chinese guy who's an engineer in Shanghai on the train for a bit. He was on his way to Lanzhou I think. Lights out at 10 (I think) probably got five hours of sleep, up at 5:30 a.m. to get off the train. I was immediately surprised by how much colder it was getting off the train, Xi'an being far north of Nanjing, in Shaanxi province (not to be confused with Shanxi province) in north central China.

Went to our hostel, which at 100 yuan a night was very nice. Stayed in three double rooms f of open courtyards. There were four computers with free Internet up front, a bar in the basement and a cafe in the back. Dropped our stuff off, had a "American breakfast," and then went on to see the city's bell and drum towers.



The cafe at the back of Shuyuan Youth Hostel in Xian. I wouldn't know how good I had it until I traveled on to Beijing.









The south gate of the Xian city wall. Our hostel was located about 100 yards to the west. The old city walls are completely intact, albeit with some restoration and rebuilding (although it seems everything in China has at one point or another been damaged and rebuilt or restored). The wall is 12 m high and 18 m thick at the base, and comes with a moat running along the outside. You could walk around the entire 14 km of wall and arrive back at the south gate. I did not.


Every city that has been a former dynastic capital of China has a bell and drum tower in order to inform people of the accurate time. The bell tower sounded at sunrise, and the drum tower sounded at sunset. These were built under the Ming (14th century) and rebuilt under the Qing dynasty (18th century). In all, Xi'an has been the capital of 11 dynasties, some back when the ancient city was called Chang'an.

The bell tower had an exhibit dedicated to Chinese shadow puppets from several different provinces which was kind of cool. Bell tower had a traditional music show involving a large set of bells and the drum tower had the same with drums.


In front of a replica bell at the bell tower. Pictured, left to right: Tom from NU, me, Kari from Lehigh, Mei Chun from University of Washington, and Kyle from OSU. Not pictured: Ben from Grinell taking the picture.








The drum tower










The large Muslim Quarter was adjacent to the drum tower, so we found a restaurant there for lunch. None of us could really decipher the menu, so we got a bunch of chuanr (meat on a stick, in this case lamb), some sort of circular flat bread, and a vinegary tasting cucumber dish. In addition, Ben and I got some excellent and incredibly spicy chicken wings.

Then went back to the hostel, where our hour long naps quickly turned into three hours. For dinner, we went to a massive jiaozi (dumpling) restaurant that had like 5 floors. The more floors you went up the more expensive the restaurant gets. We stayed on the bottom floor, which meant nobody spoke English. Service was pretty awful, as jiaozi only trickled to the table. We would point to things we wanted only vaguely knowing some ingredients in it with no way of knowing whether it actually made it to the table. We got desert later at KFC (kenduji).

Later that night, we just went down to the bar for live music. It was one girl covering English songs, but it was relaxed enough.

Other stuff
This is going to take a long time to update on, with all the pictures I took. I'll try to do one or more a day about my travels during golden week. This weekend, my parents will be visiting from Thursday through Monday, then going on to see the rest of the country. The following week I have midterm exams and my research project proposal is due. That Thursday we leave for the 10-day long "Chengdu Module" in Chengdu, Sichuan province. The module is organized by the program and we'll be attending classes and lectures in addition to sight seeing. The next three weeks will fly by.