Our next destination was Xi'an, one of the ancient capitals of China. This time we decided to try the night train - and it was actually a pretty cool experience. We shared cabin with a very interesting Chinese chap, an astronomer who'd lived in the US and Europe. We had quite interesting conversations about China and democracy, and Trump. Basically his message was - please stick to your democracies, even if they ain't perfect, they're the best we've got... (hmm, I think Churchill might've said that, actually...)
We arrived in Xi'an, and immediately got our first whiff of the sadly famous Chinese pollution. Can't quite imagine what it must be to live with that grey haze all year around... The Chinese do seem to be taking action to reduce pollution - one interesting thing that sort of stands out is the fact that all scooters and motor cycles in China appear to be electric... Good for the environment, well, except I suppose they use coal to generate the electricity mainly. Oh well...
Anyway, me and Isabelle settled into our rooms in yet another lovely youth hostel. And again, dirt cheap (one piece of advice - if you are in China, don't use the tourist hotels, the youth hostels are far more charming and great value for money, too...). Nick was actually staying at another hotel on the other side of the town centre. Me and Isabelle foolishly decided to go to his hotel on foot - looked so close on the map. 2 hours later, we arrived... (poor Nick had a bit of a wait...). But it was quite an adventure, that took us through the old Islamic quarter (Xi'an was actually one end of the silk route, so it used to be quite an cosmopolitan place - and Islam was introduced in China via the silk route).
I really loved the Islamic quarter - it's a rather strange mixture of your average Chinese street market and an Arabic Medina. A very fascinating place, full of exotic scents, food and characters. Once Nick joined us, we spent a bit of time walking around. We found a pretty cool little merchant's house that was open for visitors - we even participated in a play of shadow puppetry. A pretty cool experience.
Me and Nick also decided to check out the great mosque. It was quite an interesting place too - actually the place really resembled any old Chinese temple, there were very fews hints as to the fact that the place was a mosque. We did find a Moorish style portal with some arabic writing.
The next day, it was time to check out THE tourist attraction of Xi'an. You guessed it, we were off to see the Terracotta Army - something I've been looking forward to doing for years and years. We embarked on a guided tour, with a really excellent guide who spoke English with an impressive set of accents (Australian, Texan, Irish, to name a few!).
The Terracotta Army is a collection of lifesize terracotta statues, representing the army of Qin Shi Huang (who was actually the first emperor of a united China, and the founder of the Han Dynasty). The army was buried in a collection of pits - hence the army was only discovered in 1974 by a local farmer. Estimates put the number of soldiers at an astounding 8000 soldiers, 150 chariots (with 520 horses) and 150 cavalry horses. And EACH soldier has been individually crafted from a human model. Just an absolutely amazing feat... It's for sure one of those few places on the planet that almost literally takes the breath away...
After a lunch in the nearby touristy town (rather tasty...), we headed off to check another famous tomb - that of Emperor Jingdi's. The place is in a way similar to the Terracotta Warrior site, and at the same time completely different. The idea is the same - the tomb contains a number of tombs with buried collections of terractotta statues. But this guy was obviously more peaceful than his ancestor Qin Shi Huang (indeed that is the case - he was one of the first emperors to really embrace Confucianism) - as the statues are of farmers, farm animals and so forth, rather than soldiers (well, there were some soldiers too). It's all a lot more small-scale too, but the place was just as interesting (if not as impressive) as the Terracotta Warriors site in its own way.
Me and Nick had a walk around Xi'an by night, checking out the lit-up city walls (dating back to the Ming Era - like those in Nanjing) as well as the famous Bell and Clock Towers (seems that all major Chinese towns have - or used to have - a Bell Tower and a Clock Tower). Pretty impressive, all in all.
The plan for the night was to check out the Big Goose Pagoda Light show. The Big Goose pagoda is one of the oldest historic buildings standing in Xi'an, dating back to the 7th century. Unfortunately it was too late to visit it, so we had to contend with a very impressive light show. Those Chinese sure know how to put up a big show, eh ? This was unfortunately Nick's last night in China, so we 'twas time for us to say our goodbyes to our trusty travelling companion.
We started the next day, our last day in Xi'an, by checking out the famous city walls. The current walls date back the 14th century, but they have been reinforced several times since. They have also been beautifully restored. Unlike the City walls at Nanjing, the Xi'an ones are open to the public. As they are a full 14km long, the way to explore the city walls is to cycle around them, which is exactly what we did.
It was all great fun - the pollution-originated mist gave the whole experience a bit of a spooky atmosphere. The views from the city walls are pretty good too, gives you a great birds-eye view of the busy street markets, people doing Tai Chi and so forth. There were also great signposts for giving you the low-down on all monuments in view (and a lot of monuments that no longer exist as well). So, anyway, if you do come to Xi'an, dear reader, you must check out the Xi'an city walls, I really recommend it.
To wrap up the day, we decided to visit the Shaanxi History Museum. Like the Nanjing History museum, it's free to those holding ID, which is great. It's also a great museum, covering a big part of Chinese history, but ending before the start of the Ming dynasty. Which is actually kind of convenient, since that's about the point in history where Nanjing's history museum picks up!
And then, alas, it was time for us to leave Xi'an and head off to the south of China, to Guilin. Xi'an was definitely a fantastic place to visit, with its historic heritage (hard to think of many places on the planet that can match it, in fact), a pity about the pollution....
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