Thursday, August 02, 2007

Xi'an and the Terracota Army










After our super comfortable deluxe train ride we arrived in Xi'an - which I had also visited in 1999.
It is amazing what 7 years can do to a city in booming China!! 7 years ago Xi'an had nothing really to offer in terms of comfort - it was just a rural village that became famous because of the 1964 findings of the Terracota Army from the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty by a farmer that was digging an irrigation well.
The first time there in 1999 driving was an adventure as they werent very mindful of traffic signs, now everything is organised and quite westernised as well. You have shopping malls everywhere, including again all the major food brands.

The first day, after taking car of all the bueaucracies and figuring out our next move after Xi'an we visited the Bell and Drum Tower which are in the center of town and are now surrounded by huge shopping centres. Then we went to visit the Temple of the 8 Immortals (founders of Taoism). We followed this with a visit to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. Again, 7 years ago there was nothing around this beautiful pagoda, now there is a park area with a huge fountain lake in the middle and the pagoda is now surrounded by a "cultural emporium" (most of it still in construction). It looks quite nice to be honest but it is all to induce you to shop while you visit cultural heritage...we had fun hanging about the fountain lake as it was crowded with Chinese people trying to cool off from the heat. Jo of course used the opportunity to take out his tripod and take as many pictures as possible which then gave me the opportunity to take pictures of all the chinese that hang behind Jo to see what he is doing ;)

The hostel we stayed in was quite nice and filled with backpackers - which was actually quite nice since we have been surrounded by Chinese tour groups for the last couple of days! This place also had free internet and really nice breakfasts :)

The next day we booked an english-speaking tour (we're not falling for it twice! hehe) with our hostel to visit the Banpo Neolithtic Village ruins, the Terracota soldiers factory and the Terracota Army resting place. I remembered it quite well from the last time and what I remember the most was that there werent that many tourists visiting the palce at that time - this time around it was crowded it Chinese tourists and this time they actually allowed us to take photos which was time was completely forbidden (try telling a China man that he cant take pictures - you'll probably come out of it with a black eye hehehe) Jo wasnt too impressed - mainly because it was so crowded and they didnt let him use his tripod hehee...Oh yeah, this was also the first time we saw the sky (it was blue and sunny) after 8 days of being in China!!

We met 2 french girls on the tour and afterwards went out for dinner with them to a place recommended to them by friends that had lived in Xi'an - it was a huge wooden restaurant with animal fur rugs on the walls but they had really good dumplings! :)

After that we hightailed it to the hotel because we still needed to get out bags and head to the train station for the next leg of our trip - the road less travelled - whcih consists of going to the northwest above Tibet and down to Sichuan Province.

An aside about Xi'an - even though it had more tourists (well maybe it wa because it was smaller so it was easier to see them) the people there seemed to be more curious about us and more surprised when we spoke mandarim with them. I really enjoyed Xi'an - it has the conveniences of a city but still small enough to be peaceful.

Next stop Xining via Lanzhou...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nihau from Brussels!
bom , deve se uma viagem e pêras, com tanta mudança. Imagino a diferença em relação á viagem anterior.
agora que falas nos sítios até os revejo na minha memória , o que é engraçado por já foi há mt tempo.
Estive hoje em vossa casa para limpar o frigo, e vou lá passar de novo para pôr qq coisa para os primos.
a Ginja foi ao vet levar as vacinas anuais: está boa , apesar das cataratas e da falta de ouvido.
Beijos muitos para os dois.

Anonymous said...

Bonjour !
j'espère que vous êtes bien rentrés à bruxelles. êtes vous finalement passé à paris le 26 aout ? j'ai guetté votre appel pour vous voir le temps d'une bière....
j'espère avoir de vos nouvelles bientot.
bon courage pour la reprise après un si beau voyage !
je vous embrasse, gui.