Day 7 - May 16, 2009
Today we would leave Beijing to go to Xi’an. We packed up and headed to the Beijing airport once again to take a China Eastern flight to Xian. We ate breakfast at a Japanese restaurant in the airport basement. I personally ordered the grilled eel and it was absolutely delicious. When we finished we went to the gate to enter the airplane and sat back and enjoyed the Chinese version of Cellular (called Connected).
After a simple two hour flight, we arrived in Xi’an, one of the oldest cities in China. Xi’an has more than 3100 years of history and was the ancient capital of the Tang Dynasty. There was a Sheraton Xi’an booth at the airport and a lady from the hotel took us to a taxi which would take us to our Sheraton Xi’an. We checked in quickly and felt the downgrade from Westin to Sheraton, but the lobby still looked very nice, decorated with statues of Terracotta warriors and the rooms were decent.
Our first destination was the Drum and Bell Towers. The Drum and Bell Towers were symbols of Xi’an and the Bells were rung at dawn, while the Drums were beat at sunset. We entered the Drum Tower and toured around and saw various types of drums and in the end a pretty good but short drum show that was performed by nervous looking young people. We soon exited and went over to the Bell Tower; there was not much to see so we again watched another simple dance and music show in interesting Tang Dynasty costume.
We were hungry by now and wished to eat the famous dumplings that Mom suggested. We went to the nearby fa
mous Defachang Dumpling Restaurant and ordered dumplings and a few snack dishes. However, I did not find the food special. Luckily we followed up with delicious ice cream from Häagen-Dazs, right next door. However, I was allowed only one scoop of ice cream.After refueling, we walked to the close by Muslim Street where the people from the Muslim community of Xi’an go for street food and shopping. There were a lot of ladies wearing headscarves just like the Muslim women in Malaysia or Egypt. The Muslim men were wearing small head caps. The street was very crowded and lively with all kinds of souvenirs and exotic looking food stalls. We tried a few meats on a stick and they were tasty but
too spicy for me.We eventually left the main crowd and followed the signs to the Great Mosque. The Great Mosque is an extremely old Mosque built more than a thousand years ago and is still in use by local Muslim people. The architecture of the mosque is completely Chinese and does not follow typical Arab culture. There are no minarets and the large hall for praying has five clocks showing the daily praying time. We adored the peace of the gardens and the beautiful designs of this unique mosque.
However, we soon grew tired so we headed to the main street, hailed a taxi and prepared for our first sleep in this ancient city.
Day 8 - May 17, 2009
Today was our only full day in Xi’an and dedicated to see the most famous attraction in Xi’an, the Terracotta Army. The Terracotta Army is a large group of terracotta soldiers and horse statues dating from 210 BC. They were made by the First Qin Emperor to help him rule another empire in the afterlife. The location of the army was supposed to be completely secret and the emperor killed the craftsmen to protect its secrecy.
We began our day eating at an Italian restaurant across from our hotel and it was surprisingly good after a full week of ea
ting mainly Chinese food. Dad and Mom ate fried rice while Alex ate pizza, and I ate a delicious Fettuccini Alfredo.We then went back to the hotel and tried to hail a taxi to the train station. The hotel told us to use a private driver to the TCW for Y400. However, Mom was confident that Bus 306 at the train station is the best way to go. So we refused the rip-off private car service and asked for a metered taxi. Once we got to the train station, we asked a security person for Bus 306 to the TCW and got on one which was ready to leave. The bus lady came around later and sold us tickets for Y7 each. The bus ride was quick and painless and in about one hour we reached our destination.
We bought our tickets and took a trolley for a short ride to the TCW museum and exhibits in the site. We visited Pit 1 where there were rows and rows of amazingly unique and ancient warriors that impressed us on how ambitious and paranoid the Emperor was. Pits 2 and 3 were too dark, so Mom took pictures of the “pictures” of the warriors on display and tried to make them look like she took them herself. We spent about 2 hours at the site, rested for a while and then walked back to the parking lot to find Bus 306 again. However, we walked by a busy market with many terracotta themed souvenirs and the merchants were very loud and aggressive to attract tourists to their stalls. We bought many sets of small TCW for Y10 each. I gave these little TCW statues to my friends when we got back and they were a hit. We then easily found Bus 306 and took our ride back to the station.
After that we grabbed a taxi and went to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda which is an iconic Buddhist temple of Xi’an. We got to the square in front of the temple just in time to catch a pretty fun water fountain show. We did not enter the pagoda and instead we ate dinner at a fancy looking restaurant across from the fountains and were greeted with many extremely nice women. We ordere
d from a giant glossy menu with mouth watering pictures of Chinese food and received our food quickly. Everything was delicious and the dessert of egg tarts was absolutely fantastic. The service was also excellent and very quick, for example, when I dropped one chopstick, three girls charged to get me a new pair.We were stuffed by the end and took a taxi back to the Sheraton to digest our amazing meal.
Next - Shanghai
