Xi'an

Xi'an



I went to Xi'an on the weekend. Xi'an is the place with the Terracotta Warriors. It is about a 2.5 hour flight east of Shanghai. It is not very crowded during this time of year because it is ridiculously hot.

Xi'an is a fun place to visit. It has been a capital of 11 Chinese dynasties over 4,000 years. So it has some old stuff. As in, the Romans hadn't even thought of Rome while these Chinese guys were building cities and ruling people. So there is a lot of good tourism. The biggest draw is the Terracotta army. Apparently, this emporer had this huge clay army buried with him when he died. He wanted these guys to help him rule another another empire in the afterlife. There are also remains of the craftsmen buried in the tomb as the emporer was afraid that they would tell people about the huge clay army. So, Xi'an tourism is based on a complete whackjob emporer's insane idea that a clay army buried in the ground along with a bunch of workers he killed are helping him rule a big kingdom in the sky. Maybe he was right, but either way, his clay army is pretty awesome.

Xi'an is polluted. I thought Shanghai had ridiculously bad air pollution. I have now changed my opinion. Shanghai has extremely bad air pollution; Xi'an has ridiculously bad air pollution. I think they lost the sun about 20 years ago. Children under the age of 20 have no idea what sunshine is. I was happy to breathe "fresh" air when I got back to Shanghai.

Xi'an has a big Muslim influence. They have a lot of mosques. It was the eastern terminus of the Silk Road which was the big trading route between the east and places like Turkey, Iran and Egypt. So there is a lot of spicy lamb on the streets. They also have some really spicy bread that they cook on a fire. I completely dropped the ball because I heard that they put the lamb inside the bread to make a Chinese sandwich. I failed to try this delicacy. I was travelling with an English girl who has lived China for almost 2 years and hates Chinese food. So my Xi'an dining was limited to the hotel buffet and street food. The street food was great and unlimited beer redeemed the buffet.

Xi'an has a really good university so there are a lot of smart people. We met an astronomer who charged a mere 10 RMB to take a look at the moon.

Chinese Astronomer

Xi'an has an old walled city. You can ride a bicycle all the way around the city. It was too hot for that, so we just took photos of the warriors on the wall.

City Wall

By far my favorite thing in Xi'an was playing street games at midnight. They had a knock down the jugs game, a game where you have to throw a baseball in a bucket and a brilliant game whereby you have to make a bamboo ring land on top of a piece of wood with the amount of the prize written on it. A guy with jacked up pants and a long stick like a craps dealer set all of these pieces of wood out on the sidewalk and charged 1 RMB for for bamboo rings. It was impossible. I think the guy with the jacked up pants must be rich. I did win some cards on the baseball game.

I don't think anything really insane happened. I may have seen insanity but I think I am getting used to it. For example, the English girl wanted a better picture of a temple, so I suggested that she stand in the middle of a 4 lane highway. She had to laugh because she missed the obvious solution to the problem. Anyway, Xi'an is a lot of fun. Even though I nearly overheated and passed out one day walking around in the brutal sun (is it bad when you stop sweating?) and I probably took a year off my life by sucking on the coal laden air, I really liked it there. It was definitely a duller roar of insanity compared to Shanghai.