Sunday, September 23 (Mel)

Started the day with the worst breakfast in China.  The restaurant prepares the food, but puts it on a plain plate, as opposed to putting in a pan over a bunsen burner.  So the food gets cold and tastes yucky.  It was a buffet; 20 yuan ($2.25) for all the cold food you can eat.

We went to the site of the terra cotta warriors.  There were three pits -- #1 had the fully dugout warriors, #2 was partially dug out, and #3 were the generals.  I had read somewhere that there were thousands of them made to represent an army.  The emperor knew he was going to be attacked and didn’t have enough men, so he had the army craft the warriors out of lay so the invaders would be intimidated by this “huge” army and surrender.  Ken read a guidebook that said the emperor built a replica of his army and his servants to guard his tomb into the afterlife, kinda like the Egyptians pharaohs.  (Only the emperor in China didn’t have the servants and army killed upon his impending death, which the pharaohs did.)  I think my explanation is more poetic…

       
                        First pit of terra cotta warriors (closeup)                                                                                        Expanded view of warriors

The warriors had the same type of officers that an army would - generals, footmen, archery (both kneeling and standing), swordsmen.  The first pit had rows of them lined up.  Each had a uniform according to rank, each warrior had a different face.  When you consider that they were made of clay dirt and buried in the same clay dirt for a thousand years, then you have no choice but to be amazed at the painstaking process the crew must endure in order to unearth these warriors.  After a farmer discovered these warriors (while digging a well) in 1976, he became famous.  They built a structure around the sites, and had to take great pains to make sure that the construction would not harm the site.  The site would be absolutely awe-inspiring if it weren’t for the fact that there were hundreds of tourists at each site.  But I’m getting really good at shoving.

Closeup of archer

Ken made up a song about the terra cotta warriors, but the song will be included in his segment.

After we got back to the hotel, we gathered up our laundry, went in search of a laundry place, were unsuccessful, but found an internet place instead.  It advertised DSL.  All of our attempts to access Yahoo or Hotmail directly were blocked, but I know ways around it!  The connection was slow and frustrating.  I typed one message and decided to check the Seattle Times to see the weather in Seattle.  It was blocked!  So I linked through the University of Washington website.  Apparently universities aren’t a threat.

Now Ken is walking around the 20-ft. high wall that surrounds Xi’an.  (I was still doing the internet and didn’t join him.)  It’s been damp, cold, and drizzling rain in every city that we’ve been in since Shanghai. I’ve decided to sit in the tearoom near our hotel room and sip some hot expensive tea while writing in this journal.  It’s peaceful and quiet, and the tea will warm me.

We led the group to the Muslim restaurant.  It was a huge hit.  I stopped by the stamp maker shop with Ted and Ivy, but it was closed!  It told Ted and Ivy how upset I was that the shop was closed, and how I wanted to get four more signature stamps made.  Just then the door rolled up and the owner peeked her head out and said, “I can open for you.”  I was so happy!  (Most of the stores closed early because of the pouring rain.)

Monday, September 24 (Mel)

We woke up late this morning, and the sun was out.  Yea!!  After a frustrating morning of nothing working right, we finally got to the big pagoda south of town.  It’s seven stories and was originally built a thousand years ago.  You can see all of Xi’an from the pagoda.  Since it was partially sunny, we could see a lot farther than if we had gone yesterday.  We visited the museum which had Buddha’s life and travels carved in wood and played out on three walls of the museum.  There was nothing remarkable about the museum and pagoda, but at least it was something to do.

Ken in front of Buddha and pagoda

We went back to the Muslim section again.  (We are constantly drawn there…)  This time we saw the mosque.  Talk about brain-fry.

For the mosque there was Chinese architecture on the outside, but Muslim decoration on the inside.  Sometimes things were written in Chinese, Arabic, or Persian on the stone tablets.  We got there in time for the last Call to Prayer for the day.  The prayer was in Arabic, but you could tell they were struggling with the language.  In an adjacent building, women were in a classroom learning Arabic.

Men leaving Mosque after last Call-to-Prayer

The one thing that threw Ken and I for a loop was that during prayer, they all faced west - not east.  Does this mean that Muslims must choose the closest direction to Mecca?  And for China that would be west and not east?  Or does it mean that for over a thousand years they’ve been facing the wrong direction?

Mel at gardens outside of Mosque

After the mosque we went to McDonald’s for lunch.  I’m really surprised that I was able to eat a cheeseburger, since we walked through the meat market street on the way to McD’s.  We saw pieces of cows and pigs that aren’t sold at the stores in the U.S.  We saw table after table of huge cow livers, plus tables of pig guts.  Surprisingly it didn’t gross me out.

After lunch we went back to the hotel.  I ordered pizzas from the hotel café, we packed up everything, then headed to the train station.  We are now on our last train for the trip, thank you Lord.  We take the train to Beijing.  It’s a hard sleeper car, which means six beds to a cabin, no doors, and squatter toilets. Grant couldn’t get the tickets seated together, so we are scattered in a cabin with three other Chinese people.  It was such a madhouse getting on the train that my backpack snapped off the frame and I lost a buckle.  It’s a good thing that this is the last train of the trip, or I’d be really ticked.

Train station at Xi'an

I started talking with one of the Chinese guys in our cabin.  His name is Zuo, and he is at a university near Beijing in the computer studies department (i.e., how computers/internet is used by various engineering practices and cultures).  He is a graduate student, in his third year, and also teaches.  He was at a university competition (360 universities represented) and won two competitions.  He is the only one in his family to go to college.  He had two brothers, and was born before the one-child rule went into effect.

We couldn’t play mahjong, so we visited with people from our group.  Lights out at 10pm.

Xi'an (Ken)

The first night in Xi’an, the group went in search of food in the Muslim quarter, but Grant had been given bad directions, so we didn’t find it at first.  The group broke up and we all went off in our own directions.  Mel and I found the proper entrance to the Muslim quarter, and after wandering up and down the street, found a place with an English menu.  All up and down the street, we had seen skewers of meat and veggies, but didn’t find it on the menu.  So by pointing I managed to order some grilled beef skewers.  I asked for 15 but they brought out 50!  But each one only had a morsel on it, and they were so tasty that Mel and I ended up eating them all, plus rice and a veggie/mushroom dish.  We took the group back the next night, and ordered the same things.

They next day in Xi’an, we went out to see the terra cotta warriors.  It was a rainy misty day, but the pits are enclosed in big buildings the size of aircraft hangars.

The warriors, several thousand of them, were intended to “protect” the tomb of Emperor Qin, the first emperor to unite all of China.  Apparently the warriors were discovered in the 1970’s by a farmer named Yung, who was digging in the earth deeper than usual to find water in a particularly dry year.  The illustrious Mr. Yung was apparently in the souvenir shop the day we were there, signing copies of the book that describes the site.

So, on the way back to Xi’an on the bus, I was inspired to write the following song (sung to the tune of “Beverly Hillbillies”):

Let me tell ya a story 'bout a man named Yung
Spent his whole life pulling weeds and spreading dung.
Then one day he was digging up some food
Up from the ground came a Terracotta dude.

…Warrior, that is…tourist trap…souvenirs

Next thing ya know old Yung's a millionaire,
Folks said "Yung ya oughta move away from there.
Southern California is the place you oughta be."
But he stayed in Xi'an and he signed a book for me.

Now that's my story and it's just about done,
Terracotta warriors were sure a lotta fun.
The last remaining remnants of the Qing Dynasty,
If you ever go to China it's a sight you oughta see.

We went back to Xi’an and I went for a long walk on the city wall while Mel took a nap.  I was really liking Xi’an until the next day, when we got a late start, couldn’t find breakfast, stopped to get coffee and they couldn’t figure out how to make it “to go”, and then thought we had paid for part of an entrance fee we didn’t need (but later found out we had to pay it after all) for the Wild Goose Pagoda.  Overall, I think I was pretty patient with the oddities and inefficiencies of China, but this was one of the two or three days where I really let it get to me.  Thankfully, Mel and I didn’t kill each other, and things improved after the pagoda!  We went to the mosque, which felt much more Chinese than Muslim, although the two weren’t mutually exclusive.

Tai chi at early morning near Xi'an wall

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Next installment: 

Tianamen Square,
Forbidden City,
roast duck recipes,
problem at Mao's tomb...

mkadenko/01.01.02