Xi'an

NOTE:

No pictures here, since the internet is shaky. Most of the related pictures are posted with the post on cultural differences.. We might update this when a better connection is available!

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Xian, a city that is difficult to pronounce with all front teeth intact, is where the Silk Road originated. The place is known for large Chinese-Muslim and pickpocketing communities. Despite the latter, our stay in Xian was even more amazing than in Beijing thanks to:

1) An amazing hostel ($23/night) with a sauna, free dumpling parties, free hotpot parties, lots of [bootlegged] movies, clean bathroom, and a ping-pong table. Did I mention sauna? Anyway, we stayed in there way too much;

2) Walmart Supercenter.. That's right. Takes on a whole new meaning in this country. A meaning full of beautifully stacked produce, air conditioning, and some assurance of quality -- yes, quality. Beijing had several Wumarts, but no Walmart;

3) Hua Shan Mountain. More on this one below; and

4) Free museums and sights.

The first thing we noticed getting off the overnight train is a wall. We were pretty accustomed to walls at this point, but Xian's wall is the largest and best-preserved city wall in China, boxing the old town and allowing traffic only through the handful of panoramic gates. Smack in the middle of the old town, at the intersection of the main vertical and horizontal arteries, stands a large bell tower, dedicated to the Eight Immortals of Taoism. The tower is decorated with scenes involving the Immortals. Each scene has a title for the slower Taoists, e.g. "Sung travels on the road," "Yung delivers a scroll with a message," and "Song stands outside, wearing a shirt." Pictures were taken.

The west side of the town is Muslim, which always means good food. The market scenes here came with a twist; in addition to the usual buckets of green and red veggies, the locals pull out sand-filled barrels in which the sand is mixed by a metal handle to shell pecans. Growing hungry from walking around the market and the mosque, we found a famous dumplings joint in the neighborhood. The hostess sent us upstairs, past scores of pictures of the owner with various Chinese celebrities (we remained unimpressed). Upstairs the scenery was unusual: one side of the room looked as if the place went out of business entirely, with chairs flipped upside down on tables and piles of trash on the floor, whereas the other side was occupied by regulars, eating dumplings out of round wooden steam-baskets. We took a seat in the 'open' section. This was a miscalculation on our part however, since as soon as the folks around us finished eating, the employees began flipping chairs upside down on tables all around us, sweeping the floor underneath our table, and dusting the windows nearby. For a short while we were the only customers on the upper floor, with every chair around us flipped over on a table, and every waiter dusting the windows with water. Munching on the soup-filled dumplings, we kept looking around to see whether the employees would put up a large 'Closed' sign and go home. Luckily, new patrons arrived, and the waiters set up a couple of tables for eating again. Apparently, the cleaning game was just something the employees did to keep busy -- set up chairs when people come and flip them over when they leave.

We made sure to visit all the biggies during our week in Xian. For most people the highlight is the Terra Cotta Warriors. The story is simple. The guy who unified all of China, its first legit emperor, was an arrogant prick. He decided to build himself an amazing tomb, the size of a small pyramid, with all of the fang shui elements considered (water in the south, mountains on the north, or something like that). He forces peasants and artisans to sculpt a whole army of unique soldiers (over 3,000 people) to be buried along. Then he orders everyone working on the tomb to be killed, so they could not reveal the location of the tomb. Everything goes as planned, and his tomb is forgotten without ever making it to the history books. Some years later peasants find the tomb and burn it out of anger. Some centuries later peasants find it again and make it into a huge tourist attraction. The end. It was alright.

The highlight for us was not the Warriors, but Hua Shan Mountain. Google the name, and the first few searches will tell you that the place is a death trap, which only a handful of tourists survive annually. Moreover, the admission and cable-car prices are astronomical. We could not help it though -- the pictures of the place on the internet were just breath-taking, and so we made the trip. And the mountain is one of the five Taoist mountains, with Taoist temples on the way to the top, red ribbons everywhere, and Taoist music from hidden loudspeakers along the way (??). We only met three other white people on the mountain. Most of the tourists were Chinese folk in business casual attire: suit and dress shoes for men, and high-heels for the ladies. The only food available on the way to the top is not really food at all: ramen noodles, cold noodles with chili, or apples. Prices along the path were proportioned to the altitude. Signage was minimal, mostly in Chinese, with only occasional Chinglish (e.g. "safety propaganda"). I can't do much justice to this place with words, except for saying that this is the most amazing mountain we've ever climbed. And the climb was safer than walking around the Grand Canyon. Loved it!