Tom: Xi'an (June 08)

Xi'an (June 08) · Jun 11, 10:04 AM

Morning outside the gate doing shiko, etc.. An “American” breakfast that comes included with the Terra Cotta tour. ... we didn’t leave till almost 10:00, so I took the time to put on contacts (not the Chinese lenses I just bought, not yet). A bus loaded up seven of us from the Shuyuan hostel — three British boys, one girl, a French Canadian couple, another girl, and myself. On the way out of the city we stopped for about ten others from another hostel — I remember a German family and some Aussies. Our guide did her best to liven us up, but it’s a long ride and I think some of us were out late last night

The bus made it’s first stop at a Terra Cotta factory — part guided tour, parted guided shopping stop. We were out quickly and continued to the pits. Large hangers have been built over top the partially excavated pits. Museum exhibits have been built around the hangers, and tourists crowd around it all, snapping photos in the dim, indirect sunlight. It’s what I expected, pretty much — rows of reconstructed warriors, rows of broken fragments, and plain old dirt.

Lunch was not what I expected, on the other hand. I got nervous when the bus pulled into an empty lot, and scared (into a simple noodle bowl) at how the ordering went. One girl’s order was lost, and we think they eventually brought out a dish from the other table in the next room — a large, multi-pound platter of fried rice. The German family had a nice eggplant dish, but no white rice. The three of us with noodle bowls escaped safely, but Yanick expected his expensive steamed bread to be buns, stuffed with pork, vegetables … something. And another girl got a very very small bowl of white rice with some egg for (what we thought was) the same price as the five pound platter. And then I could get started with the inflated prices, but that’s just our room. The other half of our tour next door didn’t fare well, either.

After lunch: a museum, a small history museum featuring the fingerbone relic of some buddha or other, viewable for 100 RMB (none of us, surprise, paid). It was a great museum, but most of us are all “museumed-out” or don’t know our Ming from out Western Zhou dynasties.

Back in town I made (am I switching tenses here … I forget myself) a desperate attempt to find a place to burn a DVD, other than taking a trip to the “computer city” section of town south of the wall. I failed, but did find replacement razors, enough to last a month or two. And I picked up two interesting “burgers”. The chunks of pork fat mixed in with the chopped meat add flavor.

I ran into three French speakers at the hostel. The — Yanick and Melanie the Canadians and Jean the Frenchman — were getting into a taxi bound for the water and light show outside the big pagoda south of town. I hopped into, too. It was spectacular, the kind of spectacular I expect from Las Vegas, Burning Man, and Large Chinese City. Amazing public art. We had a ton of fun, and hung around for vegetable and kabob afterwards.

* * *

http://tom.spacing-guild.net/2006/06/13/enroute-to-kaifeng-june-09

Name		Remember
E-mail
http://
Message
	Textile Help