James & Charlotte's Travel Blog: Xian: Terracotta Fiction

Sunday

We had an early start to get to the station in order to catch our train to Xi'an. We gave ourselves plenty of time, knowing from our previous visit that Chinese train stations are pretty difficult to negotiate. It doesn't help that you've got bag scanners on the metro, ticket validation upon entering the train station, bag scanners again after that, ticket check to get into your designated waiting room, ticket check to get onto the platform and then you get them checked again on the train. I get the impression China doesn't trust its people all that much. Anyway, we somehow made it through into the busiest waiting room you'd ever seen, ever and then even managed to find a seat, as we still had 2 hours until departure. The time flew by as we entertained ourselves by having staring contests with the Chinese people who were staring at us. Before we knew it, the Chinese decided to queue with an hour still to go, so we decided to join them. I was really excited, just to see the train, let alone take a 5 and a half hour journey on it. It was one of the famous bullet trains, which has a elongated, aerodynamic nose. Unsurprisingly, like everywhere in China, it was packed, although first class was entirely taken up by a group of British pensioners who seemed to be on an organised tour, probably a bunch of trainspotters. I'd like to say we were treated to great views of sprawling modern Chinese cities and rural paddy fields clinging to the sides of mountains. All we got though, was a smoggy cloud that produced constant rain and shadows of endless identical tower blocks looming over the tracks. Along the way though, we did clock a pretty impressive 305km per hour, which they must be pretty proud of as they display it either end of the carriage on a small screen. The time flew by and before we knew it, we'd arrived and disembarked, making our way through the group of British trainspotters and on to the packed Xi'an subway. It's a fairly new subway and only has 2 lines and it seemed the entire population of Xi'an was riding it that day. We were stared at our entire way and then had to squeeze ourselves and our bags through the crowds to get off at our station. Fortunately, bearing in mind the horrendous weather, the hostel was right next to the subway stop and relatively easy to find. This is where we encountered our first reservation problem on the entire trip so far. Despite us booking a 4 bed mixed dorm and it saying that in their sheet showing our reservation, they informed us that they don't have those rooms in their hostel and that's not something they practice in China. "How come we've just come from a four bed mixed dorm in Beijing then?" We asked the 2 receptionists and then all of a sudden it changed to more of a local custom. We also pointed out to them that they had 8 bed mixed dorms, how is it any different. Eventually, they relented and we settled in to our 4 bed mixed dorm. We didn't really do much for the rest of the day, apart from have a quick look through the thick cloudy smog outside and eat some noodles in what looked like gravy in the hostel restaurant.

Monday

The next morning we had thought about getting up bright and early and going to the terracotta warriors but the weather was still grim and we couldn't be bothered, so we had a lie in instead. After breakfast, which was the hostels attempt at an English fry up (who fries mushrooms in vanilla in England?!), we decided to swap itineraries and leaves the army for the next day. Instead we took the metro out of the city centre and to a place called the Large Wild Goose Pagoda, which is a 7-storey Buddhist pagoda, built in the year 652. The building itself was quite impressive, particularly when view from infront of some fountains. The area was also a large park, which was really good and quite quiet to start with for such a big city. It contained various sculptures and statues depicting local customs and habits, like having their food very, very hot. We had to give in here, for only the 2nd time in almost 4 months and go for a western fast food place for lunch, as there was nowhere else to be found. Good old Burger King. Although the staff did struggle to understand that we wanted 2 meals and not just 1. After all the great food we've been eating, it was a tremendous disappointment and I think we'd have both preferred to go hungry and wait until we found something cheaper and more enjoyable. As we were wandering round it was Charlotte's turn to get propositioned by some Chinese people after a photograph. The only reason we could think of was maybe because of her blonde hair, they all have black in China. The morning had carried on being pretty miserable but by the time we'd had lunch the sun was coming out and the day was brightening up. We decided we'd seen enough and headed out to walk back to the centre of the city. On our way back there was a smaller wild goose pagoda but the large one was impressive enough for us and we gave it a miss. What did take our fancy though was a French bakery where we picked up a creamy style doughnut, which wasn't quite as sweet as we had been hoping. We scoffed it anyway. On a walk back in to town we passed under the wonderful looking city walls of Xi'an, which were first constructed in 1370 and I think (though I'm not sure) have been restored since. They completely surround the area of the central city and are 15 foot wide at the top. You are able to rent bicycles and cycle right round them but the weather was so bad while we were in Xi'an that the never got a chance. We walked through one of the impressive gates and reached the exact centre of the city, which is where the Bell Tower of Xi'an is located. Most Chinese cities have a Bell Tower and a Drum Tower. The Bell Tower signals the start of the day, while the Drum signals the end and nighttime. We took in both in Xi'an as they were both quite close to one another. A few snaps only though, we need to look after our pennies and didn't fancy paying the quite steep entrance fees. Located near the Drum Tower was what's known as the Muslim Quarter. It was getting late so the only part of this that we saw was the food street, which was very similar to Beijings Wangfujing Street, it just didn't contain spiders on sticks. There were walnuts as far as the eye could see though and plenty of kebabs and a peanut biscuit thing that is very popular in the area, we didn't fancy it though.

Our day was pretty much run by this time. The very kind people at our hostel allowed us to phone the bank at no cost to sort out fraudulent activity on my credit card. No, I hadn't been getting helicopter transfers in the Monaco area in September. It was sorted pretty much straight away, despite the phone ringing for half an hour before I got an answer. After that, we decided to head out for some noodles for dinner, they were slightly less spicy than the incident in Beijing and rather tasty, so we deemed that a success.

Tuesday

Today was our day for the Terracotta Warriors. It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm. We shunned the opportunities of doing a tour and opted for self motivation and self navigation. Even finding the train station was a little bit of a struggle, as it wasn't the same one we arrived at. After a bit of a hunt though we found it and despite the huge crowds and people demanding we take their "cheap, direct bus" we went for the one our research had told us we should take. It was full with Chinese people and only one other "Westerner" other than ourselves but we stuck with it. It went fine and, despite reviews saying we definitely would, we didn't get ripped off, just for the colour of our skin. It dropped us off a fair trot away from the main area, so we had to dodge around people demanding we eat at their restaurant at 10 o'clock in the morning and find the unsignposted ticket booths. We got there, eventually. It was the walk from the ticket offices to the actually excavation pits which took the longest. A good 10 minute walk before we finally arrived. We had read and heard reviews before we went that it wasn't great and was actually a bit of a letdown and rather disappointing, so we both didn't really get out hopes up. We knew we wouldn't be going up to the statues and touching them and mingling but we expected pretty good views. Our first impressions were, actually, this is better than we had anticipated. The views of them were great, the majority were well restored or in very good condition, what was there not to like about this. .Despite the crowds, we really enjoyed just walking around the outside of the pit and enjoying looking at this wonder. Not quite as WOW!! as the Great Wall but very impressive. We were slightly disappointed that we had let other people form our own opinion of such a renowned site but were also pleased that they turned out to be completely wrong. The entrance fee was quite steep but when you are in China, or atleast Xi'an, you can't not go to the Terracotta Warriors. We did speculate as we were walking round that maybe, just maybe, that some quick thinking china man had come up with this idea, seeing as they were excavated only a few decades ago in 1974. Perhaps they just decided to build a load of figurines made of terracotta warriors and claim they were ancient. But I'm sure they are genuine. There are 2 other pits nearby that also contained loads of warriors and horses but when we walked through these pits they were slightly disappointing, most of them damaged and collapsed. On our way round, we spied an acceptable pin badge, knowing we wouldn't be able to pick one up from Xi'an. We spent a good few hours browsing but there only so much terracotta you can take, so we decided to head home, catch up on the blog (even though we couldn't post it) and play some pool, it had been a long time since we'd had a chance to relax. After some more Chinese style pot noodle we played a few frames and had an easy evening, planning our days for Japan, in order to maximise our activities.

Wednesday

We had hoped to cycle atop the city wall but as I've already said, the weather was rubbish. We decided to walk round a part of it instead and found, just outside the wall, the circular park, which was a really good area, filled with outside gyms and greenery. You could almost ignore the thick pollution from here, apart from the grainy coating on your teeth. After our walk, we ate some food at the aforementioned Muslim quarter food street. Wewent for what was like a large naan bread and a local burger sort of thing in in a pitta, the queue for which was huge so it must have been something special. It wasn't, slightly bland, could probably have done with a touch of Heinz tomato ketchup. Finally, we needed a quick stop by a supermarket but headed a good half an hour in the wrong direction before realising that we were nowhere near where we wanted to be. We just popped by the one local on to our hostel to pick up supplies for our overnight train the next day. We ate out once more as the hostel restaurant left a lot to be desired, Charlotte opting for a hotpot in order to not get any spice whatsoever and this time it was a success.