skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Xi'an is a city that thrives on its history, and it is a beautiful place for tourism. On our second, and last, day here, we get up early and load the bus to the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, built to honor a monk's mother. It's BIG and, there we see monks, as there is an active community there (but it's not very nice to take pictures of them).
The rest of the day is dedicated to one of the most famous landmarks in China. Outside of Xi'an lies the excavation site of the Terra Cotta Warriors. People from everywhere travel to see them, so this is pretty huge. Before lunch, we go to a factory where artists recreate certified copies of terra cotta warriors. They mold the clay, and then hand-detail features onto them before firing in a kiln for at least 3 days. This is definitely the place to buy terra cotta warrior souvenirs. Every legitimate vendor in China recieves their models from here, and marks the prices up at least 40%.After our warrior shopping expedition, it's lunch time. Unfortunately, it includes commercials. After we've finished eating a semi-decent, but not the greatest, meal, painters who work at the building come out to show their work that they are trying to sell. Apparently eating lunch at this establishment means we must look at work we neither want nor can afford. It's like watching television online these days; before loading your show, the website loads a commercial. And like the comment cards at the dumpling place, I only see this happen in Xi'an.
After haggling ice cream bars down to only two times their Beijing price, we get back on the bus and go to the dig site. While we wait for our tour guide to buy the tickets, we left in a room where a man sits amongst a pile of books. We learn that he discovered the Terra Cotta Warriors, and now his job is to sit behind a table all day signing books and posing for pictures (but only for people who have bought a copy of his book). He doesn't say a word the entire time we are in there, even when people in our group buy the book, and I kind of feel sorry for him. Sitting in a room all day like a zoo animal seems kind of unfortunate for someone who made such a mind-boggling discovery. But that's how China rolls.
The Warriors themselves are amazing. There are so many of them that a lot of them are being reburied, as the excavation doesn't have the means to process so many at a time, and doesn't want them to be exposed to the elements. The picture below is of the main dig site, and there are two more. Most of the warriors are uncovered totally broken, and archeologists have to piece them back together. A few were found intact, and they have been sealed behind glass, as this is incredibly rare.
The tour guide gives us 2 hours to go through all the excavations and museums in the park. He is still calling us "boys and girls!", which continually irritates us, and by the time we're back at the bus, we're ready for dinner and to be away from compulsory action. We've just finished a month of intensive school, and we're really tired.
Dinner is probably the most American food I eat in China. The first dish the waitress brings us is a bowl of tater tots. Despite being in China and wondering how service could change from really really Chinese Beijing to tourist-accomodating Xi'an so quickly, the tater tots go fast...we haven't had non-Asian food in a very long time. At the end of the meal, the waitress asks us for our comments on her service, and then tries to sell us ceramic toothpick holders.
One thing I haven't had for a really long time that I really miss is coffee. The only kind they seemed to sell in Beijing was instant Nestle hot sugar water with a little bit of coffee in it somewhere. It got depressing to not be able to find brewed coffee anywhere. So, despite having to follow an irritating tour guide in a city of western prices and commercials after meals, this is one thing I can find in Xi'an that will make me happy. With 10 minutes left after dinner before boarding the bus again, my friend and I run through the underground tunnels in the middle of the city to find a coffee place. We get a little lost and come really close to having to take a taxi back to the hotel. But it's OK because we actually have our coffee, and in the morning, we will leave for Shanghai.
We're finally done with our classes! This morning, we leave for Xi'an. It's time to move out of our dorm room, but I am being slow. I should have moved faster, as it would have kept me from a 10-minute argument with 3 dorm maids about why my roommate's teacup is missing. I finally end up just paying for it, because they won't take "We don't know where it is, and it is obviously not in here," for an answer, even in Chinese.
GMU students load up a bus with luggage and drive to the airport. When we get there, we find out that the airline doesn't want us to check two bags each, because we are "overloading the plane". Somehow, it's OK to take these "extra" bags as carryon luggage. I have a 30 pound duffel bag that I definitely expected to check with me and am not happy, especially when I realize that it is full of liquids. I don't know what the rules are about liquids on Chinese domestic flights. Apparently they're fine. But the knife I packed is not, and it's confiscated. Then the security people laugh at my Harry Potter book (why???) and let me go.
The flight is short, but when we land, we're very tired. Fortunately, our new tour guide has arranged lunch at the airport. It is surprisingly good food. Afterward, our day get a little too fast-paced. We drive into Xi'an, and go to the city wall. It's a really nice-looking wall, with red lanterns all across it. There's a bike rental place, and Zhang Laoshi tells people they can ride down the wall if they want to. Unfortunately, he forgets we only have 15 minutes before we're supposed to be back at the bus. In the craziness, 2 people go AWOL and another falls on his face and breaks a front tooth in half. It's pretty crazy for our first hour in Xi'an. Adding to the craziness is the ridiculous price of ice cream, at 15元, more than a 300% increase from Beijing. We continutally discover that this city is much more based on tourism than anywhere else we go, and that they charge crazy American prices because they consistently get away with it.
Our tour guide also has a bad habit of addressing the group as "Boys and girls!!", as he waves his tour group flag and walks too fast down the street. This may have been OK on our arrival in the country, but now we've been here too long to tolerate feeling rushed and talked down to.
Our next stop is the belltower in the middle of the city. I must say, despite being here for about 2 hours and not having the best time, the center of Xi'an is quite nice. Inside the tower, a traditional Chinese concert is happening among many spectators. When it ends, vendors who are very good at playing ocarinas try to sell them to the tourists, knowing that most of them probably wouldn't be able to get a sound out of the instruments.
Our dinner is touristy, as our entire experience thus far has been. It actually takes place in a theater, and we watch an hour-long Tang dynasty music and dance performance before eating. It's interesting, but employs a narrarator, who, in barely decipherable English speaks before every scene, and doesn't really make any sense.
When it's over, we eat dumplings! They are the most interestingly prepared ones I've ever seen. The dumplings with fish are shaped like little fish...and there are walnuts, flowers, vegetables, pumpkins, chickens, pigs...it's craziness. Even though half of the meal isn't vegetarian, I'm full by the time they finish bringing us the 15 courses of dumplings they've prepared. After the meal, our waitress, who explained a lot of our meal in English before finding out that we speak Chinese, and trying to communicate that way, brings us a comment card for us to critique the meal and her service. This is something I will only see in Xi'an. Our table's card gets filled out in characters and smiley faces.
I'd forgotten that I don't like being on tour.
This story is funny, especially to people who have Chinese language knowledge.
It's the end of the term at BLCU, which means it's time for exams. I get there on time, and recieve a 10-page package of Chinese craziness to decipher. It is very intimidating, and quite honestly, I don't know whether a sentence is supposed to be written "yesterday I went to the park" or I yesterday went to the park", or any of the other word-order specific questions. Didn't I learn more than this? I feel like I know more than this test seems to think.
After writing characters for 2 hours, it's time for my speaking exam. This is the scary part, as right before I left for China I had the worst speaking exam ever and I did terribly. My teacher hands me a sheet of paper with an assignment that I have 10 minutes to prepare. It says, in Chinese, "My friend...". I have 10 minutes to prepare 10 sentences about my friend, which will not be hard at all. I fly through the exam, even the 3 other sections that I didn't have preparation time for, and I wonder how my abilities in writing and speaking managed to switch in less than a summer.
Almost every person from Mason decides to go to Inner Mongolia this weekend, except for me and Lara. Rather than sit around the dorms moping, we plan a spectacular weekend of fun things for our last weekend in Beijing. Our first stop is the Summer Palace, which is a ridiculously extravagant park built for imperial courts to play, er, live in. It's kind of the Chinese equivalent to Versailles. It's also almost as removed from Beijing as Versailles in from Paris, so we take a taxi, as there is no train service there.It's jampacked with people here, being a saturday in the summer. This is also the first time I understand Chinese curse words in others' conversations, which I will not repeat, but only say that I am very proud of myself.
It takes us about 5 hours to walk all the way around one of the lakes. We take excellent pictures. The highlight is the marble boat, which sits on the edge of the water, and doesn't float. It was the location for many imperial parties. All I can think about is how expensive it is for something that doesn't even work.
We are tired, but still want to go to Wangfujing to buy the Harry Potter book. We need to take a taxi, as we are already very removed from Beijing. Fortunately, there is a mob of taxis waiting outside the gates for travellers like us. We are hounded by 3 drivers wanting to take us as soon as we start looking around. Not wanting to be trapped behind other cars, we take the black volkswagon situated in front of the line. The nice car kind of causes us to panic (we don't want to be overcharged), but his meter is the same as everybody else's, so we leave with him.
This was a mistake.
45 minutes later, our cab fare is 192 元. We don't know this until we stand up to leave, as the gear shift was blocking our fee from view the entire time. We try really hard not to be too mad to enjoy our evening, but it's difficult, as the man has taken half of our shopping money. After we buy the Harry Potter book, which costs more than the cab ride, we don't really have much money left, and decide that it is not a good night for Wangfujing. We take a legitimate taxi back to Wudaokou for 35 元, and resurrect our evening with hot pot and the final Harry Potter book.
A big tourist attraction in Beijing is the Temple of Heaven, which was constructed for people to pray for a good harvest. 10 of us take Sketch's taxi van across town to see it on a very hot afternoon. When we line up for tickets, the lady at the counter refuses to give us a student discount, even though we all have student IDs from a Chinese university. She says it's because we're not Chinese citizens, which doesn't seem to make very much sense. Why wouldn't China want international students to have incentive to visit its tourist locations? We decide that the lady just doesn't like us, pay full price, and vow to get our money's worth.
We have the evening free, so our group of 10 students decides to go out and explore the city. We soon find that there is little to explore. Nothing is open, except grocery stores, and everyone is staring. An old man with missing teeth and dirty clothes follows us almost half a mile, gawking. When we stop to reconsider our walking path, he asks our teacher where we're from in Chinese, thinking none of us know what he's saying. Lame. Then he walks away, slowly, continuing to stare at us over his shoulder.After a half hour of walking around through dirty night markets with nowhere to go, we've pretty much had enough of Datong, so we make it an early night.
The next morning, we have another Chinese breakfast. It does not change my opinion of Chinese breakfast. Then, we drive very far to the Hanging Temple, which is a monastery cut into the side of a cliff. This is the main reason most of us have decided to take this trip to Datong, so we are excited to actually visit the site.
As cool as it is, walking is also frustrating because so many people stop in doorways and on stairs to take pictures. Plus, some people panic when they realize the only thing keeping them from falling to the ground are some wooden planks. But ultimately, it was worth visiting.
As we make our way back to the bus, the entire area around the cliff is full of Chinese tourists. Three of them grab me and make me be in a picture for them. I'm getting really tired of feeling like a zoo animal. It's been like this the entire weekend.We go to lunch. I don't drink much here (China has no minimum drinking age), but after this picture-napping morning, I could use a glass of beer with my lunch. I'm relieved when the server brings the bottle out and offers some to the guy next to me. I'm about to give her my glass when she skips me and walks 4 seats over to the other guy at the table. He declines the beer, and she walks back into the kitchen. Not only is Datong full of people who stare, but it is also home to people who don't give women beer.
Our last stop for the day is the Wooden Pagoda. It takes a long time to get there, but it's really cool. Since it's entirely wooden, it is inhabited with hundreds of birds. The building leans, so we only get to climb part of it.
We get back to the hotel with 2 hours of free time before dinner. Unfortunately, we are checked out of our rooms and really don't have anything to do but sit in the lobby and wait to leave. It's kind of aggavating. In order to take two sleeper trains and save money, the tour planners have put barely a day and a half of touring into two long days. We are getting more and more restless. After a dinner of hot pot (which I can't eat because there's only 2 compartments to cook in) we are even more tired of each other and grouchy. The tour guide, fearing mutiny, decides to drive us downtown to a square for a couple hours.
Suddenly, the trip gets interesting. Of course, this area is the social haven for everyone who lives in Datong, so there are lots of people staring at us, and even walking up, saying "Hi!" and running away, but we see lots of interesting things as well.
Some dog owners decide to make their dogs play together...except one is a large Chow, and the other is an apartment-sized teeny dog, a la Paris Hilton. This exchange ends with big dog marking his territory on the roller skates of a girl who little dog is hiding behind.
When we've walked around the circle once, we see some other people in our group in a giant game of playground ball with some residents. We go over to join them, and pretty soon there are about 20 people playing, and literally 30 more watching. If we hit the ball outside our circle, somebody throws it back immediately. It's pretty much the stereotypical conclusion to a diversity seminar. This time, we don't care that people are staring at us, because we're all playing together. And because, in an hour, we will finally leave Datong.
Yay.
