We had a relaxing morning before going to the Xi’an history
museum. There was the world’s largest guardian dragon, but other than that
there wasn’t a whole lot in way of content. Different galleries talked about
the different time eras of the area. I enjoyed the videos they had playing
throughout the different galleries. There were subtitles so we could follow
along. It was interesting but the Shanghai museum had a lot more stuff.
After lunch we got to walk on the city wall! There’s a
massive wall that surrounds the entire inner part of the city. It was built
during the Ming dynasty and has been very well preserved. It is a defining
characteristic of the city and there’s a really neat policy that you can’t
build anything higher than the wall within the borders. We walked for 20
minutes in one direction and we didn’t even get a quarter of the way around one
side. It was a great place to stroll, they had music playing on the side. A lot
of it was soft jazz which drove Ryan nuts and amused me greatly.
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| Xi'an City Wall |
We also visited a popular market street. I had a love/hate
relationship with the Chinese markets. On one hand, you could find anything you
ever wanted for ridiculously cheap. On the other, getting that cheap thing you
found involved much nagging and haggling. Even so, I got a collection of
sparkly hair pieces for my girls back home. The lady originally wanted to
charge me 90yuan for one. I ended up with five for 120. Ryan found a fantastic
giant Guan Yu statue, no joke this thing was like an 18 inch fat statue and it
looked amazing. I think he paid 180 for it and I know he could have gotten it for less but he actually really wanted it so he caved earlier than he should have. He also got a belt which was a great story. He wanted the belt
for 20yuan. He haggled and haggled with the lady but she wouldn’t go below 40
so we walked away. As they always do when you walk away she kept lowering the
price, eventually she yelled out 30. About 10 minutes later Ryan decides that
he really did want the belt and he was willing to pay the 30 for it. So we go
back, he picks up the belt and pulls 25yuan out of his wallet, turns out that
was all the cash he had left, but the girl he was talking to before was busy. A
different one walked up and with almost no words, he handed her the money and
she put the belt in a bag for him. We decided there was a new element to the
game. Have the money in hand and they’ll take it without all the back and
forth.
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| Markets in Xi'an |
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