Day 18: Train Travel in China

We were leaving for Xi’an today and Ryan was confronted with his first problem, how to get his sword onto the train. We discovered you can’t mail swords through postal mail. Gump helped us get it boxed up and shipped over with the excess luggage, it cost about 80yuan. His cheap sword was suddenly not as cheap. I was feeling annoyingly sick so I was really glad it was a low key day.

We were taking an overnight train to Xi’an. Train is the most popular way to travel in China. Especially during the holidays when everyone is trying to go home all at the same time. There are four ways to ride the train. They had soft sleeper cars with bunks and mattress. They had hard sleepers which I assume is the bed without the mattress. They had chairs to sit in, and then they also sell standing tickets. Standing tickets means exactly what it sounds like, there aren’t enough chairs so people will stand during the entire trip. And China is not a small place, we were on a 14 hour train ride from Chengdu to Xi’an, I can’t even imagine how painful that would be to stand for 14 hours.

We got the soft sleeper cabins because we’re spoiled tourists and the expensive cars to them were probably only like $20 for us. Each cabin had two bunks, there was space in between the size of the door and no more. Ryan and I roomed with Anne and Ric. People socialized out in the train car hallway but I was still feeling sick so I just tried to rest for the trip. It was much more comfortable than a 14 hour plane ride, but that’s about it. 

Day 19: Welcome to Xi'an!

We arrived in Xian at 5:30am. We received an abrupt wake up call in the form of the door being violently thrown open and the lights being turned on. Our group sluggishly made our way out and over to the hotel. Turns out there’s no traffic at 6am on Sunday, even in China. We had the whole morning free which I think every one of us used to shower and nap.

Inside of our hotel was a giant 12 foot statue of Guan Yu. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Guan Yu was a famous general during the time of the first emperor. He is also a very popular character in the video game Dynasty Warriors, and book series Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Ryan’s nerd instincts kicked in instantly when he saw the statue and spent the rest of the day squeeing with delight that we had a giant Guan Yu statue in our hotel. Side note: When Ryan read what I had written there he didn't agree that a 12 foot tall warlord so badass they depict him eating goat heads for breakfast would approve being "squeed" over. He asked for a more manly way to describe the fact that he spent the entire day grinning and bouncing with delight. I couldn't think of any. =)

Giant Guan Yu Statue inside Xi'an Hotel

We met for lunch at noon and went to the small Wild Goose Pagoda. It was a nice peaceful temple area. We were able to wander around. 

Small Wild Goose Pagoda, Xi'an

The highlight of the day though was the dinner and show in the evening. We went to a dinner theater where we saw three whole rows of Wendy Wu tour groups. Xi'an is one of those cities that is included on pretty much every tour offered so there were people on one week, two week, all different kinds of tours. Dinner was a collection of dumplings. They were fantastic and they were all made into different shapes. If it was a port dumpling they made it into the shape of a pig and the fish dumpling was a fish and they even had chicken and a peacock dumpling. It was soooooo good.

Character dumplings for dinner

The show was a series of music and dances from the Tang dynasty. During that time they were apparently very much into big sleeves and sparkly hair ornaments. They had gorgeous costumes. It wasn’t as good as the other show we had seen but it was very fun.

Day 20: Terra Cotta Warriors

Today was the biggest day I had been looking forward to. This was one of the reasons I even wanted to go to China in the first place. Today we visited the Terra Cotta statues!

Terra Cotta Warriors

Background story: In 200BC the Qin emperor unified all of China. He commissioned the Great Wall, the Li River dam and the infamous Terra Cotta army. He had over 6,000 clay statues made of his soldiers. Every single one is life sized and unique. It was a grand achievement but the Qin emperor was a tyrant and soon after he was overthrown from power, farmers broke into his vault and smashed all of the statues. They were buried and forgotten.

Two thousand years later in 1971 there was a drought going on in that area. A couple farmers were digging around for a new well when they found a clay head. It freaked them out, they thought it was a god and buried it again, but news got out about the discovery. Some archeologists who knew of the legend of the terra cotta army went to investigate farmer’s field. They started digging and found thousands of fragmented statues.

The sign in the corner is the site of the original well

Before we went to the official museum we stopped at the factory where they made authentic replicas of the statues. You could buy small sets or individual statues ranging from about 6 inches to full sized. I found one identical to the one I had purchased in Guilin off a kiosk for 40 yuan, the authentic version cost 400. Not even kidding. There was also really pretty furniture to look at, but I was just anxious about seeing the real things.

There are three pits now at the official site. The first is largest and most impressive. There are just rows and rows of life sized statues. All pieced back together, many still fragmented in the pit. It’s just amazing when you look at them, every single one is different and modeled after someone who actually lived two thousand years ago.  It was crowded and made us glad we came during the off season. As you walk around the pits there are farmers trying to sell knock off replicas. The little set of 5 guys that cost over 100yuan at the official factory we were getting for 20 or 30yuan from the farmers at the pits.

Terra Cotta fragments before they are put together

They even had a small cinema that showed a 360degree movie of the history of the terra cotta warriors. It was made all the better that the film was obviously made in the 70s and hadn’t been updated since. The other really awesome thing was there was a book you could buy that explained everything about the terra cotta warriors and you could have it signed by one of the farmers who originally discovered the head! It was 150yuan and it was actually the most expensive souvenir item I bought, but it was totally awesome and worth it.

We spent the whole morning and part of the afternoon there. It was definitely one of the highlights of the whole trip for me. After dinner we went out on a night tour of Xi’an. We saw the big Wild Goose Pagoda all lit up and we watched this really awesome light water show. It was these massive fountains all lined up in a row and water would shoot up in time to music playing. There were signs all around saying don’t walk on the fountains but a couple songs in people started running through the water and once they started you couldn’t stop them. It was quite funny. We got to walk along the park and see statues of old Tang dynasty figure heads.

Xi’an was definitely the most beautiful city we visited. I would have liked to have stayed there longer and seen more things for sure. 

Statue of Emperor and officials from Tang Dynasty

Day 21 part 1: City Wall and Markets

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.

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. 

Markets in Xi'an