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 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