Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Xi'an and Guilin pics are up
I added Xi'an and Guilin pics to my photo site a few days ago, but have been too lazy to mention it. But yeah, if you wanna check 'em out, they are here!
Monday, January 22, 2007
China, Part Two: Xi'an
China, Part Two: Xi’an
Okay, continuing the longest series in the world. I may just crash Blogger’s servers with these!
Day 4- On day 4 we got up at freaking 4:30 in the bloody morning to check out and head to the airport, UGH! Lynn was sweet and gave us boxes of Beijing dried fruit, aww! Plus good for old man Jeff, who is currently way into dried fruit for some reason. We flew into Xi’an Airport and met our new tour guide, Tracy. She was younger than us! She is a college student who is a guide as part-time job. We landed and discovered that Xi’an is like Chinese London, as it is the foggiest place in the ENTIRE WORLD! We had to take a different way to the hotel, as they closed down the freeway due to the fog.
Xi’an was one of the first capitals of China, and was for 13 different dynasties. It is one of the 10 largest cities in China, and was the start of the Silk Road. It is now a college town (it is only behind Beijing and Shanghai in the number of colleges in a single city in China). It had a very different feel compared to Beijing! It felt like a college town, in that it seemed small, and there were a lot of young people. It is weird that it had such a small feel, considering it has a population of 8 million people, but it somehow did. Wherever Tracy went, Chinese people would talk to her and be like, “So you’re speaking English, huh?” Haha. I liked the small-town feel, tho, it was more relaxing than Beijing (and later Shanghai). Plus they have good food, always a plus in my book!
We checked into our hotel, rested for like 30 minutes, then went to lunch, which was probably my favorite tour-provided meal of the whole trip! IT WAS SO GOOD! It was a really nice restaurant (which, it turns out, Tracy’s parents own) and it was SUCH good food. I wanted to have sex with the pepper steak. After lunch, we went to the Bell Tower, which is in the center of the city. I am pretty sure that English people need to stop claiming they invented the round-about, as China has them and they are older! Anyway, it is kind of inconvenient that the Bell Tower is right in the center of downtown, as it slows down the traffic and stuff. But yeah, it was a big bell tower! Haha. We then went to the City Wall, which used to protect the city. It was Christmas Eve, and the guards there were setting up for a HUGE Christmas party that was happening there that night.
We quickly learned a few things about Tracy. First of all, it was obvious that she was still studying English. While we didn’t have too many problems understanding her, hers was the worst of our four tour guides (but not bad by any means). Plus this provided the best entertainment, as there were some WEIRD WORDS THAT SHE USED! First of all, for some reason she doesn’t know the word “clothes” in English (um, shouldn’t she have learned that her first year?) and she calls them “wears!” HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. She also pronounces “hair” as “high-r,” which confused me a lot until she gestured towards her hair while saying it. Thankfully there were lots of places for people to “iron their HIGHR” back in the day, so I got to hear this often and laugh on the inside! Best and most confusing of all, however, is the word “anime,” which she used OFTEN. It is pronounced as animay, and I have NO IDEA what it is supposed to mean. She said it a LOT of times, and each time I would nod my head and be like, “oh, interesting,” while secretly thinking, “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!” I was hoping that Cindy would know, so I asked her at the end of the day, and she was hoping I knew! SAD! It is till eludes, us, tho we just realized two nights ago that it MAY have been animal. At first we thought it was enemy, but she used it in a lot of contexts which didn’t make sense. I still am not sure what it means, but because of this, Tracy’s nickname became Anime!
After the City Wall, we went to the Shanxi Museum, which is a famous museum, apparently. It was big, and I was really happy to have Tracy there, as we learned soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much more than we would have otherwise. It was actually really fascinating, as it started in the first dynasty, then finished in the fourth. It had a lot of the same items (weapons, art, etc.), so you could see how they developed as time passed. It was really interesting to see, and Tracy’s narration helped! It was also amusing to see her in “I am an important tour guide!” mode, as she would like shove her way in front of other people and not care if they were trying to read something or take a picture, as she wouldn’t move! Haha.
We then went back to the hotel for our OH so important afternoon nap, a staple of any Jeff trip. We were very excited to find that our hotel had BBC World, as it is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much better than the SHITTY SHITTY CNN International that every other hotel has! I swear CNN International is just made by bored ALTs or something, it is awful. We quickly learned, however, that BBC World is great, but only if you watch it for like 15 minutes, as they repeat the same things over and over. We watched it for like 3 hours at a time and saw the same segments like 10 times! Haha. Oh, well, at least this induced naps, which is always a good thing.
After our naps, we ventured out for Christmas Eve, which we learned is an excuse for a BIG party in China. Our mission was to find a Christmas cake, as that is the thing to eat on Christmas Eve in Asia. We soon found two and had to carry them around for like four hours, hehe. We are devoted to our Christmas cakes!
So, yeah, Christmas Eve was CRAZY CRAZY CRAZY in Xi’an. There were people EVERYWHERE. Christmas Eve appears to be a strange mix of Christmas, Mardi Gras, and New Year’s. People just wandered around aimlessly (as they did on New Years) and wore ridiculous things! People were selling light-up devil horns, strange glowing things, Santa hats, masks, and all kinds of ugly things that people were wearing! There were LOUD fireworks EVERYWHERE. There were lots of couples and young people because of the nearby colleges. There were also hot guys everywhere, HELLO! You could barely even move in some parts, as there were so many people. Thankfully they shut down the streets so that you could wander a little bit, but it was still sooooo crowded. It was fun, tho!
We ended up at another izakaya-type place for dinner, which was yummy, tho they totally ripped us off for being dumb gaijin. It didn’t matter, tho, as it was still cheap. We then wandered the streets and tried all kinds of yummy desserts from street vendors, mmm! We had a fried red thing with kurogoma (black sesame paste) inside, CUTE cupcake-like things on sticks that the lady decorated to whatever you wanted (pictures will be online later), and a mochi thing. Mmm! We then continued walking so that we could have MORE dessert when we got back to our hotel, haha.
When we got back to our hotel we were the biggest losers EVERRRRRRRRR and put on our pajamas, turned up Cindy’s iPod to full volume while playing Christmas music and ate our Christmas cakes! Yes, we are cool. It was fun, tho, and the cakes were only 350 yen each, instead of 3000 yen each like in Japan!
Day 5
Day 5 was Christmas, but didn’t feel like it AT ALL. It was a really good day, tho. Xi’an continued being the foggiest city in the world as we went to the Wild Goose Pagoda. The Pagoda was beautiful! I expected a typical Asian pagoda, but it almost looked Mexican, in that it was all one piece and brown-ish. Anyway, you will see pics of it to see what I mean. It was built in 652 and was made for the storage of the translations of Buddhist sutras that made their way from India on the Silk Road. We learned at the Pagoda that Tracy is the WORST photographer in the ENTIRE WORLD. Not only does she not get the famous things in the background, she barely gets YOU in the damn picture! It was amusing but irritating! Haha.
After the Pagoda, we had planned to go see the terracotta warriors. However, the fog totally messed with our plans! The freeway was closed again due to the fog, so we took back roads there. At first Cindy and I didn’t realize anything was wrong, as we were napping like crazy in the back of the car. However, it became clear that we had been sleeping for a while and we were not moving at all on a nasty old dirt road in the middle of nowhere. The taxi driver got out to see if we would ever move, and he came back and told Tracy, “You guys should walk and get a taxi and I will meet you later!” Tracy’s reaction was PRICELESS! She was like, “HUH?!” She is rich, so I don’t think she fancied the idea too much! However, we didn’t have a choice, as we weren’t going to be moving any time soon. So we got out on the dirt road and walked through ditches and whatnot. It was amusing and I finally felt like I was in China! Hahaha. Looking back, Tracy is really lucky that we aren’t the typical old rich people that go on tours, because I don’t think they would be very amused by walking through mud and stuff. A few times I had to tell myself that I was only walking in mud, but I suspect is may have been something ELSE, if you know what I mean! It was fun, tho, and made a good story! So we walked for 15-20 minutes, tho Tracy, who has lived in Xi’an all her life, got lost on the way and asked a FIVE YEAR OLD BOY for directions! Hmm, perhaps he should be our guide! He wasn’t very talkative (she wasn’t very pleased with that), but his 7 year-old sister was full of information. Haha. We eventually got in front of the traffic jam and took a cab to the winter palace instead.
The winter palace was beautiful! It is outside of Xi’an, and it is where the Emperor (and his concubines) would spend his winters during the Tang Dynasty. It had a lot of hot springs to bathe in and was really natural and relaxing. I kinda wanted to jump in! Unfortunately it was too foggy to see the mountain that was right behind it, but it was still impressive. We were told by Tracy that there was a Romeo and Juliet-type story between the Emperor and one of his concubines, but it was not nearly as romantic, as he had her killed in order to save himself! That is not Romeo and Juliet!
After that the driver met up with us and we went to lunch, which was the typical huge meal. As a bonus we got YUMMY sweet potato things. They have them in Japan, too. They are like long potato sticks that are sticky and hard, as they are covered in a ridiculous amount of sugar. They were SO good! However, they were the hardest things in the world, and were stuck in a huge pile. Jeff MAY have broken his chopsticks while trying to pull them apart! Whoops! The waitresses probably thought I really didn’t know how to use chopsticks ;)
After lunch we went to the terracotta warrior museum! It was amaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing! First of all, the place is HUGE! As Cindy said, it is like a college campus! They are currently building TONS of spaces for restaurants and shops (I have no idea why they would need as many shops as they are making, but whatever), and there is lots of space, trees, grass, etc. It totally looks like a college!
The terracotta warriors were built to protect the first Emperor of Qin in the afterlife, so they are buried with him. 8100 warriors have been found, and there are MANY left undiscovered (they are still digging for them now). They were built in 246 BC, and it took about 700,000 workers 38 years to complete them!!! They weren’t discovered until 1974, when a farmer was drilling a water well. It is amazing to think that THOUSANDS of them could be underground and that no one knew…and to think of what a difference a farmer made! Anyway, the warriors on display are split into three pits. The first pit is the largest one, with over 6,000 soldiers, chariots and horses that represented the Emperor’s main army. The other two pits are much smaller. The second pit contains cavalry and infantry, and the third pit has high ranking officers.
We went to the first pit first, and it was overwhelming! There are soooooooooooo many warriors, and they were just incredible to see. Along with the Great Wall, it was unbelievable to think what people can make when they put their mind to it (or when they are forced to, hehe). The warriors obviously didn’t survive in pristine condition by any means, so they have been put back together piece by piece. I don’t even want to think how much work that has been! There were some areas where the soldiers were left “as is,” and they were all just teeny pieces! I have no idea how they put them back together!
The warriors were originally painted, but almost all of the paint has been rubbed off by now. There were one or two warriors where you could see like a spot of paint, but that was it. However, I like the way they are now, as they look really natural. The museum was rare for me and Cindy, as we were actually visibly excited in front of our tour guides for once! We were like taking pictures like crazy, and were just excited about the warriors in general. They were awesome! They totally made me want to go to Egypt to continue my “seeing old things” tour of the world, hehe.
One FUNNY story we heard was that last fall a German guy dressed up as a terracotta soldier and JUMPED IN THE PIT and stood as one of them! When people told the guards that someone had jumped in the pit, the guard couldn’t find him! Dude, I would not do that in China, I don’t wanna end up in Commie prison! Apparently he wasn’t arrested, tho, strangely.
After the museum we went to the hotel to nap, then had a traditional dumpling dinner that was sooooooooooooooooo good! Xi’an is famous for their dumplings, as the Emperor LOVED them, so they invented them specially for him. There are 800 types of dumplings in Xi’an! Sadly we didn’t have all 800, but we did have about 15 kinds, including cabbage, azuki (red bean), mushroom, walnut, duck (in the shape of a duck!), pork, chicken, seafood, almond, etc. They were yummy!!!! After the dinner we saw a Tang Dynasty show at the restaurant (it was dinner theatre, but you don’t actually eat while you watch it, so it is like after-dinner theatre, I guess!). Unlike the awful Beijing Opera show, I actually enjoyed the Tang Dynasty show a lot. It was beautiful! The Tang Dynasty was a very peaceful time in Chinese history, and the arts really developed then, so the show was very artsy and pretty. It was also good for ADD people like me and Cindy, as it was fairly long, but comprised of lots of short songs and dances, so if you didn’t like one thing, it would soon be over! Once again Japanese people pissed me off at a show as these two WEIRD WEIRD WEIRD Japanese people (I think a mother and her son) like stole the two extra seats at our table?! Their tour guide “asked” if they could sit there, but there wasn’t much of a choice in our answer! They were freaking WEIRD and did not look very amused to be there. They totally seemed “off” and not like the people who would travel anywhere. I don’t know what was wrong with them! I may have purposely totally sat in the grumpy lady’s way, as I refused to be uncomfortable for some party crashers! Hehe. The people watching at the show was also good, so that is always fun!
After that we went to bed and had a boring Christmas night, as we were tired from the day and had to get up early-ish for the airport the next day!
Day 6
Day 6 was PURE FREAKING DRAMA! Because it had been so foggy the entire time we were in Xi’an, I was a bit worried about the plane being able to take off. We were assured it would be fine, but Tracy thought it would be a good idea to get to the airport early, just in case the freeway was closed again. We got there at like 9 or something like that for our 12:00 flight. Right when we got there we saw that TONS of flights were delayed and canceled from the fog! Um, NOT a good sign. We stood there for a while while Tracy figured out what was going on. We were lucky, as our flight was NOT canceled. We finally checked in and got our tickets, only to see that instead of the 12:00 departure time that SHOULD have been printed on the ticket, it was freaking 18:55!!!!! None of us saw this coming and it was not very cool! So we spent our entire morning and afternoon just sitting around the airport.
First we spent like four hours in a hotel restaurant, then we sat on a gross thing that wasn’t even meant for sitting. We finally went into the departure lobby (after Tracy ignoring us all day long, hahaha) and were getting ready to board our flight, when we went to our gate and our flight wasn’t even listed! We asked and they were like, “I don’t know!” Um! It turned out our flight was even MORE delayed, and it was rumored it might take off at 2 in the morning or so. NOT COOL! After being muy grumpy and hating the world, we FINALLY got to take off at about 8 PM. All in all, we had been at the airport for 11 damn hours at that point! We ran onto the airplane, giddy as school children, and I chose to ignore the fact that you couldn’t even see the lights on the wing due to the fog while we were flying. SCARY!
It was also annoying, as we missed a half a day that should have been spent in Guilin. However, I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised that they were actually delaying and canceling flights, rather than being Asian and like, “Oh, I am sure it’s fine, we’re Asian and everything is safe!” So that was good, in an annoying way.
Anyway, we FINALLY landed in Guilin at about 11 PM, where we met our tour guide Ping. However, we didn’t know her name was Ping until the next day (and we are still not sure!), as she NEVER introduced herself! Hahaha. She was the most ADD girl ever! But she was cool. On the ride to the hotel she never stopped talking! We learned all kinds of things about Guilin, AND for the first time all trip we KNEW THE ANSWERS TO CHINESE POP QUIZZES! Yay! Anyway, we got to the hotel and passed out after a day of frustration! To be continued!
Okay, continuing the longest series in the world. I may just crash Blogger’s servers with these!
Day 4- On day 4 we got up at freaking 4:30 in the bloody morning to check out and head to the airport, UGH! Lynn was sweet and gave us boxes of Beijing dried fruit, aww! Plus good for old man Jeff, who is currently way into dried fruit for some reason. We flew into Xi’an Airport and met our new tour guide, Tracy. She was younger than us! She is a college student who is a guide as part-time job. We landed and discovered that Xi’an is like Chinese London, as it is the foggiest place in the ENTIRE WORLD! We had to take a different way to the hotel, as they closed down the freeway due to the fog.
Xi’an was one of the first capitals of China, and was for 13 different dynasties. It is one of the 10 largest cities in China, and was the start of the Silk Road. It is now a college town (it is only behind Beijing and Shanghai in the number of colleges in a single city in China). It had a very different feel compared to Beijing! It felt like a college town, in that it seemed small, and there were a lot of young people. It is weird that it had such a small feel, considering it has a population of 8 million people, but it somehow did. Wherever Tracy went, Chinese people would talk to her and be like, “So you’re speaking English, huh?” Haha. I liked the small-town feel, tho, it was more relaxing than Beijing (and later Shanghai). Plus they have good food, always a plus in my book!
We checked into our hotel, rested for like 30 minutes, then went to lunch, which was probably my favorite tour-provided meal of the whole trip! IT WAS SO GOOD! It was a really nice restaurant (which, it turns out, Tracy’s parents own) and it was SUCH good food. I wanted to have sex with the pepper steak. After lunch, we went to the Bell Tower, which is in the center of the city. I am pretty sure that English people need to stop claiming they invented the round-about, as China has them and they are older! Anyway, it is kind of inconvenient that the Bell Tower is right in the center of downtown, as it slows down the traffic and stuff. But yeah, it was a big bell tower! Haha. We then went to the City Wall, which used to protect the city. It was Christmas Eve, and the guards there were setting up for a HUGE Christmas party that was happening there that night.
We quickly learned a few things about Tracy. First of all, it was obvious that she was still studying English. While we didn’t have too many problems understanding her, hers was the worst of our four tour guides (but not bad by any means). Plus this provided the best entertainment, as there were some WEIRD WORDS THAT SHE USED! First of all, for some reason she doesn’t know the word “clothes” in English (um, shouldn’t she have learned that her first year?) and she calls them “wears!” HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. She also pronounces “hair” as “high-r,” which confused me a lot until she gestured towards her hair while saying it. Thankfully there were lots of places for people to “iron their HIGHR” back in the day, so I got to hear this often and laugh on the inside! Best and most confusing of all, however, is the word “anime,” which she used OFTEN. It is pronounced as animay, and I have NO IDEA what it is supposed to mean. She said it a LOT of times, and each time I would nod my head and be like, “oh, interesting,” while secretly thinking, “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!” I was hoping that Cindy would know, so I asked her at the end of the day, and she was hoping I knew! SAD! It is till eludes, us, tho we just realized two nights ago that it MAY have been animal. At first we thought it was enemy, but she used it in a lot of contexts which didn’t make sense. I still am not sure what it means, but because of this, Tracy’s nickname became Anime!
After the City Wall, we went to the Shanxi Museum, which is a famous museum, apparently. It was big, and I was really happy to have Tracy there, as we learned soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much more than we would have otherwise. It was actually really fascinating, as it started in the first dynasty, then finished in the fourth. It had a lot of the same items (weapons, art, etc.), so you could see how they developed as time passed. It was really interesting to see, and Tracy’s narration helped! It was also amusing to see her in “I am an important tour guide!” mode, as she would like shove her way in front of other people and not care if they were trying to read something or take a picture, as she wouldn’t move! Haha.
We then went back to the hotel for our OH so important afternoon nap, a staple of any Jeff trip. We were very excited to find that our hotel had BBC World, as it is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much better than the SHITTY SHITTY CNN International that every other hotel has! I swear CNN International is just made by bored ALTs or something, it is awful. We quickly learned, however, that BBC World is great, but only if you watch it for like 15 minutes, as they repeat the same things over and over. We watched it for like 3 hours at a time and saw the same segments like 10 times! Haha. Oh, well, at least this induced naps, which is always a good thing.
After our naps, we ventured out for Christmas Eve, which we learned is an excuse for a BIG party in China. Our mission was to find a Christmas cake, as that is the thing to eat on Christmas Eve in Asia. We soon found two and had to carry them around for like four hours, hehe. We are devoted to our Christmas cakes!
So, yeah, Christmas Eve was CRAZY CRAZY CRAZY in Xi’an. There were people EVERYWHERE. Christmas Eve appears to be a strange mix of Christmas, Mardi Gras, and New Year’s. People just wandered around aimlessly (as they did on New Years) and wore ridiculous things! People were selling light-up devil horns, strange glowing things, Santa hats, masks, and all kinds of ugly things that people were wearing! There were LOUD fireworks EVERYWHERE. There were lots of couples and young people because of the nearby colleges. There were also hot guys everywhere, HELLO! You could barely even move in some parts, as there were so many people. Thankfully they shut down the streets so that you could wander a little bit, but it was still sooooo crowded. It was fun, tho!
We ended up at another izakaya-type place for dinner, which was yummy, tho they totally ripped us off for being dumb gaijin. It didn’t matter, tho, as it was still cheap. We then wandered the streets and tried all kinds of yummy desserts from street vendors, mmm! We had a fried red thing with kurogoma (black sesame paste) inside, CUTE cupcake-like things on sticks that the lady decorated to whatever you wanted (pictures will be online later), and a mochi thing. Mmm! We then continued walking so that we could have MORE dessert when we got back to our hotel, haha.
When we got back to our hotel we were the biggest losers EVERRRRRRRRR and put on our pajamas, turned up Cindy’s iPod to full volume while playing Christmas music and ate our Christmas cakes! Yes, we are cool. It was fun, tho, and the cakes were only 350 yen each, instead of 3000 yen each like in Japan!
Day 5
Day 5 was Christmas, but didn’t feel like it AT ALL. It was a really good day, tho. Xi’an continued being the foggiest city in the world as we went to the Wild Goose Pagoda. The Pagoda was beautiful! I expected a typical Asian pagoda, but it almost looked Mexican, in that it was all one piece and brown-ish. Anyway, you will see pics of it to see what I mean. It was built in 652 and was made for the storage of the translations of Buddhist sutras that made their way from India on the Silk Road. We learned at the Pagoda that Tracy is the WORST photographer in the ENTIRE WORLD. Not only does she not get the famous things in the background, she barely gets YOU in the damn picture! It was amusing but irritating! Haha.
After the Pagoda, we had planned to go see the terracotta warriors. However, the fog totally messed with our plans! The freeway was closed again due to the fog, so we took back roads there. At first Cindy and I didn’t realize anything was wrong, as we were napping like crazy in the back of the car. However, it became clear that we had been sleeping for a while and we were not moving at all on a nasty old dirt road in the middle of nowhere. The taxi driver got out to see if we would ever move, and he came back and told Tracy, “You guys should walk and get a taxi and I will meet you later!” Tracy’s reaction was PRICELESS! She was like, “HUH?!” She is rich, so I don’t think she fancied the idea too much! However, we didn’t have a choice, as we weren’t going to be moving any time soon. So we got out on the dirt road and walked through ditches and whatnot. It was amusing and I finally felt like I was in China! Hahaha. Looking back, Tracy is really lucky that we aren’t the typical old rich people that go on tours, because I don’t think they would be very amused by walking through mud and stuff. A few times I had to tell myself that I was only walking in mud, but I suspect is may have been something ELSE, if you know what I mean! It was fun, tho, and made a good story! So we walked for 15-20 minutes, tho Tracy, who has lived in Xi’an all her life, got lost on the way and asked a FIVE YEAR OLD BOY for directions! Hmm, perhaps he should be our guide! He wasn’t very talkative (she wasn’t very pleased with that), but his 7 year-old sister was full of information. Haha. We eventually got in front of the traffic jam and took a cab to the winter palace instead.
The winter palace was beautiful! It is outside of Xi’an, and it is where the Emperor (and his concubines) would spend his winters during the Tang Dynasty. It had a lot of hot springs to bathe in and was really natural and relaxing. I kinda wanted to jump in! Unfortunately it was too foggy to see the mountain that was right behind it, but it was still impressive. We were told by Tracy that there was a Romeo and Juliet-type story between the Emperor and one of his concubines, but it was not nearly as romantic, as he had her killed in order to save himself! That is not Romeo and Juliet!
After that the driver met up with us and we went to lunch, which was the typical huge meal. As a bonus we got YUMMY sweet potato things. They have them in Japan, too. They are like long potato sticks that are sticky and hard, as they are covered in a ridiculous amount of sugar. They were SO good! However, they were the hardest things in the world, and were stuck in a huge pile. Jeff MAY have broken his chopsticks while trying to pull them apart! Whoops! The waitresses probably thought I really didn’t know how to use chopsticks ;)
After lunch we went to the terracotta warrior museum! It was amaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing! First of all, the place is HUGE! As Cindy said, it is like a college campus! They are currently building TONS of spaces for restaurants and shops (I have no idea why they would need as many shops as they are making, but whatever), and there is lots of space, trees, grass, etc. It totally looks like a college!
The terracotta warriors were built to protect the first Emperor of Qin in the afterlife, so they are buried with him. 8100 warriors have been found, and there are MANY left undiscovered (they are still digging for them now). They were built in 246 BC, and it took about 700,000 workers 38 years to complete them!!! They weren’t discovered until 1974, when a farmer was drilling a water well. It is amazing to think that THOUSANDS of them could be underground and that no one knew…and to think of what a difference a farmer made! Anyway, the warriors on display are split into three pits. The first pit is the largest one, with over 6,000 soldiers, chariots and horses that represented the Emperor’s main army. The other two pits are much smaller. The second pit contains cavalry and infantry, and the third pit has high ranking officers.
We went to the first pit first, and it was overwhelming! There are soooooooooooo many warriors, and they were just incredible to see. Along with the Great Wall, it was unbelievable to think what people can make when they put their mind to it (or when they are forced to, hehe). The warriors obviously didn’t survive in pristine condition by any means, so they have been put back together piece by piece. I don’t even want to think how much work that has been! There were some areas where the soldiers were left “as is,” and they were all just teeny pieces! I have no idea how they put them back together!
The warriors were originally painted, but almost all of the paint has been rubbed off by now. There were one or two warriors where you could see like a spot of paint, but that was it. However, I like the way they are now, as they look really natural. The museum was rare for me and Cindy, as we were actually visibly excited in front of our tour guides for once! We were like taking pictures like crazy, and were just excited about the warriors in general. They were awesome! They totally made me want to go to Egypt to continue my “seeing old things” tour of the world, hehe.
One FUNNY story we heard was that last fall a German guy dressed up as a terracotta soldier and JUMPED IN THE PIT and stood as one of them! When people told the guards that someone had jumped in the pit, the guard couldn’t find him! Dude, I would not do that in China, I don’t wanna end up in Commie prison! Apparently he wasn’t arrested, tho, strangely.
After the museum we went to the hotel to nap, then had a traditional dumpling dinner that was sooooooooooooooooo good! Xi’an is famous for their dumplings, as the Emperor LOVED them, so they invented them specially for him. There are 800 types of dumplings in Xi’an! Sadly we didn’t have all 800, but we did have about 15 kinds, including cabbage, azuki (red bean), mushroom, walnut, duck (in the shape of a duck!), pork, chicken, seafood, almond, etc. They were yummy!!!! After the dinner we saw a Tang Dynasty show at the restaurant (it was dinner theatre, but you don’t actually eat while you watch it, so it is like after-dinner theatre, I guess!). Unlike the awful Beijing Opera show, I actually enjoyed the Tang Dynasty show a lot. It was beautiful! The Tang Dynasty was a very peaceful time in Chinese history, and the arts really developed then, so the show was very artsy and pretty. It was also good for ADD people like me and Cindy, as it was fairly long, but comprised of lots of short songs and dances, so if you didn’t like one thing, it would soon be over! Once again Japanese people pissed me off at a show as these two WEIRD WEIRD WEIRD Japanese people (I think a mother and her son) like stole the two extra seats at our table?! Their tour guide “asked” if they could sit there, but there wasn’t much of a choice in our answer! They were freaking WEIRD and did not look very amused to be there. They totally seemed “off” and not like the people who would travel anywhere. I don’t know what was wrong with them! I may have purposely totally sat in the grumpy lady’s way, as I refused to be uncomfortable for some party crashers! Hehe. The people watching at the show was also good, so that is always fun!
After that we went to bed and had a boring Christmas night, as we were tired from the day and had to get up early-ish for the airport the next day!
Day 6
Day 6 was PURE FREAKING DRAMA! Because it had been so foggy the entire time we were in Xi’an, I was a bit worried about the plane being able to take off. We were assured it would be fine, but Tracy thought it would be a good idea to get to the airport early, just in case the freeway was closed again. We got there at like 9 or something like that for our 12:00 flight. Right when we got there we saw that TONS of flights were delayed and canceled from the fog! Um, NOT a good sign. We stood there for a while while Tracy figured out what was going on. We were lucky, as our flight was NOT canceled. We finally checked in and got our tickets, only to see that instead of the 12:00 departure time that SHOULD have been printed on the ticket, it was freaking 18:55!!!!! None of us saw this coming and it was not very cool! So we spent our entire morning and afternoon just sitting around the airport.
First we spent like four hours in a hotel restaurant, then we sat on a gross thing that wasn’t even meant for sitting. We finally went into the departure lobby (after Tracy ignoring us all day long, hahaha) and were getting ready to board our flight, when we went to our gate and our flight wasn’t even listed! We asked and they were like, “I don’t know!” Um! It turned out our flight was even MORE delayed, and it was rumored it might take off at 2 in the morning or so. NOT COOL! After being muy grumpy and hating the world, we FINALLY got to take off at about 8 PM. All in all, we had been at the airport for 11 damn hours at that point! We ran onto the airplane, giddy as school children, and I chose to ignore the fact that you couldn’t even see the lights on the wing due to the fog while we were flying. SCARY!
It was also annoying, as we missed a half a day that should have been spent in Guilin. However, I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised that they were actually delaying and canceling flights, rather than being Asian and like, “Oh, I am sure it’s fine, we’re Asian and everything is safe!” So that was good, in an annoying way.
Anyway, we FINALLY landed in Guilin at about 11 PM, where we met our tour guide Ping. However, we didn’t know her name was Ping until the next day (and we are still not sure!), as she NEVER introduced herself! Hahaha. She was the most ADD girl ever! But she was cool. On the ride to the hotel she never stopped talking! We learned all kinds of things about Guilin, AND for the first time all trip we KNEW THE ANSWERS TO CHINESE POP QUIZZES! Yay! Anyway, we got to the hotel and passed out after a day of frustration! To be continued!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
