Some fun facts to start this post - why do I type Xi'an rather than Xian? This is not really a pronunciation guide, just part of Pinyin (the standard romanization system for Mandarin Chinese in the mainland). Xian would be pronounced as one syllable, so the apostrophe is required to indicate two separate characters. "Xi" means west, and "an" means peace. It is in the Shaanxi province, which is not correct pinyin. The correct pinyin is Shanxi, but there is another province called Shanxi (the tones are different), so this one gets an extra a.
Getting to Xi'an in itself was an interesting experience. We took a taxi from the hotel after forcing ourselves up after about an hour of sleep. There was one already waiting for us, and Jing found out we were his first fare of the day after sleeping only a bit more than we did. Beijing taxi drivers are on duty for 24 hours at a time, and when in the car, time sleeping is time that could be used to make money. The traffic was normal Beijing, even before 6, but the haphazard lane changes freaked Jing out a bit (who hadn't been to China for almost 3 years). Once we got to the airport the driver was tired enough to have trouble working out our change.
The airport was just as confidence-inspiring. We had to run around for a bit to find which counter to check in at, which in hindsight should have been obvious from the throng of people swarming in front of it. Once we got there, we made the mistake of asking for our bags to be marked as fragile. We were told to take our bags away and put them through the oversize luggage section, so they could be "screened for dangerous goods", which I guess is somehow not the normal way bags are handled. The bags were then thrown in a precarious stack on a cart, so it seems the fragile sticker means nothing. Strangely, this doesn't happen at other airports in China (at least, Xi'an), only at their giant capital airport designed to impress us foreigners. Things got better once we got on the plane (by bus, as usual). Air China domestic service seems a lot better than international.
Special plane for the Horticultural Expo.
China loves big expos and cute mascots. As we discovered in Xi'an airport, the big expo going on at the moment is a horticultural expo in Xi'an, and the whole city is full of images and statues of the mascot, which we dubbed Tomato Head. We saw a lot of this on the bus into the city. Once we arrived, it was only a short walk from the bus stop to our hotel, which was just as nice as the one in Beijing (but with free internet in the room, and breakfast included).
Central Xi'an is not a large area to cover, and has a lot to see. Our first stop was Hui Min Jie (Muslim street). As Xi'an was traditionally the last stop on the silk road for traders coming to China, Xi'an has seen a lot of influence from the west. So, the traders brought Muslim culture with them, and a number of Chinese converted to Islam because of this. These people are called Hui, and are spread all over China, which is why you can find Muslim restaurants in almost every city in China. The street is a busy market full of exotic foods and trinkets, much like it might have been back when the Silk Road was used (and Xi'an was the capital of China, then called Chang'an). We had some baozi (dumplings), lamb sticks (not as good as in Xinjiang I'm assured), and liangpi (cold noodles with sauce, Jing's favourite) at a well-known restaurant here.
Muslim Street.
We headed back towards the drum tower, which is on one end of the muslim street. The drum tower is, surprisingly, full of drums, and was used in the past for communicating with the townspeople. It is a traditional Chinese pagoda-style building, on top of a tall brick foundation with a tunnel through it. Around the outside, there are drums marked with old-style lettering corresponding to seasonal cycles (24 of them), and some really big drums. Inside there is a museum of Chinese drums (like "fighting drum" and "elephant foot drum"), and a stage where they give a drum performance every hour. The show was pretty cool, but I was already a fan of this sort of drumming, and there are better drum shows around.
Xi'an also has a bell tower, which is similar, but with bells. These days, the bell tower is in the middle of a busy roundabout, and the only way to access it is through a pedestrian tunnel which winds under the road (this is a common way to cross roads in China, and Xi'an in particular seems to have a lot of them). There was a bit less to look at here, but we had a rest for a bit on the balcony and stayed for a bell performance.
The Bell Tower, as seen from the Drum Tower.
To wrap up our tour of old Xi'an buildings for the day, we headed south, towards the south gate of the city wall. Xi'an has a very nicely preserved city wall, which has been maintained until today and locals still divide the city into chengnei (inside the wall) and chengwai (outside the wall). Every road in or out goes through a gateway in the wall, some of which have been added as recently as the 1950s. So, it's impossible to miss on a visit. On top of the wall, many watch towers have been preserved, and those which haven't have signs explaining why (one mysteriously burned down to its foundations). The wall is very wide, and bikes are available for hire (or touristy golf cart things if you're lazy). We decided to walk for a bit, and hopefully come down closer to Dayanta, our next destination. This turned out to be a very long walk, and it took a while to find a way down once we'd gone far enough. We did though, and took a taxi onwards.
Xi'an's very nice wall.
We headed towards Dayanta, a tower with a big square around it, but stopped nearby the square for some rou jia mo, which are most easily described as Chinese burgers. Meat between 2 halves of a flat piece of doughy Chinese bread. It is a Xi'an specialty, and the particular place we went to was famous for it. Much better than what I've had in Beijing. We then crossed the road to the square, which supposedly features the largest water fountain in Asia set to music. A grid of jets shoot water out from a pool, and spotlights shine through the mist to make for a pretty cool display. The crowds were a bit much, though, and we left halfway through.
It took some searching, but we finally managed to catch a taxi back to Hui Min Jie. We found some interesting trinkets to take back, and I discovered suan mei tang (sour berry soup), which is actually just mixed berry juice served cold, but quite nice and ubiquitous here. We walked home after a very long day to rest our feet and get ready for the next one.
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