Xi'an: Where Terracotta Is King

(My journey's now come full circle, as I'm now back in London... and two months on, I'm STILL playing catch up with my blog.)

Ask any entertainer, and they'll agree that it's pretty hard to compete with children or cute animals - they'll upstage you every time.  Cities must have the same problem, as coming from Chengdu, home of the lovable lazy pandas, I was pretty much expecting to be underwhelmed by my next stop, the ancient Chinese capital of Xi'an.

Fortunately, Xi'an is lucky enough to boast its own rich city landscape - as the ancient capital of China, and occupying a halfway point between coastal Han and the more Islamic parts of the country, it has a unique feel to the visitor.  And sure, that's all well and good, but Xi'an is also blessed by its proximity to one of the stranger burial grounds ever discovered - a massive underground complex that is home to thousands and thousands of clay statues... the Terracota Warriors.

Now, maybe it's a name that conjures up images of the worst of 70's retro, when terracota was huge, but I couldn't help but chuckle at the prospect of seeing hordes of fierce warriors made essentially like my parents' old flower pots in the backyard.  So, I have to confess it - unlike Yangshuo or the Tiger Gorge, I booked my trip to Xi'an out of a sense of tourist duty; a sort of "since you're here, you might as well as go..." type of thing and not expecting any sort of real excitement.

Whoops.

Xi'an would prove to be a nice surprise, a calmer vibe especially after the urban chaos of Chengdu, and the Terracota Warriors more than lived up to their billing.

This leg of the trip started with my flight out of Chengdu not exactly inspiring confidence, as we were kept waiting for an hour on the tarmac due to... something that was never explained.  Probably for the best, as with these cut-rate fares, while they are a backpacker's friend, you can't help but think that just maybe, maintenance could be a bit... lacking.

Once we got into Xi'an airport, the bus ride away from our plane only served to confirm this - as this picture seemed to illustrate:

The combination of bicycles on the tarmac of this most high-tech of locations, plus the pilot's body language as he checked out the plane... "hey, the engine IS still on"... it definitely made me glad to have only one more intra-China hop on my itinerary.

But the good news is that once I was actually in Xi'An proper, it was an amazing city.  As a previous capital to the newly united China, Xi'An is surrounded by towering walls built in stages and complexity beginning in the 10th century, that protect a number of fascinating neighborhoods.

I got settled in yet another awesome Chinese hostel, this one the YHA in a restored 16th century complex, complete with cute yet feisty kittens pouncing on the unwary backpacker.

Then, there was nothing left to do but just hit the streets and see what happened.  I headed immediately to the Muslim Quarter, which was a heady mix of Chinese culture, overlaid with unique Islamic influences.  Wandering the market streets, it was a constant feast for the senses, from watching the locals taking in the scene:

... to tasty-looking, if safety-lacking, streetside eateries:

I got happily lost in the byways and alleys of this part of town, and spent an hour walking around and around trying to find the Quarter's ancient mosque.  Persistence paid off and I finally got into the grounds where I was promptly waylaid by cute, and incredibly polite girls who asked me to fill out a tourist survey.  Sure, no problem, I thought... until I realized it was literally 10 pages of single-spaced questions asking about every possible facet of my Chinese tourist experience.  They obviously had not heard of keeping things 'short and sweet'... they were too nice to refuse point-blank, so when their backs were turned, I used my best escape skills to beat a hasty retreat.

Back on the streets, I kept on just walking wherever the mood struck me - including the restored Drum and Bell Towers...

... before calling it a day.  China in summer is hot, hot, hot, with a bonus side order of stickiness, so I was more than a little in need of another shower.  A bit rundown by this point, I wussed out on the more exotic eating options and ducked into a blessedly air-conditioned Pizza Hut, where I made a token nod to trying new foods by experimenting in the "Black Bean Sauce" pizza.  Surprisingly good fusion of stir-fry flavors with pizza, but I don't think Domino's will be adding this to the menu back home anytime soon.

More World Cup action, and it was a relatively early night to gear up for the big event the next day - a field trip to the Terracota Warriors.

Waking up around 6:30, I was fired up on getting an early start to beat as many of the crowds as possible.  And that worked, to a point, as I caught a motorcycle taxi to the incredibly chaotic main bus station... with thousands of people surging all over the place.  The driver tried the old 'increase the price upon arrival' trick - and because I was pretty apathetic to argue too much over a pound, he got an extra 10 yuan out of me.

That sort of attitude seemed to be pretty endemic to the Terracota Warriors scene.  The local bus got me there no problem, and I was excited to see the first of the day's many statues looming over the parking lot:

Once inside the complex, I did get snookered pretty good.  I ducked into a little noodle shop, and was handed a menu.  Looking at the menu that strangely didn't have prices, I picked a stir-fry noodle dish and a Coke, then got to chatting and even making balloon animals for the owner's kids.

Finishing, I got up to leave... when the bill came.

I had been expecting a bit of a price jump for eating at a tourist location, but when he handed me the bill and with a straight face asked for 80 yuan, I laughed out loud thinking he must be joking.  Normally, that's about 10 yuan, TOPS.

Sure enough, he showed me the menu he kept with prices hidden underneath the register and it had the price.  I was NOT amused and moreover didn't have enough cash for it.  So, after trying the ATM's in the complex with him following anxiously, I finally just got a £5 note and some small Chinese notes and just gave them to him, dusted my hands, and basically dared him to argue.

Very disappointing.

But, once I got over my irritation and was walking around the complex, it went a long way to making up for it... built for a Chinese Emperor so that he might enter the afterlife protected and in the style he was accustomed, it features 3 major tombs hiding over 6,000 statues.  As a world treasure, it's an amazing site - with each statue featuring a completely unique face, and surviving remarkably intact through the years.  Two peasants digging a well came across the tombs in the '70's and even now the work still goes on to unearth more and more chambers.

Words are one thing, but pics are better - so here are some of the highlights:

That took up most of the day, and after some tasty Singaporean food for dinner, I was pretty wiped out, and called it a day... getting ready this time for a quick flight to Beijing and my (sniff) last stop in an amazing China trip.

And just to show that globalization is no joke - I even came across that staple of mid-American fast food, a Dairy Queen of all things.  Unreal.

Chengdu - Big, Bustling City. Big, Lazy, Lazy Pandas.

(Sigh.  Still playing catchup on ye olde blog - I'm winding down my trip in SF now, so this post is only 6 weeks late.  Sweet.)

Arriving in Chengdu from Lijiang, I was struck once again by China's amazing contrasts. Leaving a smallish, cute rural town in the mountains, Chengdu greeted me with its own particular mix of smog, traffic, and busy, busy people. Saving the day, though, was a visit checking out the city's most leisurely of residents - the pandas at the world-famous breeding center.

Chengdu's pretty big, and getting bigger. Whole stock markets' worth of companies are relocating here from the comparatively expensive east coast region of Shanghai, and that means Chengdu is a near-constant construction zone. And, just like the rest of big city China, all of these people, new cars, and the like mean smog, smog, smog, mixed in with a sizable dose of traffic anarchy.

I couldn't help but sympathise with the local traffic warden:

... trying to organize this intersection:

... filled with overly ambitious delivery moped drivers like this dude:

But, after a midnight flight got me to the city and getting set up in yet another amazing hostel - Sim's Cozy Garden - the next morning, I went out walking. Spurning the dubious safety of the local bus, I instead decided to trust my karma by being one of the braver sights in a Chinese city - a pedestrian.

45 minutes walking, including one brief stop at a local McD's for air-conditioning and a chance to watch the NBA Finals with basketball mad locals, brought to the massive downtown plaza. And, being China, any massive plaza means Mao... lots of Mao. In this case it was a huge statue gazing benignly over the chaos that only a mostly capitalist China can bring. Wonder if he knows what's been going on?

Even Chengdu has its own oases of calm though, and I had fun ducking into the People's Park, guarded in this case by a bold Communist soldier statue, facing off against a resurgent bank.

A pot of green tea at a teahouse sorted me out...

...and then I kept walking to the Wenshu Temple district - a restored street of shops and temples, more than a bit heaving with tourists. I kept going, hitting up the city's street of knock-off outdoor sporting goods, but then called it a day in the 90+ degree heat, and headed back to the AC comfort of the hostel.

The World Cup brought its own fun, as the hostel put on the matches, and I got to watch the US come from behind to tie Slovenia 2-2 in the early morning hours. Great time, with the bonus of no hangover. Excellent.

The next day was pretty much devoted to the pandas, with an early morning tour group taking us out there in time for feeding around 8:30.

It turns out timing is pretty critical with pandas, as even on the best of days, they can't be called energetic. Eating only bamboo, pandas get very little nutrients from each bite, so pretty much all of their attention is focused on eating, eating, eating, with the occasional look around to see what's happening.

And, much as I loved seeing these ridiculously cute guys, I did have to wonder... these bears that are hyper-evolved to eat only bamboo, whose libido is so low that biologists have to resort to all types of tricks to, ah, encourage 'action', and whose females often don't recognize their very early newborns as their offspring, and have to be prevented from roughly batting them around or worse... well, I'm more than a little concerned about their long-term prospects. I'm thinking Darwinism might be rearing its ugly head soon, especially as their bamboo habitat is shrinking fast - they probably won't be able to adapt fast enough to survive.

But, pessimism aside, I really hope I'm wrong - they were awesome to watch. We got to see the adults getting their grub on:

... including one's best "Homer Simpson" impersonation, as he combined full body reclining with breakfast.

The adolescents were a bit more active... if only a bit:

And, as a bonus, we got to see a baby playing and bonding with its mother:

Awesome.

Not to be outdone, we also got to see the panda's cousin - the red pandas. Much smaller and equally much more active, they really reminded me of North America's raccoons:

Getting back to Chengdu, it was tough to get fired up to see more of the town, so I just chilled out and got caught up blogging. After a power nap that turned into several hours, I headed out for a local restaurant where I got to try the city's version of "hot pot" cooking.

Wow. Tongue-burning, sinus-clearing spiciness, but wow.

Here's the deal, they set up two bowls of flavored broth, one mostly chicken-based and the other a sea of chili peppers. Fired up to a near-boil by the table's gas burner, you get to dip in everything from freshwater eels, pork, chicken, and little bundles of vegetables, and basically gorge yourself silly.

Like I said, awesome.

A critically necessary walk post-dinner helped settle the stomach, and I rallied nicely for yet another night of beers and World Cup soccer, before heading out to the next stop of Xi'An in the (very!) early morning.