I came across this and just had to share.
Can you believe this place exists?? Why does everyone not know about it?!
The above pictures are of a place in Gansu province, China, called Zhangye. The maps below gives a rough idea of where it is in general, and in relation to Beijing (where I am).
The landform itself is called Zhangye Danxia – 张掖丹霞.
Danxia is a general term for these landforms of red sandstone, and there are more across China!
A long, long time ago, in a land far away…
We went to Beijing’s Olympic Stadium, aka The Bird’s Nest.
This is why it is called the Bird’s Nest:
One of the few aesthetically-pleasing sights in Beijing
Detail of the exterior
My kite will go on
These kite things are pretty cool when you’re actually there to see them; they just go on and on and on… And they’re surprisingly ‘heavier’ to keep hold of than they look. Beijing’s wind can get very strong! In fact, today was extremely windy. Outside were lots of fallen branches, and inside, all I could hear through the flat was the sound of wind trying to blow the door down.
Back on topic, the stadium has a capacity of 80,000, and being inside reminded me of being inside Old Trafford Stadium (that was a fun road-trip, eh? You know who you are 🙂 ).
Somewhere near the top
Somewhere near the bottom
Some Olympic-torch bearing, colourful dress wearing, running women outside the stadium
It was a bit of a grey day that particular day:
The three of us before we went in
And unfortunately, it began pouring down…
The three of us after we came out
We were taking shelter from the rain under one of the few covered areas at very-far-apart intervals down the side of the very-long-and-completely-open-to-the-elements walkway back towards the metro station.
There is a Chinese idiom that describes the above picture perfectly, in my opinion. 落汤鸡 luo tang ji = literally, like a drenched chicken, aka SOAKED THROUGH.
This brings me to the Water Cube.
Isn’t that just so smart?!
The above was a picture I took of a floor tile, inside the Water Cube, the colloquial name for the Beijing National Aquatics Centre, which is built alongside the Bird’s Nest.
Olympic Pool
The diving pool
It was all beautifully blue inside, and I really liked it. Admittedly, I don’t remember watching much of the Beijing Olympics (or much of any of the Olympics for that matter… >_> ) but imagining that records were broken in the stadium and pool I was in on that day is pretty exciting!
There was also a little scene out of London inside the Water Cube, which I posted pictures of recently.
A sign on the door on the train… Nice.
Last week, I saw a station on the subway called Biomedical Base. Doesn’t that just sound so suspicious? I imagine some undercover experiments going down, with other branches around Beijing.
Well, what a difference a day makes… A few days, even – because over the last few days, I’ve definitely reconciled myself with the fact that despite the approaching deadlines being such a bad way to end a year abroad on, and despite the fact that so many of us are just looking forward to going home, myself included, there is no escaping the fact that time is running out, and it’ll never come back. So seeing as going back home is determined for that date, why not really go for it and actually ENJOY what time is still left? Because I’m sure before I know it, I’ll be back in London, full of regrets for having let those last few weeks slip by, and well, in the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take.
I started out saying that this blog would include my feelings and thoughts while in China; if it’s the case that my feelings and thoughts happen to be negative and that’s what I want to record, so be it. I’m not going to censor out the bad and only include the good, if that’s not the case. I want it to be a true representation of how I feel/felt during the course of my year abroad. There have been good and bad times in equal measure… definitely more good than bad actually, but the bad tends to stick out, doesn’t it? However, the current of melancholy that’s been running through some of the more recent posts ends now.
Besides, there is still so much more to tell, I still haven’t written about some major tourist spots, such as the Great Wall and the Forbidden City (from way back in October, when my parents came!, and which I don’t remember details of clearly now… ), or the more recent trips from the Labour Day holiday, when I went to the Olympic Forest Park (beautiful) and Happy Valley Amusement Park (let’s not try summarise this in a single bracket just yet…)
Anyway, London exists in Beijing too…
There’s no phone inside, but let’s continue pretending you hadn’t noticed…
Photos taken at the ‘Water Cube’, Beijing’s National Aquatics Centre, constructed for the 2008 Olympics.
Optimism is an attitude that will serve me well for the next few weeks!
To positivity! Ganbei! (Cheers, in Chinese 🙂 )
If I want more time in the day, does that mean sacrificing my sleep??!
Where does time go when you actually want to use it constructively?
There seems to be so much time available when you’re ‘wasting time’ (not that I do any of that here, of course), but time just totally escapes you when you’re actually aiming to study.
My defence is that Wednesdays are the longest days of the week, in terms of my uni timetable. Classes from 8am to 12 noon, and then again from 3:30 to 5:15pm. That break in between is extremely annoying. Luckily I only live a 20minute walk away from campus. After getting some lunch with friends, I actually did some work in that time today. But once you start doing the work you should have been doing all year, you realise that there really is a lot of it, and it’s never-ending, and that you need to spend every single moment of your time keeping up, and that this hour you just spent working is only scratching the surface. Wait, why am I even describing that? That’s just standard student life. It’s my own fault I avoided it for so long 🙂
On another note, Nafeesah and I have recently been really trying to figure out and determine (by this, I mean with actual calculations) if cooking at home is more cost-effective than eating out. It may sound obvious, but it’s actually a pretty close call. Today we made….well, I guess I’d call it stir-fried cabbage, in various Chinese-y sauces: soy sauce, garlic chilli bean paste, sesame paste. We’re coming to the conclusion that you probably save a few kuai (20 to 30p) overall per meal, financially speaking, but then we should take time into account too, right?
Spending approximately 2 hours preparing, cooking, eating and then washing up and clearing away vs. 40minutes to walk to the local Halaal place, order and wait for your dish, eat it up (nom nom), and walk back home. (or 10minutes to get there, get a take-away, and walk home again!)
On balance, it comes down to this – minimal monetary savings vs. the opportunity cost of time and better tasting food!
I did get somewhere with regards to the list from yesterday though. I bought tickets to Xinjiang, for after my exams are over in June! I’m feeling that was a little impulsive now, in the sense that I have no idea where I’ll be going or what I’ll be doing there, but that’s something I can think more about as the time gets closer, I suppose. Booking the tickets was the more important, initial step, and I just hope that trip proves to be an exciting final adventure in China!
Something I just read online about Kashgar, the city I’ll be landing in:
The city of Kashgar lies in the Taklamakan Desert, and “Taklamakan” is said to translate as “go in and you won’t come out,” or the “desert of death.”
Uhhh great, that’s reassuring.
They also don’t speak Mandarin there…
Qing Ming Jie – 清明节
Qing Ming Jie literally translates into English as Pure Brightness Festival, actually known as Tomb Sweeping Day – a day to celebrate the dead. Families usually go to visit ancestors’ grave sites, perhaps with some offerings, and pay their respects, but the most common thing most of us foreign students here associate with it is the burning of fake paper money, just because this is what we see happening the most, on roadsides, after dark. Outside remembering ancestors, what it meant for most of us was though, essentially, a 4-day weekend, because we got Thursday and Friday off uni for the festival.
Burning fake money
(The above picture isn’t mine, but it shows exactly what I’ve seen. I wouldn’t recommend trying to take a picture, unless you want to get beaten up (*ahem* speaking from experience *ahem*). And rightly so, because despite this being something they do in public, it’s kinda personal: burning the money as an offering to their ancestors)
Tianjin – 天津
We initially planned to use this time to go out of Beijing for a few days, going somewhere far enough from Beijing that we couldn’t go to in a weekend if we wanted to, but close enough that we could fit it comfortably into our 4-day break. Unfortunately, various issues came in the way of our travel plans, and so we ended up just going to visit Tianjin for a day on Friday – a city about half an hour outside Beijing, on the high-speed train. It was my first time on a high-speed train, we were travelling at a speed of approximately 300km/h. Tianjin is known for its European architecture, and indeed, walking through some parts of the city felt like being in Rome or France. (Not that I’ve ever been to Rome or France before, but I’d imagine it would be somewhat similar). As usual, we attracted a lot of attention, being some of the very very few foreigners around at this time of the year, with plenty of people asking to have pictures taken with us. (Yep, we’re just that popular!)
I’m going to go through our time in Tianjin with more pictures than text.
We first went to seek out the ‘mosquese’, with this helpful sign at the subway station. 
“The Prophet’s Mosque” — The Chinese reads the same way as the Arabic! 🙂 (Classical Chinese used to be written from right to left, and this style is still quite prevalent)
After entering the courtyard-area though, it seemed that the buildings were all locked, and no one was around anyway, so we turned around and headed back onto the main road..
We wandered through “Ancient Cultural Street” – the shops and walkway both brimming with people, and, as is standard wherever you go in China, saw some unusual things on sale, for example:
If you can’t deal with a real cat, you could always get one of these.
(Not the best picture of the beginning of) Ancient Cultural Street, Tianjin
I was impressed!
Curio Antiques Market
Inside Tianjin Folk-Custom Museum, which was actually more a temple than a museum:
A pretty Chinese sight. (The blossom was plastic, though)
Also inside the ‘museum’, there was a stall at the back selling these strange scenes with some furry bug…things:
A Bugs Life
A Bugs Life 2
As a result of the Concessions in Tianjin, a lot of the architecture is definitely visibly different to that of other cities like Beijing. There’s a specific ‘Italian Style Town’, which unfortunately I don’t have pictures of, but- minus the foreigners, here’s a bit of what Europe looks like in China:
We found and went inside a church, not missing this very comprehensive list of rules by the door:
No love? I thought God loves me D:
Our clothing apparently wasn’t ‘proper’ enough… a woman at the door stopped us and I think she was asking us to remove our headscarves. We couldn’t make out exactly what she was telling us, but she kept putting her hands together in prayer fashion, and saying something like “this is how we do it here”. When we said we couldn’t/wouldn’t take our headscarves off, she seemed a bit hesitant, and not wanting to offend, we were about to turn around and leave, when she stopped us, and ushered us in with a smile. We made sure to smile and thank her when we left, so we at least left her with a good impression…
I found it amusing when Nafeesah told me that it was her first time ever in a church…and this, in China.
A Starbucks on one side, and a Costa on the other. European enough to me.
I don’t think it had any special significance, but we saw this cool clock, in the middle of a ROUNDABOUT, no less!! (There are no roundabouts in China)
It was cool, we could actually see the cogs moving
The above picture also shows one minor thing I liked about Tianjin — the colour of the taxis! Turquoisey-teal taxis to brighten up the city 😀
Also, something different in Tianjin, was the subway ‘tickets’. Unlike in other cities, like Beijing and Shanghai, where the single journey tickets issued are reusable cards, Tianjin’s machines gave us round, green, plastic tokens (kinda like poker chips…). Swipe it on the way in through the barriers, drop it in the ‘coin hole’ thing on the way out.
Subway ‘tickets’
This station in Tianjin must be the fanciest subway station I have ever seen….ever:
Chandeliers in a subway station!?!?
We walked down Nanjing Lu (yes, we did a LOT of walking) – there’s a very famous road in Shanghai called Nanjing Lu, it’s full of people, shops and bright lights, especially at night, and this road was almost similar. By the time evening fell, we still had some time before our train departed, so we went to see (literally, look at and take a picture of) Tianjin’s TV Tower. I distinctly remember thinking that the sky was a very nice colour.
Tianjin TV tower
There was a bit of a manic rush trying to find our train to go back to Beijing. Although we’d got to the station with plenty of time, there were no signs to a handful of platforms, including the one our train was leaving from… We must have walked all the way around the station – twice – before deciding we might as well ask the security guard, seeing as there was no one else to ask. He just pointed up some stairs, which had a sign saying which platforms it led to, ours not included!! We had no choice but to listen to him: we ran up the stairs, ran up some more stairs, still saw no signs to our platform, followed the stream of people, and eventually saw a sign to our platform across the other end of the station. With less than 5minutes to departure time, we were running across the station to our platform, down the stairs, and down the full length of the platform to the carriage which had our seats in. (The stairs come down the the front of the train – carriage 1, our seats were in carriage 8, all the way at the other end of the train.) The train left about 90seconds after we sat down… we were still trying to catch our breath…
I feel like we’re in a position right now of just waiting, waiting for the weather to get better. Apart from the freak snow about three weeks ago now (it was 10days ago when I started writing this…oops), the weather’s been pretty cool but not absolutely freezing. It’s not yet quite nice enough to go and enjoy the parks, which are really a Summer thing, but we’ve counted out how many weeks we have left in Beijing and we really, really just wanna make the most of it now.
So, two weekends ago, we somewhat impulsively decided to go to the Summer Palace, partly also because that was the last week of low season prices; from the beginning of April, all the prices of tourist places go up, to the summer high-season prices (which, in this case, isn’t actually that much higher). Due to the day being pretty polluted and smoggy, meaning that we couldn’t see that much, we actually spent a lot more time there climbing the rocks leading up to one of the main palace buildings, obeying the rules posted on signs:
I wonder what that sign says…
I’m sorry, but they were just made for climbing. I actually had a lot of fun 😀
We didn’t really go and look at or appreciate all the must-sees of the Summer Palace, i.e. the 17-arch bridge, and all of the actual Palace buildings, but I’m going to attempt to justify that now. I think that it’s a benefit of living here as opposed to just being tourists here, because while we also want to do the tourist stuff, we can go to a place like the Summer Palace and not feel pressured to have to do it all in one go. Ultimately, we decided we’d come back to the Summer Palace when Summer actually hits. I accept that it sounds a bit inefficient, but it’s not as if we started out with the intention of going back; it just so happened that the weather wasn’t satisfactory to allow us to enjoy the rest of the Palace. (Also, I admit, it’s not called the Summer Palace for nothing…)
Here are some pictures to act as evidence of the amazing time we had at the Summer Palace, not in the Summer.
The Long Corridor, Summer Palace
Not only are we supposed to help protect this ‘cultural relic’ of which there is no description, we are also supposed to help protect the railings. Okay, China.
The weekend before, we went to Chaoyang Park, and whereas the Summer Palace day was a really grey day, the day we went to Chaoyang Park was much brighter and sunnier. (An aside: it’s amusing when I hear stories of people’s holiday – “The water is so clear, we can see the fish through it!”. My response is usually quite tight-lipped: “That’s really great… I’m so happy for you! It sounds amazing :)” When what I’m really thinking is “We can’t even see people through the air in front of us”)
Chaoyang Park, like a lot of Beijing’s parks, is huge. There is an amusement park within the park grounds, and for anyone who doesn’t know, I LOVE amusement parks. There are three in Beijing, as far as research has told us, and we’re leaving what we think seems like the ‘best’ till last. I sincerely hope we are correct in our judgements, because I’m really expecting better than this next time. Although there were a couple of rides that looked like they could be decent, I felt that they were way overpriced for what they were. There was one roller-coaster that included a loop-the-loop, but I’m not sure if it can even qualify as a roller-coaster, because that’s pretty much all it did! When you pay 40yuan (~£4.50) for a single ride that lasts all of about 30 seconds, and lacks that thrill, you can’t help but feel a bit ripped off.
We went on a grand total of three rides, the third and final one was this ride, which looked fun from where we stood on ground level…
There we are, in one of only three occupied seats (if I recall correctly) on the whole ride
Not only were we just dizzy, being spun around high up in the air, the cold air meant cold wind blowing in our faces, eyes watering, noses running, face freezing… And while we thought the other two rides were over much too quickly, this one seemed to drag on. Still, it was fun.
Here are pictures of the freak snow we enjoyed! It was much better than any other times it has snowed in Beijing, not only was there a lot of it, it made Beijing look really very pretty!! I’m also convinced that the air seemed fresher and cleaner, clear blue skies were definitely visible! (Speaking of, a few days ago, the pollution level was down to a PM2.5 level of 30!! Compared to the extremely dangerous levels of 500+ recorded earlier this year, this is extremely good news!)
Winter Wonderland, right outside my building!
Walking to uni for 8am class was just made so much better – just look at those trees!
Someone tell me that’s not a pretty sight 🙂
If only London dealt with snow this well..
The icing on the ca…mpus bicycles.
This was a sort of catch-up post, talking about the weekend before last, and the one previous to that. Next post, covering last weekend (Tomb Sweeping Day) coming soon!
I say halfway home, because coming back to Beijing felt kinda like coming home. And seeing as I’m flying back to England on Tuesday (tomorrow!), Beijing ‘home’ counts as the halfway home right now. I just hope the snowy weather there doesn’t disrupt my flight! Or the weather here, for that matter! It snowed over Saturday night and also during the morning in Beijing, and when it snows here, (which I was told numerous times is not a regular occurrence at all, maybe only once or twice a year, but it’s snowed at least 5 times so far already…) the ground stays extremely icy for days on end. There’re still ice mounds around on roadsides etc probably from the first time it snowed, which was possibly back in November! Simply because the temperature hasn’t given it a chance to melt.
Anyway, so I arrived back in Beijing on Saturday morning, and boy – I have never been happier to hear that Chinese English voice that does the announcements on the Beijing Subway! 🙂 (On a tangent, I heard a “please mind the gap between the train and the platform” recently on one of the lines, but the Beijing Subway is no London Tube.)
The train journey from Xi’an back to Beijing was largely uneventful, compared to the journey there when a verbal fight had escalated to the point of physical contact, right in front (and almost on) us. Instead, as I was alone on the return journey, it was more likely that the Chinese sitting around me would attempt conversation, and indeed, within the first 2o minutes of the 14 hour journey ahead of me, this happened. Foreigners are an intriguing species, remember. Although they were speaking Mandarin Chinese, accent differences just made it near impossible for me to understand anything… It’s even difficult to understand Beijingers, especially the older generation; in my experience, the easiest to understand are university students, or conversations between parents and their very young children, all of whom sound like they’re speaking clearer.
At this particular time, I really wasn’t up for the possibility of having to try to understand and speak Chinese for all of 14 hours, so I (pretended to) read my Kindle for a while, tried to sleep, and was then asked by them if I wanted to join them in their game of 扑克牌 pu ke pai (a transliteration of ‘poker’). I declined and found out that what they called ‘poker’ isn’t actually what I know as poker, and instead, all it means is ‘to play cards’. Anyway, after watching for a while, and not understanding how whatever game they were playing worked, I ended up teaching them the rules of the card game I know only by the (Indian?) name ‘Sathyo’. I’d imagined explaining it successfully in Chinese would be really difficult, but they all picked it up so quickly, and I ended up feeling like I was the new one to the game!
Back to our last few days in Xi’an, on Wednesday we’d gone to Lishan (Li Mountain), and on the bus ride from where we were staying to the railway station where we would get the bus to take us there, we were pleasantly surprised to see a group of Australian tourists, (tourist-sightings were very few, as it’s not tourist season) who asked us if we were going to the Terracotta Army and if we could point them in the right direction. Luckily for them, we’d already been earlier in the week, and the bus towards Lishan was the same as the one to the Terracotta Warriors anyway.
We got the cable car up partway, and then climbed the rest of the way to the peak, which was just lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of steps. Actually, after the cable car, when we started our way up, we were offered the option of horse riding up to the top by a group of men standing around smoking, but none of us wanted to risk it… riding a horse up a mountain in China, I mean.
Queuing instructions for the cable car. (Not that there was anyone there at all)
One section of the steps up to the top of Lishan
As usual, there was a lot of smog and fog (aka pollution) but not bad enough to reduce visibility from the top completely. After taking in whatever we could of the view and the wind up there, we headed back down again, seeing some interesting bins on the way… Some were labelled ‘recycling’ and others were apparently specifically non-recycling. I was so convinced. Really.
In the evening, we found a little restaurant down in the Hui area, called Aliren, which was almost the cleanest place I have seen in China, and the food was good too! Bonus!
On Thursday morning we visited the Shaanxi Provincial History Museum, with the idea that we should learn something about the history of Xi’an, considering it was one of China’s great ancient capitals. The Museum itself was one of the boringer types, and we saw a lot of things dug out of tombs etc, which didn’t tell us a great deal about the city’s history itself. It was fun still, I found this row of statues particularly amusing… (Though I’m not sure what they were actually supposed to be)
Compare the meerkat .com!
We then headed back to the Hui area, as although we’d passed by and through it a couple of times, we wanted to take our time wandering through and check it out properly. The Aliren restaurant had made such a good impression on us, that we stopped there again for lunch.
Gate to the Muslim district, the characters read ‘hui fang’ which translates roughly to Hui Street
Again, we attracted calls of “Hello scarves, take look” as we walked past the many stalls. And a typical conversation between ourselves and the stall owners went like this:
“Excuse me, how much is this?”
“60 yuan”
The three of us would look at each other, knowing of course, that the quoted price was much too expensive. As we begin to walk away, the stall owner calls after you…
“Oh you say how much then! I’ll give it to you for 50, yeah?”
“Ok ok friend, let’s say 40? Alright, 30 then!”
“Ohhh just for you! Come back, how about 20?”
This is all well and good, if you were actually interested in buying it…but sometimes, we just wanted to find out prices – we soon found out that unless you definitely want to buy something, don’t ask the price. Even just stopping to LOOK is dangerous, and you’ll find it difficult to walk away peacefully. How do they expect us to buy something if we’re not even supposed to look at what they have on offer!?
In one stall I walked into, I exclaimed my surprise to the others when I heard some music sounding awfully similar to Bollywood… And as I turned to find the source of the music, there was Shahrukh Khan dancing around on the little laptop screen, in front of the two female shop-owners, who looked up at me after hearing my surprise, and said excitedly in Chinese: “Yes! You recognised it!? It’s Indian! Are you from India?”. Well, by this point and judging from their reactions, I thought I might as well say yes. 🙂
It’s Shahrukh Khan! On a street on a little screen in a little side street in Xi’an!
In the evening, we went back to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, (where we ate pizza – at Papa John’s no less, oops) to watch the musical fountain show…which was a slight let-down, but nice anyway.
Musical fountain show outside the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, which is in the background
After packing up our stuff and checking out on Friday, we went to the Great Mosque of Xi’an. It is now a tourist attraction and although we saw some Hui people praying inside the hall, it’s not an active mosque anymore. I was sad to hear the woman at the front desk who looked at Nafeesah and I and said “Are you Muslim? Then you don’t need a ticket.” She then pointed at Beth and said “SHE needs to buy a ticket.” Well, no judging done there at all. 😦
The mosque itself was different to any kind of mosque I’ve seen before, probably because all the ones I’ve seen have some features of Middle Eastern/Arab architecture, whereas this one was completely Chinese in design, except for some Arabic decorative writing here and there; but all in all, not greatly interesting, in my opinion. We got stared at a LOT, and spotted people trying to secretly take our pictures/videos, although some were not so discreet, and would aim their phone cameras directly at us as they walked across in front of us. Not the first time we’ve experienced this, anyhow.
Does London have a list of Top Ten Scenic Sports? No, only in China.
Some pictures of things I mentioned in my last post but was unable to upload pictures of:
I do believe the Chinese reads ‘cow tongue’. Now you all know what’s in your milk.
Pit 1 (the best of the three) of the Terracotta Warriors
Nice to make your acquaintance, Tea.
His characters were beautiful!
“You shall not pass!” (Gandalf)
Maybe Tolkien is much much older than we think.
Predictions of things that might shock me on my return to London:
1. Extortionate prices.
2. The lack of Chinese faces, or I guess, the sudden increase in ‘foreign’ faces!
3. Fresh air! (Compared to Beijing’s pollution levels, I believe I’m more than qualified in saying London’s air is ‘fresh’)
Did I mention I can’t wait to be home? -_-
Again, it’s been a long while since I’ve posted anything, and I probably wouldn’t have done so for a long while still, because I am currently in Xi’an (a city about 11hours on a train south west of Beijing). The longer I leave it, the harder I know it will be to write about what we’ve been doing here though! So here goes..
Two of us (Nafeesah and I) departed Beijing on Friday afternoon, for an overnight train to Xi’an. The train was exactly like you might hear in stories of train travel in China – crowded, noisy and uncomfortable. Our train was a double decker, and the seats were more in bench-fashion, rather than singles. It was honestly tough to get any decent sleep, and we arrived at some early time (before 7am), cranky, in Xi’an. Obviously this isn’t the best time to arrive, but unfortunately, other train tickets had been sold out. We got a taxi to the apartment hostel we’d booked, and after asking some people who turned out to just be security guards about getting into a room, we ended up standing around in a chair-less and dead lobby, by an un-staffed reception desk until 9am. Finally, when we were able to check-in, we were told that we couldn’t get into the room until 2pm, but this absolutely lovely man who was serving us found us a room we could rest in until then, after we told him that we had nowhere to go until 2pm anyway, having been on the train the whole night. So we paid up the deposit, and went to nap in this temporary room until we could move into our own. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, we headed out later in the afternoon to explore the area, and find some dinner, seeing as we hadn’t really eaten since Friday afternoon, and found out that the Hui area (well-known Muslim district in Xi’an) was very close to our hotel, with lots of halaal street food and little stalls selling many random things. We picked one of the better looking places to eat, saw the customary weird things on the menu, such as “Debate group of milk”, and left pretty disappointed.
I’d actually been crazily homesick for the past few days, and arriving in a foreign city did little to help. Seeing all the street food, although it said it was halaal, made me feel very queasy… I’d read online and heard about the foods you have to try in Xi’an, but I just couldn’t make myself want to. I also realised that this would be something I’d probably regret later – the fact that I went to Xi’an and didn’t try their specialities The thing is, I am in Xi’an NOW and now is the time I can change that! But still, I don’t want to! My friend told me that if that’s the case, I shouldn’t regret it, but it’s still a very self-contradictory feeling.
On Sunday early morning, we were joined by our friend (Beth) who had made the train journey with some other friends, who were only staying one night in Xi’an, so we all went to see the Terracotta Warriors together, seeing as it’s a definite must-see when you go to Xi’an! It’s about an hour and a half bus journey south from the city centre, we stopped on the way at the Huaqing Hot Springs, which was a past bathing site of emperors, and got to see some interesting old paintings, one of which looked scarily similar to Gandalf’s “You shall not pass!”. Pictures to follow, they’re currently refusing to upload.
The Terracotta Warriors are pretty much an underground life-size army, built to ‘protect’ an emperor in his afterlife. They were made life-sized and each warrior’s face is different, with intricate detail. They are in three pits, and completely by accident, we happened to start with Pit 3, then 2 and finally 1, which worked out for the best, I think, because Pit 1 is by far the best. We were somewhat disappointed by the other pits, expecting to see what we see in pictures: rows and rows of terracotta warriors standing to attention. Instead we saw half-broken horses and mangled messes of various limbs strewn about. However, leaving the best til last, Pit 1 was more like what we had expected. Apparently, they used to be painted – you can see traces of colour on some of them still. Beth and I mused about how scary they could actually look, and what an excellent horror movie it would make if they were made to come to life…until Nafeesah informed us that such a movie had already been made, so it’s now on our lists.
Before going into the museum and pits of the Terracotta Army, we had been looking for somewhere to get some lunch from, and kept getting approached (pestered) by people trying to advertise their shops to us by shouting out “Hello, rice!” and waving menus at us as we walked past. It was incredibly tempting to call back, “hello noodle!”.
On Monday, we went to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda – yes, the name does sound fascinating – but the pagoda itself wasn’t really that exciting. Probably nicer, were the things around it, for example a large fountain area, which holds nightly musical fountain shows (we plan on going back to watch this on Thursday night), stone statues of famous historical Chinese people, including poets, musicians and tea-makers, and people writing (calligraphy style) with water on the ground, which was actually really pretty! Around the Pagoda, there was what was called a ‘theme park’ (they don’t know the meaning of the word, we were expecting something like Thorpe Park) which turned out to be a “folk cultural theme park” and was really just an ordinary kind of park, with statues of various scenes in Chinese life, and lots of people taking pictures of them and with them. Of course, we followed suit. I also spotted a little shop called ‘Hello Coffee’, which just reminded us of ‘Hello rice’ and ‘hello noodle’ again. It’s clearly more common than we thought.
After an unfortunate incident on the journey back to the hotel involving a possible thief, we spent a good part of the evening learning how to pick locks, and succeeded in opening a locked suitcase, thanks to Youtube. Having not eaten properly in a few days, we went to Big Pizza (pizza restaurant in the food court of the mall next door to us) for dinner. Again, I was surprised by the Chinese pizzas; forget fruit pizzas (which they did also have here), why not try some “Strawberry and chocolate crisp pizza”?
That night, the three of us went to KTV (China is famous for their karaoke), and woah… English music is, well, music to my ears!
Today, (Tuesday), we went to Xi’an’s city wall, the most complete city wall that has survived in China. Much to our surprise, it was more than warm enough to shed our coats today! You can rent a bike to cycle around the wall on, so we rented out one tandem bike and one single bike, and took turns. Actually, the view from the top isn’t particularly special, and mostly we rode in the middle anyway, but it was really a lot of fun, especially given the good weather, and I’d definitely recommend it. Walking around wouldn’t be anywhere near as fun. The tandem bike took a bit of getting used to, and we all realised how long its been since we’ve ridden a bike, complaining of aching legs before our 100 minutes were up. Research had told us that it takes approximately 90 minutes to cycle around the full wall at medium speed, and we assumed we’d be going faster than ‘medium speed’, whatever that was, but in fact, we were rushing at the end to make it to the bicycle stop that was at the 3/4 point from where we’d started. The muscles are definitely going to protest tomorrow, when we’re going to Lishan Mountain (the Huaqing Hot Springs are located at the base of this mountain). Alright, I admit, we’re not actually going to climb up AND down the mountain, but instead, (so I’m told >_>) we’ll be taking the cable car up, and then trekking it down, which (for anyone who know me well will know) is almost just as bad.
On a good note, walking back to our hotel from the City Wall today, we came across one of the type of restaurants we ate at often in Shanghai (the chain of ‘Islamic Restaurants’ I posted about in my food posts), and stopped there for an early dinner. I found what is my favourite dish in Beijing, tudou niurou gaimian, and discovered it was only two thirds the price I usually pay for it in Beijing. It’s funny how I miss Beijing, now that we’re in Xi’an. As Beth puts it, I guess it is “a home away from home away from home”.
I’ll be going back to Beijing alone on Friday evening, arriving in beautiful Beijing on Saturday morning, as the other two go on to continue their travels, and will be flying back to beautiful-er home (the real one) on Tuesday. I ABSOLUTELY CANNOT WAIT.
More on Xi’an to come!
Your only way across until the next junction.
One of the cool things about Shanghai: the huge bridges. Circular, square, or shaped like a dragon! – there’s no ground-level crossing these roads.
We saw a random milk tea/drinks shop once while walking back to our hostel, that we would have gone in to for sure, except that it was on the opposite side of the road from us, and going to it would have required walking all the way back to the junction, up, across, and down the bridge, and then walking up the other side of the same road we were just on to get to the drinks shop!! It just wasn’t worth the effort…
Still, I did like the bridges!
Probably over a month ago, I went to Niu Jie (Ox Street) – the Muslim quarter in Beijing – home to the famous Niu Jie Mosque (Ox Street Mosque). You can tell you’re in the right place with all the green boarded shops on the street. I don’t know what I was expecting exactly, but honestly, I did feel a bit let down. I must have read about the market that takes place there, and gone at the wrong time.
Anyway, possibly the most interesting thing I saw was this sign at the entrance to the mosque:
And I just wanted to share that much at least – it’s getting harder and harder to keep up with posting! 😦
ibby 