Feeling the urge to get in as much last minute travel as we can before we head home, we decided to book a trip to Xi’an. I kind of wish we had done it a little sooner. We are getting "traveled" out. Not to mention the girls are getting really anxious to head back home and see their friends.
I also decided to do the tour thing with this trip. When we went to Beijing I scheduled a tour for just one day to go and see the Great Wall. Kevin and I really prefer to explore a city on our own. The problem with doing that in Xi’an is that the main attractions are out quite a ways from the city, and Xi’an is attempting to do what no other city in China is interested in doing. They sometimes enforce seatbelt safety! So that meant that we would need a vehicle big enough for all of us and that meant renting a van which in turn meant EXPENSIVE. It seemed like it would be cheaper to schedule a tour that would take care of us for the whole trip.
It was really different and I am not sure that I really liked it. The tour was interesting and our guide was very knowledgeable about Chinese history, but it didn’t feel like China to me. It felt like a very glossed over, over booked, touristy experience. The whole trip has now become a blur to me and I actually have to look at the photos to remember what all we did and saw.
We got into Xi’an in the evening and I immediately preceded to give myself a minor concussion when I tried to get into the van. I am not joking when I say that the goose egg I got from ramming my head into the doorway of the car didn’t go away until a day after we got back to Shanghai. I have never known so much pain just by washing my hair!
I was really disappointed in our hotel. It was recommended on a mother’s news group here in China, but I really didn’t like it. I almost felt like we should have gone with a friends recommendation and just stayed at the Howard Johnson’s! The hotel was dark and dingy, the room was nice all except the large brown stain in the middle of the carpet and the rock hard beds! The funny thing was that I only saw a handful of Chinese people in the hotel. Most of the guests were foreigners in their 50′s and 60′s. I seriously felt like we had stumbled into a retirement community! The entire four days we were in Xi’an at our hotel, I think I spotted maybe two other families! I do have to say the view from our room was fantastic, but for $110US a night I expected a whole lot more!
The thing I loved most about Xi’an is that it felt much better taken care of and greener than Shanghai. The park surrounding the city wall was beautiful. I wish we had been able to swap some of the other things we did in Xi’an with just spending the day walking around the park and letting the kids run and play. One day I will finally learn to trust my instinct and speak up for myself…or in this case my kids.
The first day in Xi’an we hit the ground running. We went to a factory to see a process similar to what was used to make the Terra Cotta Warriors. It is a great way to get tourists to spend lots of money and the guides get a percentage of the profits. Our guide in Beijing made it seem like it was a great opportunity for us to see Chinese culture up front and personal, the refreshing thing about our guide in Xi’an was that she was very up front about the fact that she wanted us to go in and buy stuff because that meant she would get a percentage. Now the problem with that is that the tour factory always charges 20 times what you can pick it up for at a street market! Our guide made sure to let me know that if I bought something from the street vendors that I should only pay 10rmb for it, because if she couldn’t get the money then by golly she was going to make sure that the street vendor got shafted too! Anyway, back to the Terra Cotta factory…we did buy some things but it was way overpriced and trying to keep Little man under control in a place that is full of breakable figurines simply pushed me over the edge. So we didn’t stay very long. We did get a couple of great pictures, though.
The Terra Cotta Warriors were interesting, but it was very crowded and busy that day. So we spent most of the day dodging other tourists, dodging Chinese people who wanted pictures of our kids or with our kids (and wanted to touch, pat, and generally annoy our kids), and trying to keep the kids from going just plain nuts. By about the 2nd building of warriors Little man and Clo-bear had pretty much had enough. They kept wondering why we were looking at yet another stone statue of a horse, or man, or headless man. So we wrapped it up, had lunch and then moved onto the next thing on our itinerary.
This is a side story but I have to include it here. Kevin and I went to dinner with another Microsofty that is living here permanently. He took us to an Indian restaurant that was really pretty good. But Kevin and I have noticed that we really don’t like eating at places that are frequented by other foreigners. In fact, we have noticed that we really don’t like being anywhere where there are other foreigners. So this friend of ours told us about a website (and in fact I think it is now a book as well) called, "What white people like." In this book one of the things that white people like is to be the only white person in a group of Chinese people. I think this is true! I found that every restaurant that we went to in Xi’an was almost solely patronized by foreigners and it was really getting on my nerves! I hated it. I like it here in Shanghai because we can go into a restaurant and be the only foreigners there and it is great! I actually felt myself getting very grumpy and almost growling at other foreigners as I watched them ruining my China! Anyway… I digress.
When we got to the Qin Dynasty Terra Cotta warrior museum we got the chance to buy a book and have the farmer who discovered them while digging for a well in 1974 (i think…see how much I was paying attention), sign our book. Now when he signs the book you are not allowed to take his picture. Apparently, it upsets him tremendously and there is a big sign that says, "NO PHOTOS!" No please or anything. Later when we got back to Shanghai, I was talking to my friend about having the old man sign the book. She said that she is convinced that they change the old farmer out every couple of years and that’s why you can’t take his picture! He keels over and they get a new old guy to sit at the desk and sign books all day. Somehow, I really wouldn’t be at all surprised if that were true!
After the Warriors we went to the South gate of the Xi’an City wall. Just like it sounds it is a wall that surrounded the city of Xi’an. Of course now the city has expanded beyond the wall. But it is still a pretty cool thing to see…but apparently not cool enough to compete with a hill of ants because that is what my kids did once we scaled the 1000 stairs to get up to the top of the city wall. They sat in the shade and looked at a very busy ant hill by a bench! What are you going to do. Even the wood cannons weren’t enough to attract my children’s attention. Not to mention that we apparently missed a pretty impressive catapult because we couldn’t tear the kids away from the…ants!
Shortly after this we let Maria (our guide)know that the kids were done! So we called it a day and went to dinner and bed on our slabs of granite.
Day 2 was a bit more my speed. First thing in the morning we went to the Great Mosque. It was beautiful. Not to mention there was a market all up the narrow street leading to the Mosque. This was the kind of market I had always envisioned when I thought of China. It is an outdoor market with stall after stall of junk. I loved it. But since Maria was in "LETS MOVE IT" mode, I didn’t get to look much. The Mosque was beautiful and the garden was beautiful as well, but unfortunately after having gone to Tiger Hill and the Lions Garden, there just is no comparison. Of course the crowning jewel in our trip to see the Great Mosque was the misprinted sign for the tower of retrospection. I wonder how that makes retrds feel?
After the Great Mosque we went to the Wild Goose Pagoda. There was some very long and drawn out reason for why it was called the Wild Goose Pagoda involving a dead bird falling from the sky, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was. We essentially saw 15 different versions of how Buddha became Buddha in jade, wood and painted murals in several buildings. It was interesting but I really like the part where we got to sit in a gazebo amongst some beautiful rose bushes while the kids just ran around pretending they were horses, and what not. We also discussed the animal for each of the years we were born. Kevin, M and I are all tigers, while Clo-bear is a serpent and Little man is a rooster. Somehow, Little man decided that a rooster wasn’t good enough for him so he became very adamant that he was a DRAGON! Then he proceded to chase his sisters around the garden yelling, "NO I’ne a Dragon!"
That night we went to the Tang Dynasty Dinner. It was cool, but later I found out that our guide was skimping on our meals and she didn’t order us the dumplings. Apparently, this venue is also famous for their dumplings. I was sooo mad about that. After the trip, I realized that she had been skimping on all of our meals! Toward the end of our trip a waitress at one of the restaurants made the comment that we were not getting very many meat dishes and mostly vegetable dishes which are cheaper! Oh well.
Anyway, Little man made it through dinner but we realized that he was not going to make it through the show. So Kevin caught a cab and took him back to the room where Case could watch a movie and Kevin could get some work done on a presentation he needed to get done. The girls and I enjoyed the show but poor M couldn’t see of the bazillions of loawai’s blocking the way! So she ended up standing for most of the show while Clo-bear sat on my lap. M loved the dance of Spring with the girls all dressed in green and the long long sleeves, while Clo-bear thought the mask dance to get rid of evil spirits was pretty cool. She liked it when the giant mask’s eyes glowed red!
The next day we rounded out our tour by going and seeing the Han Dynasty Terra Cotta Warriors and the Emporers Tomb. In my opinion, I think everyone should go and see the Qin Dynasty warriors just to say, "yeah, I saw them." But if you want a truly impressive representation of Chinese history go and see the Han Dynasty warriors. They are much much smaller, but the detail and the amount of information it gives about life in the Han dynasty is much more impressive. Not to mention the museum is much newer and is just cool. They have built a plexiglass viewing area where you can walk out over the excavation sites and look down and see the relics in the ground as they were found. Not to mention they have a very entertaining holographic movie telling a story about the Han dynasty! It is more expensive than the Qin Warrior museum, but worth it. The place was practically empty so the kids could run and look at everything and Little man thought it was so cool to stand 20-30 feet above the excavation site and look straight down onto it!
That was our trip to Xi’an. Of course everyone knows how this trip ended, if you don’t know make sure to read my blog about the earth quake.
