Xi'an Remembered

(Molly & Ms. Arkin)

Day One

(During the day, Pang Liu Village. See previous entries Pang Liu Village and Pang Liu Cont'd .)

For dinner we went to a dumpling restaurant. Downstairs they had a display out of all sorts of different dumplings shaped like chicken, turtles, pigs, flowers. You name it, they had it in the shape of a dumpling. We ate upstairs and they gave us rice wine to drink. It was warm and extremely sweet. The dinner must have been 10 courses of assorted dumplings. It was overwhelming but very tasty!

Day Two

On Saturday we went to the Terracotta Warriors. It was about an hour and a half from the city so on the way we stopped at a few museums and shops. First we went to the hot springs museum in which the name is deceptive. We froze to death. It was pouring rain and our umbrellas kept turning inside out and our clothes were soaked. We saw the ruins of a king’s bath houses and learned about a romantic(?) love affair between an emperor and the concubine whom he stole from his son. After the museum we went to a pottery workshop which was more like a giant souvenir shop in disguise. At first you get to see how they make the molds for the replicas of the terracotta warriors and see a few artists at work making lacquer furniture. Then you are released into a gigantic room full of souvenirs which included the replica warriors that were priced ten times higher than everywhere else!

Finally we got to see the terracotta warriors. It was very impressive. Many of them have not yet been excavated because they are waiting for improved technology. Also one thing we learned was that when they were first excavated, some of the statues still had paint on them. However, the paint has disappeared from too much contact with the atmosphere.

We had a Muslim dinner that night, which was amazing. We all liked it! There were many snacks – our favorite was the red bean pastry that was quite sweet. First they brought out a piece of thick half cooked pita bread that we tore up into TINY pieces and put in our bowls. They took our bowls and cooked the bread with lamb and cilantro soup. It tasted amazing but was very filling. Richard talked the servers out of giving us each four pieces, so we each got one. None of us even finished that!

Day Three

We went to the city wall and Molly and Steve rode tandem around the wall. Jill and Candice walked around and waited. We saw some amazing kites in the park in front of the wall. The wall was decorated with lanterns in every shape and size for the lantern festival that night. They had one lantern set of life-sized 101 Dalmations. We left and visited a mosque in the middle of the city. The architecture was in the traditional Chinese style and the mosque’s minaret was a tall pagoda in the middle of the complex. Then we went shopping in the mosque’s bizarre which had every type of souvenir we could possibly want for very cheap. That night we met Steve’s climbing friend, Liz, who is staying in xi’an for about four months. She was surprised to hear that we would stay with our host families for only two weeks each because she only stays with one host family the whole time and after three weeks still felt like she was just settling in. We went to dinner with her and then walked on top of the wall for the lantern festival. The lanterns were not much changed by being lit up, but the fireworks were impressive. People were setting them off all over the city. It was nice to be able to see them, after only hearing them all week. All sorts were going off in every direction, and it was very exciting.

Every night in Xi’an Molly. Steve and Candice went to the internet café across the street from the hotel. Jill used her computer in the room.