Extreme Biking

(Abby)

We had a late start today. Our new hotel, The Ramada, had a wide variety of choices at its breakfast buffet, ranging from fried noodles to roasted potatoes advertised as “potatoes sun”. We even had real cream for our coffees! We indulged ourselves until we had to meet our new, smiley tour guide, Alicia, and our mild-mannered driver, Tian.

First up, we all headed to the Xaanxi History Museum, but I’m going to back up a little to the ride to this destination and indulge you with the most exciting part of our, or at least mine and Ola’s, day for we spotted a Dunkin Donuts. Our shrieks of delight startled all members of the vehicle. We unfortunately were not able to stop and Alicia was not too familiar with the chain. At the museum, Alicia led us and spoke about the history and culture of this province as well as Xi’an itself. Some fun facts to take away from this experience was that cowrie shells were the first form of currency used in China and that there was a teapot invented in Xi’an that you pour water in from the bottom of the vassal, but when you turn it upright, water magically doesn’t come out! It’s a pretty cool invention.

We worked up quite the appetite walking through the museum, which we solved with a satisfying hotpot lunch. Fresh greens, dofu, egg noodles, rice noodles, dofu noodles, pork, beef and eggs were scattered across the lazy-susan for all of us to pick out and cook in our own personal pots of boiling broth. We also made our own dipping sauces by mixing together ingredients such as soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, scallions, fermented bean curd, and sesame paste. I had never done this kind of hot pot before, so I liked how personalized the whole process was.

Our next adventure was biking along the top of Xi’an’s old city wall. This wall was constructed in the Tang Dynasty and expanded upon later during the Ming, after which the oldest complete city wall stands 12 meters (40 feet) tall today and has a perimeter of 13.7 kilometers (8.5 miles). We rented bicycles and were sent off by Alicia to bike one loop, 8.5 miles (34 laps around the DS track), atop this wall. It was a very nice ride because the wall is in the middle of the city and thus has houses and people going about their everyday lives on both sides as you fly on by. There were also lanterns, or sculptures made from cloth and wire that resembled everything from dragons to Arial, displayed along the two-kilometers that surrounded the main entrance of the wall. Nik, Ola and I also enjoyed giving out friendly “nihaos” to passersby.

We were next taken to the Tang Art Museum where we were given a tour of the development of Chinese art through the ages. We also had a lesson in calligraphy, something I had been looking forward to for quite some time. Here we learned that there are eight types of brushstrokes that make up a Chinese character. Our teacher said that these strokes were the “alphabet” of the Chinese language. After practicing these strokes, we all moved onto practicing some progressively harder characters, which Ola was handpicked by the teacher for having the best calligraphy. We all also spent quite some time perusing the artwork they had for sale in the back room.

After a quick rest at the hotel, and a failed attempt for me and Ola to relocate the Dunkin Donuts we had seen earlier, we all went to a dumpling house for dinner. Here, we sampled some 16 different types of dumplings as well as had the world’s smallest dumplings. The number of these tiny dumplings you got in your bowl corresponded to a fortune, but all of these fortunes were good, as told by a chatterbox waitress, so you’re to have good luck regardless of the number of dumplings received.

To end the night, Ola and I ventured out, yet again, to locate this Dunkin Donuts that seemed to have disappeared on us (can you sense how much we needed a good iced coffee?). After 35 minutes, and a few odd turns, we turned to the nearest McCafe to get our coffee fix. Although our ultimate plan failed, we were able to get acquainted with the city pretty well and get an overall feel for Xi’an. Stay tuned though for Ola and I will have our eyes open for the next couple of days for this mysterious DDs.

Zai jian for now!