China day 12

Day 12

I wake up with the light. My contacts are off, so I can’t see well but I can tell we are going through mountains. Yess!! The sun hasn’t fully risen yet. I grab my camera and use the screen to see.

We are passing through Shanxi.

This is surreal. I can't believe a place like this actually exists.

It's like... those silk paintings. They actually look like that.

I'm deleting photos like mad to catch these mountains. The battery is going to run out... blast. We sit down next to the window with a guy named Liu Sheng Lai. He tries to talk with us. His Chinese is pristine and clear, but it is way too fast. I make a mental note of why it is important to speak slowly to people who don’t understand your language well. He is interested in us. Maybe he is more interested in Mari. Mari spends a lot of time testing out our travel book “handy Chinese phrases” on him, and he buys us a drink. Eventually, we arrive at Xi’an, which is two characters. I got in an argument with Myron about this. I thought he was pronouncing it wrong, because I thought it was a single character pronounced “Xian” [which sounds more like Shien]. But in fact, it is two characters, pronounced “Shee an.” Except, they don’t really pronounce the n on the end, or it’s more nasal, so it’s like, “Shee-aa.” Whatever. The point is, I was wrong and it was really embarrassing cause I hate being wrong. But oh well.

Xian looks dirty, the sky is brownish/grey, like Beijing, and there are army trucks with army personnel around. Looks more, I dunno… communistic? Soviet era? Also, the city looks a little dirtier. Around the train station is an absolutely huge mass of people, and they are not a polite crowd. In other words, my first impression is, “ugh” [but that changed]. We are staying that night at a place called “Bob’s Guest House.” Sounds seedy - but it’s actually not. It was about half a mile from the train station, which was really convenient. The manager looks like he could be Elton’s brother and the staff are just regular young people. A really harmless place. The charge per night is 40 kuai (about 5-6 bucks) and the rooms are really excellent: clean, 3 beds, and… we have our own bathroom! And it’s clean?! This is unheard of, for 40 kuai a night. Also, we have a television, not like it will do us much good though. Oh yeah, and it is air-conditioned, and in the shower-like atmosphere of Xi’an in the summer, that is a good thing. Also, there are lots of [pirated] movies to watch downstairs, and they make food. Sometimes they don’t have what’s on the menu, depends on what’s available that day. But at least that means it’s fresh, and it certainly tasted good. [in short, if you go to Xi’an, Bob’s Guest House is not a bad place to stay].

Next up, we made our way to the Xi’an city walls for biking.

Before this point my camera ran out of Batteries, and had no more space for film [I wasted it all on the stupid Panda’s. Oh the regret!!]. But Myron lent me his [thanks Myron]. Now, about the city walls:

I had first heard about them at an Acoustical Society of America conference from my Dad’s grad student Dudley. He was telling me how tall they were. We were walking downtown, and pointing to a ledge on a tall building, he said “hmmm… they’re probably about that high.” I totally didn’t believe him.

Xi’an is actually a famous city because it was the ancient capital of China. It was basically similar in size and stature to Rome, at the same time, but in ancient China. As a result, there are some spectacular architectural left overs from its legacy. The walls surrounding the city are positively enormous. They dwarf anything I saw in England, and this was surprising to me. Myron mentioned that once before he and his friends biked around the city on the walls, so I insisted we do that again. Ironically, the charge to get onto the wall cost as much as a night at the hostel, but I had a student discount so for me it was only 20 kuai. (heh heh heh).

We biked around the city walls – 14km in circumference. I guess China has a thing for long walls. The ride was bumpy, and the bikes aren’t good, but I managed to catch some great air at portions of it.

After that we went to the Muslim quarter. First though, we had to CROSS STREETS! Crossing streets is always insane in China, but in Xi’an it was like gambling with your life. It’s Frogger for keeps. And while you are standing on the white line between one of the 5 lanes, you just sort of hope that the bus baring down doesn’t want to change lanes where you are standing. Anyway, after that harrowing experience we walked to the Muslim section. Can’t look at the mosque (can’t remember why, it was either closed or outrageously expensive) but there is a large flea market nearby with lots of nifty stuff being sold. Most interestingly there is a vendor selling painted verses from the Bible. I ask if she is a Christian. She says she is not. I wonder why she is selling verses. Maybe because Christians are a guaranteed market, when they pass through, I dunno. This place has a fair amount of Western tourists.

We walk for a ways and go to another street full of interesting shops. Things look a little higher quality here. I see a shop selling some really cool small paintings. Turns out the lady who ran the shop painted them herself. My eye catches a cool painting of a horse. Myron tells me to try to get it for 15 kuai. She won’t go lower than 20. In reality? The thing is worth way more than that, and I feel bad trying to get the price any lower. 20 kuai isn’t even 3 dollars [well, maybe now it is] and it’s a real painting. The lady is a total kick in the pants, a lot of fun.

I wander to another location, and find a street vendor selling bamboo Dizi (Chinese flutes with a membrane to make a buzzing sound). I’ve always wanted one, so I start haggling the price. Some girls find this really funny, and I get a small crowd around me, watching. Finally, I get the price down to 50, and they cheer but the vendor doesn’t look to happy. Whatever. Got my Dizi.

We are all tired from all the biking/walking so we head back to the hostel, pile into the lounge downstairs to watch a movie and order dinner. Down there I meet a girl named Chie, who is from… SENDAI!!? Wow, that is so weird. Turns out she was only in China so that she could get a permit to go to Tibet, but they wouldn’t let her for some reason. She was kind of ticked off about that, but was enjoying Xi’an anyway. I got to practice my Japanese, too, which was fun. All the movies are pirated, and the copies completely suck. Oh well. At least when they finally remembered my dinner, it tasted good.

[Final journal will probably be in a week or so.]