Xi'an

I'm currently in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, but I still have China and Melbourne to catch up on, so here I go...

While in Shanghai, I thought it'd be nice to go to a part of China I haven't been to yet, since I've already been to Shanghai twice before, this being my third trip. My cousin Julie and her husband went to Xi'an on their China tour this past year and she said it was good, so I thought I'd check it out, too. Xi'an (西安) is a city further inland than Beijing and was the capital city of the Qin and Tang Dynasties, the Qin Dynasty being Emperor Qin who united China and the Tang Dynasty being the Golden Age of China so Xi'an has a lot of history.

On my flight from Shanghai to Xi'an, I met a couple, Katy and Hai, on the shuttle bus to the plane who also turned out to be Asian-American from Los Angeles. We ended up hanging out the whole weekend and having a great time. Here are our stories!


Hai (pronounced "Hi") and Katy. Katy's currently living and working in Shanghai and her boyfriend Hai is visiting from LA. I really lucked out meeting them on the plane.

Katy's like down to the business as soon as we arrived, so we went straight to sightseeing.


Me at the Bell Tower, which is at the center of the town.


Me and Katy.


View from Bell Tower to the Drum Tower.


Show inside the Bell Tower.


How come when Asian people perform, they look so unhappy? It's as if someone's aiming a gun at them from backstage forcing them to perform. SMILE DAMMIT.


Me and Katy at the Mosque.


Hi, Hai!


Me and Katy fighting.


Me and Katy flying! (Katy's dirty mind looked at the sign and thought it was triple-X rated.)


In the Muslim Quarter.

In the Muslim Quarter, we decided rather than to have a proper dinner, we'd a little bit of all the local dishes to get an authentic experience...we ended up eating a day's worth of food in a couple of hours. Here's what we ate:


Some jelly thing stir fried.


A popular dish in this region. It's mutton soup with mutton, little pieces of dumpling bread and some glass noodles.


Deep fried pancakes with beef and veggie filling.


Baozi with soup and meat filling.


Skewers and beer.

Great thing about China is that at the end, I think we actually spent about $5 USD each in total.

The next morning, I had arranged to take a tour to the Terra Cotta Warriors and Katy and Hai joined me. We had a tour guide named Wendy who showed us around town.


Of course, since it's an Asian tour company, they took us to some souvenior shop that sells carpets and furniture on the way to the soldiers. Here's me as a Terra Cotta Warrior.


Me with Emperor Qin's protectors.


A close-up.


Me with Hai and Katy.


Another angle. This place is MASSIVE. There are so many of them, but they haven't even dug most of them up because they want to keep the colors preserved. (The soldiers were all painted in color, but once dug up, they oxidize and the paint goes away.)


Crouching Soldier, Hidden Hai.


Me and Katy.


Modern day soldier.

Then we went to Huaqing Hot Springs which is important for two historic reasons. First, it was the summer residence and spa for the Tang dynasty emperors. Second, it was the historical site of the Xi'an Incident where Chiang Kaishek of the Kuomintang ended up escaping to the hills after shots were fired by his own generals in an attempt to hold him hostage in negotiations with the Communist party.


Us with a statue of Lady Yang, the emporer's concubine. During the Tang dynasty, full-figured women were considered the most beautiful. Hai is touching Lady Yang's naughty bits. Dirty, dirty boy.


Tour guide said rubbing this turtle brings you luck. Especially the teeth or something.


The hot spring water fountain. The water was amazing!


Water fight! We ended up getting drenched.


Then we went to the Great White Goose Pagoda.


Katy had the brilliant idea that we should climb it, even though we were already exhausted. The pagoda is 7 stories high, but the equivalent of 22-stories high since each level is actually about 3-stories.


"Ya-ta!" I did it!

Then we went back to the city center to the City Wall, where you can ride bikes around the perimeter of the wall. It's pretty cool, especially since I found out while in Warsaw that I CAN STILL RIDE A BIKE! YAY! Magda and I went on a couple rides and it's so cool that you really never forget how to ride a bike once you learn! It's like riding a bike. So anyhow, we rented crappy Chinese Forever bikes and rode around. We couldn't do an actual circle because of construction on the wall, but we did the equivalent.


I can ride a bike!


Me at the West Gate.


Katy and Hai. Hai was showing off and doing tricks, but his crappy Chinese bicycle's tire popped so he had to walk back and get a new bike. :P


The cutest baozi in the world. This was actually fake in front of the restaurant we ate at and they didn't give us these cute pig baozi, but I stole one of these as a souvenior.


After dinner we went back to the Great White Goose Pagoda for some water show our tour guide told us about. As soon as it started though, people started running into the fountain, reminding me once again of Magda and her "villagey" comment. Hahaha.




But if you can't beat them...join them! Me being villagey.


Katy and Hai were villagey too.


So that was Xi'an. The air pollution was bad since there's a lot of coal production in this area, but it was a fantastic and interesting place. It was great to meet you, Katy and Hai! :D