Xian (not as bad as first thought)
Editor's note: This post was originally written on Saturday evening. It is not up to date on where I am now or even where I was when I wrote it. I'll hopefully be writing more later, even if its a brief filler....
OK. So the first thing that I should say is that despite my room here being a bit shitty (forgot to mention the noisy aircon amongst my complaints I think) I am liking this hostel. For a start they gave me beer tokens - one for every night of my stay (only about a half pint but its still good). The tour to the terracotta warriors was good and they have what they call the Travelers cafe (or similar) which is a cafe bar where everybody comes to be sociable. Last night was the dumpling party where they let us make dumplings (they provided us with filling and dough basically so it wasn't really that hard). Its been much easier to be sociable despite being in a room on my own. I do still feel my room is majorly skanky but I am being prepared to forgive them for this.
So, I'm sure you are all really interested in what I've been up to recently. Right now I'm chilling with some people watching Transformers as I blog my little blog. I think since last I wrote I have seen Terracotta warriors and the Big Goose Pagoda (and surrounding temple and stuff). Oh, and taking a wander around the local area paid my respects to the city god and saw an old Mosque. It was a bit strange seeing Arabic and Chinese writing on the opposite side of tablets...
Anyway, lets try to go in order....
When I got here on Thursday night I sorted out some basic admin type stuff. This included worrying about what I was doing in terms of moving on. I went for a train ticket in the end but as I think I mentioned (writing without net connection so not sure what I said) there are problems with the train lines apparently. I'm surprised that this doesn't seem to stop people selling tickets and I'm currently hearing bad things about my chances tomorrow. The guy in reception when I went to talk to them said he didn't know and it might or might not be running tomorrow. Some other people I spoke to said that yesterday they were told it would be down for three or four days. On the plus side I have my room booked here still so it should be fine if the train is canceled. I might get them to actually phone the station and ask or something...
Sorry, that was a bit of a big aside. While booking train tickets I also booked myself on the last spot on a terracotta warriors tour organised by the hostel. There was a minimum of 5 people needed but apparently 8 had already booked on for Friday and I got the last spot.
So Friday morning at the sane time of 9:40 I met up with people in reception where we headed out to the minibus and met our tour guide Billy. The tour group was me, three Canadian guys, a danish couple and a danish family of three. We had ourselves packed into a minibus and headed on our way. being able to chat and joke around made it so much better an experience than the Great Wall tour I was on in Beijing.
On the way to our first stop we were all rather surprised by what we saw while driving down the motorway (or similar enough). A guy was walking along the hard shoulder looking from behind like he was just wearing a shirt. Bare footed ad everything. As we went passed we were all rather surprised to note that he really was just wearing a shirt and totally unbuttoned too so showing off everything he had to the whole world. None of us worked out what was going on and Billy was as confused as the rest of us...
Our first stop was a terracotta factory where they made replicas of the warriors. It was quite interesting because they did talk a bit about the processes of how they were made and painted and that kind of thing. I'd never really realised that they were originally all fully painted rather than being just terracotta looking. :)
After the interesting bit of the workshop it then largely went into a sales pitch. You can, if you want, buy full size terracotta warriors if you want to to stick in your garden or maybe use as a coat rack or something... The price tag was quite high though. :)
After that we headed to the terracotta warrior "museum". It wasn't much of a museum. There was very little information on the history of the warriors and so on and so forth. There was a cinema showing a film that said a little bit on the subject. It was a circular cinema with 9 screens around the walls in a circle that looked like it had at times been filmed with 9 cameras pointing outwards in a circle... It was kind of cool. The acting and fights and stuff reminded me of watching an episode of Monkey. The nature of General Xiang Yu was irrepressible! (He's a bloke that long ago broke into the terracotta resting places and torched them and smashed them up a load - a major reason why they are not in better condition I think),
The place itself was not what I expected though. I was aware that it was a live archaeological site so was expecting something a little less permanent... As it is though all three pits have had massive buildings built around them. Like massive warehouse type things. I'm surprised they managed to do it safely without causing problems. I like to think that back in the 70s tourism wasn't driving the need to do this ad so it was done for archaeological reasons but I don't really know enough to be sure.
Pit 1 was the most impressive and what most people will probably have in mind. It was here that it has been most extensively excavated and there are rows of trenches dug out with the warrior standing in them. It was quite awe inspiring. And impressive that they are still seemingly a long way from actually having dug everything up. I don't know if they sometimes do real archeology when people are watching but if not I doubt that leaves much time for them to do it. China is seemingly becoming very aware of the damage that the pollution here is doing when they unearth things so may well be deliberately leaving a lot of it buried.
Pit 2 was mostly buried still. They had uncovered as far as the original wooden roof that was in place (for those unaware they were in trenches, covered in wooden beams, covered in cloth and then that was buried). Some of it had been uncovered but to a large extent it was just roof visible.
Pit 3 was apparently the command area. It was much smaller and had been completely excavated (it looked like anyway). There was apparently a planning area and a prayer area in this pit. It surprises me that they didn't actually just make an army but also make a practical command post as well. I can see why the stories of them being real soldiers turned to stone come from because they all look realistic and there is so much small detail they put in as well as just making the soldiers.
There was also another exhibit of some of what they dug up from the emperor's tomb. It was a little boring frankly. Half scale bronze chariots. Woo. After the terracotta warriors it was just a massive anti-climax. I am disappointed though that Billy didn't point us at the final section of this museum which I only noticed as we were leaving which seemed to be about the recent construction of the museum and so on. It might have been dull but I'd have liked to look. This is the trouble with a tour group, unfortunately.
Then we headed back to Xi'an. It was relatively early when we got back (3-4ish) so after a bit of chilling in my room I grabbed some food and went exploring. I found some wonderful little back streets packed with shops and stalls. And I also found the ancient mosque. At least I think I did. It wasn't really that exciting. As mentioned above the most interesting thing was to see carvings with both Arabic and Chinese characters on them. Otherwise didn't seem that worth being in the guide book. Though it is possible I missed a door to more exciting things...
Then I found the temple to the city god. It wasn't in any guidebooks but the map I got from the hostel had it marked. It was a horrendous map not to scale and not even showing things in the right place but I think what I found was the temple to the city god. There was certainly incense burning going on outside and a shrine like thing. So I went and paid my respects and thanked him for letting me stay in his city and all the polite things I figure you should. :)
After my wandering I headed back, chilled in my room for a bit and then headed up to the Traveler's cafe for the dumpling party. It was delayed due to the kitchen staff being busy cooking food (I think). When we kicked off though they bought two plate of stuff out, one was vege stuff and one meat stuff (seemed to be ground up meat and herbs and things). They then had a big long thing roll of doe and a big knife. They cut bits off and rolled them int flat round discs about three or four centimeters across. We then took these,put filling on them, folded them up and squeezed round the edges to seal them and then stuck them on plates for later cooking.
Later I took a go at rolling. It was about as easy as you'd expect really once you got the hang of how thick they needed to be... Then we waited a while for them to cook and they bought them back and we ate them. And they were yummy. There was a dipping sauce too but it was rather hot so I skipped out on it.
I then spent the rest of the night variously messing around on the net (thanks to Dave Sheldon each of the subdirectories in http://the.earth.li/~chris/holiday_pics/pics/ now has a thumbnail index making it easier to look through pics - and there are lots more there than last time I drew your attention to them), playing pool and chatting to people.
OK. So the first thing that I should say is that despite my room here being a bit shitty (forgot to mention the noisy aircon amongst my complaints I think) I am liking this hostel. For a start they gave me beer tokens - one for every night of my stay (only about a half pint but its still good). The tour to the terracotta warriors was good and they have what they call the Travelers cafe (or similar) which is a cafe bar where everybody comes to be sociable. Last night was the dumpling party where they let us make dumplings (they provided us with filling and dough basically so it wasn't really that hard). Its been much easier to be sociable despite being in a room on my own. I do still feel my room is majorly skanky but I am being prepared to forgive them for this.
So, I'm sure you are all really interested in what I've been up to recently. Right now I'm chilling with some people watching Transformers as I blog my little blog. I think since last I wrote I have seen Terracotta warriors and the Big Goose Pagoda (and surrounding temple and stuff). Oh, and taking a wander around the local area paid my respects to the city god and saw an old Mosque. It was a bit strange seeing Arabic and Chinese writing on the opposite side of tablets...
Anyway, lets try to go in order....
When I got here on Thursday night I sorted out some basic admin type stuff. This included worrying about what I was doing in terms of moving on. I went for a train ticket in the end but as I think I mentioned (writing without net connection so not sure what I said) there are problems with the train lines apparently. I'm surprised that this doesn't seem to stop people selling tickets and I'm currently hearing bad things about my chances tomorrow. The guy in reception when I went to talk to them said he didn't know and it might or might not be running tomorrow. Some other people I spoke to said that yesterday they were told it would be down for three or four days. On the plus side I have my room booked here still so it should be fine if the train is canceled. I might get them to actually phone the station and ask or something...
Sorry, that was a bit of a big aside. While booking train tickets I also booked myself on the last spot on a terracotta warriors tour organised by the hostel. There was a minimum of 5 people needed but apparently 8 had already booked on for Friday and I got the last spot.
So Friday morning at the sane time of 9:40 I met up with people in reception where we headed out to the minibus and met our tour guide Billy. The tour group was me, three Canadian guys, a danish couple and a danish family of three. We had ourselves packed into a minibus and headed on our way. being able to chat and joke around made it so much better an experience than the Great Wall tour I was on in Beijing.
On the way to our first stop we were all rather surprised by what we saw while driving down the motorway (or similar enough). A guy was walking along the hard shoulder looking from behind like he was just wearing a shirt. Bare footed ad everything. As we went passed we were all rather surprised to note that he really was just wearing a shirt and totally unbuttoned too so showing off everything he had to the whole world. None of us worked out what was going on and Billy was as confused as the rest of us...
Our first stop was a terracotta factory where they made replicas of the warriors. It was quite interesting because they did talk a bit about the processes of how they were made and painted and that kind of thing. I'd never really realised that they were originally all fully painted rather than being just terracotta looking. :)
After the interesting bit of the workshop it then largely went into a sales pitch. You can, if you want, buy full size terracotta warriors if you want to to stick in your garden or maybe use as a coat rack or something... The price tag was quite high though. :)
After that we headed to the terracotta warrior "museum". It wasn't much of a museum. There was very little information on the history of the warriors and so on and so forth. There was a cinema showing a film that said a little bit on the subject. It was a circular cinema with 9 screens around the walls in a circle that looked like it had at times been filmed with 9 cameras pointing outwards in a circle... It was kind of cool. The acting and fights and stuff reminded me of watching an episode of Monkey. The nature of General Xiang Yu was irrepressible! (He's a bloke that long ago broke into the terracotta resting places and torched them and smashed them up a load - a major reason why they are not in better condition I think),
The place itself was not what I expected though. I was aware that it was a live archaeological site so was expecting something a little less permanent... As it is though all three pits have had massive buildings built around them. Like massive warehouse type things. I'm surprised they managed to do it safely without causing problems. I like to think that back in the 70s tourism wasn't driving the need to do this ad so it was done for archaeological reasons but I don't really know enough to be sure.
Pit 1 was the most impressive and what most people will probably have in mind. It was here that it has been most extensively excavated and there are rows of trenches dug out with the warrior standing in them. It was quite awe inspiring. And impressive that they are still seemingly a long way from actually having dug everything up. I don't know if they sometimes do real archeology when people are watching but if not I doubt that leaves much time for them to do it. China is seemingly becoming very aware of the damage that the pollution here is doing when they unearth things so may well be deliberately leaving a lot of it buried.
Pit 2 was mostly buried still. They had uncovered as far as the original wooden roof that was in place (for those unaware they were in trenches, covered in wooden beams, covered in cloth and then that was buried). Some of it had been uncovered but to a large extent it was just roof visible.
Pit 3 was apparently the command area. It was much smaller and had been completely excavated (it looked like anyway). There was apparently a planning area and a prayer area in this pit. It surprises me that they didn't actually just make an army but also make a practical command post as well. I can see why the stories of them being real soldiers turned to stone come from because they all look realistic and there is so much small detail they put in as well as just making the soldiers.
There was also another exhibit of some of what they dug up from the emperor's tomb. It was a little boring frankly. Half scale bronze chariots. Woo. After the terracotta warriors it was just a massive anti-climax. I am disappointed though that Billy didn't point us at the final section of this museum which I only noticed as we were leaving which seemed to be about the recent construction of the museum and so on. It might have been dull but I'd have liked to look. This is the trouble with a tour group, unfortunately.
Then we headed back to Xi'an. It was relatively early when we got back (3-4ish) so after a bit of chilling in my room I grabbed some food and went exploring. I found some wonderful little back streets packed with shops and stalls. And I also found the ancient mosque. At least I think I did. It wasn't really that exciting. As mentioned above the most interesting thing was to see carvings with both Arabic and Chinese characters on them. Otherwise didn't seem that worth being in the guide book. Though it is possible I missed a door to more exciting things...
Then I found the temple to the city god. It wasn't in any guidebooks but the map I got from the hostel had it marked. It was a horrendous map not to scale and not even showing things in the right place but I think what I found was the temple to the city god. There was certainly incense burning going on outside and a shrine like thing. So I went and paid my respects and thanked him for letting me stay in his city and all the polite things I figure you should. :)
After my wandering I headed back, chilled in my room for a bit and then headed up to the Traveler's cafe for the dumpling party. It was delayed due to the kitchen staff being busy cooking food (I think). When we kicked off though they bought two plate of stuff out, one was vege stuff and one meat stuff (seemed to be ground up meat and herbs and things). They then had a big long thing roll of doe and a big knife. They cut bits off and rolled them int flat round discs about three or four centimeters across. We then took these,put filling on them, folded them up and squeezed round the edges to seal them and then stuck them on plates for later cooking.
Later I took a go at rolling. It was about as easy as you'd expect really once you got the hang of how thick they needed to be... Then we waited a while for them to cook and they bought them back and we ate them. And they were yummy. There was a dipping sauce too but it was rather hot so I skipped out on it.
I then spent the rest of the night variously messing around on the net (thanks to Dave Sheldon each of the subdirectories in http://the.earth.li/~chris/holiday_pics/pics/ now has a thumbnail index making it easier to look through pics - and there are lots more there than last time I drew your attention to them), playing pool and chatting to people.