The Pleasures of Xi'an!

There is water dripping down my window as I sit here on my bed with the lamp dimmed, trying to recall the day. It’s midnight, and even though we are waking at eight tomorrow to go out on a class ‘field trip’, watching the lighting and listening to music has proved very relaxing before bed. I am hopeful that the rain will wash some of the smog from the sky, as it as not rained since I’ve been here; never thought I would pray for rain, but this is a great change.

Today started off with an eight a.m. quiz over the Song dynasty, which including questions about how the Chinese decided to revitalize Confucianism in order to preserve their culture from foreign influences. After that we had a standard two hour lecture over the next dynasty, then a presentation over the Mongols by Tyler, a fellow student. We were supposed to then watch a movie concerning Chinese history (yesterday we watched Mulan and took notes on what was culturally accurate and inaccurate), but since the projecter we usually had was being used for a French conference, we had the rest of the day off. My roommates and I, along with a couple others, decided to out into town for afternoon; we met up at twelve and head out to the bus stop on a main road, a short ways from campus.

We paid our 1 yuan fee and boarded bus 603, and I rode in the top half of the double-decker for the twenty minute ride into the center of Xi’an (the part with the giant wall around it. In an early post I mentioned that the wall is really big, but since then I’ve found out that it is 19 miles long. It has huge gates on all four sides, which are almost like castles in themselves. The center part of the city has a bell tower and a drum tower, both of which are focal points for everything else; we were going to up into them but found out it cost 30 yuan to do so. Most everyone had a list of things they wanted to buy from the ‘tourist market area’, which has all kinds of stores selling random Chinese stuff. It is funny to go through the stores looking at things to buy, because many of the shops have the same items and start with extremely high prices, for which you barter them down from (if they say 400 yuan for something, you can probably get it for 60 or 80). As soon as we reach the area where all the shops are, I stepped into one and began to look at some different silk ties. There is always so much to see, buy and experience in the market.

A view of the street with vendors

You can spend so much time within the market. Looking for that perfect gift would seem easy with the thousands of options, but it ends up being much more difficult. I tend to leave the market absolutely exhausted from all the bartering and searching, but it is worth the good deals. I was able to find a ton of great things and even made a few stops for some yummy street food!

A cart on the street selling food (of some sort)

It is easy to loose contact with the group when we are in the market, so we tend to regroup at multiple points during the adventure. When I ended up meeting up with them in the end, the others were just about done shopping. I pretty much go into a bartering situation knowing that I don’t really need what I’m looking at buying, and if the price doesn’t work out it’s no loss. Sometimes I would just barter to have fun talking with the shop owners, because they do it all the time and have all kinds of techniques to try to persuade to buy their stuff, which I then attempt to turn around on them. Once you let them know that you understand how the systems works, there is a kind of a mutual understanding that allows you to joke with them and work out a reasonable deal.

 One of the girls in our group had told us that this past summer when watching the travel channel, Samantha Brown had visited a restaurant in the area on her show, so we found it and tried the famous Jiao zi (like dumplings) there. We had plans to go see a popular light show of sorts at a nearby pagoda later that evening at 7:30, so to burn the two hours until then we headed to a nearby Starbucks after the meal. Being one of the only place in China that accepts credit cards in China, we took advantage of not having to spend our ‘trip cash’. I simply got a java chip frap., which could not have been more appetizing, while the air outside cooled as the sun disappeared. We stayed and talked on the couches there for maybe an hour, then headed out to go find the giant pagoda with the light show. Since we had no idea where to go, Aaron asked the Starbucks workers if we could have a small map of the city hanging up, and sure enough they let us take it.

Me, Matt, and Trinity outside the restaurant that was showcased on the travel channel

We walked across the city towards the south side of the wall, then exited through the large gate into the rest of the city. We somehow got separated from Brett and Lucas when they stopped to use an ATM, and since Trin left us after lunch, John, Matt, Aaron and I head off towards the pagoda, following our small tourist map. While walking we past by a long line of people out side the wall, which turned out to be hundreds of people waiting at the bus stop to catch a bus. We walked for a while, asking directions with our map from different people on the street to make sure we were going the right direction. Since we had about an hour til the light show started, we figured there was no need to take a taxi. After walking for quite a long ways we finally thought we were closing in on our destination. We stopped in at Dico’s (a Chinese knock off of KFC, which is really good) so John could use the restroom and so Matt could pick up a chicken burger with fries and a drink. By this time the show was about twenty minutes away, so we started walking much faster to get there. Once there was only a few minutes before our deadline, we began  running down the sidewalk trying to make it on time. Our main problem we soon discovered (after running for about 10 minutes) was that instead of being 4 blocks away, were actually more like 40 blocks away; the picture of the pagoda was on the edge of our map because it wasn’t actually on the map, only in direction of where the map ended.

A gate in the city wall... It's a really big wall!

We finally saw spotlights sweeping across the sky and eventually made our way (a long way at that) to the park the pagoda was in. The park was quite large and had hundreds, if not thousands of people walking around. By talking to someone we discovered that another show was to start at 8:30, so we went walking around for thirty minutes. While walking we noticed that down the middle of the park, leading to the pagoda, were large wet concrete areas with lights built into the ground, each about the size of a basketball court; it turned out that the light show was more of a water show with lights. While walking before the show time, we came across a large open area where a hundred or so Chinese women (most were older) were line dancing to music. Of course we took the opportunity to join in and take some pictures of ourselves looking like fools trying to keep up. We soon made our way back to the other side of the park where the light show was to begin. Each basketball-sized area was separated by a ten foot section of long stairs, where we made our way through the large crowd which had gathered around the perimeter, as well as on the stair sections. The show began and for about 20 minutes the fountains shot off powerful spouts of water into the air, with multiple displays of light illuminating them, all choreographed to different songs throughout playing over surrounding speakers. The show was quite impressive and lightened all of our spirits, as it was one of the most entertaining and enjoyably things we had experienced since arriving in Xi’an. Towards the end of the show the jets of water began to go higher into the air, and when combined with the wind picking up the entire crowd (exactly where we were) began to get soaked by the water blowing towards us. Hundreds of us began to quickly make our way away from the where were getting so drenched, and since one of the areas of the fountains was not on for a short part of the show, some people began to cut across it to get to a dryer location. Right as they were half way across, sure enough the jets they were standing on shot into the air, catching one man right in the chin.

The fountain/light show behind me; while it's not that impressive here, actually being there was awesome!

Once the show was over, most of the crowd (which was in most likely over a thousand) made their way toward the main road at the end of the park. At this time is also began to sprinkle, but since we were already fairly soaked we didn’t mind. The road soon turned to slight chaos as people rushed to board buses and hail taxis. We found our selves right in the middle of the struggle to find transportation back to campus. Since we didn’t know the bus systems very well, and could have easily taken a bus the wrong direction, we decide to grab a taxi. Only about one out of every 200 taxis that drove by were empty (or available to get in), so catching was turned out to be a challenge. As one taxi drove by (traffic was slow because of the horde of people crossing the street), Lucas yelled out that the man in the front seat was handing money to the driver to pay. So ran up beside the taxi to lay claim to it, racing many other Chinese men trying to do the same. I managed to attain a hold on the passenger door handle before anyone else, and jogged along side the taxi until it stopped at an appropriate spot to let it’s passenger out, all the while boxing-out anyone who might try to climb in before we could. We jump in, told the driver the name of our university, and he began taking us there. The trip wasn’t too long (only going a couple yuan over the standard starting fare), and on our way the sky began to flash with distant lighting.

I paid the driver eight yuan, and we made our way through the main gate of campus towards our dorm/hotel/where we sleep at night building. While half way across campus the sky began to rain some, eventually turning into the heavy drop now falling outside my window. Once we returned we took showers, played a couple games of Chinese chess, and examined the items others had purchased during the day, each sharing a unique story of how they either go received a great price or a not so good deal. While it ended up being a long day, in no way was it tiresome or wearisome; traveling the streets of Xi’an (the capital for many of ancient dynasties) proved enjoyable. entertaining, and enlightening. I look forward to what the rest of my time here in China holds, and what other adventures lay ahead.