When we arrived in Xi'an, we were so used to the cold in Beijing that 35 degrees F was such a wonderful treat! Xi'an's population is about 8 million so compared to 16 million in Beijing, everything looked so spacious. Our hotel was right in downtown Xi'an about a 2 minute walk away from the Bell Tower. Xi'an is one of the few cities in China that has its original protective wall intact so it was pretty impressive coming into the city and seeing the wall. From the airport, Vinny and I were able to take the public airport bus for only 25 yuan per person instead of paying the 150-200 yuan taxi ride. We're getting pretty good about budget traveling since our money supply isn't as plenty as when we first started on our trip (I guess not that it was that plenty to begin with).
The first thing we did in Xi'an was go to the mosque where basically there is a street market with lots of street food galore. There is quite a large Muslim population in Xi'an and Vinny and I had one of the best street food items I've ever had. I like to call it the "Chinese Quesadilla" since it was beef or lamb placed in between two sheets of wonton like wrappers that were as large as regular quesadilla and then pan fried. They were delicious. Vinny was a great tour guide as we wandered around the mosque area eating various street foods. My favorite was the fresh squeezed pomegranate juice. Yummy!
On our 2nd day in Xi'an, we took a tour bus out to see the Terracotta warriors. For my fellow City High-Middle alumni, although Mr. Vandenberg's world history class wasn't the most amazing thing ever, I definitely enjoyed learning about China and its history. I don't know if you guys remember but we watched a video on the terracotta warriors and I remember thinking back in 8th grade and even getting chills about how all these warriors were constructed and the time and effort that went into their production. Now fast forward 11 years later, I'm standing in Pit #1 of the terracotta warrior site, looking down on these impressive warriors. Yup the feeling of chills taking over as I stood there in awe was still there. Although it was chilly the day we went and considering that most of the excavation site is semi-outdoors, our entire tour group was a little cold but that also meant less tourists. There were some spots that if the guard wasn't watching, I could have reached out and almost touched some of the warriors. It was an amazing sight and I would definitely recommend it to anyone going to China.
Side note: We met these 4 professors who were deans from their respective disciplines (Engineering, Law, Literature, and Biology) from a university in Malaysia. The professors were in China recruiting students from Chinese universities to participate in a student-exchange program with Malaysian students. The professors were part of our tour group and they were a riot! Just imagine 4 nutty professors with various accents (Malay + Indian, Malay + Chinese, Malay + English), it was great. They kept complaining about how cold it was since Malaysia's average temperatures are 80-90 F and they thought that the cold would be refreshing but in turn, all these could do was complain. It was pretty funny. When our tour guide announced that we would have a total of 2 hours to tour the terracotta warriors site, one of the professors announced, "2 hours?! Oh goodness, how about 2 hours hanging out with the bus driver in the warm bus instead?" They were very fun to talk to and if any of my fellow blog readers are interested in studying abroad in Malaysia, I have the hook-up for you since they exchanged contact information with us.
On our final day in Xi'an, Vinny and I rented bicycles and tried to ride around the entire perimeter of the wall. So we made it about 1/8 of the way before I deemed that the wall was too bumpy, the tire wheels too flat, and the air around us too smoggy to allow for proper breathing. I don't have asthma but I felt that the smog in the air was too much for my poor bronchioles (I had a little difficulty breathing) so we stopped after about 20 minutes of biking and headed back to return our bikes. During our brief bike ride, we saw many workers building what looked like extravagant float-like displays for the upcoming Chinese New Year celebration. They were painstakingly gluing bits of fabric over wire frames that were made to resemble trees, lanterns, and other various displays. It was quite pretty.
We ended our day with a dinner date at Pizza Hut. Vinny and I joked about how we flew all the way to Asia to have dinner at Pizza Hut but it looked so popular with the locals. Our pizza basically tasted like a big saltine cracker with a little tomato sauce and cheese sprinkled on top. It was interesting but I'll take my NYC pizza from Difara's any day over Pizza Hut...
No comments:
Post a Comment