Geeky Gringa: Travel Journal: CHINA

XI'AN

Terra cotta warrior museum

Every single night I go to bed completely exhausted and wake up the next morning before the sun and all alone. It’s a bit daunting. But today was pretty spectacular. We went straight away to Xi’an’s main attraction: Terra-cotta warriors. There are 3 buildings that house 3 different dig sites. The first was amazing. I felt like I was in a NatGeo issue. The soldiers were better than I could have imagined, and I even saw archaeological workers excavating and working on yet uncovered warriors! The second building was basically a huge dirt field, as nothing had been uncovered yet. The third was the smallest, but still neat with the different, more high ranking soldiers.

Dayan pagoda

The rest of the afternoon kind of runs together. We spent 3 hours at the terra-cotta warrior museum, ate a great lunch under the pretense of a "noodle making demonstration," and then crammed in several other tours. One was a Buddhist temple called the Dayan pagoda. I wish we could have spent more time here. I could have spent at least an hour just looking around at the gorgeous shrines, temples, artwork and garden. To compensate, as well as satisfy my need for both heat relief and touristy souvenirs, I bought a decorative Dayan pagoda fan from a vendor. It was also only 10 yuan ($1.66), which blew my mind.

The last tour was a quick walk around the Xi'an city wall south gate. Pretty, but not nearly as impressive after climbing the Great Wall.

Dinner was at a theater and was followed by the Tang dynasty dinner show. I LOVED this. The music was good, the dancing and costumes were great, and the instruments were awesome... Definitely my cup of tea. I was even getting a little peeved at the surrounding negativity. People in the group complain about the food, the music, the singing, the walking... For heaven's sake, you are in China! Use your chopsticks, appreciate your surroundings, and shut the hell up. It drives me crazy.

Ethnocentric idiots aside, it was an amazing day.

Observations: Xi'an is beautiful at night, all lit up - it is like a mix between Vegas and Christmas but with an Asian spin; there is a lot of red everywhere you go; in taxis, the default passenger seat seems to be up front next to the driver rather than in the back seat.