Xi'an Trip

Hello everybody,

As the title says, the biggest event of the week this time around was our trip to the city of Xi'an.  This city is located in the same province as my solo trip to Pingyao was.  However, this city was farther away than Pingyao, and so we took a plane to get there instead of a train or a bus. This was a chance for me to see how flights within the country run, and I must say that they run much more smoothly than flights I've taken within the United States.  When the boarding is called, people are for the most part at the gate and ready to go.  Within a half hour of the first call for boarding, our plane was taxing to the runway on both trips.  Everything seemed very organized and ready to go as far as travelling was concerned.

As far as the city itself was concerned, Xi'an was interesting.  We visited many locations around the city during our three days there.  The two major stops on day one were the Great Wild Goose Pagoda and a history museum nearby.  These were both small stops, as we were only there in the afternoon after our flight, and we were all tired from getting up early that morning to catch the plane.

The temple at the Wild Goose Pagoda.

An ancient chess board with jade playing pieces, found at the history museum.

The high light of the second day was visiting the location of the terracotta warriors.  These warriors are fascinating to hear about, but even more interesting to see in person.  The rows of warriors, all crafted from clay and designed to look different from one another, stand in three separate pits.  The warriors, all of which are taller than me, are very intricately designed.  There are still locations in all three pits that are being excavated, and they hope to continue to find warriors the longer they dig at the sites.

This is just pit number one.  It is the largest of the pits, but all three are massive pits full of standing soldiers.

This is the best close up of a face I could get. The crowds are kept well away from the warriors, so getting detailed close up photos was difficult.

On our final day, we went to visit the old city wall, which is still standing in the city.  Development has happened on both sides of the wall, and roads go underneath the wall in many locations.  Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the wall, as I forgot my camera in the vehicle when we arrived at the wall. :/ However, it was very similar in design to that of Pingyao's wall. The biggest difference between the two sites is that the city of Pingyao is contained intisde the wall, while Xi'an has grown and absorbed the wall into the city.  I apologize for not having any pictures to share from that location. :/

Other than that, we celebrated one more birthday this week of a friend from Nepal.  That was entertaining, and involved more singing and eating, just as the first birthday did a while ago.  Also, with only three weeks left here, we have started work on our final papers for our classes.  That has started to eat up some of my time as well.  Hopefully all keeps going well during these last few weeks, and I can make the most of my time left here.  Of course I'll keep you posted on anything that does happen during these final weeks, especially the interesting things. ;) Thanks again for reading,

Adam

Pingyao - A Solo Experience

Hello again everyone,

The combination of my laziness and the things we are doing here mean that from this day on, or well, from when I started missing my Monday mark on, I won't be having a set date of publication any longer. :P I will get a post up each week for sure, but I can't promise when exactly they will show up.  With that little disclaimer out of the way, let's move on to the big event for the week:  my trip to the walled city of Pingyao.

The trip began strangely, as I ended up being the only non-Chinese speaking member to go.  The other guys here from America either had other plans for the day, or were sleeping when we were supposed to leave.  Granted, at 6:00 in the morning, I was wishing I was still asleep as well.  But instead, I boarded a train with six native Chinese speakers, hoping that the trip didn't turn into a total wash because I couldn't speak the language everyone else did.

And I wasn't disappointed.  Our tour guide spoke English, and so was able to answer all of my questions about the sites we visited.  The first of those sites was a slight (1 hour bus ride) detour from Pingyao.  Just like last week's update talked about the Rong Guo Mansion, where our book was turned into a film, this site was called the Qiao mansion, and was also the location of a movie.  However, unlike the first mansion, this mansion actually housed a family in an older dynasty.  I managed to get a few pictures here, and I'll share with you the ones that show the house the best, in my opinion.

This photo really shows the scale of the mansion. This expanse was one courtyard of the mansion.

This is a wooden replica of the mansion that is kept inside a room there.

While this garden has been, of course, refurbished and maintained, the original layout has been preserved.

After that, we drove into Pingyao, which is the last remaining walled city in China, and one of the few remaining in the world.  With a six kilometer perimeter, the city is not terribly large. And yet, it houses 45,000 people, which means that walking through the streets can be very crowded.  We took a small tour of the wall, a tour of an ancient prison and the oldest bank in China, and finally were given a chance to do a bit of wandering. Below are some pictures from my different tours in the city.

This is just one of the torture devices that was on display in the prison.  This one was used to publicly humiliate criminals, as they could be pulled around town while hung up on this smaller version of a cross.

This is the North Gate of Pingyao, and the location we were able to walk around on for our tour.

This was a small section of an old Chinese "check" which demonstrated that they used watermark techniques long before the modern era.

The wandering around town was interesting, but was also a little strange because I did my wandering alone. With no one that spoke my language very well with me, I had a lot of time to just stop and look at whatever I wanted, without having to please other group members.  Other than this trip, my week has been uneventful.  We finished the second third of our Chinese language book, and so will be taking a small test over that next week.  That means I've been doing quite a bit of studying and will continue to do so.  Hopefully, there will be some word on this music performance I talked about earlier, but as of today, we haven't heard anything. :/  I will keep you posted on anything fun that comes up when I make next week's post.  Thanks again for reading this.

Adam