Trip

16/6/02 Xi'an, China (phillip)

Click here for pictures from China

I like Rule #6

"China is a great sleeping giant. Let her sleep. For when she awakens she will astonish us all."- Napoleon

How true is that? This place is crazy but phenomenal. Once again plans have changed. Joseph ended up taking the same train as me to Xi'an (pronounced Chi-anne) but we were in separate carriages. As I sat down I said hello in Mandarin to my 5 roommates. It looked to be an older Chinese family and they laughed when I said hello. Always a good sign. I sat on a wee chair and got out my book to read but one of the ladies came to talk to me. This is very common that someone will see you and come practice their English. Of all the people I've met outside the tourist industry here, I'm always the first westerner that they've spoken to.

I chat with the lady whose English is decent. It's actually very hard to talk for many hours about nothing. I know, I do it all the time at home, but with the limited words it's always challenging. It helps a lot that I now know the word for Scotland in Mandarin: "Sugaland". When the conversation lulls, the father always seems to give the girl a new topic to keep it going. Meanwhile another girl is always trying to get in on the action (her English is much better). It does seem that all across China, girls are trying to find ways out and that seems to make it easy to meet girls!)

Once in Xi'an we try to get our train tickets for that afternoon. Joe and I are going to different places but we were going to tour the Terracotta Warrior site together before splitting ways. My next destination was Yichang and the 3 Gorges Dam. The problem is that China is suffering from sever flooding right now and the railway line to Yichang is destroyed. So, no Yichang. I did ask about flights, but they're US$100 and I can't justify it for a 3-hour tour of a dam. Pity.

Joe also had trouble since just about everything is booked solid out of here. I end up buying a ticket to Guangzhou, which is at least near Hong Kong and Macau. Unfortunately I couldn't get it until two days later. Joe had a similar problem. No big deal, he was heading first to a mountain a few hours away, so I opted to go there.

The Terracotta Warriors were great. Apart from the Chinese touting it as the universally recognized 8th wonder of the world, it wasn't a let down. We negotiated a local bus to the site with a bunch of Chinese tourists and off we went. It was expensive to get in though; almost US$10. Basically about 20 years ago some farmers digging a well came across, underground, a 7,000 member stone army built approx 3,000 years before. The life-sized figures are all unique and represent exactly how an army would've looked. Amazing stuff. It was actually presented really well too. Way to go China!

Following that we found a bus, (trust me, since no one speaks English and no signs are ever in English, this is tough!), to a little town which I won't even try to spell. Basically the town is the home of the most sacred mountain in China. It's a Daoism thing. Apparently there is a guesthouse about 4km up the mountain. A bit dubiously I followed, it was getting dark. After a lot of pointing and gesturing sleep we did find the place. Passed only Chinese on the way and said Nee-How (hello in Mandarin) to everyone. We joked that we do more for international relations in one day than the UN does in a year! Just about every person would laugh and smile, and some even asked us to be in their pictures! Pretty cool.

We find the guesthouse and decide to ascend the rest of the mountain at 1am. We knew the going would be tough and the heat would make it far more difficult. The Chinese that come here on pilgrimage almost universally ascend overnight. Unfortunately we slept in till 5am!

Boy was the hike tough, but we entertained ourselves by saying nee-how to everyone on the way up. It's amazing how some people are actually too scared (or something) to look at us, but as soon as we say hello they're always friendly. I loved every minute!

I really hope the pictures come out because it was beautiful up there. The steps were insane, there were chains so that you wouldn't fall back and definitely die! The peak was cool, the views were good but not fabulous. We were unsure if it was smog or cloud cover, it's hard to tell in China.

We did the peak in amazing time, well, the way up was slower, but we pretty much ran the way down as carefully as we could. Passing lots of temples and such on the way. The temples here are very different from Thailand. The differences between Buddhism and Daoism I still don't understand but the gods look very very different.

Bus back to Xi'an and found a hostel. My train to Guangzhou leaves tomorrow; another 20-hour journey on a Chinese train should be fun. It's funny because I remember the Texas Crew road trips seeming terribly long at 20 or 30 hours and nowadays I can do it so easily!

Hope you're all having fun! Next stop is Macau. If you haven’t heard of it think of Hong Kong but instead of English colonists it's Portuguese. There'll be lots of churches and such; I hear architecturally it's wonderful (if you ignore the Casinos!). I'm pretty confident about being able to get there on local buses, but worst case I can just grab a train back to Hong Kong and take a ferry across.

Posted by Admin at June 16, 2002 02:03 AM