Terracotta Soldiers!!

I have a new favorite Chinese city: Xi'an. Xi'an was NOTHING like what I expected it to be. I was expecting a smaller, relatively rural and remote town with mostly tourists, and what I got was nothing of the sort. Although it is technically smaller than Tianjin, Xi'an is much more densely arranged, with both people and buildings. It's a really interesting setup - it's an ancient city with historic architectural sites, but around and within it has sprung a busy and vibrant city. See the picture on the right, the ancient bell tower acts as the center of a traffic roundabout, with a huge shopping mall in the background.

This is a view from inside the drum tower, which was used originally to signal the time of day, and then also for announcing weather forecasts (I may have that wather part incorrect...). Both the bell and drum towers had some interesting exhibits, and I was debating picking up various souvenirs, but I kept deciding not to, since everything is so mass-produced. I figure my pictures are the most authentic items I left Xi'an with.

It's the most fascinating blend of old and new I've seen. The city is still surrounded by a moat and a large wall, which originally shut at the end of each day and opened the next morning. One of the more fun parts of the trip this weekend was renting bikes for an hour to ride on top of the wall, which was much more physically demanding than I expected, haha. But, I'm excited that I have ridden a bike in China! Only not with hundreds of other bikes and traffic, which we have seen in so many movie scenes in America. Actually the other day, my classmates and I were riding in a taxi and we saw a woman on a bike who had been hit by taxi and was laying on the ground. Traffic is so dangerous here...

The highlight of the weekend for me was visiting the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the Emperor of the Qin dynasty. Seeing the excavation sites in person and all the

terracotta and bronze sculptures was amazing, truly breathtaking. It's funny, since there's so much to see, we are always told "meet back in 45 minutes" or "alright you have 15 minutes, that should be plenty of time," but I could honestly spent countless hours at each location. I would love to return to these sites for research in the future. There was no excavation happening while we were there, but there were sites set up and in progress. The actual location of the Emperor's body has not been opened yet, as there has not been a method yet created to preserve the integrity of the artifacts inside; it will be extremely interesting and historic when the tomb is finally excavated.

After visiting the soldiers, we went to a palace that the emperor had created especially for Dowager Cixi. It is quite large, and very peaceful. Every evening there is a light show and a performance, which likens the location to the World Showcase events at Epcot Center at Disney World (Orlando, FL). Also, we visited a mosque and the cultural street of the local Muslim population.

The Chinese population is 95% Han ethnicity, and the remaining minority ethnicities seem to all cluster together in various neighborhoods. Xi'an happened to have a dense community of Muslims, and we saw an "ethnic minorities neighborhood" in Beijing. It would be interesting to do a socialogical study of the various groups in China, and learn the different norms and taboos; apparently intermixing of ethnicities is not common, as the 5% has not been absorbed by the overwhelming majority thus far.

It's the last few days of my experience in China this year, so I'm going to try and make the best of it!! I'm excited to go back to the U.S., but I've really grown accustomed to my daily routine here. There are always pro's and con's, a significant CON would be the usage of trains between cities! We traveled via rail from Xi'an back to Tianjin, which took around 19 or so hours. It is mostly huge masses of people being herded from one area to another in sweltering conditions, and heaven help you if you are either physically disabled or have more than an airplane carry-on-sized roller suitcase, and you should just forget travelling altogether if you are both disabled and have luggage.

(Sidebar: I'm really not sure how the handicapped population of China gets anywhere -- every site we have visited has been non-wheelchair-equipped. I wonder if there are government efforts to install thousands, probably millions are needed, of handicap ramps and railings in preparation for the Olympics??)

Anyway, the train was certainly an experience, and we take another to Shanghai this weekend, but I have heard that it will be more comfortable and cleaner. Let me tell you, waking up in the middle of the night in a shoebox that has been mounted onto the wall, with five other shoeboxes around you, with your skin sticking to the wall, searching around you for your shoes in the dark, climbing down a metal ladder without kicking anyone in the face, all to go pee into a hole in the floor of a shaking railway car and making sure you don't slip on who knows what on the floor surrounding said hole, and then reversing the process to get back into your shoebox is NOT the rail equivalent of "flying the friendly skies." When we first boarded the train, it was cute. "Yay for bunk beds and trains and long sleepover trips" quickly turned into "let's play how many diseases do I think I have contracted?" But, as my classmate said about biking the wall of Xi'an, it builds character. We should all be the most character-laden people you'll ever see once we get back. :)

Got to run, but hope you all are doing well!! See you soon!

Zaijian!