Winding down (the last line is rated PG-13)

This was across from our hotel in Xi'an. It is a standard noodle restaurant. Or at least as standard as they get with a sign like that.

Tonight is my last night here in the Golden Bridge International Hotel. I will be packing up my computer in a couple hours, and will be without internet until at least the 16th, perhaps my return on the 18th. I'm going to try to write the Xi'an entry now.

After the Pizza Hut deliciousness (you'll get a full report, sometime...) we took a taxi to the larger of the two Beijing train stations and got on a train to Xi'an. This was a pretty decent train, and it went a lot faster than the regular trains, though that might be because of fewer stops. Instead of an 18 hour ride it was closer to 14 or so. The train consisted entirely of soft sleepers. Soft sleepers have cabins of 4 beds instead of 6, your own mini TV that gets a decent number of channels, an actual closing door, and more all-around space. The price increase over a hard sleeper though was quite steep, though I can't recall exactly how much.

Anyhow we arrived in Xi'an around 8:00 AM or something, too early to check in to our hotel. We went to the ghetto outskirts
to see the E Pang Gong which is basically a palace that first Qin emperor (the dude with the terracotta soldiers) built for his long lost love. He never found her. He even built a little brigade of terracotta soldiers for her. I met a couple of them. The first one is me giving the general the Buddy Jesus.
After that we checked into the hotel which was pretty good by China standards. It had two beds, a TV, and a bathroom that had walls for the shower, so it had to be pretty classy. It also didn't look like a grim place unlike my dorm hotel room, and was a pretty cheery place. After finding it we wandered around looking for a "Little eats street" that was supposedly the place to go for tourists. After wandering around the city center for a good 30 minutes, it turned out we were going in wide circles around it and that the street was basically dead center of the city. We got there and I had a mirrorcake which was basically some sweetened rice paste topped with in my case, chocolate. It was also here that I discovered 羊肉泡馍 which is a soup/stew that has chunks of tender lamb, a few noodles, and balls of dough/bread. It is also served with garlic and a pepper paste on the side to mix in. It was simply fantasmagorically delicious. I bought a pack of dried instant-made variety to bring home but I'm not sure if it will compare. We shall see. Since this street was a massive tourist destination it also had some street vendors. Remember the Iraqi Most Wanted playing cards we released in 03/04 soon after the invasion? Well they had Chinese versions of those. I bought a pack, and I don't think I'm ever going to open it, I'll just admire it like a pet that doesn't move around a lot or require much care.

The next day we went to see the terracotta warriors. First though the tour guide took us to a bunch of other significantly less interesting places as if in an attempt to justify the cost of however much we paid for the day. Some of these were actually interesting. One was a place where someone held a dinner party and tried to assassinate his rival. There I had my fortune read by a genuine monk. Another was a mountain where the Communists skirmished with the Nationalist forces in 1937. They had a captured tank, and several artillery pieces. There was also a nice big piece of propaganda insulting that Nationalist dog Chiang Kai-shek. If you click, the picture should be massive enough to be able to read all the text.

Eventually we made it to the 兵马俑 and it was pretty cool. Walking into the massive pit and just seeing them arrayed before me was awesome. There really isn't a lot more to say about them. Except that on the actual site, I saw more white people concentrated in one place than I ever had before in China. They were everywhere. Americans, French, Italians, English, all sorts of the white devil had come to see just what the Discovery Channel had been blathering about.

The next day we walked around Xi'an a little and saw a couple interesting things. First, there was a "street surgery" that was basically a plan to fleece passers-by, though it was quite ingenious. There were 3 guys; one laid down and pretended to be ghastly wounded or terminally ill or something. The other two pretended to be trying to care for their friend by conducting surgery. The guy on the ground was almost completely covered by blankets, except for some opportune places uncovered where there were some intestiney-looking things supposedly coming out. Despite the massive amount of poor people in Xi'an, I believe this was fake mostly because of how they presented it: there was not a lot of urgency in them, and also it looked like due to the massive amount of covers over the man on the ground that they were trying to conceal the lack of any real trauma. Another interesting thing was the mentally disabled people.

Before you say "Eric, it's mean to laugh at retarded people!" I'll tell you I wasn't laughing so much as cringing. And not out of disgust either; many of them looked in pretty sorry states, but nothing worse than seen in Mexico. Their ploy to get money was what hurt my ears. Quite literally. One would push a wheelchair that contained another, singing, positively blasting music from a boombox. It was the loudest sustained sound I have ever heard. It was awful, several fire alarms worth of decibels and equally piercing. I am usually a sucker for giving poor people money, but no one in Xi'an got anything of mine.

Later that day we went to a large park situated around a lake in the north of town. It was pretty cool and for the second time on this trip (once at E Pang Gong) we rented a paddle boat. I was just like one of the English admirals forcing the Chinese to accept the opium trade I tell you. Just like them. Along the edge of one of the smaller ponds was a series of glass stepping-stones. We eventually had to turn back for fear of being yelled at as the sign strictly said not to walk on these, but someone before us was not so graceful. Look at the lower-left of the picture. (click for big as always)Yes, that is a shoe.

After that, we once again went to Little Eats Street and went to dinner with Shino's mom's colleague. He treated us to tons of lamb skewers and dumplings. The most filling meal I have had in this country, and the lamb skewers were probably the best food I have had here period.

The day after we went to Mount Hua, which is among the most dangerous tourist attractions around. It is not fraught with spike traps, but some of the paths up the mountain have rather inadequate railings. A slip and a fall and you're going straight down a couple hundred feet. Thankfully they had their own protection system in place: (click and read the sign)The locks at the bottom of the picture are part of a tradition: newlyweds are supposed to buy a lock and take it up then affix it to one of the chains to show something symbolic about love I'm sure. We made it maybe two thirds of the way up but had to go back down to get back to the van on time. We were supposed to be in the gondola line to the bottom at 5:00 PM which would have you back at our van by about 5:20 or 5:30. We didn't depart until after 7:00 PM thanks to one couple that maybe got lost or something, I wasn't paying attention I was too busy giving them the evil eye once they got on the bus. A similar thing happened at the terracotta warriors and we were a full hour late departing because one guy got separated from his group then apparently forgot how to use his cell phone or perhaps can't tell time. With only two samples there is an exceedingly good chance that this is just unlucky, and the other people on the buses both days seemed rather miffed too, but from my extremely limited experience it seems as though some Chinese people have a rather fluid concept of time. And when I note that, it means that someone is running very, very slow. Here is a picture of some cute little girls that were playing such universal games as tag and red-light green-light while waiting for the couple to come down from Hua Mountain:
I'm sorry if the 质量 (quality) of this entry has seemed lacking. I've tried to make up for the lack of polish by throwing ever more pictures at you. I started this an hour and a half ago, when my statement about losing the computer in two hours was more truthful. I won't be able to tell you about the soccer game or final days of the program until after Kunming at the least. Xi'an actually involved a bit more than just this but you haven't missed out on too much. You especially didn't miss out on the time I almost went number 2 in a disgusting bathroom without any toilet paper, and realized that last fact at the very last moment possible and successfully avoided a catastrophe of catastrophic proportions.

再见！