I arrived in Xi'an with the Poles in tow, sporting a very sore back, but happy that, after a night of heavy rainfall, Xi'an was considerably dry, along with considerable humidity. As we arrived out of the train station, we were (as has always been the case up to now) bombarded with people yelling in English, or some form of English if we wanted a taxi driver. I followed the Poles lead, and their less-than-glamorous approach of turning around in circles with the heavy backpack, and "accidentally" hitting the obnoxious taxi drivers out of the way. It seems rude, and looking back now, it probably was. But you have to realize how aggressive they are at trying to pursue you; they'll walk in front of you, showing you all sorts of pamphlets, to try and get you to go to this or that hotel (where presumably they make a commission for each soul they trap inside their hotel). Our hostel had already bought bus tickets, and stuck us on a bus that was already considerably packed. So the Poles and I made quite the five-some on this bus, where the people kept on getting hit, this time purely accidental by our backpacks. It was a no-win situation, and for once, we were hoping that we could have taken a cab, and arrived in half the time, with air-conditioning to boot. Twenty minutes later, we got off luckily at the right spot, and arrived at our "authentic" Chinese youth hostel, barely changed since the original construction of the house with a lot of rooms. The only difference was the change in decor, which was of a nice post-communism style of bland colours, but of more importance, an individual air-conditioner, controlled independently; a blessing.
In my room, I met up with a British boy of the same age who just so happened to be traveling for the past five months all over the world. (....And I thought my five months of teaching seemed rough....). I also met up with another Spaniard who was just traveling anywhere he felt like going (he had been traveling for two months) and a Chinese boy who had English as his primary language, and knew Chinese about as well as I know French; barely enough to communicate. They were all wonderful guys, and they were a lot of fun to hang out with.
We spent my first full day deciding to visit the Terracotta Warriors, and the Muslim Mosque located in Xi'an. We stopped on the way to see the mausoleum (sp?) of the Dynasty leader who commissioned the Terracotta warriors to be constructed. It was somewhat shocking to read that 770,000 workers toiled for 37 years to construct his mausoleum, which appeared from the outset to be a massive mound of dirt, with Pomegranate trees planted all over. The worst part was that after they were done, they were all murdered, so as to not reveal any secrets of what he buried underneath the mound of dirt. Rather disturbing, but seeming typical of China back during the different dynasty's.
We continued along to our main stop, the Terracotta warriors. Words cannot describe how powerful it feels just to see the massive scope of work and effort that it took to construct each individual warrior. Each warrior has a different body - from their face down to the details on their hair. Its incredible; the belief is that the workers on the warriors crafted each warrior after the men who were building them, as a lasting memory to their achievement. As I walked through, I couldn't help but wonder in amazement just the scope of time it would take to complete something of this scale. Even the ruler's mausoleum took 770,000 men to complete - my hometown encompasses 70,000 on a day where the hospital is busy in the maternity ward....But 770,000 men forces you to stop and think.
On the way back, we decided to take a wretched mini-bus tour bus back to the train station where we caught our city bus in the morning. Mini-buses have an awful record of spending more time at the stops in between the major tourist attractions than at the attractions themselves; they call them rest-breaks, but you can't stay on the mini-bus; go out and stretch..... In our naivete, we figured that they wouldn't stop at places for the ride home - they only make money bringing people to the exhibit, the ride home is free if you pay for the tour the mini-bus company. We were wrong. If the bus driver and his wretched helper didn't try to pick up every single person walking down the road; we didn't stop for 'rests" it just took twice as long. I really got to see the dirty side of Xi'an, compliments of the sweaty bus helper and the rookie mini-bus driver. We found out after we left that they work on commission for picking up people for the ride home, and not on the way to the exhibit.
Last on my stop for the day was the Xi'an Muslim Mosque, which was amazing. For a city of 6.5 million, to have over 75,000 Muslims just in one city is testament to their staying power. Centuries ago, Xi'an was a major trading hub in China - their proximity to the start of the Silk road made them the obvious choice. So the Muslims in their major trading partners sent over Muslims to learn Chinese -the Muslims stayed, and erected one of the fewer than five Mosques of its size in all of China. It was beautiful to see the cross between Chinese and Muslim architecture. And even though we "accidentally" wandered outside of the regular tourist zones, they were more than willing to show us anything when they realized that it was only two people, and not over ten-twenty whity's traveling and talking loudly in English....
In the end, I barely made it to the airport in time, no thanks to another mini-bus that took me to the airport (either the mini-bus at 25 Yuan, or the taxi at 140Yuan....Remember people that I'm Dutch....That should explain all) I will post more pictures to the site shortly from my time in Xi'an - after Xi'an, only Shanghai remains....The last leg on my journey through China -

coming soon, pt.4...i think...