Xi'an and the Terracotta Army

We flew from Hangzhou to Xi’an with no hassle and arrived about midnight.  Then there was some minor hassle when our bus broke down.  Then there was a little more hassle when we couldn’t work out how to cross the road.  But it was nothing a 1am McDonalds couldn’t fix.

Here's the Bell Tower, central landmark of Xi'an, by night.

We managed to find our hostel down a little alley.  It was warm, cozy, and excellently named Han Tang Inn.

The next day (incidentally my real birthday) we trekked to the train station and caught a bus to the Museum of Qin Terracotta Warriors and Horses.  We accidentally used the Hoards of Tour Guides entrance and were quite literally hounded by women trying to convince us how necessary a guide would be.  After successfully lying about how poor we were, we escaped on the most unnecessary electric car ever.

The Terracotta Army was only discovered in 1974 by peasants digging a well.  Three sites have been found so far; Pit 1 was the first to be uncovered, and is the largest of the 3 vaults.

It’s incredible that these figures were never actually designed to be seen; each one is intricately detailed and every face is supposed to be unique.

Pit 2 offered views of excavation whilst Pit 3, inexplicably described as the ‘Command Centre’, showed the layout of a chariot with 4 horses and a number of cavalrymen.

Here I am with my intellectual face on.

We then bussed to the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum, the actual burial site of the emperor behind it all, about 1.5km away from the vaults of the Army.  Disappointingly, we couldn’t actually get into the mausoleum.  However, we did get lost in the park, and there was a big commemorative column.

Back at the hostel I had a birthday dinner of all the Western food I could eat, which was probably on a par with the Terracotta Army in terms of excitement for me.  I got to eat apple pie, drink wine and use a fork.

The next day we had a few hours to explore the city of Xi’an.  We visited the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower, which seemed to be the central attractions.  Here's the Drum Tower:

This bell looked important.

As did these drums.

We then walked to the South Gate of the city.  Xi’an was once a walled city and all of the original walls remain, which is impressive.

It was a very brief trip to the city, but we saw what we wanted to see, and I got to eat pizza.  All too soon it was time to catch our flight back to Changsha, where Tim flew home and I caught a train back to JiangXi and an almost completely empty college.  Everybody is now on holiday for the Spring Festival so on Tuesday I will be resuming my own travels with Lydia in Hainan.

As it turns out, China is infinitely more fun outside of poor little Pingxiang.  And best enjoyed in good company.

Huangshan, the Yellow Mountains

The day after the great cake battle, Tim and I began our travels.  After a lovely, relaxing day of hastily marking 200 exam papers and calculating all 500 of my students’ semester averages through extensive data imputing, we left on a sleeper train to Hangzhou.  Sleeper trains are fun.

We were just using Hangzhou as a transfer city to get to Huangshan, but as Tim hadn’t seen Xi Hu (the West Lake) I put aside my hatred for the city that once caused me unbearable stress and we did a little exploring.

Here I am by a shop selling bouquets of small bears, rabbits and lambs.

Perhaps Hangzhou isn’t so bad after all.

We went out on the lake.  Tim tends to ruin photos so I tried to take some of him where most of his face was cut out.

In the afternoon we caught a bus to Huangshan city, Tunxi, where Stephen, the owner of our hostel, picked us up from the bus station in person.  I’d read some really good reviews of Stephen’s hostel online and he was unbelievably helpful.  He advised us on how to get to the mountain and which route to take, and even organised a visit to an ancient village with his taxi driver mate.

The hostel was on ‘Ancient Street’, the most scenic part of town and quite pleasant, although we did get lost trying to find the supermarket, and 2 dogs chased me down the street after I took this photo.

On Sunday morning we left early with Taxi Driver Mate, who first took us to 'Breakfast Street'.

Next stop was the ancient village, which I cannot name, but was very picturesque, in a dilapidated sort of way.  It was like being transported back to a very long time ago.

Weirdly, people still lived there.  And I thought Pingxiang was rural.

Taxi Driver Mate then drove us to Tangkou, the village at the foot of the mountains, where we got a bus up to the entrance.

Huangshan (or ‘Yellow Mountain’) is one of China’s 5 holy peaks and conquering the mountain is something that most Chinese wish to experience at least once in their lifetime.  As with everything in China, climbing a mountain is not quite the same as hiking in the West.  The mountain sides are too steep to traverse, so they just build concrete steps all the way up.

Walking up steps may sound an easy way to climb a mountain but it was actually fairly exhausting.  It took around 3 hours to get to the top, and I was tired after the first 10 minutes.  My shame was only increased by the fact that we were joined on the path (and occasionally overtaken) by dozens of porters carrying everything necessary for civilisation up and down the mountain.  They carried food, laundry, building material and even full sized gas cylinders.   

Here’s someone with some massive bamboo poles.

It was quite painful to watch them struggle up with their loads, especially since there was a cable car right overhead that could have done the same work in a fraction of the time and with far fewer injuries sustained.

Nevertheless, the scenery was beautiful.

China even manages to keep its mountains clean by putting bins every 100m or so.  Why hold onto your rubbish when you could provide another porter with a job instead?

Once at the top, we walked to the first main scenic spot, which promised us something fantastic.

The Chinese do love to exaggerate.  Most of the ‘scenic spots’ looked exactly the same.

There were lots of interestingly contorted pine trees (one of the ‘Wonders of Huangshan') that were helpfully described on little plaques with elaborate imagery.  I think this one was a dragon diving into water.

Thanks to back-breaking labour and China’s incessant need to build, there are 4 hotels on Huangshan.  We stayed at the Paiyunlou.

I dread to think how many porters it took to construct it.

After almost seeing the sunset, we decided to get up early for the sunrise the next morning.

Here it is, as viewed from Lion’s Peak.

And here’s ‘Monkey Watching the Sea of Clouds’.

After breakfast, we circuited the peaks, which involved a lot more steps.  At ‘Bright Summit’, one of the highest peaks, a helpful Chinese man offered to take a photo of us.

His friends then took a photo with us, because if there’s one thing more thrilling than climbing a holy mountain on a beautiful sunny day, it’s getting your photo taken with a couple of foreigners at the top.

Descending the mountain was quite a bit easier than ascending, though I’m pretty sure we were being stalked by a few Chinese women.

Overall, it felt good to conquer one of China’s finest mountains.  We took a minibus back to Tunxi to stay at Stephen’s hostel --> again.  The next day he very kindly helped us get a bus back to Hangzhou for the next stage of our travels, but was clearly doing a favour for Bus Driver Mate and managed to put us on a bus which spent an hour circulating the city picking up random locals, and only left when I texted Stephen, a tad concerned, and he called the driver to check.

We got back to Hangzhou, eventually, where we were conveniently chucked off the bus on a main road near-ish the coach station.  I think China just likes us to feel challenged.   

After some scary ‘conversation’ with a whole group of taxi drivers all yelling at me in Chinese, I managed to secure us a ride to the airport shuttle bus, and then we were on our way to Xi’an…

My pre-Birthday

As many of you know, my birthday was on Wednesday this week.  However, since I was going to be away on the actual day, we decided to have an early celebration the week before.  The celebration coincided with the arrival of my first visitor of the year; to protect his privacy he cannot be directly identified, but we’ll call him Tim.

Tim had only arrived the afternoon before and was finding China to be a bit of a culture shock.  He was not impressed by the accommodation (direct quote upon walking into the apartment: "You live in squalour") and he managed to get chilli in his eye on the first night.  China is quite the adjustment, so I had planned for us to go out for a quiet-ish dinner with the other laowai.  They, however, being extremely excited about the arrival of a new foreigner, had other ideas.

They showed up at my apartment with wine, a new nickname and a massive cake that was about 80% foam icing.

In retrospect there was clearly only one possible fate for that cake, but I was oblivious to it at the time.  We had a quick game of chilli chocolate Russian roulette…

…and then headed out to one of our favourite restaurants, where we introduced Tim to dumplings, and the Chinese tradition of toasting.

After a few beers and an encounter with a table of Chinese men who wanted us to wear their hat, we decided to head to Barbara, the club where all the magic happens and white people just get handed drinks.  The guys drank with the bartenders and I ended up playing a dice game that I didn’t understand with a Chinese man.  Very standard Barbara.

Back home in the early hours of the morning, the others decided they wanted cake.  We hadn’t quite got around to cutting it when Chrissy put her face in it.

  

Nobody can be sure who threw the first piece but in a very surreally slow and hilarious 

way, cake went everywhere.

Mostly on us, but nothing in the room was unscathed.

Terry and Jav tried to eat Tim.

Even the donkey took a hit.

After deciding to shower in my apartment, the others left, strewing cake and shoes up the stairs.  They returned apologetically the next day to help clean up but, as it turns out, cake does not come off walls once it has dried.  An amusing lesson to have learnt, but Bob was not super pleased when he came over to drop off some pay.

One of my students also came by to give me a birthday present of a giant bear, which inspired jealousy all round.

So now I have a sticky apartment, and a giant bear.  And that’s how we do birthdays in China.

New Year

Happy belated 2011 to all!  Apologies for the late blogging but with the New Year came freedom in the form of 7 whole weeks of Spring Festival holiday and I’ve only just got back from my first bit of travelling.  More on these travels later…

Since normal New Year pales in comparison to Chinese New Year out here, there wasn’t much in the way of celebration.  So the final year students held their graduation dinner on New Year's Eve.  Jav and I were their Writing teachers, so we were invited and brought Chrissy and Terry along as our plus 1s.  We were a little late after a lunchtime banquet with Bob and friends, and an afternoon of throwing the giant inflatable red donkey around.  But we made it.

The students put on various performances during the dinner.  Here’s one of my classes singing a song, in which nearly all of them ended up crying:

The monitor, Jen, couldn’t stop crying.  Literally, couldn’t stop.  I gave her extra help last term as she was worried about her English, and we’ve often gone out for dinner together, so I was sad to say goodbye to her too.  But attempting to take a photo was probably a mistake.

Poor Jen.

Naturally everyone wanted us foreigners to sing, so we performed Auld Lang Syne.  I imagine it was fairly disappointing.

Many, many photos were taken.  Here I am with some of my students.  Their enthusiasm makes me forget how bad their writing can be…

There is not much else to be recorded about the night, apart from the fact that it snowed a little at midnight.  ‘A very little’, as my students would say.  Of course, that didn’t stop them from getting very excited, or from building snowmen...

They certainly try to make the best out of what they have!