Xi'an, China 6/12-14/06

Leaving Guilin today for Xi'an. Up around 8, slept well. Use the hotel bathroom in readiness for the flight. It is most important to use the hotel room's john! The public toilets are testy to say the least! Pack up all my stuff and even get the painting I bought here in Guilin into my backpack. It is 2 fish, one red and one black swimming side by side but in and Yin Yang symbol. It is on a scroll with a porcelain blue and white dowel at the bottom weighing it down. Quite nice looking and the proceeds from purchase go to college students studying English and with inspiration and hope to go to the USA to study. Downstairs to settle the bill and pay for the peanuts I take from the room. Taxi to the airport, pretty easy here, carts outside for our stuff. Israelis in line before us at check in. Thru security with no problems. Read the monitor for the gate number because all is in Chinese, we're at Gate 7. Get a great coffee and start to clean up my journal as I am 12 days behind. Janeen comes to find me as they are boarding the plane, at 11:25 a.m. we are in the air heading for Xi'an. They serve a nice lunch, we are on China Eastern Airlines and the food is better than any food we've had in Guilin!!!! Land in Xi'an and head for the hotel counter to find a room. Negotiate with several counters and end up with Y298 at a hotel inside the Wall and the transfer from the airport to the hotel with their driver is included. We have not signed or paid and are discussing tours when I ask if they can call Jane Peterson @ the Xi'an Hyatt. Jane & Paul we met in Port Douglas, Australia and are expats living and working for an American company in China. She had sent an email that I had not had a chance to read before we left inviting us to stay with her in their suite at the 5 star Xi'an Hyatt. We accept and pay Y150 transfer to the Hyatt. She would have had her driver pick us up if I had checked email!!!! We arrive at the palatial Xi'an Hyatt and tip the bellhop for luggage to the suite. The apartment is very nice, a living/dining room, 2 bedrooms, 2 baths and a kitchen while overlooking the entrance to the Hyatt and great views of the city outside the Wall. They have been living here for 1 1/2 years and will be leaving 7/31. Paul is in Shanghai on business and they will be going there when they leave Xi'an 7/31. They have a driver, Lon, at our disposal. This is a real treat. We settle into our own private room and bath and go out for dinner walking to the local restaurant. En route we walk by a woman sewing on the street with her pump sewing machine, this is her "shop on the street". Next to her is the bicycle repair man with his "shop on the street". I take a picture of the lady sewing and attempt to take a picture of the man repairing a bike. He does not want me to take his picture, so we pass him and I do take his picture incognito. He sees the flash and runs up yelling in my face, grabs my wrist and will not let go. His very thin chiseled face and angry terrorizing eyes are on me and a crowd is beginning to gather around us. Jane and Janeen are calling to me to join them and do not realize the man has a hold of my wrist and cannot join them. I delete the picture from the camera showing him what I am doing and certainly by this point, do not want his picture!!! Look him in the eye and request, in English of course, that he release my arm. A bit scary I must admit, but I in turn should not have tried to take his picture against his will. He finally releases my arm and I join Jane and Janeen telling them what has happened. Jane tells me that if a policeman had seen the incident the man would have been arrested as they do not want those kinds of incidents happening to deter the tourists from traveling in China. Xi'an is a very popular tourist city because of the huge Wall surrounding the city and the Terracotta Warriors & Horses at the QinShiHuang (pronounced ChinShuWang) Tomb outside the city. We continue on to the restaurant and Jane orders a spicy chicken dish, sweet and sour pork, corn with pine nuts, garlic broccoli with rice, all very YUMMY!!! Xi'an (pronounced SheAn) has 6 million people. The name "Xi" meaning "west" and "an" meaning "peace", was the Capitol of China before Beijing. There is a huge Wall surrounding the old city and is the largest and most complete city wall in the world. There is a Bell Tower that we sew as we came from the airport. Jane tells us the bells are rung in the morning and the Drum Tower we see later on our walk along the Wall, they strike at the end of the day. We walk back to the Hyatt after our wonderful meal buying some lichees from a street vendor and taking a different route home to avoid the crazed bicycle repair man. Jane takes us by car to The Wild Goose Pagoda where there is a light and fountain show every night. Lon drops us off in front of the huge park area housing the fountain and the Pagoda. All of a sudden I am feeling the great need for a bathroom!!! There is a KFC on the edge of the park with a public WC (water closet). What a savior this KFC proves to be!!! I create a huge line waiting to use the facilities and am a bit embarrassed as I leave the WC. I absolutely detest fast food and the introduction of it to all parts of the world, but I must admit I was extremely happy to have this one here for my emergency!!! We continue on thru the park observing and taking pictures of the Pagoda and then watching as the fountain begins it's show. The park is filled with people and Jane comments on the Chinese. Their babies do not wear diapers but the pants have an opening exposing their butts for free elimination!!!! We cross the street from the Pagoda and fountain and walk along the Wall enclosing the old city. The Chinese have a daily habit of exercising and you can see them doing TiChee, running or using some of the exercise bars along the park running outside of the Wall. The also love to dance. There are areas set up using tents, charging a fee to enter and with supplied music where they all dance together in a large circle within the tent. There are also independent groups with their own music set up in various large squares outside the Wall where they dance in a huge circle all together but independently dancing individually. Some ladies have very colorful umbrellas they are using too. There are huge colorful lanterns hanging about lite up for the nights dancing. We walk along the Wall and back to the Hyatt. I photograph the Wall, Drum Tower and Gates but never walk the Wall, sadly!!! Back at the apartment I upload some pics to the blog and discover that the articles I had written in Dehli and thought I had lost, were on the blog 4 times, Sorry all, but the prompt had told me that the article had not been saved, thus me attempting to save 4 times with the same message. I finally retire at 2 a.m. and have a problem getting to sleep tonight despite the wonderful bed and pillow I am sleeping on. We're up late the next day and don't even hear the coffee and croissants being delivered to the room at 7:30 a.m. Jane is already up and talking thru the computer to her daughter in States. The views from the apartment are wonderful. "WE ARE LIVING LARGE" Enjoy croissants, coffee and juice before departing for the TerraCotta Warriors and Horses outside of the city. Lon picks us up at 9:30a.m. and we're heading for the tomb. We are there early before the crowds and Lon drops us off right in front and then parks the car. "HOW SWEET IT IS" A guide approaches us immediately, we think he is too high, inquire at an information desk and hire the guy for 100Y ($12.50 split or $6.25 ea.) There is a Tram to take you back to the huge museum housing these warriors and horses. The fee for the Tram is minimal. Lon has paid the tolls and gas for the trip out and we will reimburse him tomorrow on the trip to the airport. We pay 90Y ($11.25) a piece to get into the site. It is 1.5K from the tomb. The warriors and horses were constructed to protect QinShiHuang in his after life from invaders. Our guide is Peter or Cheng Jin. The site was built in 200 BC in the Qin Dynasty and took 37 years to build and 720,000 people. It was discovered by 5 local farmers in 1974 digging well. Three of them entered the digging while two farmers stayed above taking the dirt out from the three below. Only two of the farmers are alive today and are at the site several days to sign the tour books as you are not allowed to photograph them. The site is in 3 different pits, Pit #1 has 6,000 warriors and horses and is 5m deep. Pit#2 is still being excavated and has no warriors or horses seen only visible bent beams and is also 5m deep. The whole site was made public in 1979 and is enclosed in huge arched ceiling ed buildings. Pit#3 is 6m deep and appears to be a meeting place as the warriors are facing each other. The Han tomb is in Pit#2 and was built unaware of the Terra Cotta Warriors existence! Peter, our guide, tells us about the jade from the surrounding Li Mountains, where gold and jade are mined. There are four places in China that jade comes from and this is one of them. They mine 5 colors of jade in China, pink, green, white, 7 color and black. The pink or lotus jade is only mined here. Near the tomb they have discovered more warriors but they are made of black jade and not on exhibit presently. The lotus jade from here is called "Lantian Jade" or "Jadeite" and is 20,000 years old. We go into the building housing the gift shop and one of the farmers is here today. He is 70 years old but was only 38 when they dug the well and discovered the site. There is a picture of him with American President Bill Clinton on his visit to China in 1998. We complete our tour and return by Tram to the parking lot, which is full now with cars and tour buses. Lon takes us back to the Hyatt where we enjoy our leftovers from last night's dinner. Still YUMMY. Jane takes us this afternoon to visit the Mosque and the Muslim Markets inside the Wall. Lon drops us off outside the Wall and we walk thru the huge gates, Jane being our tour guide, to LiPing's shop, which Jane frequents all the time, in the Muslim Market. Great bargains here and I purchase a silk w/embroidery bedspread for my niece Amber and her to be husband whose wedding I am going to sadly miss on July 8, 2006. The problem of their gift solved!!! I also buy 4 silk pillow covers, 4 silk Pashminas, a beautiful antique panel off a kimono with interesting fish embroidered on it. At another shop past LiPing's shop I purchase 6 blue and white porcelain cute little fish chopstick holders and another set of silk pillow covers. We now tour the Mosque with beautiful gardens many beautiful grand gates before coming to the Mosque. LiPing's husband has found us each a box to ship our purchases home and we stash them in the trunk of the car before touring the Mosque. After the Mosque we wander thru the other Muslim Market containing fruit, nuts, spices and many packaged food items only available here in China. Bump into a guy from California and have a great conversation with him about our travels and his here in China. Don't see that many Americans traveling in this part of the world so we both enjoy our exchanges. Lon takes us back to the Hyatt and we quickly do some laundry before leaving for the theater this evening on the Tang Dynasty. I enjoy the dancing and the costumes but not so much the music or singing. They are playing very old instruments that I am not familiar with and unfortunately have not made good notes on in my journal. Lon is waiting outside for us at the end of the show, we return to the Hyatt, pack up our boxes for the States and go off to bed. Jane will call FedEx tomorrow and have the boxes picked up and charged to our individual accounts. Boy what a mistake that was, it costs me over $150 to send that package home!!! Up early with breakfast call at 6:30 a.m. Lon is taking us to the airport for the flight to Beijing. Jane gets up to say goodbye, what a dear she has been. We were truly blessed by meeting this extraordinary couple in Port Douglas, Australia, and them guiding us thru the places we should see in China......onto Beijing........