CHINA - day 4 Beijing to Xi'an

I actually teared up a little when I realized that this wouldn't be a day of rest. The only thing on the itinerary was a flight to xi'an. I was so tired and even more worried because I knew laura was tired. But we got up at 6:00 to make our flight and after laura slept the entire two hour flight, I somehow felt refreshed too. The food on the airplane was scary. A huge hunk of skin in my chicken that looked like it had been gathered up and tied or something. It was also very spicy food. Then we ate again ate the airport in a restaurant that was ok.

After the airport, we drove 45 minutes to the city of Xi'an. On the way, the tour guide pointed out these mounds, which are man made and the tombs of ancient emperors and their wives and officers. How cool is that? Just these huge tombs sitting on the landscape looking like innocent hills. I think most have been opened, but at least one, the one by the Terracotta Soldiers hasn't even been opened yet because when you open them, all the beautiful colors on the painted sculptures and pictures fade away within hours because of the oxygen. And because they items get stolen so easily. Its hard for me to understand how those reasons can stop the entire world from finding out whats inside these tombs, but its an interesting display of respect.

We took a bus to the North Gate of the City Wall. This turned out to be my favorite thing on the whole trip and I'm not exactly sure why. Its a huge wall that goes all the way around the city, almost as wide as it is tall. Its in really good condition and very impressive. I think there are still only four exits from the wall and there's also a moat (a moat!), which is now called a canal. Even though the city has grown up around and outside the wall, its very easy to imagine what it was like centuries ago. Just below the North Gate, there is a large courtyard with an emperor's chair that you can sit in to have your picture taken for money.

A video of Laura at the North Gate:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-7VjiWTLcA

Xi'an was the capital of china for 13 dynasties while Beijing (current capital) only spanned 4 dynasties. I'm not sure the length of time of each though. The city actually looks a lot more like I imagined communist china than beijing did. Beijing had definitely been spruced up for the Olympics. Most of the buildings in xi'an looked like very drab, ugly apartments built in the 60s and not touched since then. Easily a quarter of them were literally falling apart. I wondered if the people living in them were cold all the time or if they even had electricity. But jim and i both still liked it better than beijing. The cool thing was that interspersed with the decaying buildings, there were very beautiful ancient Chinese structures. Palaces and towers and pagodas and the city wall. That part was cool. In Beijing it was almost all modern unless you were specifically in an historical site.

Mercifully, they then took us back to the hotel for 2 hours of rest! As soon as we walked in, Laura turned on the TV, jumped on the bed and laid back on the pillow. It was so out of character for her that we just stared for a minute. Pretty funny.

Today we realized we had lost Laura's hat. Bummer. It was a good, Smartwool hat. Oh well, she borrowed mine and I used a scarf I had bought in Beijing.

Then we went to dinner. Laura devoured the soup and some ice cubes that someone had asked for. Now, she's still addicted to ice. They had a big aquarium with a huge turtle in it. With some help, Laura named it Shi-Shi (means thank you in Chinese) and talked about it all night long.

Back at the hotel, I sent postcards and got on the internet for 15 minutes. We bought lotion because Laura's cheeks were so dry from the cold and wind.

The hotel here was all decked out for Christmas. Very pretty:

A Chinese snowman:
Sculpture garden at the hotel: