China Day Four

Today we had to get up way too early for a vacation, Five AM! Our guide took us to the airport for our flight to Xi'An, home of the Terra Cotta Warriors. We weren't able to eat at the hotel because we left so early.

When we get to the airport we find it is packed, just like the rest of China. Our guide was very helpful and walked us through the entire check in process and made sure our tickets and baggage was good to go. He actually walked us all the way to security and stayed with us until it was our turn in line. For such a large amount of people the whole process was a thousand times easier than going through security in the states, and it was just as thorough.

We got on our flight and we were off. We were provided food on this flight, and I use that term loosely. I think the only thing we ate was the bread, everything else was either unidentifiable or un-edible! We heard someone call the brown goop beans but it was more like pureed rice and other vegetable matter. We also got this little plastic cup with what looked like pudding but it was white and thick like tofu, but it didn't taste like tofu. Which is actually to say it had a taste and it wasn't good. So we just had the bread and juice.

We landed at Xi'An about two hours later. Our tour started with a stop at the City Wall, which is similar to the Great Wall but it encompasses the downtown area of Xi'An. At one time it encompassed the entire city, but now the city has grown. They actually have building codes where you cannot build a building taller than 30 stories inside the wall so that from the outside you can see nothing of the inside, to maintain the illusion of a city wall. More stairs too and Christine and I were hot and tired.

Next we went to another Jade carving factory and it was pretty much the same tour we had at the other one, but this one actually sold reasonably priced little jade trinkets so we got a few small ones just to say we bought some Chinese jade.

Then we went to the Wild Goose Pagoda, which has statues of the many Buddha's and a huge Pagoda. We walked through this area and again were very hot. I think it was just too much travel that day. They did have a neat mural on the wall made of paint, jade and possibly ivory which depicts the life of the first Buddha and his ascension into Buddha status.

Then we went to lunch near the Drum and Bell tower, which was the ancient way of keeping time, by beating the drums a certain number of times and ringing the bell a certain number of times they would keep time.
This mall was directly across the street from the Drum and Bell towers, I thought it was neat that they had a waterfall on the outside of the mall. Kinda hard to see in the picture but right above the words Shopping Mall and the gold Chinese characters, thats water.

We then went to our hotel for a little rest since we were tired from traveling. The room and hotel were very nice but extremely hot. Christine took a nap while I explored the hotel, and when she woke up it was no cooler than when she went to sleep. It was about 80 degrees in that room! So she went down and requested a new room, which only happened to be about three degrees cooler.

For dinner we went to a dinner show at the Sunshine Theatre. This was pretty cool. It was about ten "acts" each not really having anything to do with the other but very unique. The best part were these "paperdoll" girls who had these things that were like Yo Yo's. The Yo Yo's were two sticks attached by a string, which they would spin the Yo Yo on. The Yo Yo looked like two cones joined at the tip so they would roll on the string. While throwing the Yo Yo's in the air the girls would do leaps, cart wheels, and all sorts of crazy acrobatics. They were the best part.

Dinner was a dumpling feast! We must have had about 100 different dumplings and they just kept bringing them out, along with soup, salad, and some odds and ends.
If you look right below the pumpkin you will see what is supposed to look like a rabbit. The red dot is its eye and one ear is visible. Others are supposed to resemble flowers or shrimp (the picture above this one with the two peas in the top is the shrimp, and by the way those peas were about 300 years old and crunchy), and in some cases tasted like or were filled with what they were modeled after.

After dinner went back to our hotel where it was just barely cooler but still hot in the room.

End of Day Four.