Hongye Xi'an

... viewing the city below. To the outer side of the city walls it was quite difficult to see anything due to the pollution but inside it was a mixture of old and new. We passed a local who was walking and happily singing to himself, waving his arms around like a crazy person – I would be too if the only place to get any space in this city was 12m up in the air.

The evening saw us on another night train to Shanghai.

... of such a problem. the scale of this area is massive. the Emporers tumb is 1 klm away from the site of the T.W. They believe that as you get closer to the tomb there will be more and more artifacts with greater value, as they get closer. The tomb took 45 years to build and covers about 42 square klm. It was built by China's first emperor Qin Shi Huangdi in the Chin Dynasty about 2200 years ago or 200 BC. A few years ...

... of my ...

... lots of sugar, so I did not open it, the waitress saw me examining the bottle and brought me one that had less sugar. We shared a fried noodle with chicken dish and had plenty left over. It was 28 yuan for lunch ($4+).

We walked by the North entrance to the Small Goose Pagoda without realizing it. It looked like it was just a park and we could not see the Pagoda itself. The Baby Goose (there is a Great Goose Pagoda too that we could see from the wall) is 43 m tall and was built ...

... and more complex and visually stimulating. Indeed, the festival as celebrated in some places (such as Taipei, Taiwan) can put even the most garish American Christmas decorations to shame. They often sport unique displays of light that leave the viewer in awe. Master craftsman will construct multicolored paper lanterns in the likeness of butterflies, dragons, birds, dragonflies, and ...

Over 2,200 years ago, Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of the Qing dynasty, ordered the construction of the largest tomb known to modern man. His legacy still seen today, he was the emperor responsible for the construction of the Great Wall and the unification of China. When he first came to power, in the years preceding 200 BC, he began the development of his tomb. Over 720 ...

... our climb up the mountain had been very quiet, many locals climb up the mountain during the night, so there were many people around by 5am. After watching the sunrise we walked around the East, South and West Peaks for about 3 hours (again reasonably strenuous) and then walked to the North peak to catch the cable car back down the mountain. From the bottom of the mountain we caught a bus back to Xi'an, arriving at around midday. We went to a restaurant with Carine ...

... so they could continue to be cared for by them. Very sweet in a creepy way! They also had other burial sites, one with four young women, one with three men, all buried with vases, water receptacles, tools for the after life. Most corpses faced west where the sun sets, so they could access the afterlife. Though there were some with their faces turned, others buried in storage pits instead of graves, others re-buried as a pile of bones. One young girl was ...

... the streets we tried some fried batter covered persimmons combined with some other stuff I can't remember. We ended the evening having dinner at a chain restaurant that specializes in the food of North Eastern China. This was not our best meal to date. As a result there will be no pictures of food that I rave about. Until tomorrow, Werner ======================================= ===================== Introduction to Xian Shanxi Province, 1,200km (744 miles) SW ...