New Tian You International Hotel Xi'an

... this that the name “China” is derived. The leader of this dynasty was the first to use the term “Emperor” and is the one who had the terra cotta army built to protect him in death. He unified China and was responsible for the building of the Great Wall as a symbol of the unification of the country. The third dynasty was the Han Dynasty. Inventions during this dynasty include paper, gunpowder, and printing. It was also during this dynasty that the Silk Road ...

... bike, making the front person lose balance.


We made it back within 100 minutes so we didn't need to pay extra. After all this exercise we decided we would go to Wall mart to get some food. We bought several weird things like dried soy bean curd, milk pudding, and sweet bread.

For dinner tonight we decided to go to the local dumpling mistress, that our two friend have been going to the last two evenings for dinner. It is a lady who has a wooden ...

... and stood with arms outstretched (controlling the reins). The was accompanied by 2 soldiers on either side who had long range weapons. It was their job to protect the highly esteemed charioteer.

Most of Pit 2 is not excavated. One area had calvary and the other area had archers (172 standing archers and 352 all together?) Some of my details are a bit off. The audio guide was incredible and had very good information, but you could only listen to the information once ...

... br>Between these oasis towns images of military garrisons and tombs then spring forth.
 
The last thing that comes to my mind is probably the first thing that one should think of when they hear the words the 'Silk Road' and that is 'information.'  We now have the internet, prior to the internet was television, prior to television were phones, prior to phones there was snail mail, prior to snail mail ...

... was soon due to depart so we bolted to make sure we got on to the train first as our guide told us that it can get quite busy.....this we discovered was an understatement!! The 8 were fortunately together for the journey with 6 in one compartment and myself and Josh in a two with four Chinese people, who turned out to be quite friendly. Those of you who have been on a sleeper train in the UK may be able to picture this slightly better but imagine this......6 beds in a 3x2 ...

I don't like the term 'going Dutch'. But it is an international by-word for splitting the bill. In China, instead of dividing up the bill, there's a fight to pay the bill for everyone. Why? Whoever hosts and pays accumulating favour with the others - so if you aren't the one paying you are indebted to the other person. They can call in a favour at any time, either directly or ...

Friday July 18th was our last day in Xi'an. In the morning we all gave our presentations that we had been working on with other students. It was fifteen minutes each and we were done by 12. Then I went with some other Chinese students to lunch. We had a great time and talked about when we would see them again in Beijing. In the afternoon, Tim had the great idea of bike riding around Xi'an City Wall ...

... and the whole site covers an area of over 22,000 square km. When uncovered, the warriors were found almost completely destroyed due to the collapse of the timber rooves which were covered with soil to disguise them becoming rotten and caving in. I was surprised to learn that the warriors were originally painted, though exposure to the elements has resulted in the colours fading. The display also features a bronze chariot with mini horses to ...

... and our time is fast running out. Earlier today we walked around the city, stumbling upon a whole street full of bars.... yep, a whole street, a bar district if you will. It's probably best we discovered it when we did and not earlier in the week. We also collected our train tickets from the nice agent who only charged us €10 for job of getting them and we then we walked for about 7-8km back to our hotel via the top of Xi'an ...

... line' only to discover that all that was available was standing tickets...for an overnight train ride. for me the whole point of choosing sleeper trains is so that the cost of accommodation is folded into the cost of transportation, and so i'm not using up daylight traveling around. as interesting as watching the countryside go by might be...it's not nine hours interesting. in short, i think traveling at night is both cheap and efficient. i left the train station and walked back to my ...