Celebrity Status and the Adorable Chinese Men

  Xi'an, China
Sunday, June 10, 2007

On Friday when the 4 of us arrived in Xi'an, Beibei's grandparents arrived on their flight shortly after.  Her grandpa has a cousin in Xi'an, so that cousin's son picked us up at the airport and took us to our hotel.  The hotel is on Xi'an Jiao Tong University's campus.

Soon after getting to the hotel, the cousin and his wife also met us and we all went to dinner.  We had to eat quick because we were going to go to a performance.  I had a couple types of pork, some noodley stuff, and some kind of sesame tortilla thing.

Then we went to the show.

Show at Tang Paradise

It was very beautiful.  It was basically a lot of dancing set to orchestral music.  There were elaborate costumes and good dancing.  It was supposed to depict the Tang dynasty.

The theater was in a park area called Tang Paradise.

Tang Paradise

There was a lot to walk around that was built in the style of the Tang dynasty.  It was very pretty architecture.  There was a lake in the middle that they were showing a movie on.  They would shoot water up and project the movie on the water particles.  It was cool even though I didn't understand the 20 minutes we watched.

After the water movie, we walked around for a bit and saw some different buildings and statues.  Some were dedicated to poets or had poetry written on them.  Then we took a taxi back to the hotel.

Yesterday morning we walked down the street for breakfast.

Fried bread...YUM!

It was a small place run by locals that served a lot of the fried bread which I knew I liked so I ate a lot of that!

Our tour guide and driver met us at the hotel.  The tour guide we had yesterday was nice but her English wasn't very understandable.  She said a lot but I really only understood about 10% of what she said.  Most of the info I got was from Beibei when she translated the tour guide's Chinese.  We left the hotel and made a quick stop for some bread to take with us on the hike all day.  Then we took a two hour drive to the mountain.

The mountain, Huashan (hua=flower; shan=mountain), has 5 peaks: north, south, east, west, and center.  It's a huge mountain and we took a cable car up to a place near the north peak.  The view from the cable car was great, but it was a little strange knowing that I was hanging on a little wire hundreds of feet above rocks and trees.

Hua Shan Cable Cars

It was a very steep mountain.  So we started out at the north peak.  Beibei, her grandpa, and I went ahead and started on the long hike to all the peaks while her grandma, San, and Sineerat walked around for a shorter distance.  It ended up being about a 5 hour hike.  There were tons of steps all the way up the mountain.  A few times we had to use chains to pull ourselves up the mountain while our feet were in little holes in the side of the mountain...kind of like rock climbing I suppose.  It was pretty steep so some of the stairs were steep too.  Sometimes we were right next to a cliff and we were holding on to a chain to keep from sliding down.  Once we got to the first peak we climbed to, the east peak, most of the hard climbing was over.  Then we just had to go down a little and up again for the next peaks.  Each place had a breathtaking view.  We were very high and I think it was kind of up in the clouds because it was very foggy.  After the east peak, we went to the south, then the west.  I think we walked by the center some time along there.  The west had  a fairly narrow path that we climbed up.  The whole hike was filled with so many spectacular views that I could hardly believe it!  A huge contrast to the Arizona scenery that I'm used to!  God creates so many different landscapes!

Along the way, there were many interesting characters.  It was pretty full of people.  There were some men that would bring stuff up the mountain or take trash.  For example, one guy was about 60-something years old and he was slowly walking up the mountain picking up plastic bottles.  He had no shirt.  The way he carried the bottles was by a long stick balanced over his shoulder with 2 bags of bottles tied to it, one on each end.  He was singing very loudly and playing a pipe.  He attracted a lot of attention from people.  I saw a few others like him but without the pipe.  Pretty strange.

A young white American climbing a mountain in the middle of China also gets people's attention.  I certainly said a number of "hello's" and "ni hao's"  I also gave a fair share of waves and smiles.  Here are some examples that stick out.  I was somewhere on a path and I had gotten a little ahead of Beibei and her grandpa.  

Hua Shan

I stopped and stood there for a minute or two.  There was a trash-carrying guy coming the opposite way and he stopped to say a few things with 3 men that were sitting near by.  They started to stare at me.  The trash guy gave me a thumbs up and said something and the guy sitting down interpreted with a nod of agreement, "You're beautiful."  It's so strange to have random people like me just because I'm so darn white.  When I started to walk by them and leave, they stuck out their hands for me to shake their hands before I left.  While circumstances like this of having random men stare at me would make me angry and a little freaked out in America, knowing that they just don't see people like me everyday makes it seem fun to simply say hi to them and make their day!

In response to so many stares in China, I've learned the easiest thing for me to do is acknowledge the stares and return it with a smile.  Then 1) I don't have to pretend to ignore 20 pairs of eyes turned towards me 2)I give them a friendly impression of Americans and 3) I just might make their day!

Here is another example of what happened on the mountain.  I was on my way down the mountain at the end of the 5-ish hours.  There were a number of security guard soldier type guys at various points along the way or at points where you could buy things.  I was coming down one of the long staircases and I saw some of the soldier guys at the bottom.  The one facing my direction was staring at me so I looked at him and smiled.  He gave a big smile back.  A few seconds later I looked over again and he gave a huge smile again.  I passed the point where they were and continued down the mountain.  A few minutes later who comes down the mountain following me and catching up?  Soldier boy.  He was probably not much older than me.  There he was with his grinning face saying "hello" and walking by my side.  

Hua Shan

He knew very little English, only enough to say a few things.  He asked where I came from then he turned to me and, trying as hard as he could with his little vocabulary, said, "You're very pretty."  I answered with a "Xie xie" and tried to ask him a couple questions to be nice but I'm pretty sure he had no clue what I was saying.  If he got ahead of me he would wait for me to catch up.  We finally parted ways when he stopped at another station and he said "good luck."  I thought the whole thing was adorable!  Here is a little Chinese man chasing you down the mountain just because you smiled at him and mustering up his courage to say you're pretty with his limited vocabulary.  How cute!!!!!  I gotta give these Chinese men some credit!

So anywho, we finally made it down the mountain to where we started and took the cable car down.  Then we had the two hour ride back into Xi'an.

We were dropped off about 7-ish in the middle of Xi'an.  It was at a restaurant where we met the cousin and the son and family.  The place was famous for its dumplings because they make them in interesting shapes.  I tried the walnut one that had cocoa powder in the wrap.  It was good!  I also tried the pork lotus one which wasn't so good.  The rest of dinner was 2 different soups, duck/goose, a tofu with corn thing, and pickled radish.

Afterwards, we walked around the city a bit.  The bell tower, drum tower, and city wall were all pointed out.  We also passed a square where hundreds of people were dancing to music.  

Xi'an City Wall

Chinese people are very community centered so this dance thing happens every night with lots of people.  You will also see groups of people (mainly elderly) exercising in a park or on the side of the street.  We eventually took a taxi back to the hotel.

Facts about Xi'an City Wall: (1) 8.75 mile loop  (2) Built in early Ming dynasty

This morning we went to the same place for breakfast for fried bread and boiled eggs.  We also had the same tour guide and driver meet us at the hotel.  We loaded our suitcases in the van and they drove us to the terra cotta soldiers.

I've been on a plane back to Guangzhou and we are landing now...I'll talk of the terra cotta soldiers later!