Xi'an,
Shaanxi,
China
Saturday, May 23, 2009
On Friday, I was on an Eastern Tour around Xi'an. This one was quite interesting, but less because of the sights we took a look at. I booked the tour at the Bell Tower Youth Hostel, which I also chose to stay from Sat to Sun (because of the necessity of getting up early on Sun to catch my flight to Beijing at 9am). The tour cost 300 RMB, including transportation, entrance fee, an English speaking guide and a Chinese lunch. I was picked up at the hostel in the morning by a tour guide trainee named Audrey. We had a nice chat, and in fact this was just the 'warm up' phase for the tour as she did not join this one. I was picked up by a car with two more visitors and the tour guide ... which means we had a private driver for the tour and a very intense tour guiding service. The other visitors - what a coincidence - have been two girls living in London, one being German, the other one being Austrian. Counted correctly, this sums up to three Austrians I met here, except the three others i prepared to meet anyway. We first went to a place called Banpu Village, a neolithic site which was supposed to be matriachaic. The site comprised some excavations, a pottery manufacturing area with models of early used pottery kilns. Quite interesting and a good start for the day. Our tour guide was named Sunny, a smiling local Chinese who tried her best to tell us background stories of the sites we visited. The next stop was a local factory / manufacturing place for pottery, all kinds of statues, lacquers and so forth. We were basically supposed to do some souvenir shopping here, nothing else. The second attraction of the day's tour was the Tomb of Qin Shi Huang, but in fact it was not - as expected - the mausoleum place, but a copy construction of the tomb as it is supposed to look like. essentially, it was a hall with a rather high entertaining and amusement/park like character. nothing really special to see, and a place to spend 10 minutes. but not more. we then had a lunch break before proceeding to the day's main attraction: the army of terracotta warriors. of course, this is one of the main sights throughout China, and you could tell by just taking a look at the many visitors there. however, we three left this place with rather mixed feelings. the army, no doubt, is remarkable and the excavations (the large amount of them is not yet done in fact, and thus not visible) are interesting. just the imagination of the greatness of this underground army protection the tomb of qin shi huang, china's first real emperor, is awesome. however, what has been done out of this place in terms of a touristic site is either disappointing or just shake-your-head weird. the area devoted to the place is huge - okay, there are three pits to visit, from which two are interesting, the third has just a couple of warriors, weapons and some other stuff featured - and we got the impression that a whole small village has been built around this place. for the moment, again, there is not so much to see. sunny told us that in a couple of years, most probably, much more of the excavations will be presented as archeologists are still working on the site. but for now, this is big amusement, big business, and a lot of hot air around a then small area.
in the evening then, matjaz (my host), a friend of him called felix and me went to one of matjaz chinese friends' place to visit a chinese wedding on the next day. this place was a bit outside of xi'an, to the east, in a rather poor, previously farmer's area. houses have been built recently there, are still being built, lots of incomplete buildings can be watched (which seem never to be finished anyway). we met the family there, again in a rather poor area. amazing is the way how these people deal with waste: waste is just thrown away, even without their own house, ashes from cigarettes just put on the floor, and the overall impression is that the understanding of well-being, of preserving nature, and of taking care in general is pretty much under-developed. still, it was an interesting experience, the wedding itself a celebration without any religious connotation, with lots of food, drinking, games, and entertainment for relatives, friends and visitors.
Comments
wedding
Feel lucky not to getting married in a Chinese way??
Based on your photos, it's a developing farmer village since Xi'an used to be farming province.
Do enjoy another capital Beijing wedding style later!!
sunny
that because of the later period people's damage~
the real tomb has not been excavated because of the chemicals inside,about the underground army, most of them has alreay broken that is reality but without resparation modern people wouldn't see the antient heritage clearly than now.right?