Xi'an

  Xi'an, Shaanxi, China
Wednesday, July 16, 2008

On the overnight train from Beijing to Xian, we met a couple high school grads from Xian and their grad student friend who was helping them arrange visas for the US. They will be going to college in Minnesota this fall in order to better learn English (they had practically no verbal skills). I love meeting people on the train, although I could tell Jen would rather have slep after being run ragged by her friends in Beijing. We all talked for hours and eventually, the over-excited 17 year old even wore me out. I was about the same age during my first long train trip away from home. I was less excited, but that was when I first met Ana on the way back from Philly.

I didn't get a very good sleep, and I woke up slowly watching the countryside go by. Villages, fields, abandoned buildings, sloping mountains with eroded terraces, more villages, more fields, and so on. As we got closer to Xian, I got an automoatic text message that basically read, "Welcome to Shaanxi province. It's hot as hell here in July, so be careful." Dai (the 17 year old boy) offered to take us around the city the next night and we traded numbers before getting off the train.

Me at Bingmayong

Terracotta Warriors

Either the text message lied or it was the best two July days Xian has ever seen because it was comfortably in the 70s the two days we were there. We took the public bus the hour or so out to the Terracotta Warriors ($2 round trip! Take that $30 tourist bus!). I'd been repeatedly told that the site was supremely disappointing but just one of those tourist things you have to do. The low expectations worked, and I found the place really fascinating. We walked around the three pits for a couple hours, and I pondered the work that must have gone into making them and the probably harder work that's gone into excavating the site and putting all the broken, millenia-old pieces back together.

Our Xian friends

Later on that evening we met up with Dai and his girlfriend for dinner in Xian. They took us around a bustling night market so we could taste ALL the local specialties. Xian has a huge Hui population (the Chinese Muslim ethnicity) and a lot of the food was influenced by that. It was incredibly good, and we eventually had to tell them we couldn't take anymore. We went up to the Drum Tower (one of Xian's ancient buildings) and got amazing views of the city.

Drum Tower

We talked a lot, and in a lot of ways they were typical teenagers. Dai's girlfriend had lied to her parents to go out with us since even though they'd been together two years she was not allowed to date. We asked Dai if he had any questions about the US, and the only one he came up with was, "Will the other students like me? How do they feel about foreigners?" We told him that Minnesotans are notoriously nice, and that it should be OK. Have to admit though, Minnesotan or not, can you imagine using up your my-girlfriend-snuck-out-to-see-me time to host two foreign strangers around your city?