Xi’an is, perhaps unsurprisingly given we're in China(!), another very large city. We arrive in these places thinking they might be, like, about 30,000 people but then realise that they’re actually in the millions. The Xi’an population is around 6 million and it shows, in our view, mainly in the form of pollution. We were squinting to see buildings that are probably no more than 300-400m away and having talked to a few locals, it seems that this is the norm. The buildings behind the big roundabout really were that bleary even though they were a few 100m away.
We had welcoming party of about four people at the train station (a few hostels offer a free pickup from a station which, after a long journey, is a Godsend) and as the train had been delayed, they’d been waiting there for 1 ½ hours but they still seemed really happy to see us!
Booking onward travel is unfortunately one of the first things that we have to do every time we arrive somewhere. Its seems wrong; planning to leave as soon as you arrive but the demand for train tickets means that you have to be on-the-ball or risk being stuck or forking out a lot of money to fly at late notice.
We were in Xi’an solely to see the Terracotta Warriors so we headed off there on a local bus that afternoon with Pete, a photographer from the US. The warriors are about an hours drive out of Xi’an and the site is hugely touristy and is absolutely massive. The warriors themselves probably only take up about 1/10 of the site space if that, and are housed in the great concrete monolithic buildings. Busloads of people were already there and the site entrance fee is comparatively pricey, at 90 yuan (about £8). I won’t go bore you silly and go into the whole history but basically they were buried for 2000 years and only discovered by chance in 1973. What would have been bare land is now a massive tourist site with awful concrete buildings plonked all over it to cover the pits containing the warriors
We did as suggested and headed to the smaller pit first, leaving the largest until last so we weren’t disappointed and it worked for us. Pit Three is quite small but the warriors in the pit are in quite good nick and close enough to photograph if you’ve a very steady hand or tripod! Pete, being a photographer, was in there for ages with all the gear so we left him to it. This is what part of the pit looked like:
I think that the warriors had been placed back where they were found and some of these were the best preserved, albeit missing some vital parts!
The horses were pretty big and in remarkably good repair
They had a few warriors out of the pits on display behind glass. The detail was incredible. For example, every warriors face is different, the hair styled differently and even the tread on the shoes of the kneeling archers was detailed
Pit two was larger but largely untouched. Originally, before being covered in earth, the pits had wooden beams laid over the top and then woven matting was placed over the beams. The dips in the below photo is where the roof had collapsed on of the warriors underneath.
Where some of the roofing had been removed, warriors lay in pieces.
Pit one is the largest (its something like 260m long) and possibly most impressive due to its sheer size and the number of warriors in there
and as you can see, pit one is only partially excavated
but its impressive nonetheless. Imagine the folk whose job it is to uncover all the remaining warriors. It would require a huge amount of patience – something more up Euans alley than mine.
The hostel we stayed in was a rambling place with two courtyards and rooms on two stories and just inside the city walls, which were pretty imposing
We had a ‘spare’ day in Xi’an and spend it in the Muslim area, wandering and sussing out the markets
On the way there were kites for sale and I’ve included a photo of these as they were pretty cool. They were so long and just hung in the sky, even with no wind whatsoever; not even the leaves on the trees were rippling. Both Euan and I were both looking up, not looking where we were walking and so transfixed by these kites that we both fell down steps within seconds of each other. Idiots.
We’re both pretty big market fans and this one had both our ideals – food and animals. The food came first (Euans call) and we passed so many wee hole-in-the-wall cafes it was difficult to choose which one to head into. People just stared and we imagined that they were willing us not to walk in and try and speak Chinese. Its really difficult – anything we try to pronounce just gets met with blank stares (or worse, laughter) – even when I tried to say the most basic things, like “thank you” to a police officer, he didn’t understand. I should have been saying what sounded like “shi-shi” really quickly but I was saying “sher sher”. Makes it very challenging and I’ve resorted to sign language which gets laughed at but its more fun than trying to speak.
Anyhow, this one place had a massive vat bubbling away and a closer look revealed that it was chicken stock. All the chicken legs, heads and other bits and pieces were floating on the top and the broth from underneath was scooped out and piled in a bowl with dumplings, spring onions and a few other bits and pieces.
It was very good and cost us next to nothing; about 80p each max. I tried a weeny bit of freshly ground chilli with the dumplings and nearly blew my doors off. Sichuan peppers are renowned for their heat but I wasn’t expecting anything quite like what I got!
We came across this lady with big bags of dried chillies and a manual grinder. These are the culprits!
The food market merged into one selling fish and other animals. I’ve never seen fish like this before. They had a nose that would have looked more at home on a platypus. No idea what they’re called. Anyone out there know?
We had welcoming party of about four people at the train station (a few hostels offer a free pickup from a station which, after a long journey, is a Godsend) and as the train had been delayed, they’d been waiting there for 1 ½ hours but they still seemed really happy to see us!
Booking onward travel is unfortunately one of the first things that we have to do every time we arrive somewhere. Its seems wrong; planning to leave as soon as you arrive but the demand for train tickets means that you have to be on-the-ball or risk being stuck or forking out a lot of money to fly at late notice.
We were in Xi’an solely to see the Terracotta Warriors so we headed off there on a local bus that afternoon with Pete, a photographer from the US. The warriors are about an hours drive out of Xi’an and the site is hugely touristy and is absolutely massive. The warriors themselves probably only take up about 1/10 of the site space if that, and are housed in the great concrete monolithic buildings. Busloads of people were already there and the site entrance fee is comparatively pricey, at 90 yuan (about £8). I won’t go bore you silly and go into the whole history but basically they were buried for 2000 years and only discovered by chance in 1973. What would have been bare land is now a massive tourist site with awful concrete buildings plonked all over it to cover the pits containing the warriors
We did as suggested and headed to the smaller pit first, leaving the largest until last so we weren’t disappointed and it worked for us. Pit Three is quite small but the warriors in the pit are in quite good nick and close enough to photograph if you’ve a very steady hand or tripod! Pete, being a photographer, was in there for ages with all the gear so we left him to it. This is what part of the pit looked like:
I think that the warriors had been placed back where they were found and some of these were the best preserved, albeit missing some vital parts!
The horses were pretty big and in remarkably good repair
They had a few warriors out of the pits on display behind glass. The detail was incredible. For example, every warriors face is different, the hair styled differently and even the tread on the shoes of the kneeling archers was detailed
Pit two was larger but largely untouched. Originally, before being covered in earth, the pits had wooden beams laid over the top and then woven matting was placed over the beams. The dips in the below photo is where the roof had collapsed on of the warriors underneath.
Where some of the roofing had been removed, warriors lay in pieces.
Pit one is the largest (its something like 260m long) and possibly most impressive due to its sheer size and the number of warriors in there
and as you can see, pit one is only partially excavated
but its impressive nonetheless. Imagine the folk whose job it is to uncover all the remaining warriors. It would require a huge amount of patience – something more up Euans alley than mine.
The hostel we stayed in was a rambling place with two courtyards and rooms on two stories and just inside the city walls, which were pretty imposing
We had a ‘spare’ day in Xi’an and spend it in the Muslim area, wandering and sussing out the markets
On the way there were kites for sale and I’ve included a photo of these as they were pretty cool. They were so long and just hung in the sky, even with no wind whatsoever; not even the leaves on the trees were rippling. Both Euan and I were both looking up, not looking where we were walking and so transfixed by these kites that we both fell down steps within seconds of each other. Idiots.
We’re both pretty big market fans and this one had both our ideals – food and animals. The food came first (Euans call) and we passed so many wee hole-in-the-wall cafes it was difficult to choose which one to head into. People just stared and we imagined that they were willing us not to walk in and try and speak Chinese. Its really difficult – anything we try to pronounce just gets met with blank stares (or worse, laughter) – even when I tried to say the most basic things, like “thank you” to a police officer, he didn’t understand. I should have been saying what sounded like “shi-shi” really quickly but I was saying “sher sher”. Makes it very challenging and I’ve resorted to sign language which gets laughed at but its more fun than trying to speak.
Anyhow, this one place had a massive vat bubbling away and a closer look revealed that it was chicken stock. All the chicken legs, heads and other bits and pieces were floating on the top and the broth from underneath was scooped out and piled in a bowl with dumplings, spring onions and a few other bits and pieces.
It was very good and cost us next to nothing; about 80p each max. I tried a weeny bit of freshly ground chilli with the dumplings and nearly blew my doors off. Sichuan peppers are renowned for their heat but I wasn’t expecting anything quite like what I got!
We came across this lady with big bags of dried chillies and a manual grinder. These are the culprits!
The food market merged into one selling fish and other animals. I’ve never seen fish like this before. They had a nose that would have looked more at home on a platypus. No idea what they’re called. Anyone out there know?
There were the usual rabbits
and loads of birds (this place was actually the bird market)
and stalls like this lined the street for a long way
but the birds were interspersed with fish
and turtles
Then we saw something really weird. These are real frogs that were about 3cm long and in a large glass jar. I took this photo from the side (because the frogs went nuts when I put my camera over the jar)
then came across more, less colourful but more camera-friendly, so I took a straight-down photo into the jar. No flash camera tricks or fancy fandangle filters used here; they really were thse colours.
This was really sad. A turtle that had grown algae on his shell and in a jar no bigger than him. He could only turn in circles around the edge of the jar, scrabbling a the sides with his legs. It was awful and I wanted to buy him to get him out but Euan was right, they’d just put another one in there to cater for demand. So we left him.
On the way into the market, this place had a massive queue of people lining up to buy this sticky sweet rice out of a huge copper cauldron. There was still some left on our way out so I lined up too. It turned out to be layers of sticky white rice, plums and beans. It was really yummy as the plums had kind of caramelised around the edges and gave the rice a really nice flavour. I wasn’t sure about the beans though. They got left behind in the container.
We were headed towards to Chengdu in the Sichuan province, some 1200km away from Xi’an. We still haven’t got our head around the distances here and are doing some rapid rethinking as to where we might be able to go in a month!
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