(View of the Summer Palace from the lake.) Valerie: As surprising as this may sound, it wasn't until Thursday that we finally found some dumplings in China. This small restaurant (Niegu Jiaozi) specializes in dumplings (it's all they serve) and they are made fresh to order.
(Temple of Heaven Park.)
Adam: The Temple of Heaven is where the Emperor would come to pray for a good harvest. It is shaped like a square with a dome on the top -- apparently, round shapes represent heaven, and square shapes represent earth. This is also a park where people come to practice Tai Chi and and an instrument which sounds like a cat being tortured.
Friday, September 7
Valerie: We took an early morning flight to Xi'an -- the ancient capital of China. Xi'an was the capital of China for 6 dynasties. We were warned that Xi'an is more polluted than Beijing which is hard to believe given the level of pollution in Beijing. Despite the warning, nothing prepares you for exactly how polluted the city is. It hits you like a brick. There is so much smog you can't see the buildings. Visibility here has to be around zero all the time.
Adam: On the way over, the smoke was so bad that I began to cough quite a bit. Everything is grey, and there are smoke-belching factories all around. Seriously, if I ever had any doubts about the need to fix our environment, I no longer have them. That being said, I think both Valerie and I are enjoying Xian more than Beijing. Despite the air pollution, it is a very walkable city, and there are some really nice spots in town to visit.
(The Bell Tower, downtown Xi'an.)
Valerie: One of my favorite sites so far is the Great Mosque -- a Muslim mosque in downtown Xi'an. The mosque is still functioning and it has not been overly restored like a lot of other sites in Beijing. The mosque is enclosed in a large area and there are several pagodas, including one where worshipers wash up before entering the main temple. The entire complex is very peaceful.
Adam: Afterwards, we visited the "Islamic Street" which is half Chinese market, half souk selling all sorts of dried fruits.
Saturday, September 8
Valerie: On Saturday morning we did something we've never done before -- we joined a tour group! It was, as we expected, a mistake. We signed up for the tour because that's the easiest way to see the"famous" terra cotta warriors -- Xians claim to fame. Apparently the warriors are the eighth wonder of the world. I thought there were only seven wonders?
Adam: Although we were gone for nearly nine hours, we only spent two hours at the warriors themselves. This is because the "tour" included a temple ("The Big Goose," the name says it all), a "historic village" (lots of unintelligible dirt) and a "factory" for terra cotta warriors (the China garden gnome factory). We also had lunch, which included, bizarrely, potatoes fried in sugar. Weird.
Valerie: The warriors themselves were very impressive. There are three "pits" of warriors. The first pit has approximately 6,000 of them.
Adam: The warriors were constructed during the Qin dynasty, around 200 BC. An emperor who thought quite highly of himself as a general decided that he wanted to command an army in the afterlife, so he had his minions construct, at last count, over 7000 soldiers. Unfortunately for the emperor, stone soldiers do not fight as well as live ones, and his dynasty was overthrown shortly after his death, many of the stone warriors being destroyed in the process. Overall, it turns out, the warriors were the only sight that was not a "pit" all day (uproarious laughter)! In the end, Valerie and I decided that we were tired of Xian and the smog, so, ditching our earlier plans, we decided to "bolt" and spontaneously bought earlier plane tickets for Shanghai. We'll let you know in a later post how our efforts to "return" our later plane tickets go. Expect lots of angry gesturing.
Up Next: Shanghai: boom or bust?
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