Area Goes to Xian, China

I am very excited to announce that I am starting to do some travel writing! As I am out here seeing and doing all these things anyway, it's great to be able to share some of my experiences with others and get published at the same time. Thanks to my wonderful Aunt Lisa for connecting me with with Area and helping me out with these writing opportunities.

This piece about Xian, China, which I visited in December 2008, is my first story for Area Daily. The website focuses on boutique hotels, fine food, and interesting travel activities. The idea is to supply readers with ideas they are not going to find in their average guide book. I will be continuing to write more for Area my next piece being about my recent Morocco trip.

Enjoy!

HISTORY LESSON

This week Area Daily local correspondents weigh in about what’s on their radar this month. First up, Elena Sprick takes us to Xi’an, China.

Get a taste of the imperial life with a trip to this ancient capital, about an hour's flight from Beijing. As one of the oldest cities in the country, Xi’an has more than enough history to satisfy any history-starved junkie.

The famed Terracotta Army built over 2,000 years ago by Emperor Qin Shi Huang, serves as the main attraction here with an estimated 6,000 life-sized warriors plus horses and chariots erected to guard the Emperor in his final resting place. And it gets creepier... no two statues look alike and to keep the project a secret he had all the workers killed upon its completion.

The warriors are great for a day visit, or maybe more if you’re an archeology buff. But don’t worry; if you’re planning to travel all the way to Xi’an, there are plenty more things to see and do. Spend the day biking around the city high upon the walls (the views are killer). And don’t miss the Great Mosque and the winding streets of the Muslim quarter.

After a long day, relax in style at the Sofitel Xian on Renmin Square. The Sofitel has it all: enjoy a massage in the finely decorated spa or sing your heart out in a private karaoke room.

When hunger sets in, feast on dozens of varieties of tasty traditional dumplings at De Fa Zhang Jiaozi Shop (No. 229 Jie Fang Road on the north side of the Drum Tower), or wander the streets of the Muslim Quarter and snack on noodles, pancakes, rice bowls or any other number of traditional Chinese dishes for less than the price of a Starbucks latte.

Don’t have time to trek to China? Hop the train to Washington D.C. to visit a special exhibition of the warriors at the National Geographic Museum, on display through March 31.

Photo courtesy of Elena Sprick

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More Xi'an

After visiting the warriors (that took up most of the day), we went back to the city and decided to do some more exploring while we had some daylight. We went up onto the city walls, which encircle all of the original city and are surrounded by a moat. The walls are BIG. They're probably 20 meters high and about 10 meters wide at the top - thicker at the bottom. You can rent bikes on top of the walls and ride around, which looked like great fun if it weren't so cold. So instead, we just walked around for a little bit and enjoyed the sights from high off the ground.

Later that night, we went with some other people we met on our warrior tour (they're also English teachers in Korea) to see and water and light show. The show is supposed to be China's biggest water show, but it really wasn't anything to brag about. I got bored of it after about a minute (especially because it was so cold! See a theme here?). But the show was located in a plaza next to the Big Goose Pagoda, one of Xi'an's most famous sites. So at least we got to see a nice attraction while we were there.

After the water show, I started feeling my cold rise up again. So I ended up spending the rest of the night and most of the next day in bed. There was a lot more things that I wanted to see in Xi'an that I didn't get to. The next day while I was laying in bed trying to get better, I decided to take part in an ancient Chinese tradition: acupuncture. The hostel I was staying at had a Chinese doctor that could come and preform various Chinese treatments, such as acupuncture, cupping, toxin scraping and massage. My back was really bothering me and I had the cold and I knew this was going to be the cheapest acupuncture I could ever get, so I went for it. I got a little freaked out when he quickly jabbed a needle in my cheek and then poked it around a little bit. He put four needles in me (two in my face, two in my back) and it was a little scary, but I got through it and had my first acupuncture experience.

That night, we took an overnight train from Xi'an to Beijing. It took about 11 hours and we got beds in a "soft sleeper." There were 4 bunks in our little room which we shared with a Chinese man and woman. They went to sleep right away and Jason and I tried to go to sleep after about an hour or so. Lucky Jason slept through the night just fine, but I hardly slept a wink. It didn't help being sick, and then our car got incredibly hot and I was sweating all night long. And with the noise from the tracks and being jerked around, it just wasn't a good combination of things...

The Terracotta Warriors

The next day, our first full day in Xi'an, we headed out with a tour group from our hostel to the terracotta warriors. For those of you who don't know of the terracotta warriors, a little history lesson for ya:

The warriors were constructed by Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor to unite China. They say there are around 8000 warriors (they're still excavating). They were built because the emperor believed that he would still rule China in his afterlife and needed an army to help him (our tour guide kept telling us that he was crazy). One of the best known facts about the army is that no two warriors are the same. Each person was originally holding their own weapons, but they were made of wood so they disintegrated long ago (same with several chariots made of wood). Everything was painted life like colors, but after 2000 years of being underground, the paint on the clay vanished almost instantly when they were dug up and exposed to air. Each warrior is life size and was constructed after an actual person, so each one's facial features - and even hair styles - are unique. And when the army was finished being constructed, the emperor had all of the workers killed so that no one would know the secret of the army and come and destroy it. Probably one of the reasons it stayed so well preserved for so long.

The army wasn't discovered until 2000 years after it was constructed. In 1974, a peasant was digging a well and dug up a warrior's head. Our tour guide told us that the government paid him 10 yuan (about $1.25) for his find, since they had no idea what it would lead to. But he has since been well taken care of, being provided a great house, not having to work, and meeting leaders from around the world (Including our very own Bill Clinton). The man is now about 85 years old and hangs out in one of the buildings on the warrior compound almost every day, and we actually got to see him.


It was about an hour drive out to the site from our hostel. The grounds that the warriors are located on are pretty expansive, and we did a lot of walking. The first thing we made our way to was a building that houses a couple bronze chariots as well as many examples of the weapons that the warriors held. The bronze chariots were really nice and detailed. They are built a quarter of the actual size, because the emperor believed that when he got to heaven they would expand to full size to meet his needs.

From there we went to a little cinema which has a short film detailing some of the history of the warriors. It was all in English and didn't even have Chinese subtitles. Guess they know who their audience is. (This is where we got to see the man who discovered the warriors. He was sitting behind a table with a big "No Photos" sign on it.)

From there we moved on to Pit one, the biggest of the 3 pits where the warriors are located. The room is about as long as a football field and there are about 6000 warriors and horses, all standing in battle formation. Pit 2 is the smallest area, with only 72 warriors and is believed to be the army headquarters because of so many high ranking generals that were found in this area. Pit 3 is decently large, but most of the warriors haven't been unearthed yet. But there are apparently about 1300 warriors in this area. Also in Pit 3, they have a couple warriors enclosed in glass cases, so you can get up close to them and really see all the detail (even the tread on the bottoms of their shoes is unique!). They have even been able to preserve a little bit of paint on a couple of the warriors.

Xi'an

Leaving Shanghai, we got off to a bumpy start. We had booked a cheap flight to Xi'an on a small Chinese airline which we found online. We went to the airport and found our ticket counter to find out that, oh no, our flight had been canceled! The woman at the counter seemed surprised we didn't know: "Oh, nobody told you? Well, sorry..." She directed us to the help counter and they put us on a flight on China Eastern Airlines (the same airline we took from Korea) which was leaving at the same time and didn't charge us any extra. So it ended up working just fine, but did give us a little scare. The train between Shanghai and Xi'an is about 20 hours, so we we're really hoping to not be subjected to that. Also, the airports in China were strangely quiet and empty. For a country with the biggest population in the world, you would expect the airports to be a little bit hectic. But in every city we visited, they we're quiet, dark and empty.

We flew to Xi'an and arrived there mid afternoon. From the airport, we had to take a hour and 1/2 bus ride into the city. The province that Xi'an is in is pretty small compared to some of the other Chinese provinces. Xi'an is the biggest city in the province at I believe 3.62 million people. But the whole province is about 62 million people. Driving from the airport, I just really found it hard to believe that that many people are hiding in there. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but that hour drive seemed very eerie to me. The sky was incredibly hazy and almost seemed to blend into the dirty, dust covered ground. Much of the area that we drove through was filled with factories and high rise apartments, but it seemed just empty. We were driving on a big highway but were accompanied by few other cars. I didn't see any people out walking on the streets or around the apartments. The buildings looked un-lived in from the outside. There were no cars driving down the streets. It really felt like a ghost town to me. And just left me wondering, where are those 62 million people??

Anyway, after the odd bus ride into town, I eventually did start to see more people and it turned into the small, touristy city of Xi'an. Xi'an is filled with ancient Chinese history and was once the capital of China. The main area of the city (the original city) is surrounded by great, tall city walls. Our little hostel was located right next to the walls, by one of the main gates. It was such a wonderful place, with the best staff you could ask for, a delicious restaurant and great bar (and they offered free beers and tea everyday... beat that!) and comfortable rooms. I really loved this place, and the staff ended up being incredibly helpful to us.

After finding our place and getting settled in, we set out to explore the Muslim quarter in the late afternoon light. Xi'an apparently has a big Muslim history, and the Muslim quarter is now filled with street vendors and hole in the wall shops and restaurants. There's also a mosque in the area that I wanted to visit, but we ran out of time to go back. We peeked in the door at night but it wasn't lit up. But from what I could tell, it looked just like other Chinese temples. So we walked around and explored it all for a while and found some good little gifts.

On a side note: the way you have to bargain with vendors in China is amazing. They inflate their prices so greatly that most guidebooks will recommend you give your starting price at about 10% of what they are asking. We had people go down in price from about 600 yuan all the way to 20 yuan. (That's about $90 down to about $2.50). I've traveled around and done my share of bargaining, but nothing like I experienced in China. You learned to just ignore what their initial price was and decide about how much you would be willing to spend. Then when they're not going to your price start walking away, and 9 times out of ten, they will chase after you and agree to it. It's quite the experience.

After the Muslim quarter, we got some delicious, authentic Chinese food and a small restaurant with no English that our hostel recommended. I got chicken with peanuts (I had it a few other times throughout the trip as well) and was really surprised at how much the Chinese food in China tasted like the Chinese food in America! And we definitely weren't in touristy restaurants catering to foreigners, it was the real deal. It made me glad to know that they don't over Americanize all the food they serve in the States.

Check out Xi'an photos here.