Another visit to the Muslim Quarter and a walk around the Great Mosque. It's an interesting mix of Islamic and Chinese architecture and art and is set out like a Chinese temple, but with an Islamic prayer hall and spires decorated using pagoda style architecture.
I get chatting to a shop keeper outside who at first I think is just trying to sell me something, but it turns out he thought I was Muslim and just wanted to chat. It happens a second time round in the evening and a guy I buy some food from is convinced I am Muslim, after he probes and finds out I went to an Islamic school for a year, he latches on and keeps asking.
At night time the Quarter transforms into a circus of people selling food, artists offering to draw your portrait, people selling kites and other entrepreneurs wanting to cash in on tourist money.The kites are amazing, consisting of many small kites tied to one another in a long string, they must stretch at least 100m into the sky and you could buy 5m sections for around 50p. The best example of money making were the guys with full on telescopes mounted onto the back of motorcycles, who for just under a pound will let you look into the sky at the moon or Jupiter. When I say telescope I don't mean a small hand held thing, but massive white industrial telescopes that have supporting frames and are turned using wheels and gears. I'm not sure how good it is for the optics, being driven around on the back of a motorcycle and being bashed around going up curbs over bumps and I'm sure if any astronomer saw it, they would have a heart attack.
With man flu in tow, I have an activity rate of about -5 for the morning and so do practically nothing, the afternoon however is very interesting. Me and Jenny decide to take a walk around the Muslim Quarter in Xian, which just breaks all stereotypical images you have of religions and how people should look. Compared to the other markets in China it's selling so many different things and is like a toned down version of the market in Marakech, really bizarre for the middle of a massive Chinese city. The women wear hijabs and burkas and the men head caps, with their clothes having a distinctive Arab flair. There is Arabic calligraphy as opposed to Chinese characters on the shops and around the quarter and occasionally people will talk inArabic. A walk around the city walls and the parkland that surrounds it, has us land in a traditional Chinese dance performance and singing, which is 'interesting'. Also in the park are the communal exercise bikes and machines which seem to feature in much of China. It's such a good ideaand there is the usual collection the older Chinese generation on the machines doing their afternoon routines. We really should adopt this idea in the UK.
Jenny also solves the conundrum of how so many Chinese people can afford to go to the tourist sites today. She says that there is only a small percentage of people in China who are actually rich and can afford to spend money on cameras and gadgets and travel around, whilethe majority of the country is extremely poor. This very small percentage is smaller than in other countries, but when you have 1.3 billion people it equates to around 97 million people, more than the whole population of the UK, who have enough money to buy what theywant, travel around the country and support a huge (and expensive, even by UK standards) domestic tourism industry.
Getting off the train at Xi'an feels like breaking out of prison. The station is just outside the north city walls and I decide to walk to the hostel which is at the south gate, once again the Lonely Planet map is way off and an hour and a half later I rock up at Shuyuan Hostel. It's set over three lovely courtyards with a cafe at the back courtyard and a lively bar in the basement underneath it all. It is a lovely place and I'm glad I'm booked in for 5 nights as it will giveme time to get over my cold and see the surrounding sights.
After I check in, they tell me my bed isn't ready yet, so give me a free coffee voucher and let me store my luggage, after my first coffee in a month I decide to get the terracotta warriors done as it's still early and make my way to the site about an hour out of town. It's blistering heat and the sun has decided to just be offensive, so the air conditioned air craft hangers the warrior pits are set in are a god send. It's a massive complex and is really impressive, especially inspecting some of the warriors up close and seeing the details on the life size models. I decided to take an audio guide to get some more information, in the pits it's quite interesting, but in the exhibitionhalls the masses of Chinese tour groups push past you and you can't see anything, also the audio guide gets a bit boring here. I am determined to listen to all 74 tracks, which means I end up sitting down on a bench for about 20 mins just playing them one after the other. I didn't actually listen to them and day dreamed for most of it, but I had to get my monies worth.
Once back at the hostel I crash in a pile of exhaustion through illness, and the sun's barrage of burning rays. I later meet my room mates, Jenny from Germany, Javier from Chile and Alex from the UK who lived in Hong Kong, it's an eclectic bunch and we ending up discussinglife, the universe and the Chinese until about 3.30 in the morning.
I really have nothing to do today, I've seen the sights and walked around the walls, been outside the city gates and explored and now am just killing time until my train leaves at 11pm.The only option is to sit back outside the hostel and attempt to learn some more Chinese with my Mandarin recordings and bask in the sun. When that gets boring I break out the Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, which was given to me in Novosibirsk by Sasha. I guess she knew I would need it at some point.
I'm starting to feel a bit ill today and my throat hurts and I think I have a cold coming along, which is seriously bad timing considering I have an eight hour hard seat journey ahead. It's nothing more than a small cold, but when you're perched on an uncomfortable, reasonablyhard seat designed to hold 3, with 4 people on it; the gangways packed with people standing; no air conditioning; it smells and people spit and throw their rubbish onto the floor. It turns out to be a horrific journey and I get about 2 hours intermittent sleep, hugging my rucksack trying to use it as a pillow. Chinese hard seat trains are definitely for day journeys and not long night ones, but when there are no tickets left it becomes the only option (although it is considerably cheaper, for a reason).
At night time the Quarter transforms into a circus of people selling food, artists offering to draw your portrait, people selling kites and other entrepreneurs wanting to cash in on tourist money. The kites are amazing, consisting of many small kites tied to one another in a long string, they must stretch at least 100m into the sky and you could buy 5m sections for around 50p. The best example of money making were the guys with full on telescopes mounted onto the back of motorcycles, who for just under a pound will let you look into the sky at the moon or Jupiter. When I say telescope I don't mean a small hand held thing, but massive white industrial telescopes that have supporting frames and are turned using wheels and gears. I'm not sure how good it is for the optics, being driven around on the back of a motorcycle and being bashed around going up curbs over bumps and I'm sure if any astronomer saw it, they would have a heart attack.
