Xi'an-endoah River

After another night train from Pingyao we arrived in Xi’an. The night trains in China really aren’t that bad. I would prefer them any day over a night bus. Being able to lay down is quite nice. And if you like the smell of cigarettes and feet, they’re amazing.

Like Pingyao, Xi’an (pronounced She-An) is an ancient walled city; but unlike Pingyao, it is also a completely modern city full of shopping malls, an Imax movie theater, and the requisite amount of lung clogging Chinese smog. You can still ride bikes on top of the City Wall, check out the imposing Gates, or visit the ancient Bell Tower or Drum Tower if you’d like a little bit of history.

We loved our time in Xi’an. Even though we stayed in a shared dorm room with 6 other people, our hostel was amazing. Our favorite, and the nicest place we’ve stayed so far. Great mattress. Clean, soft, comfortable, fluffy white linens. Everything was fairly new and clean, but our favorite feature was the shower. Even though it was technically a shared bathroom, it was at least in the room, and not down the hall somewhere. And after weeks and weeks of Ferris Bueller-esque hand held shower heads with cold to arctic temperatures, and water pressure that somehow defied the laws of physics and flowed out slower than gravity pulled it to the ground-we welcomed a shower with the water pressure of a car wash and a temperature that ranged from warm to jaccuzi to the seventh circle of hell. I showered at least three times a day. Even if we didn’t leave the hostel.

A close tie for our other favorite part of Xi’an was the food. Amazing food. Somewhat unique to China, Xi’an is home to a large Muslim population, and the Muslim Quarter was a great place to wander and sample some great eats.

Now maybe we were just getting better at choosing places, but the ease and quickness that we found great food at budget appropriate prices was a game changer for us. No more walking around until people were turning into cartoon T-bone steaks. Perhaps it was because everything was fried, but everything we tried was delicious.

This little food cart down the street became our favorite place to eat. We found that sharing their three dishes was the perfect amount of food.

The above wrap is a big staple in the area. I think it was a breakfast food, but people also eat it whenever. It consists of the fried dough pancake, an egg mixed in there, some lettuce, whatever thsoe noodles were and a red chilli sauce. You could get it with "meat" (a Chinese hot dog) for an extra 15 cents.

This Cong You Bing is a delicious fried green onion pancake stuffed with more fried glass noodles and a bunch of more green onions and cilantro. Also delicious.

I'm not sure what was in these fried noodles above, and I don't care. They were amazing. We saw a guy eating them, pointed at them, ordered them, and then ended up eating them almost every day....Oh and each one of these things is less than $1.00

We thought this was going to be like a yellow cake mix. It's not. It is made of sweet rice and has a sweet honey date goo on top. It was ok.

I thought they were a little sour, but Sara really liked these candied hawthorn fruits with walnuts.

This Pao Mo took us a while to figure out. So we stood creepily off in the distance and watch people order and eat for a while before feeling confident we had kind of figured it out. First you go up and order, and they give you these two little pieces of bread. There is no way you could eat them. They are very hard and very dry.

You rip up the cakes into little pieces and then take the bowls back up. A few minutes latter they bring the bowls back to you filled with soup consisting of glass noodles, veggies, and whatever protein you picked. The dough now taste like pasta.

After writting this, it really doesn't seem that hard. But when you're looking at the giant menu on the wall that has 50 things on it, it takes a little while to know which one to point at.

Here's a few more desserts. Some sesame cookies and then some sticky rice also dipped in sesame seeds.

Even with all the great things inside the city, one of the main attractions of Xi’an is outside the city wall – The Terracotta Army. If you’ve turned on the Histoy, Discovery, or National Geographic Channel in the last 20 years, you’ve undoubtedly seen a special on these guys. In case you don’t have any of those channels, but somehow have the internet to read this blog, I’ll give you a little background.

With an Egyptian Pharaoh level of narcissism, as soon as Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, ascended to the throne he started working on his mausoleum. This was around 200something BCE. Now this isn’t your grandmother’s mausoleum…unless your grandmother was the first emperor of China, in which case it’s very similar. This guy thought it would be a good idea to build a replica of his army to protect his tomb. We’re talking somewhere in the vicinity of 8,000 soldiers, over 100 chariots and cavalry horses, plus and extra 500ish other horses…just in case. And since soldiers are soldiers, he also thought it would be necessary to have a terracotta version of the Ringling Brothers and built a number of musicians, strongmen, and acrobats for all of their terracotta entertainment needs.

The detail in each one of these warriors was astounding. No two were the same. Different height and weight. Different facial features and facial hair. Different haircuts and clothes. Each of them with some sort of weapon. And not like a weapon replica. We’re talking fully decorated ornate hand crafted weapons.

Oh and every single statue was painted and would have originally looked like this.

Perhaps as incredible as how meticulously these were made, is how well they have been preserved. Sure a large number of them are broken pieces of rubble, but you can still see the paint on a lot of the warriors.

Much like our experience at the Forbidden City, getting to the front and center of the main excavation pit (there are 3 pits), was a lot like getting to the front row of a Justin Beiber concert...uh, so I've heard. So we waited, and waited. We eventually positioned ouselves so that we were somewhat next "in line", and then boxed people out with an amazing Minnesota like passive agressive politeness. After thwarting many would be budgers, and quietly whispering our disdain for the selfie taking lingerers on the rail in front of us, we finally got to the front...and promptly lingered and took a selfie.

From Xi'an, with Love,

Will + Sara