Xi'an - Day One

Friday morning we boarded an 8AM flight for Xi'an, the original capital of imperial China.

Between our group and the students from Miami (Ohio) University, we managed to book most of the plane. The 75-minute flight would have been very pleasant if not for the fact that the A/C seemed to stop about halfway through the trip. Air was still coming out of the vents, but it was not really cold. A warm plane can quickly lead to restlessness. In an attempt to combat this, the airline played a video of a flight attendant leading us in a set of exercises to do on the plane to the tune of very upbeat music. It was a bit strange.

After landing in Xi'an and eating lunch, our first destination was the old city wall. The wall enclosed the ancient city of Xi'an, forming a square whose four sides total a little over 25km in length. The wall stands about 30 feet high and is about 12 meters wide at the base. Today the old city is at the center of modern-day Xi'an and is full of places to eat, shopping malls, clubs, and all other types of places for tourists to spend money. At the center of the old city is the Ancient Bell Tower that was used to sound the time during the day, for warning, or for important occasions.

Also located within the old city limits is the Great Mosque. Xi'an (which was then called Chang'an) marked a major eastern endpoint on the Silk Road. Along with a transfer of Oriental technology to the west, came a spread of some Islamic influence into China.

After walking along the old city wall, we went to the nearby Stele Forest. The ''Forest'' is actually a museum for stones with Chinese characters engraved. The oldest steles were from around 1500 years ago and the collection ranged from imperial edicts to full books by ancient scholars. Many of the stones were taller than us and most have weighed many tons. There were many different calligraphy styles represented and some of the characters were so small, that it must have taken great skill to carve them all so perfectly into the stones.

Afterwards we checked into our hotel before going back to the old city for a dinner of dumplings.
Xi'an is famous for producing many different types of dumplings. Our dinner consisted of 16 dishes of dumplings, with each being different from the last type. We had dumplings filled with pork, chicken, tomatoes, crab and walnuts among others. Some of the more fancy dumplings are made to resemble different types of flowers or animals. We saw a display with dumplings shaped like swans, frogs, roses, and more.

Following dinner, the group split up. Earlier in the day our tour guide sold most people tickets to a ''culture show'' for the evening, but Janet and I decided not to spend the extra 150RMB. I thought the show would consist mainly of people dressing in traditional Chinese costume with traditional dances and music. From my understanding, that is pretty much what it was.

Instead, we decided to spend more time walking around in the old city and ended up seeing our own ''culture show'' for free in a park right outside of the city wall. It seems that on weekend nights, many of the older people gather dance in the park. Some were playing drums and other instruments while a large group danced with fans and umbrellas. While at first it seemed like chaos, it became clear that there was some order to the dance and somehow everyone who joined in knew the steps. It was fascinating to watch. Despite a couple of invitations to join in, we decided to walk across the street to watch another group who had gathered to sing. There seemed to be an older man and woman leading and bypassers would gather around to join in singing what must have been fairly well-known songs as everyone seemed to know the lyrics. It was a great, free culture show and likely more enjoyable than being stuck with the other 60-odd students in a little theater.

After an adventure with our taxi driver not knowing how to get to our hotel (despite his assuring us he knew the way before we got in) we finally made it back to rest up for another busy day ahead of us...