Xi'an - Terracotta Warriors, an (almost successful) trip to Mount Huashan and That Tandem Bicycle

This was such a fun week - I don't even know where to start. I will therefore start with a praise of all the little things that really made it a great week. Thinking about the week in Xi’an still brings a big smile on my face. This trip was a perfect break from the Chinese studies with lots of laughs, no stress and no worries about tomorrow.

To be honest, although Xi'an is one of the ancient capitals of China it isn't the most exciting of all places to visit. Xi’an is most famous for the nearby Terracotta warriors that a farmer digging a well in his lands found accidentally in the 1970s. Now thousands and thousands of travellers flock to the site yearly to stare at the hundreds of clay men standing in their pits. It wasn't the warriors or Xi'an itself that made this trip so great for me. The best trips are made of:

1. Fabulous buddies to plan the trip with. My travel buddies Jamie and Ashley are both easygoing and fun people and our rather large age difference didn't seem to bother any of us. The age difference was really rather big - If I had had children as young as my mother, Ashley would be two years younger than my oldest child. I thank the goddess of Wisdom for having giving enough wits to rather waste my life on travelling than raising children.

2. The unexpected company. Making new friends on the road is always nice. This time we stumbled upon a Belgian guy (in our hostel dorm) and a nice German guy (at the bus station on our way to see the Terracotta Warriors. We of course joined forces for sightseeing, eating out and general fooling around. I do have to confess (yes, this is in the series of the Old Woman's Uninteresting Confessions) that in particular the cute, nice and fun Belgian guy (who was also nearly 10 years younger than me) made it to my list of highlights of this trip. That's enough to make my day- or a few. Before any of you dirty-minded people even think about it: I behaved well!

3. A couple of interesting sightseeing days: Terracotta Warriors and Huashan were both good but I would also put pacing behind Ashley and Jamie’s skyblue tandem bicycle as a great tour of the city. Much better than taking a taxi.

4. Nice, cosy hostels. I've raved about hostels before but here it goes again: Hostels are the best places to meet people, chill out and swap travel stories. Do hang out at the public areas. I did not do even nearly enough of that during this trip, yet I did get some travel tips also this time. Value for money cosiness = Life is worth living.

5. Sufficient amount of good weather, a few good surprises and not much of any bad surprises (the only really bad surprise was that the infamous plank walk at Huashan Mountain was closed - booooooaaaa).

Getting to the trip itself, we took a "slow train" from Beijing to Xi'an. The journey took about 13 hours overnight. We had booked ourselves into a so called "hard sleeper" compartment and were very impressed by how comfortable Chinese train travel. A "hard" sleeper was not hard at all. We got mattresses, clean bedsheets, pillows and blankets. There were 6 people to each cabin. After a bit of negotiation we managed to swap our tickets and were in the end all in the same room (as it was Golden week we had only managed to get bunks in three different rooms). Asking Chinese people to change tickets with us was a great way of practising our Chinese right at the start of the trip. Between the 3 of us we knew just about enough Chinese to manage this communication – and still it was quite an operation.

Ashley and Jamie in our hard sleeper comprtament,
and arriving at the train station in rainy Xi'an.

 It was raining in Xi’an when we arrived, but we still decided to follow the hostel instructions to find Green Forest, push our way past the offered taxi rides at the train station and find the bus that took us nearer to our hostel. Unfortunately it rained all day so out planned tour of the city wall had to be postponed. All we managed was a short trip to a nearby restaurant, some snack food shopping (we already had bags full of snacks, heaven knows why we bought even more), buying a map of Xi’an. Once we had also equipped ourselves with two local newspaper we headed back to the hostel and instead of reading the paper stuffed it in our soaking wet trainers to dry them up, ready for next day’s adventures. Somewhere during the wait for the rain to end was when our new Belgian friend David walked in. Ashley started with offering him food (as we had piles of snacks and he had a long train journey behind him) and I invited him to join us for a tour of the muslim food street, both offers which he accepted. I immediately decided to like him. A man who eats food when offered can’t be a bad man J

Dorm at Green Forest hostel.

We had a wander around the food street. It was good fun – but I did come back smelling as awesome as if I had been on the menu myself. Oh well, who cares of a smell of frying oil and barbeque smoke when you’ve had a good meal. We also tried the local noodle specialty, biang biang mian. It is also famous because the locals created a special Chinese Character for this dish – it is the most complicated character in the Chinese language. Created for food. Tells something about the priorities in the lives of the Chinese, haha.

Ashley and Jamie eating biang biang mian in a
tiny restaurant at the food street.

Xi'an food street at night.

The next day we found our way to the public bus that took us to Terracotta warriors for the price of 7 kuai (under 1 euro) and bumped into Marcus, the German dude, while looking for the bus.  Once we arrived at the visitor centre, there again were a lot of willing people to be our guides, yet we decided to first get our tickets and then look for a guide. Marcus and David went straight for the student ticket queue and it seems at terracotta warriors the staff did not know much English as they managed to successfully buy them. The uptight Finnish woman (me) first decided to disapprove of such cheating yet in the end barely managed to gather her wits enough to follow the lead and buy a ticket that was 50% cheaper than the genuine one. Although technically, after all, I am a student (not employed and studying mandarin) a part of me still didn’t like the idea that I’m buying a student ticket just because I can. Can’t believe I’m that uptight, but oh yes, let’s just face it, I am. Where is the villain in me?

We hired a guide at the terracotta warriors and I do think it added a lot of value to our visit. I quite enjoyed listening to her explaining to us the background and the history of the warriors. Hearing that the emperor had started planning for his afterlife at the age of 13 and building an army to fight for him also once he has crossed to the other side was both rather amazing and a little disturbing. Only an emperor can afford to think of their life after death at the age of 13.

 

The warriors in their pits

The next day  (Tuesday) we ditched David and headed over to Huashan with Marcus (actually he ditched us – he wanted to go to Huashan on Thursday afternoon and overnight on the mountain – an exercise we would have loved to join but had no equipment whatsoever for overnighting on a mountain under a sun and we weren’t really tempted to stay at the mountain top hostels during Golden Week when everything is more expensive than usual). To get to Huashan we took the fast train at 7.30 in the morning and returned from Huashan North station at 7.30 in the evening – which was pretty much just right for a cable car ride up, walking around all the peaks and a quick hike down the mountain. On top of Huashan it was blistering cold and Ashley was wearing the tiniest shorts any mountain climber has ever worn in this world – luckily she doesn’t get cold easily. I was cool enough in my long sleeve cross country skiing / hiking jacket and long trousers. Not cold – but had it been any colder it would have not been pleasant. It wasn’t that cold of a day otherwise but we were unlucky enough to have a strong breeze blowing over the mountain tops that cooled down the air a good few degrees.  Our biggest disappointment however was that the plank path was closed and we could not complete the famous death defying  Huashan walk. (The path re-opened two days later when David arrived on Huashan and he was able to complete the walk. We hate him!) Huashan was beautiful, the scenery is breathtaking and whether you decide to hike up the mountain or take the cable car up, both are ways to see Huashan and the nearby mountains.

The long cable car ride to the West peak.

Jamie wasn't fond of the strong wind we had on the
cable car ride.

Locks with wishes on top of Huashan.

View towards one of the other peaks.

Our group pictured in a mirror ball.

This is as close to the plank walk as we got.
(Probably to Jamie's relief).

 For the rest of the trip we didn’t do much of anything else worth mentioning except for we did the recommended Xi’an City Wall cycling (a fun ride but after Huashan the scenery felt somewhat boring), and changed hostels. 7 Sages Hostel was another great find! They claim to be “one of the world’s most spectacular 10 hostels” and whilst this may be a slightly exaggerated claim, they were definitely one of the best hostels I’ve been in. The dorm rooms and common showers were not as nice as at green Forest but the 3-person room we had was a bargain and in good condition for the price we paid for it. Wat mad the place great was that the hostel had an amazing deco -  a great combination of old and new (built in old military barracks), a cosy restaurant and lounge area, a courtyard area, ping pong tables, pool table, a well equipped bar/fridge, laundry facilities (that we used at the end of the week) and bicycle rental services. We also made friends with Niu-Niu, the hostel dog (Well, Ashley and Jamie did, I’m not so much into dogs) and a man we believe was the owner of the hostel (we didn’t ask whether he was the owner or the manager).

Cycling on the Xi'an city wall.

We were impressed by the pretty coffee cups at the Seven
Sages hostel.

The courtyard at the Seven Sages hostel.

The restaurant and breakfast room at Seven Sages.

In the evening we also saw the umbrellas that people had left
in support of the pro democracy demonstrations that were
taking place in Hong Kong when we were in Xi'an.

 On our second last day we rented bicycles. Whilst I was happy with one of the hostels extremely old bikes, Ashley and Jamie conquered  Xi’an on a blue tandem bike. We did a good long run over to the great Goose Pagoda, further down and around the park area and back to our hostel again. If you can put up with Chinese traffic, it is a real fun experience. Get out there on a bike – cycling is something that must be tried out in China J

The Giant Goose Pagoda. We did not go inside the park
(there was an entrance fee).

This shopping mall had a funny screen in the roof with sealife.
It was like a ceiling movie screen.

Some signs in the parks did not make sense to us.

We returned to Beijing on a fast train  on Saturday(cheap tickets on sleeper trains were sold out), all very pleased with our trip. Looking forward to new adventures with this crew – hoping to also cross paths with Marcus and David again one day.

Sending all of you peace and love from a very polluted Beijing – at the time of writing this the PM2.5 reading is closer to 500 and rising…