General: Xi´an

Are you one of those people who are bit fearful around airports?
Some people are afraid of flying and deal with it by getting a lot drunk and a bit fighty.
Some people are oddly specifically afraid of just the take off and landing, like there’s a better way if getting 36000 feet high.
Some people are secretly just a little bit worried that their suitcase will inexplicably burst open in transit and that their belongings will ...
.../> Sock. T-shirt. Sock. Pants. Pants. Tears.

I’m one of the latter.

In Xi’an airport, after a 2 hour 40 minute flight from Beijing with the surprisingly comfortable but ambiguously named Dragon Air, I came desperately close to catatonic shock as one of our two suitcases jerked along the fairly antiquated luggage belt, Wide. Open.

Holy Pantsonthebeltophobia Batman!


Luckily, you can ... more

Are you one of those people who are bit fearful around airports?
Some people are afraid of flying and deal with it by getting a lot drunk and a bit fighty.
Some people are oddly specifically afraid of just the take off and landing, like there’s a better way if getting 36000 feet high.
Some people are secretly just a little bit worried that their suitcase will inexplicably burst open in transit and that their belongings will arrive along the luggage belt in an inconvenient individual manner.
Sock. T-shirt. Sock. Pants. Pants. Tears.

I’m one of the latter.

In Xi’an airport, after a 2 hour 40 minute flight from Beijing with the surprisingly comfortable but ambiguously named Dragon Air, I came desperately close to catatonic shock as one of our two suitcases jerked along the fairly antiquated luggage belt, Wide. Open.

Holy Pantsonthebeltophobia Batman!

Luckily, you can take the boy out of Manchester, but you can’t stop the man nicking a blanket from the Heathrow to Beijing flight on BA. Just in case.
The pilfered blanket acted heroically by holding absolutely everything in place and thus avoiding any need for medical attention.
I stroked the blanket appreciatively, closed up the suitcase then gave it a kick and the evil eye before leaving to greet our rep, hoping for a bit of mental security.
We subsequently embarked on one of the most inappropriately hilarious car journeys I ever did have.

Her name was Katherine.
Katherine is our guide for our stay in Xi’an, a city that served as the Capital of China in ancient times and once being the starting point of the Silk Road, (this obviously predates the ages where road building progressed through Yellow Brick and Cobble before all finally agreeing on Asphalt).
In modern times, since 1974 infact, Xi’an has been known throughout the world as the location of the Terracotta Army, and another tick on the “Chinese things to see” list

Katherine referred to herself in the third person for the whole car journey and Katherine did something with the English language that was genius.
Believable in context but nowhere near the actual intended meaning, and mostly animal words.
One probing line of questions went (almost)exactly as follows:

Where are you from?

“We live near London”

Do you live in house or an apartment?

“We live in a flat.”

Does your flat have a chicken in?

“A chicken? Ummmm…. no. No, you’d definitely need a garden for a chicken really and we only have a communal garden, might upset the neighbours. Good idea though, fresh eggs and that. Interesting question too. Well done.”

My friends have just bought house that come with 2 chickens. It has 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom, and 2 chicken and garage for car.

“2 Chicken and bedroom and a garage for car? Do you mean Kitchen? I think you mean Kitchen. We’ve got a kitchen, yes. Just the one though.”

She also asked me if I’ve ever seen the Apes, so I replied about our forthcoming trip to Borneo and the Orang-utans, before she interrupted and said she meant had I ever skied on the Apes. Alps. Apes. Nearly, but not quite.

All the while I was still in recovery from the luggage near miss. It was as though I’d landed in a Shopaholic and Blister novel.

Pulling into hour hotel, it just got more obscure.
Firstly, the Grand Mercure Hotel was built in concrete by the Russians, never a combination that will win any design awards but nevertheless inside the lobby it was pleasantly grand enough, and brilliantly, there was a Monk Conference on.
Loads of Monks, on holiday, in a 5 star hotel. One monk was the happiest man on earth when we said
“Nee How!” ( meaning Hello! or, possibly Chair! depending on your inflection).
He turned around giggling joyously and then made a face identical to the Laughing Buddha – who incidentally is popular in China but only popular with the 3% who are both Buddhists and avid statue carvers as most of China still follow the Communist way of no religion at all, but tolerate the resplendent temples and statues in every city we visited.

The day was only improved further when we were informed that the hotel was full so we were being upgraded to room 2388, which happened to be a Suite.
The number 8 in China is considered a lucky number, and rooms with 88 in the number have 2 bathrooms, an office complete with chairman’s desk, a lounge with seating for 7, and a bedroom with a bed big enough for 8. No Chicken though.

As we discussed the chandelier that was reflecting irritatingly onto the massive T.V. we relived a truly peculiar day and wound down by watching a bit of Chinese television.
When the infomercial that claimed a drink could make you grow taller, complete with before and after interviews was followed immediately by another infomercial that claimed a drink would make your boobs bigger, we retired to the padded room to rest up for the trip to the Terracotta Warriors the next day.

Breakfast is always great when you’re surrounded by monks, some in ecclesiastical robes and some wearing dressing gowns and slippers, and a day is only improved when there’s fruit and pancakes and waffles and sausages and bacon and crusty rolls. We ate like king and queen, fully aware after our Beijing experience that we’d also soon be eating lunch, and headed out with Katherine to the old City Wall of Xi’an.

It was whilst we were at the wall that Katherine taught us how she remembers the names of the various dynasties who ruled China for thousands of years, something we were struggling to comprehend as we’d inconveniently arrived without our PHD in ancient history.
Her technique only applied to the 3 dynasties whom had designated Xi’an as a capital city, so maybe more 11 plus than PHD, and went as follows;
Chin, Tongue, Hand.
Katherine helpfully pointed to each body part as she spoke as we clearly hadn’t had enough confusion since yesterday.
It was some time later that we learned that the ‘Chin Dynasty’ was the ‘Qin Dynasty’ the ‘Tongue Dynasty’ was “Tang” and “Hand” was “Han”.
Simple really.

The wall surrounding Xi’an is the only remaining and complete city wall in China that survived being demolished as part of the construction of the Great Wall.
Tall and wide, much wider than the Great Wall, the views from the top show the definition between the inner ‘old city’ and the high-rise conurbations of the ‘new city’ that has grown up around the outskirts.
High-rise buildings are supposedly banned from being built within the city walls, although it does appear that at some point the locals somehow managed to distract the planners and build 5 or 6 30-plus story office buildings.
From the wall, we could also conclude that there wasn’t much else to actually see or do in Xi’an, apart from the Wild Goose Pagoda. A misnomer as it is a pagoda that doesn’t have any geese who looked even mildly annoyed, never mind wild. It did have some lovely gardens though.

We were in Xi’an for a total of three days, two nights but only really one reason.
That reason being the Terracotta Army.

The army was produced in 221BC by a Chin Emperor. Point to Chin. Think Qin. Emperor Jimmy Hill was a superstitious fellow and as he wanted to make sure he would be protected in the afterlife, he ordered his men to create the life-sized models out of clay and place them around his tomb. It took him 40 years to complete his quest, meaning he was preparing for death pretty much his whole life.
In 1974, when the area was little more than a collection of farms, one of the men decided to dig a well as there had been several dry seasons.

He dug, found some scraps of pottery, thought nothing of it and continued to dig, and then came across an arm and then a leg.
Understandably freaked out he contacted the Government, because Time Team hadn’t been invented, and by 1979 the first few hundred warriors were on public display following 5 years of excited digging and gluing.

They’ve been slowly excavating ever since, and today there are 2000 individual warriors to distinguish as all are different, displayed in 3 separate covered pits. Entrance fee for the privilege is 50Yuan.
If you decide £5 is too steep to see one of the most remarkable archaeological discoveries since a series of small walls was found in Wiltshire, then you can see hundreds of warriors on the approach roads leading up to the site.
They haven’t escaped, or been stolen, but there appears to be a roaring trade in full size replicas and there are dozens of factories churning out identical potted people on both sides of the road for about a mile.
There are about 6000 real warriors still buried in the official site as originally, all the warriors were painted to look more lifelike but the colours that remain on the newly uncovered warriors quickly fades and the statues return to the familiar brown clay. I found this quite an astonishing revelation – here I am, looking at 2000 brown models and wondering at what point they realised the supervisor of digging was colour-blind?
They’ve stopped digging now, until they come up with a way of preserving the colours permanently.
But it still took 2000 incidents of
“Boss – This ones in colour too!”
“Lies! Keep Digging!”

There are still plenty of smashed up pieces of pottery that are being painstakingly sellotaped back together to keep the archaeologists busy and this is done at the far end of Pit One, allowing a better view of the “under reconstruction” warriors than those completed ones that are arranged in the 6 metre deep pit in regiments of soldier ranks.
Pits two and three contain a further 400 statues and these are officer class and charioteer statues, including another revelation – they only made horses here as well!
Proper sized clay horses!
It should be known as “The Terracotta Army (and a few horses)”

One horse had only been half uncovered and this impelled Katherine to attempt a more conventional joke of “We call this ‘The Horses Ass’” Before giggling to herself like she’d just been the naughtiest girl in class.
She later pushed it a bit too far by asking me which of the 3 pits was my favourite, prompting a considered response from me about the virtues of all three and the achievements of everyone involved, before she deadpan informed me that her favourite of all the pits is Brad Pitt. This girl was a professor of word games.

Through to the gift shop, and amongst the regular giant pencils with tassels, Chairman Mao watches and replica warriors, there was a small crowd of people around a desk letting a very old looking man autograph their £12 souvenir programme books.
Never one to miss out on meeting a celebrity, even when I don’t know who they are, I bought a book and joined the queue whilst Katherine explained that we were very fortunate as this man was the farmer who dug the well and got freaked out by loose pottery limbs back in 1974, and he’s not here every day.
You’re going to have to take my word for this though, as we weren’t allowed to take any photographs of him.
We did wonder if this was because they wheel out a different pensioner from the local old folks’ home every day. Outlawing photos means no incriminating evidence to compare.
Our farmer was small, bald, and had funny little round red glasses on, just incase you’re in the area and you pop in for a look and see Grandpa Joe and not Grandpa Ghandi.

Our experience of the Warriors left us with a “glad we saw it but don’t need to see it again” kind of emotion. We really enjoyed the whole day, but not long after looking at one Terracotta Warrior, it starts to get just a little bit samey, and we did see 1999 of them in the car before we even entered the site. This isn’t to detract from the historical importance of the 2000 year old Warriors, nor does it mean that you shouldn’t go if the opportunity presents itself.
Just make sure you wear a blindfold on the way in and you don’t go when it’s raining. Life gets busier in the rain – another Katherine fact for you.

Our time in Xi’an had come to an end and we headed to the airport to catch our flight to Shanghai.

It would be the last time for some time that I would fill out the legal “Quarantine Declaration” forms on a flight without having to lie. Just a little white lie though…..
 

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