I got into Xi'An as the sun was setting - it looked quite pretty from the plane, as I mentioned in my earlier post. As I walked towards security, I realized that I had to re-fill a Chinese entry card because being in Hong Kong technically counted as exiting China and thus going to Xi'An constituted re-entry. Thank God I got a 2-time visa when I applied for it. But because I took some time to find a card and fill it out, the Chinese security kind of came over and hovered over my shoulder. The officer was nice, and was impressed that I wrote very clear characters but still sent me to the "special" line. I was like...uuuuuuuuuuh....did I do something wrong? Luckily, that turned out to be just the line that was free and not the Chinese government tagging me or something....I hope.
Anyways, I got on the bus to the Bell Tower and then met Wei Ningqi (or NW, as I've referred to her before on this blog). It was so nice to see her again after 8 months! We went to her apartment and cooked up some veggies and chicken and rice for dinner and just talked. It was a lovely relaxing evening.
The next day we woke up early and went to the Antiques Market in Xi'An with one of NW's friends from Shaanxi University. He's an archaeologist and he's pretty cool. We just went to look about for a bit and see what was available. To be honest, we were pretty sure that a lot of the stuff at the market were fakes (of varying degrees) but we still found some very pretty things. I personally really liked the aged wooden doors and lanterns we found in the ground floor as well as some old republican-era round glasses and the Han dynasty mirrors. I didn't get anything though I did take a lot of pictures as inspiration for a story I'm developing at the moment.
After the market, NW and I headed up to the Muslim Quarter. We walked around for a bit before deciding that we were hungry and we should eat something. We ducked into a pretty big and pretty famous restaurant that I forget the name of and ordered some xiaolongbao (小笼包) which are a kind of soupy dumplings and some of Xi'An's famous Yangrou Paomo (羊肉泡馍) which is is mutton meat soup with pieces of nan bread in it. Both dishes were absolutely delicious! I actually want to learn how to make yangrou paomo because it was so so good.
After eating, we set about to walk through a bit more of the muslim quarter. There were a bunch of really interesting things for sale. I bought some of the dried Kiwi that were intriguing me and some Chinese Shadowpuppets for my family (they were very very pretty). We also ate some really delicious persimmon cakes. SO GOOD. Probably not very good for one's health, but whatever...I'm on vacation! Here are some pictures of some of the stuff we saw:
After that, we headed over to the Shaanxi History Museum where NW works at. A bunch of other Fulbrighters were in town (did I mention NW has a Fulbright Scholarship to study provincial museums in Shaanxi, Henan, and Zhejiang provinces in China? Did I also mention she is kind of badass because of this?) so NW gave all of them and me a tour of the museum. I must say, they have a pretty amazing collection! I especially like the Chinese bronze "ding" - it is absolutely mind-blowing to me the amount of detail and craftmanship that goes into one of these. They're pretty amazing. We also got to see some real Han dynasty mirrors which I also really liked. I also discovered that I agree with NW in saying that I really don't like Qing dynasty porcelain. It is so overworked and too covered in detail! Anyways, after the tour, NW and I met up with NW's friend Cathy (who also works at the museum) and went for a walk around the vicinity of the museum. Cathy was super sweet! She helped us practice our Chinese and was very very patient with me, which helped me a lot and helped me get over the sort of speaking block I had kind of been going through up until that point. We decided to go for dinner and ended up eating noodles somewhere in Xi'An. They were, of course, fantastic. We attracted some attention from the other patrons in the establishment on the account of being foreign and being able to speak somewhat fluent Chinese. I think a lot of them were perplexed by it - especially when NW was talking. Her Chinese is really really good and she speaks it almost as fast as a local would so it often garners a lot of very confused stares by Chinese people. Which is good, in that it means her language skills are pretty awesome! After that we said good-bye to Cathy, headed back to the apartment for a bit and then went out for a drink at the Belgian Bar in the South Gate district. We met up with the other Fulbrighters that I had done the museum tour with. They're all pretty incredible and interesting people!
Also, funny thing happened. In a group of 5 Americans, 3 of us ended up being from Kansas. Just weird little incident - who would've thought that 3 Kansas folk would meet up and be the majority in a group in Xi'An, China???? Haha. We did a few toasts to Kansas and Kansas pride and whatnot. They updated me a bit on what's happened to my hometown of Wichita (apparently it has developed a Hood???? wtf?) and we laughed at stuff for a bit. Yay Kansas! :D
The next day, the beer we drank made sure we slept in unfortunately. So all we really did is fret over my new business card design and then head out for a dumpling banquet dinner at Dafacheng Dumpling Restaurant near the Drum Tower.
Oh. My. God.
Dumpling banquet!
How do I describe the deliciousness and amazingness of dumpling banquet????
Well, here are some pictures just to get a sense of what I was eating:
NW and I each got the cheapest banquet (for 130 RMB) and ate our fill of deliciousness. We then went out and walked around for a bit and snapped some pretty cool pictures of the Drum tower and Bell tower during the night:
My last day in Xi'An, I went and walked around the Xi'An city walls and then went to Calligraphy Street and bought a bunch of Calligraphy supplies (I like Chinese calligraphy a lot). Later I ventured out to the terracotta warriors site with another Fulbrighter friend of NW's. It basically took all day. They were pretty awesome, but I think that NW was right in saying that they're worth going to see, but once you've seen them once, you're set. I mean, the site isn't that spectacular. What really gets to you is the sheer enormity of it. Pit One is the best of the three pits. It really puts into perspective the scope of Qin Shihuangdi's tomb and terracotta army. Mostly because it is an airplane-hangar covering only one of pits of thousands of terracotta soldiers. Apparently, they've only dug up about 6000 but estimate that there could be up to 60,000 of these things total, most of which are still untouched underground. Isn't that nuts?!
Tomorrow I'm off to Kaifeng (another of the ancient Chinese capitals) by train. NW has bought us train tickets while I was out looking at terracotta warriors. I'm excited! Although, I will definitely miss Xi'An, I look forward to the next adventure!
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