Xian Gate Dub

Our second overnight train was just as crazy as the first. A family were in the beds opposite us and I missed the lovely delight of the baby girl wetting the floor in between the beds. This might be the time to explain the clothing of kids from about 6 months to 2 years old which consists of trousers with a split in them from front to back and normally no underwear or nappy to be seen. Now this might seem a great idea for potty training but I have seen children sitting in dirty streets and also sliding down chutes dressed in this attire - I shall say no more! We also had a couple of people with no beds one of which sat on Chris’s bunk for a while and shouted at each other for a couple of hours. So we were fairly tired when we arrived in Xian at 6.30am and after getting into our hotel the Canaan International right away we tried to get some sleep. Unfortunately we had a couple of drunken smokers next door who had their room door open and were shouting and laughing at each other so we managed to get our room changed.

We realised that we could get internet access and also this would allow Chris to view some games via the Celtic’s Channel 67 + network. So Chris set up his details and imagine our surprise later when we were phoned by someone from Celtic to confirm his details!! Normally this kind of thing would take weeks to be sorted out but for once Celtic definitely on the ball.

Xian has a large Muslim population which is renowned for it’s street food and as we were both in need of some sustenance we headed out to sample some of this. We managed to have our first chicken on a stick which was deep fried with a batter around it (not exactly the healthiest for breakfast) which was spicy although you could have added dried chillies, a chilly sauce or a pepper powder to it! We were not disappointed. We were both fairly exhausted after the amount of walking that we’d done in Beijing and Pingyao and decided to take things easier for our first few days in Xian. In addition to this we also booked into a much more plusher hotel than usual which was still under 15 pound a night.

Other than our first week in Beijing the weather here has been mainly grey also due to the amount of pollution in the air and Xian was much the same (we even had rain the first night). So it was back to the hotel in time for a quick snooze before waking Chris up for the Celtic game which they won 5-0 against Dundee United (I am not sure if I like this Channel 67 it’s making me wake up at the oddest of hours).

The following day we tried another street delicacy pita bread with extremely spicy chicken and pepper on it, again maybe not a great idea for breakfast but boy was it good! Our mission for the morning was to get to the train station and find our way to the tourist information office, well we must have wandered in and around the train station for over an hour looking for this place. We eventually found out that they had moved to the other side of town. We were trying to book a trip to the Terracotta Warriors and eventually went to a youth hostel to book it. This turned out to be another drama, as we turned down the street we couldn’t see the hostel but there was a huge pile of rubble with a digger on top of it. Someone asked us were we looking for the hostel and told us to follow him up over the rubble and down the other side (I think I would have cried had I come here and saw this as my accommodation!). Well we managed to book our tour and had to retrace our steps carefully over the rubble since there was only one entrance (doesn’t even bear to think about if there was a fire!).


It was Friday the day of our tour which included a decent breakfast in the ticket price. Got chatting to Ruth and Dave who we had bumped into the night before - they told us when they arrived in the morning there was a huge gate to the hostel and when they got up later on it had been demolished. Both of them were from London and so was another guy Nigel who sounded like Ian Dury. Our guide Abbey took us firstly to a large shop/manufacturer of Terracotta soldiers and a guide in there explained how they were made. We then went to a museum which had loads of ancient artefacts and a list of punishments that included death by poking, being boiled in water, hung drawn and quartered and the death of the individual, their family and even sometimes several of their neighbours - good idea if you don’t get on with the Jones’s. We then went for lunch in a huge restaurant but the most bizarre thing was being taken all the way up to the back of the restaurant and put into a room at the back (obviously used for Westerners). We all got chatting and had a bit of a laugh even although the food wasn’t that great.

We then headed to the Terracotta Warriors around 2 o’clock, this was the part we’d all been waiting for. The soldiers were discovered in 1974 by a farmer digging a well (he has now written his own book about it and when we were there he was doing signing sessions). The Army of Terracotta Warriors are over 2000 years old, and there are thousands of these soldiers and horses in battle formation. Over 10,000 pieces of weaponry were also found with no corrosion or rust due to their surfaces being treated and due to this when found were still sharp. An emperor decided that on his death he wanted to be surrounded by an army and hence the reason why these soldiers were made. It is a fairly amazing sight to see and there is still a lot of excavation work being carried out. One of the good things is that this is being done properly and the soldiers are being pieced together carefully. Our guide wasn’t up to much and we were whizzed around the site with a brief talk which was also included on boards around the place. This was in between being pushed, shoved and prodded by the thousands of Chinese tourists. We were also inundated by the street sellers trying to sell us all manner of trinkets including the fake copies of the Terracotta Warriors.


We didn’t feel too hungry that night after our big lunch so we decided to have a few more things off of the street vendors to keep us going. So we had that good old faithful chicken on a stick and also some delicious garlic and herb flat bread. We then were looking for somewhere for a drink and headed into the Moonkey bar which we had spotted the previous evening. The music sounded ok from outside so we went in to be surrounded by a sea of staff wanting to serve us (we were the only customers).
After one drink we decided to leave and to find somewhere with a bit more atmosphere, but despite being a Friday night we failed our mission and ended up back at the hotel before 10pm.

On Saturday we strolled around the Muslim quarter which was full of stalls and the ubiquitous Chinese crowds pushing and shoving as if their life depended on it. There have been calls in the local press that there should be a new event at the next Olympics in Beijing namely “Jostling” with China winning Gold, Silver and Bronze. There were also lots of different smells coming from the food vendors and we bought a deep fried cake with a fruit jam filling which Chris put into his mouth immediately even although it had just come out of bubbling oil “It’s hoooottt!!” he exclaimed, but they tasted much nicer than they sound.


We sharpened our bartering skills and bought packets of Mao and Cultural Revolution playing cards for a fraction of the actual price requested by the vendor. After this we headed back to the hotel through the main streets of Xian passing by hundreds of mobile phone shops. There are currently 377 million mobile phones in China making it the world's largest market.

During the day we stumbled on a lane full of bars and decided that this must be the “happening” place so after dinner we headed there only to be met by more disappointment with several couples sipping coffee or empty bars. We decided to head to the bar in the hostel to see if that faired any better, it wasn’t really much busier but we bumped into Ruth and Dave and had several beers with them.


We had a lazy Sunday just walking around the city buying some last minute things for our 16 hours train trip the following day to Chengdu. That night after dinner we settled down to watch another Celtic game well Chris did whilst I packed our bags. There wasn’t loads to do in Xian, but it was well worth it being here for the excellent street food, the Terracotta Warriors and only being charged for 1 days internet instead of 5.