Western Peace

I arrived in Xi’an after a very smooth morning of travel. I woke up at 4:30, tip-toed around Vicky’s apartment to get dressed, and set out the farewell gifts I had brought for the family. Vicky and her mother got up to say good-bye, and Lili met me in a Taxi to take me to a shuttle to take me to the airport. She also helped me check-in. When she said good-bye, she asked, “Are you sorry to leave?” Um, no, I thought. But I politely said, “I was just getting used to things here, and now I have to leave!” I was not sorry to leave because I was headed to tourist heaven and a luxury hotel room!

Xi’an is lovely. It’s name means “Western Peace,” and it was the seat of three of the major dynasties: Qin, Tang, and Ming. Surrounding the downtown area are the city walls from the Ming period, and many of the buildings are designed in the Tang style. Tang and Ming-style structures are what most Americans think of when they try to imagine what Chinese buildings look like. The structures are symmetrical with heavy tile roofs that curve up on the ends, like fish tails. Xi’an will host a huge horticultural expo this year for several months, and it therefore has lots of pretty landscaping and parks. There are lovely public sculptures and art works as well. It is early spring in Xi’an, and it made my heart leap to see the willow trees with tiny green leaves and the white petals of the pear and plum trees. The weather had been sunny in Shenyang, but not spring-y, and everything was grey and brown. It was a nice change.

My tour guide, Liu Wen Di, or “Wendy Liu” as the agency told me to call her, met me at the airport and took excellent care of me the whole time. First, we went to the Shaanxi History Museum, where I saw artifacts dating back to prehistoric times. I was amazed at how advanced some of China’s early societies were! Nearly 3,500 years ago, the people living in this province were writing word characters and firing beautiful pottery. The museum houses several national treasures, including an incredible, porcelain tea pot that has an attached lid, gold head-dresses from a lady in the Tang court, and huge bronze tripods that were used for cooking (and to show off a person’s status). It was a great place to start my tour.

Next, we drove to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, which is a Buddhist temple. It was built during the Tang Dynasty to house Buddhist scriptures brought to China from India by Xuan Zang, a monk. Legend has it that Xuan Zang was such an avid student of Buddhist scripture, he read everything Chinese Buddhism had to offer. So, he travelled to India, where he could find more scripture that had not been translated yet, and brought back many new texts. He was well liked by the Emperor and Empress, who celebrated his return by building a beautiful pagoda for the texts and his translations. It is a lovely place, and a mix of very old and very new construction. The pagoda and the drum and bell towers in the complex are from the Tang period, but the other structures were built in 2004. It is an active place of worship, and there are beautiful shrines, marble steps and statues, and quiet courtyards, complete with yellow-robed monks reading and meditating. Even though it was crowded with tourists and pilgrims, it was quiet and peaceful.

Just outside the pagoda is a new, fancy development with a huge fountain with lights and water cannons, like the Bellagio casino has in Las Vegas. One can see the pagoda rising up behind the fountain, and Wendy said she thought that picture encapsulated Xi’an best – the old and the new together, each pretty in its own way.

First thing the next morning, we went to visit the famous Terracotta Warriors. Several people I met in Shenyang had warned me not to get my hopes up about them, saying that they really weren’t that special. Boy, were those people wrong! This has by far been my favorite sight on the trip. In ancient Chinese society, people believed that the afterlife was a continuation of earthly-life, and that when one died, he would need to bring along his belongings to use in the underground world. It is very similar to what the ancient Egyptians believed, and the tombs that Qin Shihuang, the first emperor to unify the nation, are just as impressive and elaborate as the pyramids. Since Emperor Qin wanted to continue being an emperor in the afterlife, he buried everything he would need to fight off uprisings, including a huge army. Each of the sculptures is slightly larger than a real soldier from this time period, is outfitted from head to toe in armor, and was once armed with real weapons. Each warrior is a unique individual with his own facial features and expression, his own hairdo, and his own gestures. Three huge pits of these soldiers have been discovered, and what I visited was not really a museum, but a huge archeological dig that is still in process.  This discovery has shed light on ancient Chinese society and will probably continue to do so as researchers discover more and more tombs. I had a wonderful time wandering around the site inspecting everything for the whole morning.

While Wendy drove me back, she humored me by playing a CD of Chinese pop music I had bought in Shenyang. She told me what the songs were about. Most of them were over-produced, easy-listening love songs, and I didn’t really like many them, but she did! Apparently, I had picked a pretty good CD. Most of the songs had been very popular during the last ten years.

On our way to the city center, we stopped to look at the fabulous city wall. It was built during the Ming period to protect the royal city. The wall circles around the downtown and has one gate in each direction that would have been closed every night to keep intruders out. It is cleverly designed to trap enemies inside of it. Evenly spaced along the top of the wall are ramparts from which soldiers could shoot arrows from crossbows. The ramparts were carefully planned to be spaced closely enough together that there would be no gap between arrows shot from one rampart and the arrows shot from the next. Then we visited the Drum and Bell towers. They are also from the Ming period, and would have been used to keep time and to send messages and warnings to the people in the city. We walked to the top of the Bell tower to take in the view, and then we had to be off again.

Wendy took me to “Culture Street” for shopping and dinner. All of the buildings along this pedestrian street are Tang style, and it is very pretty. Vendors selling all kinds of souvenirs had set up stalls along the street, and although I was timid about buying too much, I had fun looking at everything. We ate dinner at a restaurant that specializes in dumplings filled with soup. Wendy said these are unique to Xi’an. When they arrived to our table, she showed me how to carefully pick one up, bite a small hole into the side of it, and pour the soup out into a spoon to sip before eating the rest of the dumpling. It was loads of fun, and very messy.

Wendy drove me to the airport the next morning and helped me get checked in for my flight. If she had asked me if I was sorry to go, I would have shouted, “Yes!” and meant it. I had a wonderful time in Xi’an, but it was whirlwind. I wish I could have stayed longer!