Every weekend is an opportunity to travel around China, and Xi’an was next on my list. It was not enough time to see everything the city has to offer or to even try the famous ‘biang’ noodles. Nevertheless we enjoyed every second of it from the morning up until midnight.
This is a photo of a postcard of the name of the Xi’an noodles, biang2 (only chinese speakers will understand the ‘2’ next to the pinyin). This is one of the most complicated characters with 56 strokes. The bottom part explains a little bit about it.
Xi’an is one of the most ancient cities in China. It has a history of more than 3,000 years and it is famous for the City Wall and the Terracotta Warriors. We rented a local tour driver to take us to a few places, and as it is part of chinese culture they wanted to cheat us. It makes me so mad that they’re always after the next opportunity to scam us tourists. Anyways, we came to an agreement and continued the tour.
Our first stop was the Terracotta warriors, it was amazing to see the massive creation of many army sculptures of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. These soldier figures were made with the purpose to protect him in his afterlife, and make sure he had people to rule over. A bit crazy I would say! This underground place was discovered by a local farmer in 1974 and it is the largest pottery figurine group ever discovered in China.
This is the farmer who discovered the Terracotta army. His discovery has generated thousands of dollars by tourists, and his compensation was only a two figure number.
Then we headed for a ride on the city walls. From the top you can appreciate the old city if Xi’an. There was really not much old to see, except for some temples, the rest were new buildings.
During our search for the famous noodles which we never found, we came across a muslim town. At least their noodles were not bad at all. This neighborhood was very interesting, it was like been in a different country. China is full of new things. The people were more reserved here, didn’t want you to take pictures of them or their shop but that didn’t stop me from taking a few shots.
At night we enjoyed a water show in the city, I literally felt like running in the middle of it but didn’t want to fall and break my teeth, ha. The place was full of people, well anywhere in China is. I feel like everywhere I go I don’t get to see enough of the it, or get to know its people. I guess one will never fully know everything about a certain place, unless one stays there for years. There is still much more to see in Beijing where I live now, but even here, I am treated as an outsider, I am not one of them… to them, I am just a tourist.
It’s very interesting. And the food make me drool…..
Terracotta warriors, forbidden city and the great wall are amazing, if you imagine that build in the era with out modern technology, and peeking duck are delicious specially the skin , its crispy