4/26-4/28: Xi'an

I'm in sort of a low mood right now, even though Xi'an has some amazing sights (and also some not-so-amazing sights) that I'll write about in a second. First, the normal pressures and anxieties of travelling. I get antsy sitting at home (NYC, St. Louis or Kunming, depending on context and my mood at the moment), and as soon as I hit the road, all I want to do is curl up with street dumplings and pizza and watch VH1 with DB. It is weird how I'm starting to miss Yunnan and Yunnan food out here in Shaanxi. Also, Xi'an is a murderous, muggy hot that seems to suck the life out of me completely. That, or a general lack of caffeine is bringing me down.

The bigger concern right now is that my laptop is not working at all. I had a regular viking saga getting the damn thing repaired and sent to me here, and now, all of the sudden (literally as I was using it in Xi'an), it's flipped out on me and won't start at all. The indicator light turns on, the fan/drive makes one of the most sickly noises I've ever heard a computer make, and the computer just never starts. I've tried all sorts of computer won't start tricks, from the sophisticated (resetting the PRAM) to the desperate (shaking it), and no luck. Right now, I'm just praying that it'll magically fix itself somehow when I get to Luoyang. Otherwise, when I get to Kunming, I'll first try and connect it to another power adaptor (oh man, if it were the power adaptor, that would be so the best...), and then take a look inside. Best case scenario, it's the power adaptor, medium case, it's a fan malfunction, worst case scenario, it's damaged RAM or eeek, the main logic board. If it's the worst case scenario, I'm really in for it: I can't imagine what it would be like to try to get hardware repaired/replaced in China, and I'm not about to try, so if there's anything that requires more than compressed air and a q-tip to repair, I'm out a computer for over a month. I've been thinking of what an incredible pain in the butt not having a computer will make my life for the next month, and it's been bringing me kind of down. In the meantime, it means no more posts with pictures :-(.

Anywho, Sunday was primarily a travel day. Flying in China is basically comfortable, although America's airport system is far superior. I took a cab with an amiable driver with hilarious shades who quizzed me on how to say relevant terms to him in English, and got to Shangri-La's airport, which is basically a little puddlejumper airport with one gate obviously constructed in the last ten years. The flight itself was painless (and on a full sized jet, thank God), but then I had to switch to a flight to Xi'an, which meant picking up my checked luggage and checking in all over again. In China, apparently, it's unusual to get to your flight more than an hour in advance, so the woman at the check-in counter in Xi'an actually made me come back to check-in later. I checked in after a lunch at KFC (where they actually had run out of things to drink), and after being manhandled by security, caught my flight and got into Xi'an. Flight really isn't too bad here, although it's just as expensive as in America. I also, however, ran through all my reading material (a New Yorker and a collection of essays by Lu Xun), which started another saga once I got in.

Xi'an is really quite a nice city. The streets are wide and it's not sickeningly overcrowded, and one thing I noticed today: what makes a big difference is that all the streets are tree-lined. Somehow just makes the whole city more livable. It is also quite a jarring shock, coming from the Chinese borderlands, to go to the place that is one of the cradles of traditional Han Chinese culture. Xi'an was the capital of China during two of the most formative dynasties for Han culture: Han and Tang. Everything here just feels typically Chinese, whatever that means. The old core of the city is also still enclosed by a dramatic set of city walls. A small, petty note: for whatever reason, it seems to be a hell of a task to hail a cab in this city, and that makes it sort of hard to get around.

That first day, I got in around six, so I just went straight to my hostel from where the airport bus dropped me off, near the Bell Tower in the center of the city. Walking to the hostel and struggling to get a cab, I saw a cab driver hit a guy on a motorcycle. Nobody seemed to be hurt, but it was quite a spectacle. Also, in Xi'an, motorcycle drivers like to offer their b- seat to you. I actually burst out laughing at the guy who offered it to me as I was standing there with all my luggage. My hostel here is nice, with great water pressure, although it also happens to be over a very popular bar ("the only terra-cotta soldier themed bar in Xi'an"), and gets noisy during the day. I grabbed a meal at a terrible restaurant near my hostel. It's funny how the signs of a bad restaurant are universal. Even if I couldn't understand my neighbors complaints about the service, I'd be able to tell from the way that the waitstaff seemed to be an average age of sixteen, running around chaotically, that the place was no good. First, the waiter spent like an hour explaining the menu, until I finally had to ask him if I could just sit down. Then, they charged me to use utensils (making sure that I didn't bring my own that I could use instead, to be fair). When the dish came, there was so much red pepper and sichuan peppercorn in it that it was downright painful to eat. Also, the Chinese have an annoying habit of using the neckbones of the chicken, which means a lot of bones and no meat. Oh well. That night, my computer broke, and having no reading material and no computer, I practically died of boredom. I watched Chinese TV for a while, then gave up and went to bed.

The next day, I headed out to meet Sarah and Michelle and go out to see the Terracotta Warriors. Getting out there is relatively easy, actually, just hop a bus at the train station and follow the crowd. A shady character at the train station tried to charge us 100 kuai for a private car right in front of the 7 kuai bus, obviously trying to pull one over us foreigners, which made me mad. When I travel with Sarah and Michelle, it's kind of a funny phenomenon, since they are Korean and not obviously foreigners. A lot of times, the Chinese will direct their questions and answers to them, even though I can obviously understand what they are saying. Sometimes, Sarah and Michelle get treated poorly because people think they're Chinese until they speak. The Chinese complex about foreigners is really sick: both an undying admiration of them and a barely concealed resentment, and it can be real unpleasant to be around.

Our first stop was the Huaqing hot springs, where Tang dynasty femme fatale Yang Guifei (think a Chinese Marie Antoinette) famously bathed and where Chiang Kai-Shek was kidnapped by his own XO and forced to agree to a second unified front with the CCP against the Japanese. Michelle was disappointed because the hotsprings were not wild, open pools surrounded by rocks and trees, but rather channeled into a series of bathhouses. I, on the other hand, having never been to a hot spring, was pretty stupidly amazed by the fact that the water was naturally hot. I also liked seeing some of the Tang-era pools, some still filled with water and some shaped into lovely designs. After that, we took a cable car up to Mount Li, which overlooks the city. The view would be great, if Xi'an werent choked with so much smog that the overlook is practically pointless. Since we weren't into any of the sights at the top, we took the cable car right down again and hopped back on the bus.

Our next stop was the site of the tomb of Qin Huangdi, the first historical emperor of China. The place is a world heritage sight, but even though I visited the damn thing, I couldn't tell you where it is, or what exactly it is. The site remains unexcavated, because (and this is kinda neat) Qin Huangdi ordered the site surrounded by rivers of mercury and booby traps to prevent looting. So there really isn't much to see there except a mound. I say, skip it if you're ever in Xi'an.

By the time we got to the Terracotta soldiers, we were hot and pissed and ready to swear off Xi'an all together. But the Terracotta soldiers are really worth the fuss. Like everywhere in China, it's the size of the site that really shocks. The excavated pits are literally the size of football fields, all filled with terracotta soldiers. The artistry is also really amazing, especially when you consider that the soldiers are over 2000 years old. The way the fabric is draped, the lifelike poses, the fact that no two faces are alike...it's really stunning. A dramatic thing to see and experience. Qin Huangdi was right that this would be a tribute to his power: when you think about the sheer power that it would take to get people to build this, it's downright scary.

By the time we got back to Xi'an and bought our train tickets (in a mob scene that I have not seen anywhere in China), we were tired and starving. This being China, everything was of course a pain in the butt. It took us forever to get to where the restaurant was, and then another forever to find a working ATM. When we finally sat down, the "dumpling banquet" I had read about seemed to be unavailable, so we just had dumplings. They were good, but I wasn't blown away: I'd just as soon have some Shanghai xiaolongbao. We finished the night off in the hostel bar, which inexplicably was playing some great blues songs (Big Mama Thornton's "Hounddog", Howlin' Wolf's rendition of "Spoonful").

Today was kind of a low day. It took me only about forever to get to Big Goose Pagoda. Big Goose Pagoda is, well, real big, and again, would give a great view of the city if it weren't for the smog. It's historically very important as the destination of the Monk Xuanzang, who journeyed to India and returned with Buddhist scriptures (inspiring "Journey to The West" and, um, Dragonball Z). But it's just not that artistically impressive, although the peony gardens are nice and fragrant.

After that, I walked to the museum, only to get discouraged by the ticket situation (that old China standby, the weird, non-moving line), and decided to take a bus back to the bell tower in the center of town. I kind of regret it, since I was in the mood for a museum. I got a frappe at the Bell Tower starbucks (ah, global capitalism, how I love you), and then tried to find a foreign bookstore I had heard about. Of course, this being China, it was near impossible to find. My lunch was a variety of street food (skewered meat and what I think was some sort of crab squash cake, and a damn delicious muslim gyro type sandwich), and finally, I found the bookstore by asking, though it was extremely not where it should have been and probably not the bookstore I was looking for. Once there, I found that they had few english translations of Chinese works, and mostly just English/American classics. I desperately bought a copy of "Sister Carrie" and got out. It did warm my heart, however, to see Chinese copies of Locke on sale...maybe it'll rub off..

After that, I ventured into the muslim quarter to see the Great Mosque of Xi'an. The muslim quarter is pretty nuts, filled with vendors of muslim food and snacks, and a mob of shoppers. The mosque is gorgeous, and strikingly old, with a minaret that looks like a pagoda, and Chinese style stelae with Arabic writing. Here I was, comfortably back in the Chinese periphery. I even caught the afternoon prayer service, which was really lovely. After that, I ate a mush recommended by the guidebook in the Muslim Quarter. Well, it turned out to pretty much just be a mush, so count me as disappointed.

Guess I'm just having a low day today. Hopefully my mood will pick up, and my computer will revive. Tomorrow, I head to another dynastic capital, Luoyang, to see the Longmen caves and the Shaolin temple. I'll check in when I can.