Xian the first time

Strangely my drop down list has the title, thinking that it has been used before. But it does not exist in my blog.

On my first trip to Xian several quite strange and unusual things happened.

• At the train station a man came up to me. He was a taxi driver. He wanted me to stay at a particular hotel. He was determined to do so. Verily so and so much more so than I have ever encountered before that I took special notice of it. When I told him where I was to stay, he said that I should not do so as the showers did not work. (Well this much turned out to be correct. The showers were cold and had to held by candle light. I stayed somewhere to the north west of the city wall.)
• At the place where I was staying, this American man was sharing my dormitory room with two girls from Sweden. He said that he had been intending to stay at the hotel where I was offered by the taxi driver but had changed his mind. He seemed out of place in the low end accommodation that I was using.
  
• While I was walking the streets of Xian with this man a day or two later, he was talking about having blue balls. Later he told the girls from Sweden that I was safe.
• At the market in front of the grand mosque (大清真寺), I wanted to buy a green hat. The man at the stall asked if I was a muslim. I said no. He said that only muslims were allowed to wear hats like that. I thought he was being very narrow minded.

I learned quite a lot from this man. He was living in Taiwan and his chinese was very good. Back in 1999 it was still only a month after the nato (to the chinese american) bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. While I was always asked if I was an American and was glad that I could say no, he would say yes. I was somewhat aghast. But there ensured a discussion on several occasions. My chinese is not great, but I was impressed with how well the Chinese understood the one-sided view they are given by their media and the American man would always win the argument by pointing out that every day the (the chinese) threatened to blow up TaiPei and that he lived there. My resect grew enormously.

"Courtyard at the Great Mosque, Xi'an, China" by molas [?]

Day 4 - Xian, November 2006

For the second time, I arrive in Xian on the Z19 train. This time in the reverse directions. With all the speed up plans for the rail system, the journey is about half the time. I remember it taking 25 hours the time before. Now it is overnight. We arriving in the morning light.


We do an early check into the hotel and then it is a quick orientation of the city. When I stayed here in 1999, I stayed outside the city wall on the north side. This time we stayed inside the wall near the south gate. It was the most chinese style hotel. I loved it, the others hated it.We had yummy pork dumplings for brunch. Unfortunately, I managed to dribble pig fat all over my camera. While standing in line at the dumpling shop, I was a bit tardy in deciding what to have. Some chinese girls got in the line in front of me. They got three dumplings for ¥1. We only got one. So I saw that there was still a dual price structure. But the locals were more discrete here in Xian. They did not know I knew enough Chinese to see what was going on.


We now headed off into the Muslim Quarter. I was quite keen to see how it had changed. I had some good meals there last time. think that there is more variety now. What had changed was that there was more activity. When I was there before, it was quiet. The streets mostly empty. Now it was bustling with commercial activity all the time. Brian and I had a traditional muslim meal with the large round piece of bread and a bowl of food. I preferred the one I had in 1999.


In the afternoon we headed out to see the Terracotta Warriors. The whole place has been redeveloped and I was a bit saddened. But it is much nicer. The authorities were trying to stamp out the hawkers from inside the museum area, but with only limited success.


In the evening, we went back to the Muslim Quarter, for a steam boat. I have to say I was not so impressed with this type of Steam Boat.


After that we wandered back to our hotel.