Warriors and Heights Xi'an the place to be.

12 hours on a hard seat, 12 hours of a screaming kid, 12 hours of my nightmares come true. 

Please turn off the dam lights!! its 4am :(

I was on the over night train from Beijing to Xi’an. I thought it would be ok; I have slept in planes that go for longer durations. 

However this was something else. The seat was millimeters thick, hard was an understatement. They may as well put concrete as the description, and for 12 hours, even from midnight to 5am the lights were on and music was playing over the speakers. The 2-year-old sitting across from me wouldn’t settle (wonder why, when the parents kept moving him when he dozed off) and was screaming for the entire trip… so it was a very very long ride.

I arrived in Xi’an at 7 in the morning and it was chucking it down with rain, apparently it had been raining for 1 week solid I later learned. Found the hostel and checked in. It was million times better than the one I stayed at in Beijing, and had a bar inside so, knew it was going to be interesting at least.

That day I was super tired as you can imagine, so I walked to 2 towers in town and close to the hostel. The Bell and the Drum tower. Named so as they had Bells and Drums in each… They were not overly interesting, but they did have a “free” demonstration at 2pm which I decided to head to the drum tower for. 

I had 20 min to wait and it was a long 20 min, I passed out and got woken up by a massive bang, they had started the demonstration 2 meters next to me and the drums were extremely loud. The crowd that had gathers laughed as I jumped 2 meters in the air when I was woken up…. Happy times, I just wanted to sleep L

The next day I was off to see the all important terracotta warriors. I boarded the local bus (a double decker) to get to the train station and noticed that the double deckers in china at least do not account for tall people. The roof was at my shoulder height. On board I met 3 other travelers, a German and Irish girls and a Danish guy. It happened we were heading in the same direction to the terracotta warriors via the same public transport so I tagged along, and at least gave me someone to talk to. 2 odd hours later we had arrived and set off to find the ticket office. Not being in a guided tour we have to fight past all the scammers and fake guides and sorveior shops, fruit vendors, noodle vendors and dog fur sellers.. Yes Dog fur, poor Lassie.

Once we got the correct path and at the ticket office, my new Danish friend managed to get his ticket at ½ price as a student, so I though I would give it a go as well, I told the ticket vendor I as was a student and she passed me the ticket and the change without a blink… woo hoo!

The first gate I got to I passed the guard the ticket and out comes “I D” , I though of crap I’m so busted, so I said “don’t have any on me, at hostel”… “I D”, I pulled out my AUS drivers licensec and passed it to him, then he nodded and buzzed me in, the next gate, the guard blurted something in Chinese I assume was “ID please” again passed my drivers license and I was in… ½ price as a backpacker in a few rounds at night so I was cheering.

 

We first visited the museum for the 2 chariots that were discovered, one with a traditional Chinese umbrella the other an armored chariot for the emperor. Both were a ½ scale model of the ream thing, but discovered in the tomb.

From here we went to the terracotta warriors, it looked just like the photos. The area was massive and they had rows on rows of them. Moving around the outer edge we could see the remains of the structures that use to house the warriors and the broken pieces still to be assembled.

There were horsed and other things in there as well, from the first pit we then moved to pit number 3 which had almost nothing excavated yet, but had some displays on. Including the only warrior that was found intact. Then finally to Pit 1, which was, the smallest but contained the chariots.

All in all we only really spent 2 hours at the site, I had seen the warriors when they were in Sydney and felt the visit to the site in China a little bit of a let down. It was not as grand as I imagined it.

That evening there was a trivia quiz night at the hostel; the winners get a free “Special Drink”.  One of the guys in our team had been staying there for 7 odd days as he was now working in Xi’an as a teacher, and when the first question was read out he knew the answers to all… the hostel was reusing the same questions each week. We won the special drink called a flaming Buddha outright with 100% correct.

The following day I went for a strole around Xi’an, visiting the great goose pagoda a 7 stories ancient pagoda. The pagoda was surrounded by a nice park and a few things to see.

From the pagoda I continued my walk around the city and found a museum which explained the history of the area… nothing special and quite boring L

My last day in Xi’an I wanted to get as far out of the city as I could, I was use to Korea and japan were I could get away from the tour groups and see things for free, and not get hassled. But in China it didn’t matter where I went it seemed to cost an entry fee, or there were souvenir shops outside or someone telling you were to go. It was getting on my nerves. So I had planed to go hiking on a mountain 2 ½ hours out of the city, and see a cliff walk. I wrangled up a few others from the hostel who were interested in doing the same and we left at 7:30 that morning.

Arriving at Haushan, the public bus that we had boarded 2 hours earlier stopped and we were ordered off to get a ticket (*Sigh*), the park entrance, so with that we then had to buy a new bus ticket a local shuttle bus up the hill as it was a 1-2 hour walk otherwise, then a cable car ride up the hill as it was closed to any other methods unless you had a spare day to climb… so much for getting away from the tourist, the cable car queue was 1 hour long, and we had to be off the mountain and back at the local bus stop at 5pm otherwise we miss our ride home. 

So time was precious, it was already 11am and I was hoping for a 5-hour hike to the cliff walk, which was fading as quickly as my money. Speaking of money I was down to 10 yaun about $2, and had to beg a backpacker for a loan, because I was not expending so many things to buy…  and I knew the cliff walk was going to be 30, and the ride back to Xi’an another 40… reluctantly he helped me out of the bind.

Finally on the mountain I was off, hiking away and dodging the crowds of people… it seemed didn’t matter were I went it was packed. I managed to get around most of the groups and set off on a fast passed walk up the mountain to try and get to the cliff and the peaks in time. 

Along the way I passed a group of porters carrying steal up the hill for a new building, some of the guys must be in there 70’s and it was painful to watch these guys carrying such loads up.

A few km’s more and I came across another porter, but this guy was on his way down with a load. Cheerful as ever he stopped, stood on 1 leg, sang, and played a flute all while balancing his load on his shoulders.. It was great to see this guy in such a happy mood and he didn’t even seem bothered about pictures. Most times if you take a picture of someone they seem to want something from you here, but this guy was great. Even the locals enjoyed it.

Finally I hit my cliff top walk I had heard about via the grape vine. 2-½ km sheer cliff with little to nothing to walk on. The older Chinese people on the mountain seemed to stop dead in there tracks when they seen the cliff, they were blocking the path to get to the ladder. Passing by them was a breath of fresh air, at least I knew no one other than myself and other adventure lovers would be stupid enough to put on a harness in china and put your life in a piece of stings hands.

IT WAS GREAT! The rush was what I was expecting, leaning over the edge and seeing nothing below you, jumping, standing on 1 foot all made the pains of the past few hours melt away and seem petty. One other young Chinese fella was infront of me and we shared cameras along the way. Careful not to drop them as there would be no way to recover it.

The cliff walk leads to a small monks cave where a monk use to live several hundred years ago. To think he made that journey without safely gear gave me the shivers.

 

Then my phone rang… I had 2 hours to get back to the bus stop that included the 20 min cable car and the 20 min shuttle bus. It had taken me 3 hours to get to the cliff walk to some serious running was required. I made it back to the cable car station with 1 hour to go till my bus left, load of ti…. Queue. I hadn’t accounted for the queue of people getting off the mountain, 2 hours later I was off and at the bus stop with no bus. So where the 3 other backpackers from my hostel.

 

We found another bus going “close to Xi’an” and board it. It seemed to take the longest possible way back to Xi'an, past a few Nuclear power plants. Close to seemed to be a relative term as it dropped us nowhere near the correct place and another 45 min cab ride we were back at the hostel. A long but worthwhile day. 

*No pictures sorry of this last part*

Dinner, Beer and great sights.

The next day I had to again catch a train, this time I had booked a sleeper in advance to Chengdu. I arrived at the train station to find my train but the board was blank… 30 min of hand talking (he couldn’t speak English and I can not speak Chinese so hand signal is all we can use) to a ticket inspector I worked out that the train was delayed, it was still in Beijing (16 hour away), “I could cancel my ticket and get a refund or I can take my chances on the next train leaving in 20 min”. All that from hand and paper take a long time you see… so I had accommodation booked in Chengdu already so I took my chances, the ticket inspector called over the most official guy in the train station in full uniform and badges and explained in Chinese what was going on and I was ordered to leave my bag (cloths only, and again hand signals no “englishy”) there and run with him, so I did and followed him, passed through the first set of doors into the train station again and there was another backpacker (Tom from the UK) with the same problem, I explained to him what was going on and he followed as well.

We headed out of the train station, out to the ticket office; the official took our tickets and pushed 20 people waiting in queue out of the way and to the window. Changed the tickets over to the new train (I got a refund of the difference in price so did Tom) and we headed back into the train station passed security without checking (we had the official with us, we were VIP now), and back to our bags, passed the guy I spent 30min “talking” to, to the train. The official had a few words to the train conductor and he turned to us both, “You speak Chinese?” he said in quite good English, “nope” we replied. A pause. Back to the official to talk, then back to us. “Ok please board the train you are in 14, you are in 15”. We both had gone from bed tickets to standing tickets on a packed train. Because the other one was cancelled… oh fun, 17 hours of this… I was ½ way though looking up air plane flights when I was standing on this packed train when Tom called out from the other side of the carriage egging me to follow. Apparently the conductor had found some beds but he couldn’t give them to us till we were moving. The conductor had written on a piece of scrap paper to give to the 2^nd carriage lady that we should get some hard sleeper beds. I was more than happy as long as I don’t have to stand for 17 hours in a packed train.

We ended up in the staff carriage, which was great, and had a great trip. It was nice to have someone to talk to and not have to stand for 17 hours. It also happened the beds we were in, had the fruit supplies for the train stored underneath them so we got lots of attention from the staff J Special treatment I’m sure…

Chengdu here we come.