So we checked into the Han tang hostel in the center of the fortified city of Xian. The workers at the hostel were awesome, finding us a random room on the top floor, leading outside to the rooftop garden, despite not having a reservation for tonight as we had assumed we would be on the mountain. We then talked to them about the logistics of going to visit the terra-cotta warriors on Sunday, then driving out to the airport for our 6:20pm hopper plane. After some discussion we saw this was geographically impractical, so the only time to visit the warriors was, well, now. So we changed our plans once again, ran to our room, ditched our luggage, and tried our luck at bus connections. We found the stop near our hostel and caught our first bus back to the main train station. Then we caught bus #2 to the terra-cotta warriors. In all it took about 2 hours to reach the excavation sight. We did the museum first, and then went to pit 2, which was mostly excavations and remains. We then went to pit 3 which was the smallest, and contained some restored warriors. We saved pit 1 for last, which was massive and had row after row of warriors, and some horses too. It was pretty neat. The history of it was Qin shihuang became ruler at age 13, and was the first ruler to call himself 'emperor'. Later, he fashioned the terra-cotta warriors around his tomb, which after he buried to hide it all from the world. He wanted the warriors to protect him in his death and provide for him a parallel universe to pass into, as well as a show of his strength and power.
It was a pretty impressive sight, but it was completely mobbed by Chinese tourist groups unfortunately. We made our way back to Xian by the same busses as before, and were pretty tired. A lot has happened today! We went quickly to our hostel to unload some stuff, then we went into the streets to find some dinner. I was hoping for steamed buns and mom wanted soup, like that hole-in-the-wall in Beijing, but there really aren't as many bun steamers here. We chose a random place, pointed at a vat they had, and tried to gesture that we wanted to know what was in it. They said dumplings. We pulled out our English-mandarin dictionary and pointed to soup? They said yes so we sat down. They brought us the soup, which ended up being a straight vegetable broth. Maybe not what we had in mind, but we just had to laugh at it. Then she finished the dumplings and served them. She took a large dinner plate, and piled it with vegetable dumplings. It was a lot, like a lot, and we assumed it was for both of us, but nope, we each got a plate. There was no way we could physically consume that many dumplings, but they were very good, and only $3 for both of us.
We've noticed Xian is pretty different from Beijing, despite being relatively close. Cars honk less, people are less accommodating to English-speakers (I asked a girl if she spoke English with hopes of getting directions, and she sassily replied 'well, do you speak Chinese?'), and, at least the neighborhoods we've seen so far, are less quaint then some we found in Beijing. Don't want to judge too quickly though, so we'll see how the next 2 days go!