Greetings from a wet Xi'an! We've been here for 5 days now and the weather has been ok, it's a lot cooler than Beijing generally but we've had a couple of scorchers! The mozzies are out in full force here too.

Xi'an is a great little city - little by Chinese standards with only 3.25 million living here! It's a lot easier to get around than Beijing which was huge, but it needs to be big to fit over 16 million in it! We've found it a little more difficult here as there's less English on menu's etc, but the change of pace from busy Beijing has been nice.

The train journey here was pretty good, the soft sleeper overnight trains are great - if a little strange! There's 4 beds in a cabin so you have to share what is essentially a bedroom for the night with some Jonny Randomer's. We were lucky and got a Chinese couple in their 50's and they were really helpful and quiet.

Xi'an has a couple of impressive sights in and around the city, we cycled on the city walls for the day, seen the pagoda's and temples and took the public bus to the site of the Army of Terracotta Warriors which was very impressive. The ride back was pretty interesting too! We got there on a plush coach with air-con and came back on this scratty old bone-rattler on surfaces that could barely be called roads. But an hours journey for 70p can't be sniffed at and we got to see a bit of the real China in the bargain. I think Xi'an is a bit more like how we thought China would be, whilst Beijing, except for the tourist sights, is a little contrived and polished. It seems like it was given a huge makeover for the Olympics and some areas lacked a bit of character.

What can we say about the Chinese people? They are an odd bunch, odd in that they have a bit of everything in them, good and bad. There are some that are always eager to help us and practice their English on us, then there are the ones who stare at us like we have 9 heads and a toad for a nose. There's the pointing and blatant photo taking by some, but we've developed our methods such as the counter stare, the turn around when they are taking photo's and the high pitched singing by me (Danny) of songs such as Auld Lang Syne (which bizarrely played in restaurants all the time, in September!). it certainly is an experience visiting China!

We've got a couple of hours to kill this afternoon before we get another train, this time 23 hours to Hangzhou - a city sort of near to Shanghai. We've picked it at random as another place to see as we didn't have enough time to do the Yangtze river cruise thing, and then after a few days there we're off to Shanghai. I reckon we'll put some photo's up when we get to Shanghai so you'll all have to be patient for another week or so!

Hope everything is ok with everyone, zaijian for now

Catherine and Danny