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I sat down this morning with the intention of writing a quick blog about Xi'an, but didn't feel I had enough to say. Four hours later, however, I have plenty. Let me explain....
Two days ago mom and I caught a little green bus outside of town to see the Terracotta Warriors. I loved the site absolutely. My only complaint is that the displays were lacking their weaponry, but other than that they were all great. I bought myself a couple of the mini replicas to decorate my room when I get home and was very pleased with the site.
Oh, another thing if ever you find yourself in Xi'an. Don't eat lunch out by the Warriors. Mom and I simply had dumpling soup and water for which we were charged an exorbitant sum of 80 yuan each. Yes, I know that is only about 10$ apiece, but when the same meal in the city would have put us out only 8 yuan, we were pissed. What is that? a 1000% mark-up or something? Ridiculous.
On a different theme, last night mom and I climbed up the Bell Tower at night, when it was all lit up and the night birds were swooping around catching up moths in the spotlights. I took a few minutes to just sit on the steps and take in everything around me. The bell tower is the centerpiece of the city, sitting smack in the middle of the intersection at the city center. So in the evening I could hear the honking of cars, the birds flapping by, I could see all those neon lights chasing each other down the street that characterize a big Chinese city, I could see 2 McDonalds' and a Starbucks, I could see the glitter of little kites that had been caught in the trees across the street and at my back were bells and flutes of all shapes and sizes. It felt very modern and Chinese.
Now for this morning. Mom and I went to the building where we were supposed to have been able to buy our train tickets where we waited in line for 15 minutes or so, (it wouldn't have been so long, but the Chinese have no problem with cutting in front of a dozen people or more standing in a line) before the woman directed us inside the building because she didn't speak English. There, the man in charge of all English dealings was useless. He got all the information out of us (by means of a cheat sheet, and had us write things down because he couldn't speak English as much as he could read it) that would get us a ticket, went and asked the lady at the counter, then came back and said that there were no tickets there and we would have to go to the train station. At least, we thought that's what he was saying, because when we said it back to him as well as we could, he said "yes yes." Then I said it one more time, just for good measure and he said "oh, no no no!" So already in a dark mood, (well, me at least) we left to catch a cab to the train station.
There, we stood in yet another line, got right up to the counter and some overweight, sweating Chinese dude tried to push his papers into the window right in front of us. Usually, I can take this kind of thing, you know, I'm in their country, I won't make a scene and all that jazz. This time I was ticked off already so I yelled at him that "I am not in the mood to share right now!" He just yelled something back at me and I blocked him until I had talked to the lady at the counter, who directed me to another one down the way.
THAT counter was packed and there was no semblence of order whatsoever, so we decided to take a bus instead. Ugh. At the bus station some lady took charge of us and was ready to throw us on a bus without a ticket and our backpacks back at the hostel. We finally got rid of her when I became a basket case in the middle of the station, having found out that I had just had all my money stolen. Granted, it was just 50 bucks or so, I think I was more broken up at having lost my happy watermelon coin purse. Ugh. What a crap morning.
Finally we did get tickets and in an hour we'll be leaving for Tianshui. I can't wait, it looks fantastic.
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