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TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
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After an overnight sleeper train from Beijing, we arrived bright and early into Xi'an. After the frantic pace of Beijing, we found Xi'an a great place to wonder around and truely experience the Chinese way of life. Xi'an itself is a fairly busy place - pop of around 6 million, but most of the city is contained in the city walls - Ming dynasty, so its all really accessable. If you wish you can hire a bike and cycle around the city walls - about 14km for about 10 yuan per hour.
We took a bus ride (around 1 1/2 hours) to visit the Terracota Warriors which was amazing. This was always going to be a highlight of our visit to China and we weren't disappointed. There are three pits you can visit. Pit 1 was the first one to be discovered by Chinese farmers digging for a well in 1974. The amount of work that has gone into restoring these statues is incredible. There are around 8.000 figures of soldiers, horses and chariots and it really does take your breath away. Will post some picutures at a later date.
The Muslim quarter of the city is a great place to visit during the evening as there is a great night market selling various foods, clothes etc - the colours and smells are incredible.
We ate a traditional Chinese Hotpot for dinner where you have a boiling pan of water split into two - one side is spicy hot with ginger, various pods and chillis in the water and the other side is mild. You then buy various skewers of vegetables and pop them to cook in the water. You also get plates of very thinly sliced uncooked lamb, beef etc and pop them in the water to cook too. After a couple of beers this can get very interesting..... At the end of the meal, the restaurant simply count how many skewers you have on the table and charge you accordingly. We paid Y35 pp which is roughly GBP2.50 including beers which was really good value.
If you can rise early enough in the morning you can see some local people doing their Tai Chi - its an amazing sight.
previous travel blog entry
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