Gearing up for Chinese New Year

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So we have now been in Xi'an for 4 days now and are liking the city more and more each day.  We can even say that we are finding our way around much better than the first day and have an idea where we are when we are walking around.  The city is beautiful filled with big buildings and bright lights.One of the things I really like about the city is that it's enclosed with city walls. There are really cool developments, we haven't seen anything like this before, not even in Beijing.  With the Chinese New Year which they call here Spring Festival just around the corner they are busy draping the city in red with lots of decorations and lanterns.  Also everyone is practicing for the big night by setting off fireworks, just because they can.  Chinese people lead a very different lifestyle here than we do at home.  There are things that we have seen that we just don't do at home, but here that's the way it is done and no one looks the other way.  It is socially acceptable to spit and blow your nose onto the street, everyone here litters because someone is right behind them to clean it up, and public urination by the smallest children and the oldest men is common to see. Jon has been great to let us know that, this is how things are done here and no one thinks twice about it.  

In the past couple days we have done a lot of walking around and getting acquainted with this fabulous city.  Our first night here we went to the Muslim Quarter which is in the center of the city walls located just by the Drum Tower.  We went there and had a bbq dinner of street meat.  One dish we tried first and it was really tasty.  We asked what it was and it was the lining of a cow's belly.  Sometimes it's better not to ask.  Everything that we tried was surprisingly good. We  then set off to look at the market but to no avail (and just our luck) it ended up being closed.  There are many more nights for us to go back to the market.  We ended up just walking back to Jon's apartment along the yellow brick road to what we call the Emerald City. 

We have gone and seen the Drum Tower and the Bell Tower.  These towers both resemble how they sound, the drum tower having the largest drum, and on some nights they do this big drum show.  We haven't seen that yet.  As the bell tower has the huge bell on it that you can ring. The Bell and the Drum towers are very old buildings that have been very important to the city for many years. From the top Bell Tower is that you can see north, south, east and west.  We got incredible photos of all sides of the tower which show different points of the city.  Really all we saw was a lot of traffic jams and people.  But we are in China where there are so many people so it is to be expected.  

Jon has taken us to many different supermarkets which have various types of meats, fruits and veggies.  He took us to a place called Metro and it is like a big Costco.  We had much fun in there.  Here they too hand out samples to try, so I tried what looked like to be a cracker in a shape of a fish.  Thinking it would taste like a goldfish cracker at home, I was pleasantly suprised that it was nothing like the crackers at home.  It was awful, it tasted like stale rotten fish in a cracker. I bit into it then right as the taste hit my tongue I had to spit it out.  Like I say in China they eat some really weird things, so next time I am staying away from the samples.

Jon took us out to this really nice meal the other night that is a traditional Chinese dinner.  It is called hot pot and it is sort of like fondue.  It is a soup base and you pick different kinds of veggies and meats that you want.  One side is spicy and the other mild.  There is so much food that you sit there and eat for 2 hours.  It was delicious and we are very happy to have had that experience.  Afterwards we went and had some ice cream at a cute coffee shop and met some of Jon's friends that he has met through teaching here.

Finally to our big day Valentines Day.  We went and saw the Terracotta Warriors and the Banpo Museum.  We started the day off with phone calls home to say hello.  Then we met up with our tour guide and we set off.  We hadn't planned on going to a silk museum but thought it would be interesting.  We got to the silk museum and they showed us how they make quilts out of worm cocoons.  They are very strong, I tried to pull them and they are tough.  We saw some of the formal dress that the emperor's wore, and what they wore in battle.  They then tried to sell us everything there to bed covers, quilts and clothes.  They said because it is volunteer day and that we were the first people there if we buy something they will give us a free present.  We both bought a scarf and received a free extremely ugly silk handkerchief.  Yeah. The best part of the Silk Factory was right at the beginning. The Chinese take a lot of pride when foreigners come to their shops, and on the wall, was a giant picture of George Bush dressed all in silk, along with others (in separate pictures) like the King of Thailand, shaking hands with the manager of the store. I am not sure if they realize it, but the fact that George Bush was there is not going to make me buy Silk products, but nonetheless, it was humorous.

We then continued to the first attraction of the day, the Banpo Neolithic Village Museum. This is the first on-site museum. The building has been built around the Archaeological site. The site is that of a village from the Neolithic time period, where they have found the remains of houses, ritual sites, burial grounds and ceramics. Our wonderful guide explained to us that if someone was found buried face up it meant that they were good, if they were face down they were bad.  All the graves face west, in the direction the sun goes down to symbolize going down into the earth and traveling towards the Western World. This village was also run by the females, they were responsible for everything, and you can tell this by the way they were buried. Women were buried together, and men together (normally not more than three people). Our guide explained to us that this was because the woman dominated the society and they did not want to be around the men for the rest of their lives. I am sure there is a better way of explaining this, but we thought it was quite cute. 

From there we finally got to the Terracotta Warriors. First we went to a ceramic  factory to see how they Warriors  are made, then went to the museum.  Erin has studied this magnificent find in university and had prior knowledge about what they were.  I on the other hand had no idea what to expect.  They were absolutely amazing.  As Erin put it it is an archeologists heaven (and between the two sites today, she was in heaven). (**Note from Erin: I wanted so badly to jump into the pit and start putting some of the warriors back together, but I figured if I tried, they would ship me out of this country very quickly.)   These warriors were made over 2000 years ago (around 200B.C.E), but were just discovered over 30 years ago.  A farmer was just in the field digging when he started to find these pieces of pottery and didn't know what they were. He started to get worried when he kept finding arms, legs and faces and notified the government of what he found.  The  archeologists came in and excavated the area and put some of the pieces back together.   When we entered the first building called pit 1, there are over 6000 warriors there.  They are aligned in rows, at the front there are the warriors who have been put together and at the back are the warriors remain in pieces , in thier pre-found state. The warriors are all lined up in their original positions, as they would have lined up for battle. Each of the warriors is unique. There are 5 different "types" of warriors, distinguishable by their hairdo (seriously), but all of their faces are different, as if they were modeled after real people (which they probably were). The warriors are absolutely huge, the largest measuring in at 1.9meters tall. There are also horses and wood and bronze chariots (the woods ones aren't there any more) and the bronze ones have been taken out of their original place and moved to the museum.  We walked around the different buildings, seeing the different areas where the warriors were found.  I must say that I was very impressed and at the end of the day. After seeing the Warriors on the way out,  we met the farmer who made the first discovery. (**Note from Erin: Mom and dad, just to let you know, the farmer is here everyday, so it isn't a coincidence that you also saw him when you went to see the Warriors.)

We still have 6 more days in these great city, and we have many more exciting things planned and more sight seeing to do.  Jon's 25th birthday is in 2 days so we have a big celebration for that and of course for Chinese New Year.   We are practicing with the fireworks so by the big day hopefully we will blend in with the crowd.  Kind of hard when you are the only white people in a 5 block radius.  Jon is going to introduce us to our first night of karoke.  The Chinese love their karoke, they call it KTV and it is a huge thing down here.

We wish you all a Happy Valentines Day.  Until next time.................... ...