"the Terra Cotta!"

We're safe in Xi'an, after night-training it again from Pingyao. I know Beth blogged from Pingyao, but since we've been in China we've been unable to access our own posts, so sadly your comments have gone unread (though we appreciate them!) and I'm not super sure of what Beth blogged about so I may repeat a touch, but hopefully not. There's so much to report on! Pingyao was great - a really nice way to get our feet wet in Chinese culture - apart from the somewhat shocking scale of Beijing (that place is gigantor. All the buildings are huge. Tianamen square is breathtakingly vast. And blocks on the map that look eensy are actually...huge, becuase all the buildings on them are mammoth (it's like las vegas in that - and only in that - where you start walking towards something that looks close and then come to realize 45 minutes later that the giant tower you're heading for is actually still 6 blocks out. The buildings are a tease). So, the pace of Pingyao let us test the Chinese waters, and being in this new culture started to sink in. Beth gave Pingyao details, so I won't repeat - but it was a great place, with a hostel full of really nice people (travelers and locals alike) and we were fans. We left Pingyao after two days, to head out on the night train to Xi'an. The night train was a mass exodus of "waigouren" (foreigners) - it's a very common route to go from Pingyao to Xi'an, and our hostel arranges train travel, so we filled up about 1/2 a train car with other foreigners on the train, which was fun. We were saved once again by someone who took pitty on our lack of muscles and hoisted our big backpacks onto the high racks above. A couple of sleeping pills later, it was smooth sailing until morning. We really like Xi'an - it has a very "polished" feel (it's the former capital of the country so it's enjoyed lots of preservation), and it's a nice size for exploration on foot. Our first day we climbed up into the Bell Tower, a cool pagoda with a nice view of the city's main thoroughfair and traffic circle. The smog was nuts - we thought it was just overcast, but soon realized (as our eyes began to water) that the "fog" was in fact smog. The sun looks like it does at home when there's a big fire - a hardly-distinguishable reddish ball, which is pretty nuts. But the Bell Tower was very cool; neat architecture and fun art exhibits inside. Our next stop was the Drum Tower (another cool old pagoda) which we walked under to get to the Muslim Quarter. This area is really neat - lots of street vendors selling traditional snacks, tons of Mao memrobelia (I had to purchase Mao playing cards. They say "Mao - man, not God. Playing Cards" on one side, and on the top, somewhat puzzingly, they say "Not playing cards." But really...they're playing cards (Mao's even on the Joker.) We went to a georgous mosque, took LOTS of photos (to come - the machine for making CD's is broken here, but I promise we'll load more in Shanghai) and played "Chinese Checkers" at our hostel. Yesterday we bussed to the Terra Cotta Warriors (the bus trip was an adventure in and of itself - we waited at the "bus 306 - Terra Cotta Warriors" bus stop for about 1/2 hour, during which two different local people came up and told us that the bus had been cancelled but that we were welcome to go on one of their private tours instead. We politely declined, knowing this was a scam (we'd been warned). But we waited...and waited...while they circled and eyed us, and then eventually two police women came by and told us that the bus we wanted was actually around the corner, behind a wall in an area with no sign. We walked to the no-sign area, and just chillin at the side of the train station were four 306 busses. Right.) But that made our victory of actually getting there even sweeter, and the Terra Cotta warriors were awesome. They've taken the area where the warriors were found/excavated and built observation rooms and exhibits up around them - big rooms built around this recently-discovered self-proclaimed "8th wonder of the world" (the signage everywhere is very proud of the 8th wonder. the warriors were discovered in the 70's). It's a really cool way of displaying them and preserving them, and Beth and I were amazed at not only the amount of in-tact soldiers they've unearthed (rows and rows of life-size warriors), but also at the massive amount that are still to be excavated (there's a good 2/3 of the room in which the soldiers are that still hasn't been dug into. I bet in 20 years it will look a lot different... Amazing! Today we hung out around town again; honed some bargaining skiznills (Beth types an amount into the calculator - about 1/2 of what she's really willing to pay. She slides the calculator to the shop-keeper, who laughs at the figure like it's a joke. The shop-keeper then types another figure, really not much higher into her calculator like you might expect from the previous "that's absurd" cackle, and Beth considers, then types one slighly lower and the shop-keeper considers...and then says yes. We're learning.), had an awesome time strolling and drinking local Tsingtao beer on the vast, beautifully preserved town wall (we haven't been eating that much, and the beer hit us. Beth observed, "that one asian girl at the front desk is really nice" - as you may have guessed, there are about 6 different "asian girls" who work at the desk; and I later commented that "we should really learn how to say thank you," forgetting momentarily that the only words we really know how to say are "ni hao" (hello) and "xie xie" (thank you.) We say them...all the time. One can of Tsingtao and we so silly), and after walking we decided to rent bikes to ride on the wall (as the sun went down and the lanterns turned on and locals waved and shouted "helllllloooooooooooooooo!" to us, and we shouted "ni hao!" to them- so great!) Tomorrow morning we fly to Shanghai, where more pictures will be posted and adventures had. Much love to you all! Amy