Xi'an

The first day in Xi'an we booked a tour for the Terra Cotta Warriors, Hot Springs and the Banpo Museum. The only one worth talking about was the Terra Cotta Warriors. Buried underground to protect the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, thousands and thousands of warriors were created out of clay. The bodies were made separate from the heads. Each face is distinguishable by expression from hand carved details. The paint on the soldiers were faded, but there is some evidence of reds, blues, greens and golds. An interesting detail was the sole of the shoes...with tread meant married and without tread meant single (I am still without tread) :) The wife was the one who detailed the shoes. Other distinguishing features were hairstyles (buns and square knots) and attire (details on the suit). The excavation still continues as money is donated for the feat! I don't think my words can describe the scale of the scene...so hopefully my pictures will. The rest of the tour, unfortunate to say sucked! But in the end we met a great group of people from Australia, D.C. and Vancouver. We ended up at their hostel drinking and playing card games! We were asked to move out of the bar into the back patio area, secondary to earthquake warnings. We were safe and nothing happened, but a good time with new friends!

The following day we went to see The Dacien Si (temple) and The Big Goose Pagoda. The pagoda has seven tiers with a window at each level. Visitors throw money out of the windows for luck. Unfortunately the pagoda was closed so instead we walked around the temple. Xuan Zang spent 15yrs in India collecting Sanskrit sutras. He brought them back to China to translate the 1335 volumes into Chinese and had the pagoda built to protect the sutras! Some of the halls depicted carvings on three walls of Xuan Zang's journey. The side walls were of black laquer, carvings made in the laquer with glistening gold paint in the grooves. The middle wall was a mahogony colored wood with raised carvings. All of this was so interesting to "see" his perserverance and dedication to preserving the sutras. Inside the main prayer hall sat a 50ft tall gold-foiled Buddha that really made an impression on me. Just outside the hall was a large candle holder made of wrought iron. It held hundreds of lit and melting China-red candles. Unsure if this was a daily tradition or secondary to the victims of the earthquake. At the end of our visit, we came upon a prayer wall, which held 4x6 wooden cards with different colored borders. Red=love and health, blue=success and green=education. We purchased a red prayer card, wrote a message for those injured and/or displaced by the earthquake and hung it on the wall along with many others. A solemn moment for me, but a happy one as well as I paused to remember how fortunate I am to be here and experiencing all that is China.

We moved on to the Muslim Quarter to see the Great Mosque...by far my most favorite piece of religious architecture in China! An old, yet active mosque that was stunning...upturned eaves with detailed carvings of dragons, archways with phoenixes and blue-glazed roof tiles. It's a beautiful and harmonious combination of Middle Eastern and Chinese architecture. After the mosque we headed for the Muslim Quarter, where we ate noodle soup (sorry don't know the real name, secondary to can't read Chinese characters) which contained leeks, garlic and a slew of vegetables...YUMMY!!!!! We also had Chinese pizza, two pieces of crepe like bread filled with meat and vegetables and deep fried...mmmm....good!!! The food has been settling well in my belly! We walked around the market stalls and noted anything was for sale from fake Rolexes to Prada bags to chopstick sets and watches with Mao's picture and his hand as the second hand!! So finally time for us to head out; we decided to leave via auto-rickshaw. Our driver drove us into oncoming traffic and then crossed a raised median and whipped around corners...we made it back safely...can't say my blood pressure was in a safe range, though. :)