In Xi'an

Pictures still are not working :( I guess when I come back to the US I will just upload all 1,000 plus of them to Flick'r or something and you can look at them when you have more important things to do that you don't want to do.

It's been a crazy few weeks, first Qingdao, then two days back in Beijing, then Xi'an for a week. Xi'an is in the middle of China approximately. Xi'an was the capital of China during different times in its history, but most famously (as far as I can tell) during the Tang Dynasty. You could probably say the Tang Dynasty (around 700AD) was China's heyday--a lot of what we (Americans) think of when we think of Chinese art, silk, poetry, architecture, etc, is from around that time.

Xi'an has ridiculously beautiful parks with pagodas (I especially liked the Small Wild Goose Pagoda, or 大雁塔). The old city walls are still standing and you can walk or bike around the top of them (imagine the Great Wall sort of only in a square shape around a much smaller area). Also, in part because of it's location on the Silk Road, Xi'an has a largeish Muslim population and a Muslim Quarter. We found a restaurant where they seemed genuinely afraid we would only speak English (It was a little out of the way from the tourist areas) and ordered a spicy noodle bread lamb or mutton (it is all sheep in Chinese) soup thanks to our Lonely Planet guidebook, which has pinyin with tones (Chinese romanization), Chinese characters, and English descriptions of food, so you can say anything and say it about right.

There are many famous sites outside of Xi'an, archaeological sites, temples, and a hot springs bath resort (I think it was used as long ago as the Tang Dynasty, if not earlier). The most famous site by far is the Terracotta Warriors--thousands of soldiers and other objects arranged perfectly to protect the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, or 秦始皇 in the afterlife. I saw some of these at the Dayton Art Museum in a travelling exhibit as a young Jen, but it was pretty amazing to see them all in their original habitat.

We also saw a beautiful Buddhist Temple, Famen Temple, known for holding four of the Buddha's fingers, among other things. The temple still has an active monastery with around 300 monks. I can't describe how peaceful the atmosphere was, or how beautiful the gardens were. In particular, I liked their huge vegetable garden, bordered by persimmons, and their cute, if shy, cats. At the hot springs I soaked my feet for 3 dollars, 20 minutes, which was probably still too much, and saw a neon light up picture of magma so I could learn about how the hot springs worked.

The countryside around Xi'an is very fertile, so agriculture is huge. I don't know why, but since I always pictured China as very industrial in my mind, I assumed agriculture would be more industrialized too, sort of like Ohio with giant tractors clogging up the roads. Instead, I saw mostly "manpower"--people's rooftops were covered with bright yellow drying corn, and the front yards were filled with cornstalks. I saw people shucking corn in their front yards, and putting it into carts in the fields. Also! They grow pomegranates, and people sell them at most of the tourist sites. Pomegranates are really tasty and really annoying to eat. In class, almost every new grammatical structure we learn has an example sentence that refers to China's economic development. I have definitely seen that development, but it comes in so many different forms, from giant upscale malls with genuine European designers and prices higher than the US, to fakes markets, to small temporary booths, to individual sellers on the streets. I could get my bike or my shoes fixed on a street corner for fifty cents, or buy a BMW down the street for I don't even know how many tens of thousands of dollars. A cup of coffee in a coffeeshop costs almost twice as much as a huge meal in a standard restaurant.

Bottom line: China is really interesting and I'm glad I'm here.