Xi’an, Shaanxi, China
November 13, 2013
I needed a cheap day after the Terra Cotta warriors yesterday. It was only buttons to get there but they charge you £15 entrance to the site so today was a quieter one.
A nice cheap and tasty noodle veg and meat breakfast set me up for the day from a stall just outside the hostel. It was 90p and really tasty and healthy, my chopstick skills have come on a right treat since being in China. From there I took a walk down past the bell tower and on towards the South gate of the city walls. Xi’an is a very old and historic town with a fantastically well-preserved city wall running round in a big rectangle around the old town. Outside of that it becomes a sprawling metropolis of high rise urban developments. I got there just in time for the changing of the guard at the South tower gate. It’s pretty much a tourist spectacle now as opposed to a genuine changing of the guard but it was worth hanging around to watch for 15 minutes all the same.
Once inside the gate you can walk up to the top of the city walls which are a decent size, about 15 metres wide. From there you can hire a bike for a couple of hours and ride all the way around the top of the city walls. It’s about 15km in total so I grabbed one and headed off. They may produce everything themselves in China these days but they certainly don’t know how to make a bike. It was some kind of crazy poor effort at being a mountain bike/girls cruiser but it did the job I guess. You get a decent view down when riding along about 12 meters above ground level. There is a moat that runs all along the outer side of the wall and every hundred metres or so there is a rampart.
Each side has its own gate, North, South, East and West all with their own name. North is Anyuan (forever harmony), South is Yongning (eternam peace), West is Anding (harmony peace) and the East is called Changle (eternal joy). Above each of these gates is a fairly impressive gate tower which were used to raise and lower the suspension bridge that crossed the moat. It was a nice ride out, weather was a bit grey and grim but at least it didn’t rain and it was warm enough so I can’t really complain. In Chinese towns and cities it’s hard to tell what is fog and what is smog from the traffic pollution, but you couldn’t fully see into the distance.
I spent all the time I had ambling round at a lazy pace and then took another saunter back to the hostel. The good thing about staying within the city walls is that it’s easy to get your bearings especially with the huge bell tower sat at the centre so it’s easy to go off wandering in any direction for a bit snoop around without losing track of where you are or how to get back.
This time I meandered through what must be the art quarter which was really interesting. A good few narrow little streets with artists sat out doing various paintings, mainly landscapes and portraits and also a lot of people doing calligraphy on a grand scale with huge sheets of paper and massive brushes.
Once back I chilled out with a couple of beers and waited for Ryan, Natalie and a Dutch lad called Adam to get back from Mt Huashan which they had headed off to at about 4am this morning. Another couple of lads from America tagged along and we headed off in a taxi to go and see the light and fountain show at the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. The hostel told us it started at 9pm but when we got there it had just finished as they failed to tell us they move it forward an hour to 8pm in the winter! Grrrr Still the Pagoda looked canny when lit up so I took a quick wander round to have a look and grab a few snaps before grabbing another Taxi back.
A bit more street food from down the street (it’s everywhere in Xi’an) and then we chilled out with a few beers…..then more beers …..then quite a few more beers! I had planned on getting up early and heading off to Mt Huashan as it looked really good from the others photos and its a good couple of hours away on the bus to get there so when the time suddenly said 6am and there was only me and Adam still up I thought there wasn’t much point in going to sleep so had planned on grabbing a quick shower and getting my stuff sorted for the hike…………..instead I dozed off and didn’t wake again until 11:30am!!! No mountain for me today.
