Wednesday
Wednesday morning was a free morning, and so Alex, Aaron and I went to an underground market near the area where most of the embassies are located. We went to the train stop YingNa recommended to us and when we came out we couldn’t find anything at all, and with lost expressions on our faces a businessman passing by began to help us out. He spoke really great English, and when we couldn’t find any cabs, he said that we could go to the next subway station down the line, and he would take us there because he needed to continue on down that line as well. We talked to him a bit more and then made it to that next stop and left, thanking him. We found the market and shopped around a little bit, buying a few things and after about an hour we had to head back to the hotel for the afternoon adventures. We went to lunch and met one of Antonio’s friends from BeiDa who is working on his Ph.D. and then we went to the Summer Palace, which was built buy the last Empress of the Qing Dynasty. They place was pretty cool and had lots of different buildings and temple areas around the main lake. We then rented paddle boats and split up on them and paddled around for about 45 minutes and then got back onto the bus and made our way to BeiDa, Antonio’s old stomping grounds. We got to see the building that Antonio taught most of his classes in, the building where the president works and some other famous areas around the campus. Beijing University is basically China’s Harvard and the campus reflected that as it was really nicely taken care of, large, and very pretty. We then went to a chicken wing restaurant right off campus that Antonio ate at for four day straight when he first got to BeiDa and hadn’t met anyone yet. The chicken wings and vegetables that we ordered were way delicious… all they needed was some breading and spice and some ranch dip, but otherwise they were scrumptious. We then headed back to the train, loaded our bus up and headed out to Beijing Railway Station to catch our overnight sleeper train from Beijing to Xian. The railway station was packeeeeeeeeeeed with lots of people just sleeping outside on newspapers and such… I don’t know if they were totally poor and just waiting for a chance to take a train back to their hometown with a stand-by ticket or something… it was just another world there. The sleeper train itself was pretty awesome… 4 beds to a cabin, bunk bed style. Each had a light at one end and then a personal TV at the other with about 15 channels. The beds were relatively comfortable and the ride itself wasn’t too bad, and we all got a pretty good amount of sleep and got into Xian at about 9am.

Thursday
Thursday found the 4 guys in my cabin WIDE AWAKE at 7am. Apparently they have a wake up information talk about the train and the area around Xian plus current Chinese and American pop songs afterward. Sounds great huh? Apparently they forgot that they turned the volume all the way in our cabin because it came on really loud in our cabin. So basically we have a Chinese lady yelling good morning at us and telling us that we are delayed an hour (as YingNa told us later one) and then another lady told us the same in English… minus the part about the hour delay… oh thanks. So, us four are all up and chipper while the rest of our crew slept through their soft wake-up calls. LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME. Hahaha, so we sat around after everyone else soon woke up and talked about how much sleep we had gotten and how the train raid had turned out pretty cool overall. We got to the station in Xian about 945am and made it outside and found our guide from the university in Xian that we would be staying at. We showered (it had been a day and a half now… ewwwwwww) and relaxed a bit in the rooms before heading back out to experience Xian. We first went to lunch where we had to pick apart two loaves of gordita type bread into really small pieces for a soup and when we had done that the waitresses took the bread back to the kitchens and about 20 minutes brought it back as part of a soup with noodles and lamb on it… it was pretty good. The only problem is that the soup was uberrrrrr-greasy; it just sat on your lips after slurping up the noodles and bread pieces we had ripped up. Most of us only ate about half our bowls because it was so greasy and we had ordered various types of dumplings to accompany the meal. We then headed off to a museum that displayed and explained about the ancient cultures of the region of Xian, and there was a lot of pretty cool artifacts in the museum. We then made our way to the Great Goose Pagoda which was pretty cool and very tall. It was part of a Buddhist Temple area, and usually you can go into the pagoda and climb up into the different levels, but the Pagoda was actually damaged in the recent earthquake. Walking around here and taking in all the sights was pretty cool and the temple was very peaceful. I was able to take some pretty cool artsy photographs around the temple, especially at this one area in front of a small building with a Buddha in it where you could buy a number of different candles and light them and leave them on this upside down chandelier thing to let them drip their wax into the basin below. Lighting and letting the candles burn down is supposed bring good luck to your family. After the Pagoda we made our way out to dinner and then back to the hotel for sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. I think we also watched part of I Am Legend that night.
Friday
Friday was my favorite day of the trip because we finally got to go to the “Eighth Wonder of the World”, the Terracotta Soldiers. This was definitely my favorite part of the trip, because I have always wanted to see the Terracotta Soldiers in person and had only ever seen them in textbooks or in pictures. The park that the pits are in is settled between a major mountain range and a large river… and the area is really beautiful because they have taken a lot of time in the landscaping around the pits. The first, primary pit is in this huge shed/canopy/arena/thing and is not even fully excavated. You come in and there are just rows upon rows of these soldiers there, hundreds of them, and less than half of the complex is dug out. They left most of the soldiers buried because they really want to preserve them as much as possible because the ones that are uncovered have lost a lot of their original color because of their exposure to the air. The back half of the arena area is dedicated to the restoration of soldiers and horses that have been dug out from the pit. It’s pretty amazing that they are able to piece all these guys back together despite most of them all being broken into different parts after being buried for so long. After going through the First Pit area, we made our way into the Third Pit (not by accident… that’s how the tour goes, hehe) which is the Command Center of this emperor’s army. Here they found a lot of Terracotta Soldiers that represented upper level generals, as well as many 3 and 4 person chariots, of course only the terracotta men and horses remained, the wood rotted away long ago. This pit was climate controlled and was in a much sturdier building, and was at least 30 feet below ground level. We then moved into Pit 2 which was also a really big one but was also climate controlled. It was about 20-30 feet under ground level and there were multiple huge ramps for transporting the terracotta soldiers down into the pits. This was also another main contingent of the emperor’s afterlife army and has a huge amount of archers in one whole section. Many parts of the pit have been dug out but the roofing of clay and wood (now rotted) is still intact in many places where it covered the rows of terracotta soldiers. Those three pits are the extent of what they have chosen to dig out, even though they know there are about 3 more pits in the area. The problem is that they do not want to disturb and mess up any more of the soldiers in these remaining pits or ruin their original paintjob which remains on many of them. We then made our way through a museum that gave us much more detailed information about the history of the area, as well as this cool circular theater thing that had different scenes about the soldiers playing on about 10 screens around this big circle room. Sometimes, it would turn into a 360 degree movie shot or each screen would have a different scene as the narrator spoke in English (yeah, English, not Chinese, I thought that was interesting… maybe it alternates between Chinese and English every other movie.
After making our way back towards Xian, we came to another museum of a very old settlement from very early China. There were a few different rooms of artifacts and then another large climate controlled complex much like the terracotta soldiers’ complex that had remains and outlines of the original village, plus computers with continuous 3-D demonstrations of life in this old village. Overall, the museum just wasn’t as exciting or well-maintained as the others we had visited, and didn’t impress much overall.
We then went to Pizza Hut for dinner since it was July 4th and a few people suggested we eat American food. Overall, the food was pretty good, as is most fast food here in China… it was less greasy, seemed to have more care and time put into it and overall just better than United States fast food and pizza. I got a personal pizza plus some Tiramisu and it ended up being about 13 dollars or so, which is a bit more expensive than in the states I think. The thing about fast food restaurants in China however is the restaurant itself… what we consider quick and common fast food in the states is a night out to many Chinese people. So, KFC’s, McDonald’s, Pizza Huts, etc. are all considerably nicer and more upscale than their American counterparts. It’s like they are totally different restaurants from the ones in America, where you are supposed to sit down and enjoy your food and surroundings.
Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
Saturday!
So, around the old city limits of Xian is this huge 30 foot high wall that is a good 20-30 feet across, wider than the great wall, and it spans about 14 km around the old capital part of Xian, and the popular thing to do is go for a bike ride around it, and so of course we did. The bikes were fairly old and kind of sketchy, but riding around the wall was a lot of fun and it was a perfect day to do it. Clear blue skies allowed us to see the entire city around us as we biked around and it was a lot of fun just taking our time in biking around this wall. Some parts of the wall were pretty well kept and did not jostle the bikes around too much, but there were a few sections where I totally thought the bike was about to come apart beneath me and at one point I hit a good sized hole while not paying attention and almost ate ancient stone but escaped with a scraped ankle and sore butt area because I went over a good amount of bumps after hitting this hole and these seats had no padding whatsoever. After getting done on the wall we spent some time along a really nice market street that had a good variety of gifts and items, and we got some more buying done. We then headed to lunch by the old Drum and Bell Towers near downtown Xian, and then headed to the Great Mosque. This mosque was the first mosque built this far into China and its architecture is very Chinese rather than more Islamic style, in that the minaret, or where the priests will call for prayer, is a two-story pagoda in the middle of the compound. The site itself was very beautiful and well taken care of, and one of the signs said that the mosque had been founded back in the 1300’s. Talk about a city of history. It was time to head back to our hotel now to catch a plane back to Qingdao, and when we got out to the airport, we found out that our 645pm flight to Qingdao was delayed until 1145pm that night because of bad weather in Dalian, which the plane was continuing on to after Qingdao. So, now get this… the airline set all the passengers up in the airport hotel which the airline owns, with rooms in case we were stuck there for the night, as well as a free dinner (which ended up being pretty darn good), all for free. It was amazing, and was totally different then how we would have been treated had we been flying in the states. Try and find that kind of treatment with an American airline nowadays. So, we ended up being able to leave at around 1145, got back to Qingdao at around 145am, and got into the dorms at around 230am… SLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP…

I will try and get a post about my internship and China and Qingdao observations up here in the next few days… hope all is well!