D - Xi'an or bust

Well C and I have decided to go to the city of Xi'an for 十一（10/1 - The Chinese National Holiday). We get a week off from school and we didn't want to putter around campus for 7 days thinking about all the cool places we could be going.

Dalian has been a real success story for us in terms of a place to live. The air IS actually clean. It is a modern, accessible city and there's Western food when we think we can't take another bowl of rice. As expected, however, it completely lacks in the culture department. There's a few museums here and there but nothing that speaks to China's long history. The only place remotely close that qualifies is the city to the south of Dalian known as Lushun. There's a former Japanese prison where many Chinese were killed and they turned it into a museum on the occupation. Of course Lushun is also home to the Chinese Navy so parts of the city are forbidden to foreigners. Until we find someone who knows Lushun well we will probably avoid it so we don't have an uncomfortable meeting with a Chinese policeman.

So, Xi'an -- what's there? Well, Xi'an was the first capital of China and the home of the first emperor. A brutal but intelligent dictator named Qin Shi Huang united the warring clans of China into a single Chinese empire spanning much of modern China. As seems par for the course for ancient dictators, Mr Qin (Chinese surnames come first) decided he wanted to live forever, so he commissioned hundreds of sailors to go searching for the islands of eternal youth. Not surprisingly, they didn't come back - his response to their lack of results would not have been favorable. Failing to obtain eternal life through the usual means, Qin realized he must build a tremendous army to protect him in the afterlife. Thus he commanded the construction of the Terra Cotta soldiers, a massive group of life-size soldiers and generals surrounding his tomb. Qin likely shortened his lifespan by consuming mercury pills, which were thought to provide immortality. He spent so many resources of his empire on building the Terra Cotta soldiers that his reign was increasing brutal to keep control. Reportedly he kept body doubles and slept in a different place every night to ward off the assassination attempts.



Xi'an has many other interesting sights, such as an ancient city wall, the Wild Goose Pagoda, the Bell and Drum Towers, and the Hot Springs where Chiang Kai-shek was kidnapped prior to the temporary unification of the Communists and Nationalists to fight the Japanese. We are actually going with a retired couple from Denmark who are also here at DMU. So the 4 foreigners are going to brave a Chinese city alone - stay tuned, this could get interesting!

We originally wanted to take the train to Xi'an. It would have been 7 hours overnight to Beijing, and then a day in Beijing followed by a 12 hour journey overnight to Xi'an. We were going to book the best possible class (known as Soft Sleepers) which has 4 bunks in an enclosed compartment. Alas (or perhaps for the best) because the holiday is so significantly travelled, all the train tickets were sold out and we were forced to look into airfare. The only web site in English you can book through is Elong. Usually the airfare in China is very cheap but being a peak travel time it wasn't as nice.

After consulting with our Danish friends, I went ahead and booked the flights as I would on any other web site (minus the Credit card...they call you to get that information, or so I thought). A few minutes later I got a call from a nice gentleman from Elong who spoke English. He confirmed the reservation but he also informed me that to use a credit card they charged a 2% fee and they couldn't issue the tickets and thus book the prices unless I mailed them a signed authorization. Given that the prices were going up daily, we couldn't afford that option. So I said we could pay cash. He indicated they could deliver the plane tickets that afternoon. I tried to give him the address but he didn't believe me so I had to have him call a Chinese friend who gave him directions to the Administration building of our university.

Now picture this - the total for all 4 roundtrip plane tickets was 7600 Yuan. The largest denomination of currency in China is the 100 Yuan note. 76 notes to carry around! I felt like Al Capone...Of course when we went to meet the driver I accidentally dropped all the money...haha

(Try to ignore my latest face experiment)