Days 14-17: Xi'an

          I arrived on a late flight to Xi’an, and took the airport shuttle to town.  From there I needed to take a taxi to the hostel.  Thankfully, my hostel told me how much to expect the taxi to cost: ¥25, so I knew what to ask for.  First guy comes up to me and offers me his Taxi, I show him the address and ask how much.  He holds up his hand for “5”. I offer to prepay and show him a ¥5.  He says no and shows me a ¥50.  I offer ¥25, but he says no, ¥50.  I decline and walk over to another taxi driver and show him the address and offer him ¥25.  The first driver comes up to him and says something to him, and then that second driver holds up his hand to say ¥50 as well.  So I keep walking down the street.  A third taxi driver comes up, having witnessed all this and offers me ¥40, I decline him as well and keep walking.  I’d rather just walk all the way to the hostel at this point then get ripped off.  As I start to walk a way, the first driver grabs a hold of me and won’t let go.  I pull and pull, and try to break free, but he won’t let go.  I keep pulling, worried where this might head next, but he finally gives up and lets go.  I walk a little further, see another taxi driver, show him the address and offer him ¥25, and he agrees right away.

          I get a good nights rest and hang around the hostel till noon.  The hostel staff invite me to join them for lunch, and I accept.  As we eat, they compliment me on my chopstick skills.  I ask how many other people there are at the hostel, and they tell me it’s just one other person who I share the room with.  Obviously, I must be here during the off peak time.

          I spend this first day just wandering the city, exploring, trying interesting foods I run into.  Xi’an was a really nice city, especially compared to what I had just seen in Beijing.  The air was a little cleaner, the weather a little warmer, and the entire city was really very nice.   All the trees on all the streets were decorated with millions of lanterns for the upcoming Spring Festival.  I wandered around and check out the city wall, and then headed towards the muslim quarter and bought some dumplings off the street and stopped at a bakery to try some desserts along the way.

          I ran into a man making spinning a cast iron tube over hot coals, and I instantly recognize it as a chinese popcorn popper I’ve heard about and got excited to see it in action in real life.  The sealed tube was heated over the hot coals until enough pressure built up.  Then the tube was pointed into a bag and the top was removed.  With a “bang”, all the popcorn instantly exploded, filling the bag.

          The next day I checked out the infamous Terracotta Warriors.  Overall, I wasn’t all the impressed, but it may have just been the way the warriors were presented.  You enter this huge hanger built over the original mausoleum, and you look down into this pit where the statues are.  The statues only fill maybe a quarter of the giant warehouse, and the rest of it appeared to be unexcavated.  You feel so removed from the warriors, that it just doesn’t really feel like there’s that impressive of a number of them.  I kind of wish they had rebuilt the original mausoleum and let you enter as it was originally intended.  Now that would have been an impressive experience.

          Probably the most entertaining aspect of the visit to the Terracotta Warriors, was how I seemed to be one of the bigger attractions there.  On several different occasions Chinese girls would either ask to take their photo with me, or just grab me and force me to be in their photos with me.  I assume they must be visiting from some of the more isolated areas of China where they had never seen a westerner before.

          I had made plans to spend the rest of my time in Xian with another couchsurfing host, but she ended up canceling on me last minute.  I contacted another person who offered to host me, Assam, and met up with him after visiting the warriors.  Assam is from Dubai, but is Pakistani born and is in Xi’an to attend medical school to become a dermatologist.  He lead me through some night markets in the muslim quarter and then he took me to restaurant that serves baskets of dumpling that were delicious.

The next day he takes me over to his friend’s apartment who is out of town, but lets him use his apartment, and makes me a Pakistani meal.  He says he can only stand so much chinese foods, so he was forced to learn how to cook the foods he prefers.  He made a meal with a dal dish and rice and beans and it was really good, and a nice change of pace from all the chinese food i’ve head lately.

          Unfortunately while in Xi’an, I started to develop a cough.  I wasn’t sure if it was just from the pollution in Beijing or if I was coming down with a cold, but it became obvious that it was a cold as time progressed.  Assam sent me off onto the shuttle to the airport and I headed off to an even warmer place.