Ancient smurfs, terracotta warriors

We felt like really little package tourists today, from eating a hot buffet breakfast to following a flag toting guide. Up early to eat bacon and eggs and to meet our guide for the day, a young lady in pink with the English name of Ruby.

Our minibus stopped at two other hotels, further from the local CITS but much more convenient for the guests, to pick up another ten tourists, including an old Finnish gay man and his younger Thai partner and a couple of Swiss and Italians. On the way our coach driver got into a verbal argument with some men from a wedding party over who had the right to block the hotel driveway. We then drove off to the nearest of the day's destinations, the Big Wild Goose Pagoda.

The pagoda was built to house the precious Buddhist artifacts and scrolls brought back from India by the monk Xuanzang. Xuanzang's pilgrimage formed the basis of the story Journey into the West, better known by the Japanese television series Monkey!

While the central 64 metre pagoda is impressive (we were too lazy to climb it), also worth seeing is the colourful jade wall representation of Sakyamuni's (Buddha's) life. The story has obviously undergone some modifications over the years, with Sakyamuni now depicted as having special powers as a baby and a halo through his life - very much like the story of Christ.

The wooden depictions of Xuanzang's journey are also worth a look, though I could not see any monkeys flying around on clouds.

The following destination was the obligatory shopping stop, ostensibly to learn how the warriors were constructed (head and hands moulded separately from the body, which was made on a pottery wheel). Really, it was just a shallow attempt to get us to buy various sized repoductions and furniture.

Next stop was the Banpo Ancient Village. This is the site of excavations of a neolithic village from 6000 years ago. The Banpo society was apparently matriarchal and according to our guide there was no central management structure and everyone worked for the common good of the village - conveniently communist methinks.

From the shape of the ground indentations the Banpo people were neolithic smurfs. Not certain about their skin colour being blue, but they did live in mushrooms. Or so their wood and adobe houses appeared.

Excavations show the skeletons of adults, sometimes buried together in communual cemetary grounds. The babies were placed in clay pots kept in the houses of the mothers, who would continue to "look after" their offspring. Descendants were also known to chop off a couple of their digits to be buried with their parents. Don't remember ever seeing the smurfs doing that.

The lunch was also vary much a tourist trap location, though at least B got to eat some rice (short grain - the Cantonese seem to use long grain). The food was okay and at least we didn't go through our normal practice of searching the whole city for food.

Each time the coach set off we napped. After late nights and early mornings we were both exhausted. A couple of good things about the tour was that we were driven around and could relax from planning and thinking.

Finally, we made it to the Terracotta Warriors, braving the hawkers as we made our way up from the carpark to the excavation site. There was a lot of redevelopment going on, with men jackhammering away and women using picks. Posters lined the sides of the path, one stating:

Qin Wind, Qin Smelody, Qin Culture

Maybe they also ate cabbages for lunch.

The warriors were as impressive as the hype suggested. There are three excavations. The first pit is in the aircraft hanger like building. This contains the reconstructed warriors in formation, plus others in a partly reconstructed state. Much of the location remains unexcavated in order to retain the colouration on the buried warriors.

The seconds pit houses the general staff and a chariot. Most of the third and final pit is unexcavated, but a few figures have been reconstructed, including a couple of archers, a general and a lower ranking officer. These you can see up close and the level of detail is incredible, down to the tread of their shoes.

The tour gave us enough time at the warriors to see all we wanted to, then it was back to our hotels. We were tempted to request to be dropped off in the centre of Xian and explore it further, but both of us, me especially, were tired and want to call it an early night. So we found a dumpling restaurant recommended by the Lonely Planet and located across from the hotel. The difficult bit was in crossing the road, dodging the cars. Scary.

I would like to have seen more of Xian, walked the city walls and explored the Muslim Quarter. It seems a fascinating place, though sometimes the streetscapes reminded me of Beijing. Tomorrow we are off very early to Chengdu and Leshan. Time to get an early night.

Sacrifices and cadavers

I feel like we had a little bit of a China Day today. We made it to Xi'an, but this hote, the Xi'an is not, as Ms Joe described it, at a great location. It's outside the walls and away from the bright lights and I've only had pot noodles and junk food for dinner...

This morning we checked out of our hotel in Beijing and caught a taxi to the Temple of Heaven. The temple is actually a complex of buildings located within a park. It was here that the Emporer and his retinue sacrificed animals to the gods in order to ensure a good harvest.

I wanted to sacrifice some of the singers making awful noise in the park, like shrieking birds. Chinese song cannot be defined as music. Or maybe it's just the effects of karaoke, the single worst invention in the history of mankind.

We were walking the wrong way through the complex, from north to south. So we hit the highlight first, the Hall for Prayer for Good Harvests. The empty space around this octagonal/circular building highlights its impressive architecture. It's colours are rich reds, blues, greens and gold and it sits on three levels of white marble.

The marble carvings come in three types - the dragon, the phoenix and clouds. I especially like the dragons poking horizontally outwards from the walls. One type in particular looks fat and silly rather than fearsome. He even has flat teeth.

From the park we walked around to the nearby Museum of Natural History. The animated dinosaurs and various animal skeletons are particularly interesting. Other exhibits would be more so if their English captions were better. The aquarium section smelled like a fish shop.

The most gruesome exhibits were not, as the Lonely Planet says, on the top floor, but in a separate white building near the exit gate. Here were human cadavers and organs, cut away to demonstrate different parts of the body. There was a tank containing just the male sexual and liquid waste disposal system, baby and children's faces half cut away to show the brain and teeth. I guess some would find this disgusting, but for me it was a fascinating anatomy lesson. Chinese parents seemed to have no problem with it either, as they showed their young kids around.

We walked back to our hotel, past recently demolished hutongs. Vendors were hawking hairdressing wares outside one, including bunches of human hair. We passed some local shops and bought some sweets, or so they claimed to be for we both found them awful.

After purchasing some souveniers of the Beijing 2008 Olympics from the shop beside Tiananmen Square and some more footslogging we finally reached the hotel. Our legs had given up.

Both of us slept a short while on the taxi ride to the airport, though I did catch a glimpse of the ancient observatory and crumbling remains of the city wall. I wonder if the driver pushed a button to speed up the meter, because the fare cost us more than RMB100 and seemed to tick over quickly near the end.

Beijing's airport is quite nice. There are actually decent food places after security, prior to security your best bet seems to be in the basement where a number of food vendors reside, including KFC. The pre-pay system dissuaded us from eating there, despite our hunger. Anyway, we were running out of time.

Our Hainan airlines flight morphed into a Chang'an Airlines Airbus 319, but I don't pretend to understand Chinese airline ownership. Clean aircraft, fairly comfortable and the announcements were in Chinese and sometimes unintelligible English. We even got a box of noodles or rice, a bun and pickles on the plane, though I found my inedible. I couldn't believe they continued to serve during turbulence, although considering the whole flight was rough I guess they had no choice. I couldn't wait to land.

At Xian we ignored the taxi touts and hoped on a minibus. The "conductor" did her best to explain in English that our stop was a distance away from our hotel. We passed motorways and parts of the city wall lit up like some futuristic world. Xian seems to be an interesting place and I am now regretting our short stay.

Once off the bus we made our first big taxi mistake, with a tout grabbing our bags and hustling on board, then refusing to use the meter. At the hotel RMB13 turned into RMB30 and he took our RMB20 note and drove off. Bastard, but our fault.

The hotel seems designed to absorb our money, though at least the internet access is free (I hope). The bellboy who brought our luggage (he wouldn't let us take it up ourselves) redeemed himself by being very friendly and helpful, assisting us in changing rooms when we were given a twin instead of a double (we did ask Ms Joe for doubles!).

It was late, we were away from any shops and only the western restaurant was open and changing high prices. We were "forced" to purchase pot noodles from the hotel shop. The hotel has no message to say that we are booked on tomorrow's tour of the terracotta warriors, despite us having paid for it. Finally, I can't find my ATM card - must have misplaced it.

I hope things are back to smooth tomorrow. I'm tired (too much late night blogging) and a little disappointed with the results of letting someone else book. I don't like this hotel's location and I don't like the one in Shanghai either. For both places I had better options I found myself. Already I'm wondering if we are pushing things too quickly now.

Time to relax for tomorrow's early start.