Going underground

Wednesday, 28/11/2012 – 167 A.D.

Hotel rooms with thick dark curtains are confusing. You can never be sure what the daylight is doing outside. I was awoken from my slumbers by the following:

[Knock-knock.]

[Unintelligible word from behind door.]

[Knock-knock.]

[Unintelligible word from behind door.]

[Knock-knock.]

[Unintelligible word from behind door.]

Etc.

I should point out that it was the same unintelligible word that was repeated over and over. I went to answer it dressed only in my sleep shorts and my quiff and opened the door to find one of the maids there. She repeated the same unintelligible word and I grunted back in confusion, still half-asleep and wondering what the heck was so important in the middle of the night. Eventually I reached for the Do Not Disturb sign and hung it on the handle. She understood and walked away, and I walked back to bed.

But I couldn’t drop off again, and I must have lain there for a good while, trying to ignore the weird Chinese music that was drifting in from the street outside. Why were they playing it so early in the morning? It seemed to come and it seemed to go, but I just couldn’t drop off again. It was as if my brain and body were working together to tell me something…check the time, dufus! Okay then…sh*t! It’s ten to eleven! Or, as I put it to my still-slumbering brother, “F*ckin` `ell, Tim, it’s ten ta f*ckin` eleven!”

How did we manage to oversleep so much? Immediately my accusative eyes looked to Tim, given that it’s his responsibility to set the alarm, but upon checking his watch he was convinced it had gone off. So that means we both slept well and truly through it. Or it went off, he turned it off and neither of us batted an eyelid until the maid started frantically knocking to rouse us before breakfast finished at 09:30, bless her. On the negative side of things, we were up late, we’d missed a perfectly good brekkie, and we’d have to make contingency plans that the situation did not occur again. But on the positive side, if this had to happen then we did pretty well to go this far before having to deal with it. Prior to this, the latest we’ve slept in is `til 09:45 – talk about record breakers! If only that maid had known the English for “breakfast”, or even, “Get up and out of bed you slothful English idiots, it’s bacon time!”

So that was a bit of a downer and we had to get ready in double-quick time, but we did okay, and brisk-walked it north to the train station. Today we were off to see the terracotta army, about an hour’s drive from the city. The easiest (and cheapest) way to get there is to jump on the number 306 bus and get off at the last stop. We found the bus just about to go at its stop just outside the train station and hopped on by 12:00 – not bad considering that 70 minutes earlier we’d both been in sleep shorts and under duvets. And for 70 pence you cannot go wrong – take that, Southport “what’s a return ticket?” buses!

[Beware of the boys who sit at the back of the bus.]

Here’s a bit about the terracotta army – it was constructed over a period of about 30 years and completed in 209 B.C. (that’s B.C., man, not A.D.!) Current estimates reckon it contains over 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses, and 150 cavalry horses. There are also non-military figures, such as acrobats and musicians. And every single one of these LIFE-SIZE figures was buried close to the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, to protect him in the afterlife. The belief if that to exist in the afterlife you need to be buried with everything that you had when you were alive. So, by that rationale if I was to pop my clogs tomorrow my grave would contain a terracotta Samsung netbook, Apple Ipod and a cracked bottle of Tsingtao beer. Actually, make it a crate of Tsingtao – the afterlife is eternal, after all.

The terracotta army lay there under the earth for over 2,000 years until it was discovered in 1974 by a group of farmers trying to dig a well. There was evidence of some previous disturbances at the site, such as a local graveyard, but it seemed as though any terracotta that had come up through the ground had been discarded as worthless. Not so! How can it be worthless if it attracts the Grayboys to visit from halfway across the world? Upon alighting the bus we realised that winter really was heading to Xi`an and it was a good job that we’d be clearing off in a couple of days’ time! Brrrrrrr!

After buying our tickets and politely sending away multiple requests for an English tour guide, we made our way up to the entrance. The site as a whole is known as the Terracotta Army Museum and it is built upon the three pits that have so far been excavated (okay, so there’s also a fourth pit, but it didn’t contain any warriors – guess the B.C. builders had clocked off and gone down the pub by that point!) All of the pits are enclosed under buildings, but because they are so large the museum owners weren’t willing to put the heating on, which was a bit of a downer, but not enough to detract from the spectacle. I give you, Pit 1…

..this is by far the largest of the excavated sites. The warriors were built from local clay and assembled piece by piece, i.e. legs, torso, arms, head. They all originally held (mostly) bronze weapons, but virtually all of these were looted or wasted away over the centuries. You’ll notice that most of them face the same direction – east – because the states that the emperor conquered were all east of Qin.

The sites are still being excavated. The 8,000 soldiers mentioned in an earlier paragraph is only an estimate because the work is ongoing. This whole army is guarding the mausoleum of the emperor, which is essentially a massive necropolis that represents all of the buildings that he would have used when alive – remember that when he’s dead, he needs what he had when he lived. The actual tomb of the emperor (close by, pyramid shaped) remains unopened. Legend has it that there are 100 rivers of mercury flowing inside and contains Indiana Jones-style traps like automatically-firing crossbows to keep would-be thieves from entering. But the real reason it has not been excavated is the dry Xi`an air – the fear is that artefacts within the tomb will quickly disintegrate if exposed to it. The terracotta army was originally painted, but most of it wore away while they were buried for two millennia. However, some figures retained traces of paint when dug up, but by some accounts, when exposed to the air, the paint curled off in 15 seconds and after four minutes it had flaked away completely.

Here’s the thing that really left me gobsmacked by the terracotta army – every single one of those fugues is UNIQUE. Yep, they were all individually created, not like some kind of production line similar to the toy figures of today. Every single one of those faces, uniforms and feet is different from the rest. The effort involved must have been huge, though the original account of 700,000 people to create the whole complex has been denounced in recent times as being slightly far-fetched. But by how much? If the first emperor of China tells you to do something, you drop whatever you are doing and do it!

[James meekly adopts the victory sign that all Japanese people make when being photographed.]

Pit 2 is not quite as large as Pit 1, but looks a lot more like a museum from the inside, rather than a big warehouse. There weren’t that many figures down in the clay, but instead there were selected warriors housed behind glass that visitors could observe up close. The rule is that the larger the figure, the higher their rank. Below we have, respectively, a kneeling archer and a general.          

Pit 3 is the smallest and contains what was assumed to be the command post for the entire terracotta army. Made of clay, just like the rest of the battalions, I’m not sure how it was supposed to give orders in the afterlife, but let’s not get all metaphysical in this blog! Here you could go a bit crazy if you fancied it and have your photo taken professionally with the whole army as a backdrop, or get your own face personalised in the form of a terracotta warrior... 

...we didn’t fancy either of those. Instead we headed to the exhibition hall, which was basically a museum-within-a-museum giving some background information to everything. The whole terracotta army, coupled with the extensive mausoleum of the first emperor, is one of those things that I could get quite spaced-out contemplating if I thought about it enough. Fortunately it was too cold for that much contemplation, so we tipped our hats to the terracotta generals and headed back to the bus stop for the number 306.

Back in Xi`an we barely had time to nip across to a Japanese noodle bar over the road for our first proper meal of the day - a meal in which, I might add, not one word of English was spoken. They hadn’t turned the heating on, despite the frost coming down outside, so we were forced to sit out the entire meal in our coats. I ordered some kind of noodles with steamed duck. It was very nice, but again they only provided me with chopsticks and when I asked for something else I was given a pair of elongated spoons. Okay, so I can try to scoop up noodles with these (and fail!) but how am I supposed to chop up the pieces of duck which are about two inches long and an inch wide? Swallow them whole like the noisy slurper enjoying the same meal at the next table to us? Oh well, when in Xi`an, I guess the Xi`an man can

Bicycle race

Tuesday, 27/11/2012 – 166 A.D.

Hotel rooms with thick dark curtains are confusing. You can never be sure what the daylight is doing outside. Tim’s alarm went off at 08:00 this morning, but I refused to trust it. I think I have some ulcers coming on, but I’ll take them over any other kind of local ailment. And I didn’t notice them as I chewed my way through a hearty breakfast, the first I’ve had on this tour when I could have eaten as much bacon as I liked, or until I burst in a big streaky explosion.

Here is the rule – the better quality hotel it is, the more they will charge for laundry services. It’s not even worth me quoting what the Days Inn charge to do a pair of jeans, you won’t believe me. And so a teeny-weeny bit of hand washing was all that held us back this morning before we got out into the Xi`an sunshine. This was indeed a bright, sunny bonus, as the forecast had said it would be cloudy for the rest of our time here. But what do forecasts know? Predictions are just predictions and not guarantees. And I'm rambling already.

We headed to the South Gate of the city. As explained in the previous post, the ancient heart of Xi`an has a wall running around it, which is, on average, 18 metres high and 15 metres deep. They hold a marathon up there on 3^rd November each year. But we’d come to do this classic rectangular circuit on bicycles, the only way to travel on ancient Chinese masonry! 

It cost us 40 yuan to get on the walls themselves, then another 40 to hire the bikes, leaving a 100 yuan deposit in case we rode off into the sunset. The bikes actually looked pretty well maintained and definitely worth more than a tenner, but where was I going to store it in my luggage? Earlier we’d toyed with the idea of getting a tandem between us, but realised we wouldn’t be able to get very good video footage. Plus one of us would have the other’s arse in their face, which kinda sealed the deal. And looking at people who were riding the tandems, they were situated very close together indeed! Yep, only appropriate for couples who regularly get that close anyway. Tim and I only get that close under protest.

For our 40 yuan we got 100 minutes of biking time. That seemed like an enormous amount. The saddles weren’t the most comfortable (are they ever?), but the bikes were easy to ride. They only had the one gear, which I’d say was akin to gear number 5 on a 15 gear cycle. And then it was time for PEDAL POWER!!! 

[The view from the handlebars!]

We headed west along the southern wall, trying to do endo’s and wheelies and the kind of skids I could pull off with ease when I was a kid who was surgically attached to his BMX for every single day of the school summer holidays. Every now and then one of us dismounted to take some piccies or video footage of the other engaged in a fancy move, such as riding cross-legged, or just happily riding along without a care in the world, i.e. before the saddle-soreness kicked in.

By the time we got to the halfway point along the north wall, we realised we were only just above schedule, but then again we had been messing about a lot. Was it not Ernest Hemingway who claimed that, “Nothing is so much fun in life as messing about on bikes?” Then again it might have been boats, not bikes, and it might not have been Hemingway who said it, but you get the idea. We peddled harder and increased our pace, zooming along the east wall like a couple of Lance Armstrongs (minus performance-enhancing drugs, plus complimentary hotel fruit).

In the end we returned to the drop-off point for our trusty steads with about 25 minutes to spare. It had been a great ride and no mistake, made all the more easier by there only being a smattering of other riders to avoid – probably a very different story during peak tourist season. And some sections of the wall were less well-maintained than others, particularly bumpy was the area around the south eastern corner. I found myself walking rather gingerly for the first ten minutes after dismounting for good. Great fun through, and I’d recommend it to anyone (just remember to wear your thickest underwear).

The afternoon passed in the blink of an eye, with a bit of wandering here and there, though we stumbled upon nothing much of note. Maybe four months ago the things we saw in the park would have made it into this blog post, but not now. These days it needs to be something different, something dynamic, something…dangerous! Otherwise I don’t write about it. But that’s what journalism’s all about, isn’t it? Sensationalism!

Nothing sensational happened in the evening either – we trekked a long way across town to find a restaurant called The Small World Café. Owned by a Dutch woman, it came recommended by Wikitravel and though the décor was fine, the menu was sparse. I was disappointed to find almost a complete lack of Chinese food on offer – only two more days in this country, need to nosh it while I can! Strange to find me going on about food so much these days? The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach – that’s something that means the same thing the world over!

[Tim demonstrates the typical Chinese pose of draping oneself against a building with slightly saucy look upon the face.]

Keep talking

Monday, 26/11/2012 – 165 A.D.

Xi`an (pronounced “shee-an”) is ancient city with a history going back 3,000 years. It is the Eastern end of the silk road and has been the seat of about 30 Chinese emperors over the centuries. The saying goes that until you’ve been to Xi`an, you haven’t really been to China. The original city is surrounded by a wall that is the largest of its kind, the foundation of which was built under the Tang dynasty, but which was enlarged under the rule of the M…M…come on, you know this…four letters…last one is ‘G’…you’ve read enough about them already…M…M…that’s it…MING dynasty! They’re everywhere, those Mings. And which is my favourite Chinese dynasty? Umm, don’t really have one. I preferred the Chinese Dallas instead. 

Xi`an is roughly in the centre of China, and on the north-south scale it’s about halfway between Beijing and Shanghai. It was chilly, but nowhere near as cold as “The Jing”. We had a bit of trouble finding the hotel, mainly due to Google Map’s continued reluctance to work on Tim’s phone while in China, but after a bit of reconnaissance we got lucky. And how lucky we are! The Days Inn is a well-known chain in various parts of the world and in Xi`an it equates to four star accommodation. And we’re not really paying any more than we have in The Jing and The Hai. Okay, so the place has little charm and zero character, but it’s nice to be back in a place that is Comfortable with a capital ‘C’. I almost feel like I’m here on business!

[Complimentary fruit - I can understand the apple, oranges, tomatoes, but what's with the pickles?]

It was important to take a shower upon arriving. I’ve been having a bit of trouble finding some deodorant. You may remember that I had my two sprays confiscated by the Shanghai metro, but as it’s been so cold I didn’t think there much point in replacing them. Yesterday morning I got to the bottom of my roll-on, but after scooting around the streets of Beijing I couldn’t find a new one anywhere. Oh well, it’s not as if I’ve perspired much recently! I figured I’d try Beijing West station, but despite plenty of identical shops selling the exact same sort of stuff, said stuff did not include deodorants. So, I guess it was quite lucky that we had the soft sleeper to ourselves last night! Now I was in a new town and determined to get as fresh as normal. Watch this space.

We are staying right in the centre of Xi`an, and it’s a modern, urban centre. The city wall is about fifteen minutes away, with a gate at its north, south, east and west points. From each of these gates is a road, name of North Road, South Road, East…you get the idea, and they all meet in the very centre of the city where a large structure called the Bell Tower stands. Besides the obvious, I’m not sure what function the Bell Tower has, but there was scaffolding either just starting to go up or in the final stages of coming down, so we didn’t try and get inside. Instead we headed for tourist info and got ourselves a decent map. You’re never in trouble when you’ve got a decent map.

The afternoon was mainly spent strolling around and getting a feel for the place. There’s no point trying to do too much in the first 24 hours. We took a trip through The Muslim Quarter which features outdoor food of any kind you’d like, plus some glaring health and safety violations that would put most European cafes out of business. And I had no luck finding my deodorant, even stooping so low in one shop as to make the gesture of rubbing something under my arms. She had no idea what I meant. Come on, what else would you rub beneath your armpits other than deodorant???

The language barrier presented further complications come the evening when we went out for dinner. In true First Night Syndrome style, we tried to find two restaurants and failed on both counts. We left the hotel at 19:00, but it was at least 20:30 by the time we were seated, on the sixth floor of a shopping mall, in a restaurant in a food court that didn’t contain a sniff of another westerner. One thing we are fast-learning about Xi`an is that there are a lot less signs in English than the other two Chinese cities we’ve visited. At least this eatery had a menu translated into (very rough) English. When we arrived it was like we were visiting dignitaries from a far-off land and the staff didn’t know what they should do. They took us right to the far end of the place (get us out of the way???) and gave us what was almost our own little semi-walled-off section. Quite cosy really, though there were chairs for eight people and just two of us dining.

We assumed the waitress we got was chosen because she had a smattering of English, and I do mean “smattering”. She spoke reasonably okay, but understood zilch. Tim ordering his dish along with a portion of rice would have been hilarious to watch had I not been so hungry! And I really should learn the phrase, “Can you give us five minutes, please?” because it winds me up something chronic when the waitress is hovering over me while I’m trying to choose something from the menu. In the end I panicked and chose a dish called something like, “Cottage country meat” (the picture looked like it was beef with green peppers). It was only when she left with the order taken down that I realised I had no idea what type of meat I would be eating. Sure, it looked like beef, but what did that mean in central China? Holy cow! My brother’s words of, “As long as it tastes nice,” were of little reassurance.

I’m pretty damn sure it was beef, and pretty damn tasty it was too. Pretty spicy as well, but a rush of heat endorphins isn’t a problem on a cold Xi`an night. One recurring problem is that I’m always provided with chopsticks as standard. Fair enough, that’s what they use in China, but I’m not Chinese, and it would be nice to be offered an alternative. Normally I just have to ask and they bring a fork, spoon, knife, etc., but this time I had to make spoonish scooping motions to communicate and the waitress brought the type of plastic spoon that you eat your crab and sweetcorn soup with. Oh what the hell, I can manage, I’ll just use one of the chopsticks for some extra grip. Halfway through the meal the manageress must have seen my plight because she shouted something at the waitress, then brought a knife and fork along with a humble, “Sorry!” In other news, Tim realised what his nonsensical conversation when ordering had been about – how hot do you want your chicken? Now, that boy can take a bit of heat in his food, but tonight he got it full-on Chinese strength and had to admit defeat early on. Never mind, he’ll be back, but probably not in that place. As we went to leave, the waitress gave us a big grin and said, “Please walk slowly!” I think she may have meant, “Take care,” or “mind how you go”. That’s the kind of lost-in-translation that I can cope with!

[Chillis, chillis and more chillis!]

[Ironic that the restaurant bin has an English word upon it!]

On the way home, as well as buying a beer for the road, I also bought some deodorant (finally!) It may not have been a power stick anti-perspirant of the kind I’m used to back home, but at least I now smell as sweet as….that sweet and sour chicken that Tim fought against. But I’m not half as hot, despite the five layers.

Deodorant...can he find one? The Xi`an man can!

Goin` out west

Sunday, 25/11/2012 – 164 A.D.

`Twas a very sad morning, and not just because `tis one month exactly until Christmas. White Shirt has finally gone to the great wardrobe in the sky. He was on borrowed time and had become extremely tatty. Nor was he actually that white anymore, rather a kind of yellowy-cream. He could have got the boot even halfway through America, but he hung in there, playing on my loyalty. Still, now that I have Teacher Coat, there just isn’t room for White Shirt in my luggage. But I held an appropriately solemn ritual of parting for him and I. In the absence of a bugle to play, I just hummed quietly, hoping that Tim wouldn’t hear in the next room. Then I put him in a ceremonial cloak, i.e. chocolate bun multipack wrapper, and put that in a sacred coffin, i.e. grey plastic bin in the corner. And that was that. White Shirt represented a different era when I wore slightly baggier shirts. He will be missed.

After checking out of the Leo Courtyard we went a couple of streets down to what was described as an electronics market, but it was in fact full of stalls displaying beauty products. No, thanks, or “bu yao” as they say over here (lit. “don’t want”). Or, as Tim has taken to saying these days, “a swing and a miss” (it’s not getting totally on my nerves just yet). We had lunch at a nearby hostel’s restaurant, Helen’s Hangout, where we pursued the theory that I may have a tiny lactose intolerance. This is driven by the fact that I seem to cough more after certain meals, and we may have narrowed this down to meals containing cheese. We’ll be keeping an eye on that one. Oh, and speaking of which, we still have not come up with that elusive fifth cheese joke. Here’s a recap if you’ve forgotten the original four:

1.      How do the Welsh eat their cheese? Caerphilly.

2.      What’s the best cheese to hide a horse in? Mascarpone.

3.      Which cheese do you use to tempt a bear out of a cave? Camembert.

4.      Edam is made backwards.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at the National Museum of China, and we could have spent most of the morning there too, had we remembered how close it was. The museum is free, but you need to have your passport or ID card swiped to get inside. I believe this is so the authorities can see where you’ve been, i.e. on trains to certain places, or visited this and that building. Everywhere people go seems to be monitored. However, whereas some amongst us may view this as controlling Big Brother tactics, the general feeling is that processes are needed to protect a system which runs highly efficiently and in which the ultimate aim is enablement, rather than restriction. Go figure. On the streets I do not see that many beggars and most people look like they are reasonably well-off, though I bet it’s a different story out in the sticks. But as a stranger here, I see no graffiti on the walls, the cities are safe (pickpockets and, err, petty scams being the main threats) and there are no hooded teenagers hanging around to make you feel threatened. Maybe if I looked a little deeper under the surface I’d see more signs of injustice and oppression, but currently looking from the outside-in, things generally seem to be okay. After all, China IS on the up, no one is denying that.  

[Tim adopts typical Chinese photo stance, i.e. rigid posture, eyes straight ahead, no emotion on face.]

The museum not only kept us out of the cold, it was very entertaining. The whole of the vast basement level was devoted to ancient China, i.e. from prehistoric times up until, errr, 1912. Not “ancient” by most peoples’ definition, but definitely another world compared to the society in place now. Even though we’d seen plenty on this subject back in Shanghai, we still found ourselves transfixed by the weird and wonderful wares on display. Plus the dynasties of imperial China was a section of my knowledge that was severely lacking before arriving here – you never know, just being aware of when the Tang dynasty was in power might help me answer a question sometime at The Guest House quiz!

[The Chariman contemplates whether he should have included a section on Tim in his Little Red Book.]

There was a large, open room on the ground floor devoted to Communist artwork, which I found particularly interesting. The vast majority of these featured Mr. Mao, usually in conversation with his leutenants in the glorious revolution. Oh yes, it was damned inspiring stuff, tending to show brave soldiers charging fearlessly towards the enemy, or surrounded by peasants with huge, wide smiles, so happy to have been liberated from their earlier oppressors. There’s such a strong bias in these works that I find it difficult to take them seriously, but as a record of what constituted art in these somewhat shadowy times, they provide a fascinating glance. 

Frustratingly, the room detailing the Chinese republic that was formed in 1912, and the subsequent Peoples’ Republic created by Mao in 1949 was all in Chinese with no English translation whatsoever. This was the part I really wanted to see! Just as I was vaguely singing the Chinese authorities' praises two paragraphs ago, they throw me a curveball. What’s the point in only having it in Chinese? So Western eyes will not pry and return to their homelands saying things that they shouldn’t? Hmmm.

Our time in the museum was cut short because we wanted to get out onto Tiananmen Square and see the flag lowering ceremony at sunset (about 16:50). There are always large crowds for this, but fortunately I can see over the tops of their heads. Was it worth standing in the cold for ten minutes? Only to say that we’d seen it. The ceremony itself wasn’t that impressive, akin to the changing of the guard in Windsor Castle, but with some expert flag-folding thrown in for good measure. And there was no stirring music to make you feel good about being part of the great Chinese nation. 

[The Beijing Monks XI soccer team pose for pictures.]

[I play camera wars with some giggly girls taking my photograph.]

[Tim gets into the spirit of it all by adopting a shade of Communist Red.]

After collecting our luggage from the Leo Courtyard, and under strict instructions from the manageress to walk away if the fare came to more than 40 yuan, we caught a taxi to Beijing West Station. This was constructed in 1996 at a record cost of three quarters of a million US dollars. It is the largest station in the whole of Asia, and just like everywhere else in China, it was full of people.

But there were plenty of hot taps nearby for us to fill up our noodle pots. As I was putting the sauce sachets into mine, a young girl approached me and asked how it was called in English. “Noodles,” I replied, sounding somewhat surprised. “Just that?” she asked, sounding somewhat surprised. I shrugged. “Okay, you would call it pot noodle.” She thanked me and left, with me feeling a bit guilty for being rather standoffish, but even after Haven worked her healing magic, I’m still in anti-scam-detection-mode. And to be fair, though a legitimate line of enquiry, it was still a strange question! 

[No less than four extras came with this pot noodle - a record! He didn't try the sausage though.]

So, we got on the train. If you’re a masochist and therefore a regular reader of this blog then you’ll remember that there were no hard sleepers available, so we were soft sleeping it tonight. Which two people would we be sharing with? None, as it happened! Oh joy of joys! And the standard of this soft sleeper was the best we have come across yet. Every bed had its own miniature TV, and it didn’t matter that nothing was being shown on them. There was just a general sense of true cleanliness, unlike other trains where it's appeared clean on the surface, but then we’ve lifted up a bed sheet and seen a stain that the devil himself could have made after a night eating hell’s fieriest vindaloos.  

The train left the station at 20:02. It would reach its destination at 08:12 the next morning. How perverse that both Tim and I wished we could have stayed on it a little longer! Beijing was the furthest east we would go in Asia, now it was back west we wuz headin`. In fact, we wouldn’t stop headin` west until we reached Southport…blimey! 

Blighty’s well-and-truly calling us back now…