Rice is Nice

Having Trouble Getting Hotmail to Work Reliably, probably due to Great Firewall, so My Apologies for Not Being ResponsiveHaving Trouble Getting Hotmail to Work Reliably, probably due to Great Firewall, so My Apologies for Not Being Responsive

To my right is a cute girl doing something that looks kind uv like a game, and kind uv like instant messaging. She is also chain smoking. Most uv this basement-y (to borrow a phrase phrom Sarah Walker used to describe Jason's 1st post-college apartment) internet caphe is devoted to playing video games.

We started the day by getting on a group tour, uv about twelve people, mostly British, to see the main attraction uv the Xi'an area: the Terracotta warriors. As soon as the tour guide found out that we were phrom Philadelphia, the guide asked us about the stone horses that are at the Penn Museum, which should be in Xi'an. She asked us if we felt guilty about that.

They were every bit as impressive as they would need to be to draw massive amounts uv tourists here. The warriors are about the size uv a grown, European man. In other words, they are larger than liphe. It was interesting to see the bronze work in the model chariots, and the mechanisms phor the crossbows that the soldiers held. They were complex and phinely worked enouph to seem as good or better than what one would see in, say, Roman technology, and the timing was about the same.

Thousands of soldiers and one Angeleno

Now they live in a hangar

But really, the number uv tourists was not enough to justiphy the massive (and mostly empty) retail and dining phacilities that have recently been added just outside the facility. Stephen commented that a telltale sign uv a market correction is seeing this wasted inphrastructure. And today was the day aphter the 6% decline in the Shanghai market index, phollowing a tripling uv the tax on trading.

We just arranged phor laundry and our tour tomorrow (Phamen Temple and other sites west uv the city). Our hotel here, the Grand Mercure, is nice, but too nice phor us. I wish that I'd booked something more "local." The hotel is centrally located but in a sort uv compound. And everything is expensive.

Anyway, I like Xi'an a lot so phar. You can walk it, the people are nice, the phood (including the bread and lamb stew we had last night) is good.

So Wednesday's flight to Xi'an, including the traffic to the airport, was much easier than people had told us it would be. In phact (I spell that way because this computer doesn't work), it was easier than it would have been in the US. Our phlight was dominated by Germans.

I had pictured Xi'an as a mildly dusty, provincial capital, uv a moderate size. But there are 7 million people here, and it shows. The center is compact, and the pace is manageable. The people are phriendly.

Xi'an city walls, very much intact

We visited the Beilin (Phorest uv Stelae) Museum, where we saw all kinds uv inscriptions. There were some pretty ancient items, with spooky pictures uv hooded people, "magic trees," dragons, birds, etc. Two stone horses phrom this period were clearly missing from the collection. It turns out that they are in the museum at Penn. They really seemed to miss them here.

The winner of the highly competitive contest for worst use of our language

At the Imperial Palace, it was pretty clear that much of what had been recently done was done by Empress Dowager Cixi. She basically usurped power from two consecutive emperors (and even kept one of them captive) and refused to reform China at a time when it was being picked apart by foreign powers with superior military technology.

To honor Cixi, we slept in today. And then we took a long taxi ride, or really two long taxi rides and a long walk, to the Summer Palace, just outside the city. As is true with most summer palaces, this was more impressive even than the not-summer palace. Most of the grounds consisted of a large lake, surrounded by pagodas, buildings, and bridges.

Summer Palace - Corridor in a Temple

After climbing to the top of a hill and visiting one pagoda (from which there is now a view of a modern city), we took a paddle boat out on Kunming Lake. However, the wind picked up as soon as we tried to turn back. We couldn't paddle fast enough and were being pushed into a retaining wall. We weren't the only ones, so a powerboat came out and towed the boats back to shore. This was our dangerous sailing experience for the trip.

Summer Palace - View of Temple from Kunming Lake

Summer Palace - Getting Rescued in a Gale on Kunming Lake

At night, we made a second attempt to find Liqun Roast Duck, the best-known little roast duck place in Beijing. We'd tried before and failed. It turns out that you have to go through a big construction site, as the hutong that contains it is largely demolished.

Sign Letting Us Know We're Close to Eating Duck

Liqun has been left intact, apparently, because of the enormous tax revenue it generates. Great duck, and they even bring you some sort of spicy salad of duck tendon and a platter of duck liver.
http://www.economist.com/cities/displayobject.cfm?obj_id=5466926&city_id=BJS
http://www.plateoftheday.com/18/

Tiananmen Square on Our Last Night

We got up early today to get our ride to the Great Wall. We decided to hike from Jinshaling to Simatai, to of the less-visited sections of the Great Wall that are near Beijing. I think they're less visited because hardly any of it is restored, and it's very steep. Stephen can attest to how steep it was. We didn't see many other tourists, but the locals (some claim to be farmers) seem to get around without a problem, as they follow you long distances to sell you a fan or a t-shirt. They all sell the same stuff, so it's a wonder that they all approach you.

Two ladies, however, were pretty helpful. They helped Stephen with a shortcut around the steepest part. And one spoke good English. So we way overpaid in buying a couple of t-shirts from them.

Locals Circle Like Vultures as Stephen Tires on the Great Wall

Oh well. The scenery alone was worth it. The views of the surrounding mountains are amazing. The funny thing about the Great Wall is that it does not seem to have been very effective. In fact, the Qing came through that area when they conquered China. I think that if somebody figured out how to get through those mountains, they could easily get over the Great Wall.

Great Wall at Jinshaling

Night consisted of mediocre Sichuanese food, accompanied by amazing Sichuanese mask-changing opera. Look it up, or try to see it, because it's pretty impressive. We went to the bars around Houhai Lake area at night. A few years ago, some people opened up a cool bar there without a name, overlooking the water and playing Brazilian music and stuff. Now, the whole lake is surrounded by bars. Many, however, manage to create ambience. Walking around the lake, it was amazing how Stephen was targeted by people trying to tell him, in Chinese, to come to a "lady bar." That was really the only taste of seediness we've seen here. I think Stephen's family had a Chinese mailman or something, because everybody here thinks he's Chinese, and they ought to know.