Xian
A bit longer than one hour flight passed very quickly. Xian airport is very nice with very helpful English speaking personal at tourist information desk. So I bought a map of Xian city and took a bus to the railroad station of Xian. At the railroad station I supposed to meet with hostel people - free pickup service from train station. Free pickup service turned out to be a boy "a little" speaking English which took me to the hostel by public bus #309. After around 40 minutes a bus dropped us somewhere in the deep hole, may be one of the poorest quarters of the city. The hostel looked no more better than a area it is located in so I just grabbed my bags and escaped from there back to the train station.
First lesson to me - never ever take an accommodation without checking its location in the city and reading as many reviews as possible about the place ! Actually reviews about the hostel weren't too bad, and it had pretty high score in the
http://www.hostelworld.com/ (might be they are cheating?). Also the messages I received from the hostel were written in very good English, showing respect to the guest and crating very good reputation for the place. Turned out you can believe none of this.
So I left in the Xian train station, just in front of the city wall so I entered in and just started to walk in. After 5 minutes walking I seen local travel agency and communicating through Google online Chinese-English translator found that a nearest hotel is just 5 minutes walking into the town.
BTW, I wonder if I could find and install offline electronic translator between English and Chinese or some other language to my
iPod. This would be really helpful for communication at least here, in China. It would be almost must-to-have device here.
So I walked to the hotel and ... The hotel was located just two blocks away from
Ludao International Hostel building so I checked the hostel as well. No words, the place was just great ! Very helpful English speaking personal (everybody spoke very good English), free
Internet, bicycle rental for 15Y a day and travel information. The room was no worse than hotel rooms I stayed in US, except it had a shower instead of bathroom. As in Beijing they provided everything you might only need during your stay - soap, shampoo, tooth brush, small tube of tooth paste, shaving cream, razor, even a comb and shower shoes. Everything for single use.
All this took quite a long time so I settled down just around 2PM instead of 11AM I planned. But no problem, the hostel personal helped me to organize a trip to the Terracotta Army museum, the guy from hostel reception even walked with me all the way to the bus stop to show me exactly where it is.
The most popular Xian attractions for the tourists are:
Terracotta Army Museum (of course it is #1)
Bell Tower and Drum Tower in the heart of the old city
Xian city wall
Big and Small Wild Goose Pagodas
But it turned out that a bus #306 route to the Terracotta Army has quite a lot of other interesting things on the way, for example a few museums you might be want visiting or Hot Springs SPA resort to relax after long work or travel.
Terracotta Army
I arrived to the Terracotta Army Museum around 3PM when museum closes at 5:30PM so I had two and half hours for browsing and taking pictures - actually much more than needed. The museum is a four large air-conditioned buildings (to preserve remainings of ether warriors) surrounded by huge and very nice green park. In the normal day it might be nice to walk around the park but during my visit it was just too hot for it - 38C in the shadow, close to 50C on the sun (i.e. everywhere), not something pleasant, so I actually found myself hiding from the outside heat inside the museum buildings.
Out of 4 buildings only actually two were interesting enough. The first building (Pit #1) is most interesting one, it contains very large army of Terracotta warriors and horses, total should be more than 5000 units. It is where most of the pictures were taken :) The second building (Pit #2) is significantly smaller but also very impressive. The Pit #3 is not really interesting, it is the same size as Pit #1 but nothing is restored. The глинянные warriors in Pit #3 or completely covered under sand or almost completely destroyed and you only see and small pieces of it. The fourth building is just a museum which is partly even not related to the Terracotta Army itself. Entrance to the complex is 80Y and only half price 40Y for students. My old Technion student card worked very well, so I saved 40Y thanks to it.
Bell Tower and Drum Tower
Bell Tower and
Drum Tower are located just in the heart of Xian in the distance of just a few
hundreds meters one from another. The large bell from the Bell Tower was originally used to notify ancient Xian city citizens about daytime passing. The large drum from the Drum Tower was heard during the night, first strike to notify about the city gates being closed, second strike at midnight and third strike to notify about end of the night and city gates being opened. The day bell and the night drum.
Bell Tower
Although the towers already over 600 years old it seems that they were recently renovated and adopter as tourist attractions. Which of course didn't make them any better. I have heard it before but now I seen it in my own, the Chinese do not really care for the antiques restoration, more suitable word for that they do is renovation. As everywhere Chinese figure out that remaining antiques could be tourist attraction and therefore source of money, so they do everything to keep these antiques from being destroyed. But instead of restoring the antiques original look, they usually rebuild and re-painted using modern materials, beautifully illuminated and filled with museums and souvenir shops. After the renovation 1000 year old temple look like its Disney Land or Hollywood copy. The entrance fee to the each of the towers is 27Y, again I've got half price using my Technion student card expired in 2003.
The main attraction of the Bell Tower is its large bell, and for just 10Y you could strike it 3 times or even 10 times for 30Y. The poster near bell claims that striking a bell brings you some luck. The boom of the strike is very impressive and heard a few hundreds of meters around. For the Drum Tower, it has very nice collection and museum of drums and you also could strike a large drum starting from the same 10Y price. There are many smaller drums as well with Chinese characters meaning health, luck, richness and etc. Striking the drum (for money of course) supposed to bring (or at least to wish) you relevant property.
Drum Tower
I went to the both Towers at the evening, after I came back from Terracotta Army museum, took a dinner and shower in my hotel. Both towers look very nice during the night, very beautifully illuminated and also not so many visitors at the same time. The security also was pretty sleeping so I went around taking pictures against "no photo" signs, hitting drums against "no striking" signs and generally doing things that most likely weren't permitted during the day.
Cycling Xian, Ancient City Wall
On the next day I had to be at the airport at 4PM to continue my journey and fly to Lijiang. This didn't left me so much time for attractions so the guy at hostel suggested me to rent a bicycle (just for 10Y a day) and go cycling around the city. After it I could commit that doing that was the best way of committing suicide for non prepared person. The traffic is not really paying attention on the bicycles, cars are driving through special bicycles lanes and every time you need to pass some intersection you have to leave the bicycle line and join to the main traffic. Already after 10 minutes I got crashed into motorcyclist which just suddenly appeared in front of me. I was on the bicycle main lane and he just crossed the road by pedestrians crossing. But everything end fine, the fact that I don't understand a word in Chinese also helped a lot, a guy started shout on me in Chinese but figured out very quickly that I am not really affected by it so he just picked up his bike and continued his way.
I did a round cycle outside the Xian ancient city wall, when took it up the wall (don't ask me how, I know it is generally not allowed) and did a round trip on the top as well. The entrance to the city wall is through South Gate, entrance fee is 40Y or 20Y thanks my expired Technion student card again. The wall is huge, it is possible to walk on the wall around the city for a few hours. There are plenty of bicycle rental places on the wall for price of 20Y (this is why you are not allowed to enter with your own!) and you need to leave 200Y cash deposit for the bicycle itself. Outside the city wall it is pretty nice park to travel if don’t want to pay money and go up to the wall. I think the entrance to the park is also costs some money but I just passed the gate with a speed on a bicycle without stopping so I don't know for sure :)
After I drove to look a Big Wild Goose Pagoda but already seen it only from the main square. I had no time to continue because I had to come back and take the airport shuttle bus. Actually later I was told that I missed might be one of the biggest Xian attractions - music and fountain show near the Pagoda followed by people jumping into to the fountain during the night. OK, so I left something for the next time !
