Travels

Day 7 Monday Feb 12

The wedding was done. We got up & packed for our 2 night Xi'an 'getaway'. Our new family was a joy to meet. Their hospitality & truly generous nature really touched us. We never needed a common language to communicate our shared warmth. Enough gushing. We had a farewell lunch with all in Handan & then hopped into a new van with a new driver for the 2 hour drive north to the nearest airport in Shijiazhuang. This city I might add, is the place where our star-eyed couple tied the official knot. They needed to register the marriage at a marriage office & this one was convenient by train & they didn't have to wait. The bride's parents insisted on driving with us to the airport & they brought along a young friend of the family to translate. An uneventful drive despite the usual lane-hogging mania on the highway. I even saw a bus using the shoulder to pass some slow trucks. Our driver only dipped there once or twice. He was pretty calm overall. But as usual, the view was seriously boring. They have lined the entire road with poplar trees. 2 hours of flat farmland thru poplar trees.

To cap off the family event, her parents insisted on dinner before they dropped us off. The airport is well north of Shijiazhuang & just east of the toll way. We exited a couple of miles before the airport into the most depressing place I've ever seen. The air stunk as we drove into this unknown heavy industry town (since identified as Zhengding) an hour before dusk. It gets dark early in this part of China. Or it seems to with all of the toxic haze. The main north/south street was lined with fireworks vendors selling their wares from carts. It looked & felt like the slightest spark would blow up the entire town. The bride's father had the driver pull over & he asked for the best dumpling restaurant in town. 3 blocks away we walked into it. Well, first impressions were seriously negative. All of the diners in this grubby place froze when we walked in. Ditto the kitchen staff as we walked by to take the stairs up to a private room. We seemed to really want a private room. As we walked by the cooking area, a big bowl of fried duck beaks & some halves of those disgusting green thousand year eggs. Oh boy! A treat! The stairwell was nasty as was the 1st private room that they gave us. And nasty is not an exaggeration. The 2nd was mildly better, but we were starting to worry. Glad we had those shots. I guess the local health board was not very active. Despite our fears, the food turned out to be very good. Multiple types of dumplings & several chicken & beef dishes. A nice meal if you could overlook the surroundings. The kitchen staff lined up to stare as we left.

From there, a quick hop got us to the airport. As we were checking in & saying our goodbyes, an American came up behind us in the line. He seemed desperate to talk. We agreed to meet in the boarding area. He was from Minnesota teaching English in Shijiazhuang for a year. It was a pretty lonely existence for a white English-only speaker but he agreed that the people made it worthwhile. He was going to Xi'an to meet a friend & gave us his cell # in case we ran into any trouble. A nice guy. But that's travel. You run into random people in out of the way places & you connect for an hour. Always pretty cool.

The flight was on-time (our only on time in China) & uneventful. We were pickup up at the airport by our guide - Betty & driver - Mr Jong. She was holding a sign that said Canada. 45 minutes later were were ensconced in our great 17th floor room at the Hojo. Alone at last!

Day 8 Tuesday Feb 13

We woke up hearing a throbbing disco beat in the dark. It gets late here (7 AM) but I jumped to the window. Down below in the pavilion beside the wall, a group was dancing to throbbing Chinese songs. Modern yangkou (loyalty dance) or a variant I would guess. As a hazy dawn broke more & more people came to the wall for Kung Fu or Tai Chi or just stretching & walking.

We had breakfast on the hotel - wow, real coffee & real bacon & eggs. This was the 1st coffee that I had had in days. Then it was off in the van on a hazy cool day for Xi'an adventures. Our guide Betty was a 24 yr old babbling type & her English was reasonable although an off-topic question often stymied her. Her facts sometimes drifted too but she was quite nice. The driver just smiled & nodded.

Our 1st stop was for some wallet-suckage at a pottery factory in the northeast part of Xi'an. A tour bus of English students were being tortured at the same place while we were there. Yeah, yeah, what's next? At least it was a washroom stop. Then it was off to see the main attraction: The Terracotta Warriors.

They are housed in 3 large covered pits about an hour east of Xi'an. The toll way drive gives you a chance to see some of the countryside on the way, as well as roadside villages & the suburbs of Xi'an. The parking lot is about 1/2 mile from the pits. In that 1/2 mile, the enterprising Chinese are building a plaza of restaurants & gift shops to tempt the Yuan from your wallet. Very little was occupied when we went through although the hawkers were doing their thing around the admissions gate further in. The museum gives you a look at your 1st Warriors & the bronze chariots they uncovered in the dig. Pit 1 is the home run, so start with 3 to warm up then 2 & do 1 as the grand finale. Wow. Imperial Chinese royalty run amok with ego. Impossible to capture on film, you just have to go.

The guide guided us to the gov't buffet/restaurant that is part of the complex. Populated strictly by tour groups, I noticed her getting her cut of our meals at the end from the cashier. That's how the guides make money. On the way out, expect to be hawker mobbed but remember - 1 Yuan, I give you 1 Yuan! We met the bored English students on their way in . . .

The next stop was for more wallet-fleecing. Another silk factory. This time we told the guy to skip the 1 grub vs 2 & the stretchy speech & get to the showroom. After intense negotiations - including me standing in the parking lot yelling to my wife 300m away - Noooo! - they got us. (See pic below for shot of her with the manager on the steps) We bought. But it was 1000 Yuan cheaper than the one in Beijing. And we were still overcharged, I am sure. But now we have a nice new silk comforter & cover & it is really comfy.

Next stop was the Huaqing Pool which was pleasant but not really that interesting. More interesting was the guide's excitement at showing us the scene of the Xi'an incident with Chiang Kaishek. We saw the window he crawled out & the plastic covered bullet holes (see below), all loving told by our guide. I think a wee bit of propaganda is played out here. The rest of the complex is beaten up & dried up pools used by various Emperors & their concubines.

After that, it was a drive back thru the 'burbs & thru the walled city center & its traffic jam. On the way, our guide tried to sell us on the Dinner Theater thing but we (I mainly) resisted. I had already read enough about this to know that its one to miss. We collapsed at the hotel & decided to eat Western in the hotel's restaurant. Don't. Our Chinese steak was tough, overcooked, funny-tasting Australian beef. Our wine was Chinese & no better. But it was easy & didn't involve chopsticks.

Goodnight.

Day 8 Wednesday Feb 14

Our yangkou wake up call came at 7 AM again. It looked a little brighter & sunshine was threatening. After a call from our guide, we started late this day. We had to checkout of the hotel because we were flying to Beijing at 6 PM. Well, now it was 8 PM. So we left around 11:30 & made for the Big Goose Pagoda & its Buddhist Temple, the Dacien Si. It was of interest for the exquisite jade & wood carvings that adorned the walls, telling the local history of the temple & Xuan Zang, its Tang dynasty monk & benefactor. But the price was - of course - another attempt at parting us from our Yuan at an art gallery. We were getting really good at saying no by this time - except for the silk comforter slip.

After a walk thru the well-peopled square to the north we were back in the van. We were trying to get Betty to take us to the Muslim quarter downtown but we could never quite get her to understand. Or maybe she just saw potential revenue slipping away as we frittered away our Yuan on street vendors & ticky tacky stores. Oh well. Next time. We did convince them to stop at a shop for the Chinese hamburger - rou jia mo (spiced lamb in a bun) - which we gobbled down in the van for lunch.

We drove to the East Gate next for the gate experience. Other than a photo shoot, it was - you guessed it - another gov't shop. This one included a brief lecture on Feng Shui, that segued into jade lions & a jade pitch. All proceeds from the inflated sales to go to Xi'an's ongoing wall repair. No. No. And no!

Out last stop of the day was the Han tombs near the airport. I hadn't read about them at all & it came as a very pleasant surprise. There is a museum filled with small terracotta figures with no arms & terracotta animals & iron utensils etc from the era that were excavated from pits around the Mausoleum of Ming Emperor Liu Qi & his concubine. There is also a pit area with glass floors that allow you to see the various pits from overtop. A different approach than the Qin terracottas & it was virtually empty. A recommended stop.

Betty & Mr Jong bid us adieu as they dropped us at the airport & we assured them that we would not have a problem. Well, we shouldn't have spoken too soon. In Xi'an, as well as Shijiazhuang's airport, a board directs you to a specific check in desk. In Xi'an, it directed us to one that was in use for another flight. What we didn't know - as the 1 hour to flight time had passed - was that our flight was delayed & we didn't have to panic. But that was hindsight, so we panicked & got checked in after a minor fuss. Once inside, with our baggage checked, we realized that it was a major delay. So we hung around the airport for 5 hours until we finally left for our return flight on a sparsely populated plane to Beijing. Btw many flights were inexplicably delayed.

Arrival in Beijing was a breeze & we took a taxi to our haunt at the Playa Royale again & collapsed.

For the continuation, see Beijing Redux.