Day 4 Sat Oct 8

An early morning start to the day to get to the airport for an early flight to Xian.  The group all made it down, bags packed rearing to go.  All on time and excited about the next part of the journey.

Grabbing a packed lunch and onto the buses.  The smog and mist was still around as we headed to the airport.  On arrival a thank you card and gift was given to our two guides with a huge thanks for a fabulous experience in Shanghai.

We boarded the plane - Air China.  After a little delay we lifted off and were winging our way to Xian(she ann).  This city is known as the roots of China.  An ancient city.  The trunk and the branches of China is Beijing and the blossom is Shanghai.  As we flew in, once again heavily ‘smogged’ in and dull looking place.  Initial feelings are it is dirtier and a lot busier than Shanghai.  Xian has 8 million people living here.  Once again high rises and very busy roads.  Xian is  an ancient city – more than 5000 years old hence the roots of China.  13 Dynasties existed and based in Xian. 

As we moved through the country side to Xian we were pointed out the burial mounds that exist in the countryside.  The size of the mound indicated the status of who was buried there.  The emperor’s mounds were very high-highest being 30m high.  Most of them had not been excavated due to superstition but also the government have made them historical sites.  Over the years many of the tombs had been plundered.  The terracotta warrior site is one of these sites which represent the Qin Dynasty emperor.  In the early days some have been excavated before they ceased and found that many of the treasures as exposed to the air disintegrated significantly.  Also many of the tombs are booby trapped so the archaeologists will be putting themselves into danger by digging and uncovering.

The guides Ping and Wei were excellent and knew their history extremely well.  We received a comprehensive outline of Xian and the history.  Ping explained that the people of Xian have a three point plan for the next 20 years.

1.      Double the population in the next 20 years.  In this area of China they had eased the one child rule.  If you and your wife came from single parent families then you were entitled to have two children.  If you have twins then you are very lucky and this is counted as one child.  If you have more children you are fined about 3 times the average wage so in Xian you would have to pay Y90000 which is $18000.  The wealthy Chinese can afford this but the average person cannot. 

2.      The second goal for Xian is that every person has to know 900 English sentences – Do you know 900 phrases and or sentences????

3.      Lastly every person in Xian should know a minimum of 200 chinese scripts.

When we arrived we went for Lunch then went to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda.  This is a huge pagoda which was a three story building which housed the Sanskrit scrolls which were written in Hindi.  They were being translated into Chinese and therefore needed somewhere safe to be housed so they built the pagoda.  The monks were inside the temple chanting when we visited.  Many of the group brought incense sticks and placed them in an incense pit and had a little prayer.  We walked through the pagoda gardens and relaxed as we went into the various shops around the pagoda.  Many of us learned about the Chinese calendar and zodiacs.

Back on the bus then off to the Art Gallery Museum.  Here we saw some great art work of differing types.  We saw some three-d-characters made from donkey hyde – interesting.  After learning about the ancient art craft we were taken into a classroom and taught some basic calligraphy.  The calligraphy strokes and the brushes was fascinating.  The basic 8 strokes were shown and from these 8 there can be 1000s of characters made – Chinese scripts.  When a character is written it is not a straight translation of the name it is how the name is vocalised.  The vocal gives the sounds which translates to a character.

Back on the bus and off to Dinner.  We went back to out hotel – City Hotel and then free time.  This hotel is in the middle of the inner city of Xian.  Xian has an inner wall and moat.  In the early days a 14km wall surrounded the old city and ensured their protection from the marauding Mongols. 

The hotel was 2 star.  Old hotel and inside was well worn and tired.  A good enough place to sleep.  Free time-meant we could go out and look at the local shops, find a supermarket and get snacks but also meet the locals.  The Xian people were always busy and were busier than the other places we had visited.

At the end of another busy day we all slept well.