Nihao - we are back in China again! Time is running and this now is already our last stop before arriving in Beijing and before organizing the last step of our travels - Mongolia and Russia! But Xi'an was on our route from Lhasa and so we spent a couple of wonderful days in this surprisingly beautiful and agreable city. A mix of modern buildings, living areas, restaurants and bars with old traditional neighborhoods: we found Xi'an a very charming city and a great place to relax for a
couple of days and to learn even more about Chinese culture, history and traditions! One of the places to go and learn, besides the museum about regional history exhibiting hundreds of vases and statues (very interesting after about the 150th repetition), were the two old city towers, Drum and Bell Tower, and their integrated museums on Chinese musical instruments, furniture, and paintings! Of course, David liked the drums most but everything else was also very interesting and vivid, and the views from up there were also great.
Another great experience was to get lost in the old traditional neighborhoods of the city with its beautiful wooden houses and its many impressions, colors, odors, and sounds. Why do people for example keep little birds in cages hung in the streets there? How do you play all those boardgames people enjoy in the streets? What the heck did we eat that looked like potatos but had the consistency of jelly? ... Wonderfully friendly Chinese girls explained to us how to eat rice cake, the fruit vendors made us taste all kinds of strange things and ended up ruining our day's budget, a sales woman with hot chestnuts (Maronen) made me feel as if I had fallen into a German christmas market, black American breakdancers kept backflipping through the streets, and went the night fell and the red lampignons started to glow and the food stalls started steaming, we felt like being transfered into a different century.
Speaking of the night, there were some great sights to be discovered when the lights started to alluminate the old Chinese architecture along the city wall and the old towers. Some men even let fly beautiful kites all aranged in a row and that added even more to the typically Chinese atmosphere. Of course, modern life is never far away here in this fascinating country and we didn't miss out on the typical huge neon lights and flashy advertisement boards either.
A good contrast to all the traditional aspects of Xi'an were all the modern shopping malls, the restaurants, and our old friend Starbucks. :) A mixture of modernity and traditional wooden building techniques, the cafe was perfectly placed on the side of a huge square and we simply couldn't help escaping the opressing afternoon sun in the comfy armchairs placed in the shadows, sipping on cold frappuccinos and watching old and young strolling over the square. Ah, we did great society analyses even though some people might consider our doings as making fun of people. ;)
Of course, you can't come to Xi'an without visiting the famous terra-cotta army and we didn't miss out on that one either. There they were, the silent warriors, standing in impressive rows with imaginary weapons in their hands, ready to defend the dead emperor; or being broken into hundreds of small pieces and lying all in an undefinable huddle. At first, I was a little disappointed because I
imagined the whole site to be much larger but actually most of the 8000 statues have still not been unearthed. After walking around for a couple of hours, however, and after imagining what we were "achieving" in Europa at the same time (2200 years ago) the whole grandeur of Qin Shi Huang's (first emperor of all China) action became very tangible and more and more impressive. I guess ending our trip through China by visiting this great spot (and this agreable city) was just the right thing to do in order to grasp some more of China's former greatness before heading for the capital of the upcoming new global power.
Nihao - we are back in China again! Time is running and this now is already our last stop before arriving in Beijing and before organizing the last step of our travels - Mongolia and Russia! But Xi'an was on our route from Lhasa and so we spent a couple of wonderful days in this surprisingly beautiful and agreable city. A mix of modern buildings, living areas, restaurants and bars with old traditional neighborhoods: we found Xi'an a very charming city and a great place to relax for a
couple of days and to learn even more about Chinese culture, history and traditions! One of the places to go and learn, besides the museum about regional history exhibiting hundreds of vases and statues (very interesting after about the 150th repetition), were the two old city towers, Drum and Bell Tower, and their integrated museums on Chinese musical instruments, furniture, and paintings! Of course, David liked the drums most but everything else was also very interesting and vivid, and the views from up there were also great.
Another great experience was to get lost in the old traditional neighborhoods of the city with its beautiful wooden houses and its many impressions, colors, odors, and sounds. Why do people for example keep little birds in cages hung in the streets there? How do you play all those boardgames people enjoy in the streets? What the heck did we eat that looked like potatos but had the consistency of jelly? ... Wonderfully friendly Chinese girls explained to us how to eat rice cake, the fruit vendors made us taste all kinds of strange things and ended up ruining our day's budget, a sales woman with hot chestnuts (Maronen) made me feel as if I had fallen into a German christmas market, black American breakdancers kept backflipping through the streets, and went the night fell and the red lampignons started to glow and the food stalls started steaming, we felt like being transfered into a different century. 
Speaking of the night, there were some great sights to be discovered when the lights started to alluminate the old Chinese architecture along the city wall and the old towers. Some men even let fly beautiful kites all aranged in a row and that added even more to the typically Chinese atmosphere. Of course, modern life is never far away here in this fascinating country and we didn't miss out on the typical huge neon lights and flashy advertisement boards either. 
A good contrast to all the traditional aspects of Xi'an were all the modern shopping malls, the restaurants, and our old friend Starbucks. :) A mixture of modernity and traditional wooden building techniques, the cafe was perfectly placed on the side of a huge square and we simply couldn't help escaping the opressing afternoon sun in the comfy armchairs placed in the shadows, sipping on cold frappuccinos and watching old and young strolling over the square. Ah, we did great society analyses even though some people might consider our doings as making fun of people. ;)
Of course, you can't come to Xi'an without visiting the famous terra-cotta army and we didn't miss out on that one either. There they were, the silent warriors, standing in impressive rows with imaginary weapons in their hands, ready to defend the dead emperor; or being broken into hundreds of small pieces and lying all in an undefinable huddle. At first, I was a little disappointed because I
imagined the whole site to be much larger but actually most of the 8000 statues have still not been unearthed. After walking around for a couple of hours, however, and after imagining what we were "achieving" in Europa at the same time (2200 years ago) the whole grandeur of Qin Shi Huang's (first emperor of all China) action became very tangible and more and more impressive. I guess ending our trip through China by visiting this great spot (and this agreable city) was just the right thing to do in order to grasp some more of China's former greatness before heading for the capital of the upcoming new global power.
1 comment:
j'aime bien cette armée de terre cuite , pas trop dangereuse et un vrais chef d'oeuvre
et dire que certains revent de citoyens "terre cuite" bien rangés
s'cuse dav mais tu ne pouvais y échaper!toi qui est maintenant CITOYEN DU MONDE
bisous
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