Standing to Order for over 2000 Years
Trip Start
Jul 11, 2004
1
16
19
Trip End
Oct 10, 2004
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Xian, China
Friday, October 1, 2004
I made it back to Xi'an in February 2008 as part of my ill-fated Honeymoon, enroute to Tibet. Check out my entries which begin here. I've been told they make for enjoyable reading so you might actually like them.
***************************************** Update - February 2008 *************************************
Our Nature lies in movement; complete calm is death
- Blaise Pascal, Pensées
Get me outt'a here
From Yichang it was north again, this time to Xian in Shaanix Province. As I alluded to in my last entry, Yichang is not a main railway hub and as a result I was only able to secure a hard seat train ticket from the 13 hour overnight trip to Xian. At the time of purchasing the ticket I was merely curious about Hard Seat, having only ever travelled Soft or Hard Sleeper class, and didn't think too much more of it. But when I boarded the train in Yichang and saw the conditions in the Hard Seat class carriage I found myself in I knew I was in trouble. Hard Seat means hard seat. The conditions are immensely uncomfortable; the carriages are very, very crammed, very, very noisy, very, very hot and very, very, very stuffy (you get the idea, right?). If you're lucky to get a seat (invariably more tickets for hard seat carriages are sold than there are seats within them) and you'll be sharing a sparsely padded bench with 2 others, directly opposite 3 other inconvenienced passengers, passengers who are only there because they cannot afford to travel in a higher, more comfortable class. For my part a sharing a 4 foot bench with 2 other Chinese, for an overnight trip of 13 hours, just wasn't going to work. Under normal circumstances it probably would have. I might have been able to stick it out. After all, aside from anything it's a super way to interact with the locals. But not today, not on this occasion, not tonight. I was tired, very tired. Even getting on the train I was tired as I hadn't gotten anything near a full nights sleep either of the last two nights on the Yangtze ferry. I needed out of Hard Seat...... and I knew it was a possibility. I had read that, subject to availability, upgrades to higher classes are available on trains. All enquiries should be directed to the appropriate attendant, who is normally found in carriage #3. After spending a bit of time (an hour or so) analysing how desperate my Hard Seat situation was, and seeing another traveller successfully upgrade (I assume that's what he was chipper about as he picked up his bags and floated out of the Hard Seat carriage), I eventually approached the attendant. After shuffling through the pages of my phrase book trying to combine words like 'upgrade' and 'possible' with phrases like 'I would like to buy a ticket' I was given the option of what I believed to be a Soft Sleeper berth. "Bingo!" All that was required of me was payment of RMB160 (€16), a sum I had no problem handing over (I probably would have paid twice that). What a relief. A few minutes later I was being directed to a berth in a Hard Sleeper carriage.
"Hard Sleeper? Ohh, okay, fine...... this is fine. I though I paid for Soft Sleeper but this will do..... anything's better that hard seat."
I only questioned my Hard Sleeper berth with the carriage attendant when I discovered I was given the worst of the Hard Sleeper berths available in a carriage - the top, end-of-carriage berth beside the constantly opening & closing door and constantly illuminated light (recall how, in the Hard Sleeper Ain't no Soft Sleeper paragraph from my Yangshou entry, I explained that Hard Sleeper carriages have open compartments with 6 berths, 3 - a top, middle and bottom - on either side of a communal desk). That succeeded in sufficiently pissing off the attendant who then had to escort me to the correct berth, which this time turned out to be, hooray, the Soft Sleeper berth I suspected I initially upgraded to.
"Super. This is more like it!".
It felt like luxury compared even to Hard Sleeper so you can imagine how it compared to Hard Seat (read my initial thoughts on Soft Sleeper class from my Shanghai entry). To this day the €16 I spent on that upgrade is the best purchase I've made on this trip (even better than my KFC breakfast in Yichang earlier that day!) and needless to say I had a great nights sleep. I arrived in Xian, Shaanix Province, the next morning chuffed with myself and nicely rested and ready to go again. I was, however, still seriously in need of a shower..... having spent the last 4 nights on a ferry and a train the last shower I had was 4 days earlier in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. That beat, and beat well, my 2 day shower drought between Ping An village, Guangxi Province and Leshan, Sichuan Province. Ohh, you filthy backpacker.
************************************** Update - February 2006 ***************************************
In February 2006 I made it back to China, but this time I wasn't so lucky with regards to escaping Hard Seat and I had to stick it out. Poor me. Check out the entry here and the pictorial evidence here
************************************** Update - February 2006 ***************************************
Historical Xian
Xian, the capital of Shaanxi province, is one of Chinas 4 historical & ancient capitals and thus one of Chinas most historic cities. Beginning with emperor Qin Shi Hunag, who reigned from 247 - 210BC (221 - 210BC over a unified China), it served as the imperial capital to 11 dynasties and at it's height it would have rivalled Rome or Constantinople as the greatest city on earth. Today it's another big Chinese city, albeit one of the nicer ones, with a few nice tourist attractions. I spent 2 nights here and the highlights for me were wandering around the Muslim quarter, viewing the city from the beautiful Bell Tower and circling the city atop the 14th century City Walls, one of the best preserved examples of city walls left in China. The Bell Tower sits right in the middle of the city and is connected to the 4 main gates of the City Walls. This simple design makes getting around the city a piece of cake. I stayed at a hostel in the north-west of the city called 'The Flats of Renmin Youth Hostel'. It was outside the city walls and was a bit of a pain to get to and from. I'm not quite sure why I stayed out there and walking around the city I saw I could have easily stayed, and suggest you do, in the hostel just inside the walls south gate. It's central and convenient.
Terracotta Warriors
My main reason for visiting Xian was to see the famous Terracotta Warriors, an attraction that a lot of fellow travellers had told me to avoid, stating they (the Terracotta Warriors) were over rated and quite boring. I found them anything but. In fact, I found them fascinating and in my opinion it's well worth visiting Xian solely to see them. In my opinion, of course. No records exist, or at least none has been found, of the warriors which were only discovered in 1974 by locals sinking a well. They are 2200 years old and were built during the Qin Dynasty to guard the tomb of China's first Emperor, the aforementioned Qin Shi Hunag (ruled from 247 - 210BC). It is believed construction of his tomb, and the Terracotta Warriors guarding it, began in 246 BC and took 700,000 workers and craftsmen 38 years to complete. According to historians Qin Shi Hunag was interred inside the tomb complex, which has not yet been opened, alongside great amounts of treasure and objects of craftsmanship, as well as a scale replica of the universe complete with gemmed ceilings representing the cosmos, and flowing mercury representing the great earthly bodies of water. Nice, eh? Although the tomb itself hasn't been opened the three vaults of Terracotta Warriors that have been discovered house an estimated army of some 15,000 figures in battle formation, only a small percentage of which has been excavated to date. Built never to be seen, today it is one of the most visited tourist sights in China. It really is a sight to see and, as I said, I found the site fascinating. See my pictures for more information on the site and why they truly are one of the best attractions in China.
Nearly There
So with Xian in the books it was time to move on. Not too many stops left for me to get back to Beijing and complete my loop of China. One actually - Datong, a city in northern Shanxi Province and only a few hundred kilometres west of Beijing by rail. While Datong itself has no sights of note, its surrounding area does. But more on that in the next entry. See you there.
