Warriors and Skyscrappers

DATE: March 2003
LOCATION: Xian and Shanghai, China

Xi’an is the ancient capital of China, and home to the Terracotta Warriors. Our guide was named Jack. Hummm, Joe in Beijing, now Jack. A trend? The airport is 40 minutes from the city, but this is the first chance we’ve had to see the countryside. People are working the fields by hand outside stone houses. Jack is nothing like Joe. He is tall, with little glasses. He is an academic, and within the first two hours has used the words alluvial, tremendous, and fortitude. No good shopping tips are forthcoming, he actually seems clueless about more practical things. The city is walled, and there are little white lights along the entire thing. It is breathtaking, although the entire wall was rebuilt 25 years ago. Rebuilt walls seems to be a trend as well.

Dinner our first night was a trip highlight. It was a 17 course dumpling feast. The dumplings were steamed, fried, boiled, with every possible filling. The pork dumplings were shaped like pigs, the fish dumplings like fish, and some where in intricate little baskets. It was amazing. We all ate WAY too much, but how often do you get 17 courses of dumplings? After dinner was a Tang era show. It was good. Outside the theater a kid on a bike stopped to stare at us. We said hello, and the kid left. Not 2 minutes later he was back with a friend, and they peeked around a corner at us and giggled for a good 5 minutes.

We were off to the Terracotta Warriors, and excited about it! But first, a stop at the Terracotta Warrior replica factory. Buying things at these rip-off factories only encourages the behavior, but we just couldn’t help ourselves. Then, off to the real thing. They were amazing. For those of you who don’t know about the warriors, a farmer out in his field in the mid 1970’s discovered an underground army of 7,000 life size terracotta soldiers, each one different, and painted ornately. They go on forever. What kind of guy orders a clay army to defend him? It boggles the mind. The best part was they weren’t rebuilt! On the way out, we were accosted by vendors who would pull their wares out from under their coats where they were hiding them. Seemed sort of sketchy, so we walked quickly by. All of a sudden, a horde of people came running past us. It felt like we were in the running of the bulls. We turned to see the bull…which turned out to be one 15 year old security guard with a 9 inch baton. The vendors ran to a nearby construction site, stopped and turned around. I guess this was just a big game of tag, and the site was base. The guard continued to chase 2 guys down the road, then turned around and walked back to the gate. Fun game. The construction site was “improvements” being made to this world heritage site. They are all set to make it a first class tourist trap, so GO NOW if you want to see it.

Next stop were some royal hot springs, but more interesting than the springs, it was the place Chang Ki Shek hid, and was ultimately captured by the communists. Needless to say, the history given to us at the site was slightly different from my lessons in college.

As we sat watching CNN in the hotel that night, we learned the Taiwanese president had just been shot. I thought to myself, I wonder if the Chinese may have had something to do with it. Just then the anchor woman asked whatever talking head they got in on short notice if he thought the Chinese had something to do with it. He said too early to speculate, blah, blah, blah, and the screen went dead. The other channels worked fine. I got the distinct impression the news was being censored. Shocking, I know...The next morning our guide asked what we knew about the situation. He said there was nothing in the Chinese news. His friend told him what happened after looking on the internet. We told him what we could. He told us CNN was only in hotels, ordinary people weren’t allowed to have it. BBC is outright banned, the internet sight as well. He told us when he has tours he always eats breakfast at the hotel so he can watch Western news while he eats. I handed him the stack of recent Economist magazines I brought with me. “Just to practice his English” of course.

Before we headed to the airport, we had another factory to visit--silk rugs. The most intricate rugs take 1 girl 18 months to complete. They had a couple of young girls there hunched over in an unheated, poorly lit room weaving away. I asked how much they make. $80 a month. There was no way I was going to buy anything here. Mom was thinking the same thing, so we politely walked out.

Next on the schedule was Shanghai, city of sin! Our guide’s name was Jeffery. The name trend is confirmed. Jeffery had done some traveling. He’d been to Korea, Indonesia and Thailand. He also went to North Korea, which I peppered him with questions about. He said it was very sad there. There wasn’t much food, no stores, and only state sponsored things to see. I asked if he saw signs of famine. He said no, and that the North Korean government wouldn’t let them see it if the rumors about starvation were true. An interesting answer, I thought.

Shanghai is a modern city. I’ve never seen to many skyscrapers, and most have a unique feature on top. Some are really cool, others downright silly. There really isn’t too much else here. There is a beautiful garden, a jade Buddha temple, and a decent museum. Other than that, it’s all about shopping. We did have our picture taken a bunch more times. And we certainly shopped. The only memorable thing we did here was go to a Mongolian BQQ place. It was memorable only because it was such a zoo. There were 7 tour busses worth of people in this place. Six of the busses had a tour of middle easterners. Apart from the apparent cultural differences, there were some more subtle ones, like they don’t stand in lines very well. You really need to use your elbows. They also really like salt (borrowed ours until it was gone), and eat raw meat. I guess they were too hungry to wait for the guys with 4ft long chopsticks to cook it. Shanghai was good, but really just like every other city. I don’t really recommend it. Time would be better spent someplace smaller and less commercial unless all you want to do is go shopping. I was actually glad when we got back on the plane to Korea.

Once back in Korea, we stayed in Seoul for 3 days, showing mom and dad the sights. We figured it may be the last time we would be there. Our first order of business was a big Mexican lunch at the base. I like Chinese food, but after 8 days straight of nothing but, I was ready for a change. Tacos haven’t ever tasted so good.

Well, that’s it. The highlights in a nutshell. Five weeks exactly until Germany, and whole new set of adventures!