Xi'an

Well,

I arrived in Xi'an in the mourning of the 26th, and it was gorgeous right from the get go. Xi'an is the ancient capitol of China, and a very old city. Think Jerusalem, but the Chinese version, and of equal historical significance. The whole city is surrounded by this monstrous wall, and there are many ancient buildings all over the place. To the right is the ancient bell tower. Around the year 500 this building was used to wake the people in the morning, and used to alert people in case of an intruder. Jake and I saw a traditional music show inside, which was really cool. It's funny, because it I were to jokingly imagine what traditional Chinese music sounds like, I would be spot on.

There is also a giant Muslim market in Xi'an, which again reminds me of Jerusalem. Its really cool, they sell everything there from skinned dogs to Chinese spices, and even paintings or other crafts. While there I bought some dried Kiwis, which were delicious. I was also stopped again by some girls to have their picture taken with a white person, which is always fun. Many parts were very crowded, but the crowds made me feel uncomfortable to take my camera out, so the picture to the left was a brief moment of space between me and the next closest person.

After the Muslim quarter Jake and I went to have dinner in a traditional Xi'an restaurant. What they eat is this bread, which the waitress makes you tear up into little pieces, and then they pour this broth over it with some cut up lamb. It was actually pretty good (at least edible compared to Chengdu). My only complaint was I spent a lot of time tearing this bread, and then it turned out to be way too much food for me to eat. Overall it was a unique thing I would recommend doing if in Xi'an.

Jake and I then went to climb the city wall and tour the quarters of the ancient guards. It was really beautiful. Its hard to tell form the picture, but it goes on for miles, and is about 15 meters wide. They have the whole thing lit up at night, and make it look even more impressive than it already is. Its difficult to make out in from these pictures taken in the night, but it is a very impressive structure.

After that Jake and I stumbled upon a Chinese party. It was really cool. There were a bunch of young people all line dancing to this Chinese pop music. That was cool, but what was really awesome was that the line dances were spontaneous. At the beginning of each song two or three of them (a different group for each song, it was just whoever took the initiative) would make up a new dance, and then once they decided on one the rest would join in. It was so cool how everyone would struggle at first, and learn this new dance just moments ago created. I would say on average ten seconds in a group of 30 or more people would be doing this dance perfectly. Then when the song ended a new group of people would make up a dance, and everyone would join in. We watched for a while, and were fascinated by everything. The dances ranged from very simple to extremely complex. Some involving two groups of people moving in opposite directions; those looked the coolest.