Xian - China
7/17/05
We became masters of 'hard traveling'; after traveling for the whole night from Beijing, we arrived in Xian at around 6 a.m, left our backpacks in the locker room at the train station and took a bus to the Terracota Warriors, 40 kilometers away.
It wasn't that simple though; first we tried to buy a train ticket for the same evening to Pingyao with no success; the station was super crowded and with long lines at the ticket counters the attendants didn't have the usual patience to try to understand what ticket we were trying to buy; Angie asked in Chinese for hard-sleeper tickets but it was full, so she asked for soft-sleeper, but it was full too. She asked then for standing tickets and without checking the woman answered no. We asked for the following day, but no matter what were saying from that point on, the only thing we got was an instantaneous 'mei yau' (don’t have in Chinese) and they sent us out of the line :(
But one thing we were sure of, we didn't want to stay in Xian, we just wanted to see the warriors and move on, so we tried to buy bus tickets to Pingyao; the buses are just outside the train station. But again, here we could not find someone who speaks English and our Chinese wasn't good enough. Although they understood where we wanted to go they couldn't understand we wanted to go only at the end of the day.
Not being successful with the bus tickets either we left to visit the Terracota Army around 8:30 a.m.
The Terracota Warriors
Excavations at Banpo, not far from present-day Xian, show that nearly six thousand years ago a sedentary, agricultural society flourished around the future metropolitan region of the early Chinese empire, Xian, that was once the very center of the Chinese world.
The Army of Terracota Warriors is a perpetually vigilant force standing guard over an ancient imperial necropolis.
In 1974 peasants digging a well uncovered what turned out to be perhaps the major archeological discovery of the 20th century: an underground vault of earth and timber that eventually yieled thousands of life-size terracota soldiers and their horses in battle formation.
The 6000 terracota figures of warriors and horses face east in a rectangular battle array and are more than 2000 years old.
There are crossbow and longbow bearers...
... armored soldiers and every figure differs in facial features and expression.
Many of the figures held real weapons of the day.
The surface of the weapons was even treated for rust. They are kept away from public view.
The place has three major sites and other buildings working more like a usual museum with pieces exposed behind the glass.
After that mind-blowing visit we took a bus back to Xian with a mission to accomplish, find a way to get to Pingyao. Back at the train station we tried again to ask for a bus but all we got was one just going to a city close to Pingyao; we took it anyway.
In the bus there were some passengers that were more than happy to talk to us, the conversation was held on a basis of broken English-Chinese and they showed up to be amazingly nice people.
Arriving at the city the bus driver did the unbelievable; he brought us to the train station, got off the bus and came to the counter to order our ticket to Pingyao and showed us where the waiting room was. He didn't speak any English but did everything to understand our broken Chinese.
As I have already mentioned before, meeting nice people makes the visit a delightful experience. Once we had our train tickets in hands the bus driver happily said goodbye and asked absolutely nothing in exchange.
Another 2 hours in the train and we got to Pingyao, at 1 a.m.
We became masters of 'hard traveling'; after traveling for the whole night from Beijing, we arrived in Xian at around 6 a.m, left our backpacks in the locker room at the train station and took a bus to the Terracota Warriors, 40 kilometers away.
It wasn't that simple though; first we tried to buy a train ticket for the same evening to Pingyao with no success; the station was super crowded and with long lines at the ticket counters the attendants didn't have the usual patience to try to understand what ticket we were trying to buy; Angie asked in Chinese for hard-sleeper tickets but it was full, so she asked for soft-sleeper, but it was full too. She asked then for standing tickets and without checking the woman answered no. We asked for the following day, but no matter what were saying from that point on, the only thing we got was an instantaneous 'mei yau' (don’t have in Chinese) and they sent us out of the line :(
But one thing we were sure of, we didn't want to stay in Xian, we just wanted to see the warriors and move on, so we tried to buy bus tickets to Pingyao; the buses are just outside the train station. But again, here we could not find someone who speaks English and our Chinese wasn't good enough. Although they understood where we wanted to go they couldn't understand we wanted to go only at the end of the day.
Not being successful with the bus tickets either we left to visit the Terracota Army around 8:30 a.m.
The Terracota Warriors
Excavations at Banpo, not far from present-day Xian, show that nearly six thousand years ago a sedentary, agricultural society flourished around the future metropolitan region of the early Chinese empire, Xian, that was once the very center of the Chinese world.
The Army of Terracota Warriors is a perpetually vigilant force standing guard over an ancient imperial necropolis.
In 1974 peasants digging a well uncovered what turned out to be perhaps the major archeological discovery of the 20th century: an underground vault of earth and timber that eventually yieled thousands of life-size terracota soldiers and their horses in battle formation.
The 6000 terracota figures of warriors and horses face east in a rectangular battle array and are more than 2000 years old.
There are crossbow and longbow bearers...
... armored soldiers and every figure differs in facial features and expression.
Many of the figures held real weapons of the day.
The surface of the weapons was even treated for rust. They are kept away from public view.
The place has three major sites and other buildings working more like a usual museum with pieces exposed behind the glass.
After that mind-blowing visit we took a bus back to Xian with a mission to accomplish, find a way to get to Pingyao. Back at the train station we tried again to ask for a bus but all we got was one just going to a city close to Pingyao; we took it anyway.
In the bus there were some passengers that were more than happy to talk to us, the conversation was held on a basis of broken English-Chinese and they showed up to be amazingly nice people.
Arriving at the city the bus driver did the unbelievable; he brought us to the train station, got off the bus and came to the counter to order our ticket to Pingyao and showed us where the waiting room was. He didn't speak any English but did everything to understand our broken Chinese.
As I have already mentioned before, meeting nice people makes the visit a delightful experience. Once we had our train tickets in hands the bus driver happily said goodbye and asked absolutely nothing in exchange.
Another 2 hours in the train and we got to Pingyao, at 1 a.m.
posted by Adriano and Angie | 1:21 AM
5 Comments:
hey guys!
waited for your post for couple of days, finally! Sorry to heard all the hard time you had with train & communication. But I am glad that the bus driver help you out. It's hard to find nice people out there, but I do believe there are. Xian, I've never been there myself. I always wanted and I will definitly visit one day. It would be nice if I can be there with you, then you won't have all these hard time with communication, but, maybe this is part of traveler's fun and adventure. I know you guys might be busy having so much fun, however I was looking forward to see more pictures. I want to see more pictures!!! he...he... :) take care out there!
your favor fan...
Hi there
this is your biggest blog fan. Great pciture, great description as usual. Angie how come you still don't know to speak Mandarin. Didn't i gave you a set CD that suppose to teach to speak fluent chinese after 10 days. Angie you disappoint me. Well you will have to drink a couple extra pisco sour when we see you in Peru as punishment the night before the hike.
Love you guys always
See you soon
Danny
coucou angélique c'est salomé.
Je suis désolé de ne pas t'avoir écrit plus tôt, en tout cas pour l'instant je regarde surtout les photo, même si j'essaye de comprendre ce qui est écrit.
A la maison nous avons un nouveau petit chaton, elle s'appelle Chouia et elle est très mignionne même si elle nous saute dessus et nous griffe légèrement pour jouée mais on lui pardon car elle est encore petite.
Cette été nous ne sommes pas partitau camping avec nos cousins commes nous en aviont l'abitude.Cette année nous sommes parit en famille dans un bungalow en hollande, nous logions dans un village non loin de Amsterdam, nous avons visité , la maison d'Anne Frank, un éco musée, la ville en elle même, la mère du Nord et bien sûr quelque magasin.
Quand nous sommes rentré au bout d'une semaine je suis tout de site repartis pour faire un camp théâtre de deux semaines, ensuite je suis rentrée et j'avous que je ne fais pas grands chose.
Et bien maintenant il ne me reste plus que ma rentrée en quatrième et se sera la fin des vacances. En tout cas j'éspère que ton tour du monde se passe bien et je te souhaite une bonne continuation.
Salut
What happened?? Got shy?? Tired of blogging?? Or just can't stand paying for 1 hr of internet the same you used to pay for a week of hotel?
Come on, man... We're waiting for more news and photos.
Take care,
Wellington
Again, beauful pictures and inspiring stories.
I glad you made it back to the Americas!
Rich W.
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