Xi'An China

While in China, I managed to make it Xi'an, a city in north-central China. It's a bit far from Beijing, so I flew there. Miss Sumana was our guide, with Mr. Chow as our driver.

  

Xi'an was originally the eastern most point on the silk trade road that connected China with the Mediterranean area! Now, it's a very big city with a lot of ongoing construction.

Wait, is that...

Yes! Miss Sumana had a little dog of her own! So even though you weren't there, I had some company with Dog. We got along fairly well since he did not eat my snacks.

You and your snacks! There is something called sharing, you know.

Not for bears.

There are several things to do in Xi'an: the Neolithic Museum, the Old City wall, the Wild Goose Pagoda, and a Tang Dance, which is traditional to the area.

Wait a minute. Aren't there some big statues or something in Xi'an?

You mean the terra cotta warriors? That's true, but they are a whole blog for themselves! You'll see.

Okay. 

Now, a great spot to go is the Old City walls. You can actually walk on the top of them. They are wider than the Great Wall! During the Ming Dynasty, the city walls were built. Every 120 meters there is a guard tower with arrow slots. 

Why 120 meters?

Because a good archer could shoot an arrow 60 meters. With archers shooting from two towers, they entire distance was covered from enemy attack!

Another great spot in Xi'an is the Neolithic Village Museum. By accident, this entire excavation was discovered completely buried. There is a lot of pottery decorated with a man's face holding a fish in his mouth.  No one knows why.

 

 

Maybe he was hungry?

 

Maybe. Or a legendary figure. Some archaeologists think it has to do with a superstition.The whole site shows a village from the Neolithic times so a lot isn't known about why they did things a certain way. Of course, no written records or anything like that.There's also the children's graveyard.

The Wild Goose Pagoda was fun, but I was disappointed a little.

Why? What happened there?

Well, there were no wild geese. None. 

Um... did you expect there to be?

Well, the name is the WILD GOOSE Pagoda.

What was it like, other than gooseless?

It's a square pagoda that was once a Buddhist temple built in the Tang dynasty. The original temple had 15 floors, but an earthquake caused some damage and there are only 13 floors now. This pagoda is all that's left of the original temple complex. The land around it is now a park with no monks and no statues of any kind.

For entertainment, we watched a Tang dance performance. This included traditional music and dress. The Dance of the Long Sleeves is just like it sounds, and the Dance of a Thousand Hands.

How many hands? Someone has that many?

It has a lot of dancers standing behind each other in a line using their hands and arms so the front dancer looked like she had a lot, but not a thousand, hands. See:

 

Now that is pretty cool. It does look like one person has a lot of hands.

 

And that is some things to see and do in Xi'an other than the Terra Cotta Warriors.

Which you haven't told us about.

It's coming! Keep reading!