Xi'an Day 1: Local Lunch, Terra Cotta Warriors, Hot Springs, Dumpling Nirvana, Bell Tower

Ellen is going to take us through our first day in Xi'an...

The first thing I saw when we got into the airport in Xian was a woman dripping in Coach things. She was carrying a Coach handbag, and also a Coach shopping bag with more. I took her picture surreptitiously for Adrianne Fulk, but couldn’t really get a good shot. The Chinese are all over Western brands, both authentic ones and ridiculous knock off brands than must curdle the blood of US trademark lawyers. They have whole chains of stores that are clear infringements of things like Nike, Izod, plus knockoffs everywhere you look. It is pretty clear no one cares here about trademarks.

As soon as we landed the Chinese cell phone rang and our guide asked us if we wanted to go to the Terra Cotta soldiers or the hotel. We did not understand that the answer “terra cotta” meant we would drive for an hour in a crummy cab with a driver who spoke no English to meet the guide in the terra cotta parking lot. Lucky for us, lunch was available in a local Chinese joint when we arrived. Actually, it was not all that lucky. The grease factor took its toll, but at least we were not hungry. The best things were the eggplant (unfortunately breaded and fried before being decently sauced) and the truly excellent homemade noodles. They were about 2 feet long and thick and perfectly al dente. I have no idea what they did to make the fish taste so bad. So, here comes another thing we figured out—always order too much so you can get full on half of it. There is no way to predict in advance what is going to be good or even great.

Everything here is so big—I just wrote in an email that the only small things are the children and the dim sum. The scale of the terra cotta soldier site is just incredible—we saw thousands of them in various states of repair—from perfection to smashed to bits. They are all smashed to bits now, but the ongoing reconstruction project has produced thousands of quality examples. We haggled like professionals in the official museum shop and bought a quality replica of one for Tony. There are endless lesser quality replicas available from vendors everywhere, even the bathrooms. They also found some amazing bronze chariots. Our guide, who is very competent and quite efficient, seized control of our camera and that explains the multitude of pictures of both of us together with endless terra cotta people. One thing that amazed us was the more than 100 pits discovered and untouched yet by archeologists. There are a lot of jobs for archeology PhD’s here.

Next on the guide’s agenda was the hot springs. One of our guidebooks really panned it, and we told him we didn’t want to go. He ignored us and he was right—what a beautiful and historic place. Chang chai shek used the place as his field headquarters during his battles with Mao, and before that it had been baths for several dynasties. There were separate bath houses for the concubines, the emperors, and the high officials, all beautiful. The water temp is 107, and we put our hands in it. The lack of jets caused us to decline the opportunity to pay to put our feet in it however. We also resisted the opportunity to pay to have our picture taken with the woman dressed up as a concubine. The garden merging into the hillside was magnificent, and we continue to have cooperative weather making it all the better.

Oh, and we also rubbed the lucky turtle.

After checking into the hotel and stopping buy the lounge for a beer, we went right to the best dumpling place in town for dinner. The quality was high and we could easily have fed another person for the RMB 150 we spent—about $20, including 2 beers. The watercress was delicious too.

We walked back to the hotel from the restaurant, stopping off at the Bell Tower on the way. The Bell Tower is a pagoda in the middle of the old downtown area, and they play the bells a various times during the day. I could not resist paying a few cents to ring the bell myself, and had a lot of fun doing it. The view from the balcony ½ way up (which was as high as they let you climb) was fantastic. (If you didn't watch Ellen ring the bell... watch Ellen ring the bell.)

After that, we spent about 20 minutes walking back to the hotel, and the teenage scene along the shopping street home was, as they say in the credit card business, priceless.