The majority of our day involved getting to Xi’an. After breakfast at the hotel we traveled across Beijing by bus to a train station where we caught a bullet train for the five hour ride. Traveling through the train station in a group of 44 with all of our luggage in a city with a population as huge as Beijing is an experience in and of itself. Scott and Z. of course were great at making sure we were all accounted for as we navigated through turnstiles and escalators among the huge, fast -moving crowd, and Eric Zittel has taken on the role of picking up the rear, and checking for or waiting on stragglers.
We filled a little more than one car on the train. The ride was mostly spent snacking and napping and taking in the scenery. The train traveled over 200 mph, and was amazingly quiet – very different from the click clack of Amtrak in America. The longer ride enabled us to get away from the city and see a variety of scenery. The terrain was mostly low, rolling hills. There was a lot of agriculture, including rice paddies and other crops, but nothing that looked like a large production farm, just groups of small plots that appeared to be managed entirely with manual labor. There were communities of high rise apartment buildings, there were some factories with nearby apartment buildings. We saw several nuclear power plants. And we saw miles of buildings that were in rubble. It looked as if this area had experienced an earthquake, but we weren’t sure if that was the case, or if these were just “ghost towns” – factories and apartments that had been abandoned and partially torn down.
When we arrived at the train station in Xi’an, and got off the air conditioned train, we realized it was even hotter here than it had been in Beijing, probably closer to 103 or 104 degrees. Also, the air quality had been poor in Beijing until this morning, when the sky had cleared. It was the first time we’d seen true blue skies in Beijing. But as we headed away from the city and towards Xi’an, we traveled back into the smog.
Upon our arrival, we were met by our tour guide for Xi’an, Siao Mai. Scott is still with us, but Siao Mai is especially knowledgeable of this area. Like Scott, she is an excellent guide and is sharing history, custom, and teaching us Chinese. Xi’an, Siao Mai says, is considered a city that is “not too big, not too small – just the right size” (five million – relatively small by Chinese standards.) It’s major industry is tourism, and because it is much less expensive to live here than in Beijing, it has become a popular place for young people to move to after they finish at university. We made a quick trip to the Xi’an City Wall. This is one of the most well preserved walls in China. The wall encloses the entire downtown area of the city now. Because of the heat, we were relieved to hear that climbing to the top only involved 70 steps – much different from hiking up the Great Wall, but we still walked along the top and enjoyed the view.
After arriving in Xi’an, we immediately went to a beautiful restaurant for a dinner buffet and then checked into our hotel. While the hotel in Beijing was very nice, we were very surprised by the hotel in Xi’an. It is incredibly upscale. The rooms are huge and beautiful – all suites with marble floors, glass showers, separate tubs, fancy bathroom amenities, lush robes and slippers. We are up on high floors, such as the 22nd, and some of the rooms have a view of the Xi’an City Wall, which is decorated with lit Chinese lanterns at night. We were in for the night early, and I think most of the choir chose to stay put and enjoy the lovely accommodations.
Xi’an City Wall at night from our Hotel.
Tomorrow we have a big day. In the morning, we will visit a factory where they make replicas of the Terra Cotta Warriors, lacquered furniture and pottery – all by hand. Then we will see the actual Terra Cotta Warriors. After lunch the choir will rehearse and then we have a public performance at 3 p.m. at Xi’an Conservatory of Music.
