And off we go to China

Advance warning - this is the first of many, many blogs on our trip to China.  I like to chat so there will be a few ;-).  JC is fascinated by the Silk Road, particularly China, and this was his 5th visit.  He'd brushed up his mandarin (the language, not the orange) and included essential Ruth phrases - the most important of which was "does this have meat?".  So we schemed, planned, googled, prepped, googled again, travelled to London for visas and finger prints, checked buses/trains/opening times.  Eg, we did all we could to ensure our independent travel adventure was as water-tight as possible.  So off we went.

Friday 11 October/Saturday 12 October 2024 

We left Heathrow on the last flight out of Terminal 4 on a small, but perfectly functional, China Southern flight Boeing 787.   Such pretty boarding passes.

After a few hours of sitting my sciatica really flared up and, at one stage, I feared I’d need to stand for the rest of the 11 hour flight.  But the aircrew moved JC to another seat, giving me two seats to stretch across which saved the night.

We landed in Guangzhou late afternoon (local) and entered China.  There were some unusual processes, including using an automatic finger print machine which gave you a receipt to take to passport control. They seemed to ignore this so unsure of the point?

We then waited in a hall to go through to domestic security, but could only go through when they called our flight and stuck the destination on a board.  For a country which is digitally driven, it was a very manual system!  JC eventually twigged that it we should move when they called the city from where we'd come, not where we were going (how confusing) so we shuffled through security once they’d stuck London on their board.

It was a late night arrival into Xi’an but seamless check in and sleeeeeep.

Sunday 13 October 2024

Unsurprisingly we slept late, having spent ~24 hours travelling and 'losing' 7 hours time zone wise.  We ambled out and found ourselves our first Chinese noodle meal for brunch.  I like that the coffee shops have a latitude and longitude on. Very important to know where you are in the world when you have coffee.

We took a metro (25p each) down to the Small Goose Pagoda.  This pagoda was built around ~707 CE to store Tibetan scripts. It has lost its top due to an earthquake so it currently stands 2 metres lower at 43 m.  

JC was unimpressed by the bamboo forest they’d grown which interrupted the view “that wasn’t there in 2012,” he muttered.  In fact, this was JC’s third visit to Xi’an and, of course, lots has changed. They'd moved the horses and lions too.

It cost 10 yuan, £1.10, to dong the bell 3 times.  It is meant to bring fortune and good luck.  When the bell was struck the fountains (out of shot) gave a little splurt of water which greatly amused the children - and me of course. 

We popped into a museum which gave me my first taste of terracotta lovelies.  Lots more to come.

By this time, it was mid afternoon and we headed for the city walls.  The inner city walls are complete - due to a mix of survival, refurb and rebuild.

They span 14 km in total so we hired a bike to pedal the circuit. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) they only had tandems left, so JC and I both had our very first ride on a double bike.  It took us a few 100 m to get the hang of it but it was a lot of fun!

We were on the walls as the sun set and the lights flicked on.  Every so often we’d stop and take some shots.  A perfect way to see Xi’an.

Feeding Ruth became a bit of a chore in the evening but we needed to eat as we’d only had some noodles each.  JC suggested the Muslim quarter as it had stacks of street food.

Indeed it did, but meat and egg/wheat noodles were aplenty and veggie gluten free options barren.  I hadn’t realised that this part of China is a wheat growing area and rice isn’t much on the menu - not as boiled or even turned into rice noodles.  Everyone JC asked “rice noodles?” just shook their heads.  So we left the squid, beef, offal offerings behind and ended up in a restaurant where JC had some sort of meat patty in a bun (no we weren’t in a McDonalds) and I had a side of vegetables.  Ah well it’ll keep us going.