Taoist temple, the Xi'an mosque and a super speedy train

Wednesday 16 October 2024 

This morning we visited the Temple of Eight Immortals.  It is one of the most important Taoist temples around, on the Taoist pilgrimage route.  It is thought to be built in the Song Dynasty (960-1279) and was where one of the last emperors hid during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. 

One of the monks said 'bonjour' to us as we wandered through. Again, we were the only non-Chinese visitors there.  

You can see where people run their hands over the brass text.

On the way to the metro we stopped for street food.  We were learning how to better interpret menus - the symbol for rice was easy, rice noodles we got the hang of.  And with JC being able to confirm in Chinese there was no meat involved we were off.  £1.70 for two.

We popped to the Xi’an mosque.  It’s pretty impressive squeezed inside the back alleys of the Muslim area.  It was founded in 742 CE and extended over various Chinese dynasties. We didn’t have a lot of time but cruised around enjoying the architecture as much as we could - such as the wooden memorial archway and the stone memorial gateway.

I’ve seen quite a few mosques in my time (Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in particular) and this looked most unmosque-like.  I couldn’t even see the crescent anywhere.  It really did look like a Chinese temple with its minarets and pavilions, but what would I know?

In the past few days we frequently saw Chinese dressed up in period costume.  It was usually women dressed in geisha-like dresses, black hair wigs and white painted faces.  Everywhere we went we’d see them with various props - flowers, balloons and even plastic swords - and a photographer taking numerous poses of them.  Around the bell tower there were 10s of photographer set ups with tripod, lights and props. Occasionally we saw guys dressed up as ancient warriors. Once they finished their photo shoot they’d pop into the 7-11 for shopping, or catch the metro.  It was so normal to see them wandering around no one looked twice.

More random asides - I found a friend (my future self?) and was fascinated by the noodle section in a shop.

Our train to Luoyang was mid afternoon so we headed for Xi'an North station.  It was HUGE!  I’ve seen many international airports smaller than this.  You arrive and have your luggage scanned to enter.  Then you queue up at gates to depart.  My brain was obviously confused as I kept talking about our plane to Luoyang.  

When you buy train tickets, and some other tickets like tourist attractions, you have to enter your ID number.  Therefore, when you travel, you only need your ID card (e-tickets are so yesterday).  As every traveller but us, it seemed, was Chinese they could use their ID cards to get through the gates.  The only ID we had was our passports (which we carried everywhere) so we had to queue in the ‘special assistance’ lane for every ticket barrier.

Chinese trains, including metros, are very well organised and everything ran on time.  On the metros, as you near a station, a diagram of the escalators appeared on a screen so you could see which way to turn when you stepped onto the platform.  Likewise for this train, there were digital displays on the platform showing exactly where each carriage door would line up. 

On arriving in Luoyang we hopped on the metro (such beautiful tickets - they are plastic and get eaten by the machine for reuse once you've finished your trip) and it was door to door for our hotel.  

Holiday Inn Expresses aren’t plush but they are reliable and, in this case, cheap.  And they did breakfast.  We had another hot pot this evening: this time we had a little hotpot each so JC's lost meat didn't end up swanning around in my pot.

Terracotta Army and a Pagoda Light Show

Tuesday 15 October 2024

The Terracotta Army is part of a large mausoleum estate left by the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang (259-210 BCE).  As the first emperor he was progressive in many ways.  He standardised the unit of measurement and currency, but he was also an oppressive tyrant and killed to have his way.  He also seemed strangely obsessed by death and started building himself a huge mausoleum within a decade of his reign starting.

To build the mausoleum he first created a village, populated it and then started construction.  The whole site is massive.  It consists of his burial mound and a palace-worth of items to help him continue to reign in the after life.  So he had actual life size replica courts, stables, armouries, kitchen stores, livestock and even ponds with wildlife to assist him with this.  1.5 km away he built a Terracotta Army to protect his after-life community.  And this is today the main attraction.  However, when he built it, they were very much the side show!  The rest is yet to be unearthed. 

We arrived at the Terracotta Army at 0850 today to find the entrance area heaving, as we’d expected.  We started with educating ourselves (well, me - JC most knows most of this stuff as this is his 2nd visit) in the exhibition centre where you could get up close and personal with many of the treasures.

We then tackled (yes, that's the right word) the pits, of which there are 3.  At JC's advice we did them in reverse order as Pit 1 is the best so we worked up to it. It also got us used to the pushing and shoving which came with the vast number of tourists.  

Pit 3 is the smallest and has a selection of warriors in a meeting-like room.

Pit 2 is still very much a work in progress.  The pits were originally covered in wooden beams which is the striatum we saw.  To date they have unearthed 116 warriors and continue to excavate horses, chariots and more warriors as they go.  Looks to be a painstaking job not only discovering them but then working solving the mystery of which bit belongs to whom.

Pit 1 is the most spectacular due to its size and number of warriors it contains.  They believe there are over 6000 here and they’ve unearthed 2000 of them so far.

The warriors all face east.  The front 3 rows are the archers.  None of the weapons remain as the wood has rotted.  Then there are the horses and carts/coaches followed by the main marching army.

It was heaving.  Each tour group had a guide, flag and about 20 followers all with colour coordinated lanyards or caps.  We learnt to time our dash for a spot by the railings by waiting about 3/4 minutes whilst the guide explained the scene then we’d push our way to the front.  Chinese have no compunction about pushing and shoving so we went with the flow.  I did grump only the once, as a lady was determined to have my spot even though I was still in it. “Let me get out first!” I exclaimed in English (which had no effect except to make me feel a little better).

We spent the whole day at the army.  We took it steadily and managed two coffee stops and a lunch break.  I even found a sweetcorn cob to eat.

At 1600 we went back into pit 1 and there was certainly more elbow room even if I still wasn’t swinging cats.  I was fascinated by the building area.  They really do start with a pile of pottery, which they suspect is all of the same person/horse - but it's painstaking work for sure. They build the bodies first them lie them down to attach the legs and head.  

Everyone has a label.

There are certainly puzzles to complete.  The warriors are not identical - there are various hairstyles and clothing used across the army.

And I took the photo just because I could!  No idea what I wasn't meant to be photographing - I think it was the horse reconstruction zone.  

We started the evening with a free beer in the Belgian bar attached to our hotel.  It was a freebie for staying there but I felt they owed us that and more for keeping us awake so much with their karaoke.  JC had a fancy latte with a tassle.

We headed south back to the Big Wild Goose pagoda to watch a free light show.  We bagged a decent spot an hour before it started.  It started gently with pleasant music and a voice over.  As it was in Chinese it was wasted on us.  It was probably a Chinese tale, but could have been the communist manifesto, but whatever it was it went on a long time and those around me started watching food clips on their phones.  [An aside: food videos are a big thing here and you see loads of people watching cooking programmes, not to mention they are broadcast on screens on the plane and metros.]

After 10 minutes the mood changed and, hurrah, it really got going.  This was more like it - flashing lights, fountains spouting - a fun 25 minutes in all.

We ate in the first place we entered which is a first for us here.  The noodle place served veg dishes so I munched bamboo shoots and spinach while JC had a noodle dish of sorts.  Then we metro’d up to the Bell Tower.  It was beautifully lit up.  I was also very amused by the underground pedestrian roundabout under the tower, built to assist movement of people coming in/out of the metro.  I think over the course of our stay in Xi'an we'd managed to enter and leave every single numbered exit which greatly pleased me.  

The Mausoleum of Jingdi and Big Wild Goose pagoda

Monday 14 October 2024

We started the day visiting the Mausoleum of Jingdi, Han-dynasty emperor (188–141 BC).  He had significantly scaled down the mausoleum stakes compared to his predecessor (see tomorrow’s trip).  He only had a burial mound with wall, 4 entrance gates and about 81 pits surrounding his burial spot.  And his wife had a burial mound nearby.

Inside the tomb 11 narrow pits have been excavated.  Some were covered by a glass floor, so we could walk over and get a great view of the relics.

In order to be able to operate as an emperor should in the after life, it’s important to have a posse of staff and goods around you.  It is thought that more than 50,000 terracotta figurines were buried here, including eunuchs, servants, domesticated animals and female cavalry on horseback. The figurines originally had movable wooden arms (now gone) and were dressed in colourful silk robes.

There were also kitchen pots, chariots, horses and loads of other animals provided.  The animals were beautifully carved out of clay: horses, cows, sheep, goats, dogs, pigs and very cute piglets. 

We caught a DiDi - Chinese equivalent of Uber - back into the city, very pleased that we’d sorted this app and 4G data in China before we left.  Our data is £10 a month and it’s turning into a necessity here.  WePay, connected to WeChat (the equivalent of WhatsApp), is one of the main digital payment apps and it’s impossible to use vending machines without it.  Translation and map apps work more accurately online too.

We headed for the Big Wild Goose Pagoda: no idea of the origin of the goose name for the pagodas but saw no geese.  It was built in ~649 during the Tang dynasty with five storeys at 60 m high.  One of its functions was to hold sutras and figurines of Buddha, brought back from India by seventh-century Buddhist monk, scholar, traveller, and translator Xuanzang.  It has had a few rebuilds since then.  The first version collapsed after 50 years and was rebuilt with 10 storeys.  The second one lasted 850 years until an earthquake shook off the top three layers.  It had a large renovation in 1964  and now it's back up to 64 m.  It was pretty busy which set JC off tutting as people walked in front of his perfectly lined up shot!  

The area around the pagoda has been significantly developed since JC was last there (again).  The wall has also been heightened much to his amusement.  I presume it’s designed to stop sightseers getting a shot of the pagoda without paying their 30 Yuan entrance fee.

JC lined up a shot through a metal structure.  Others watched him and then, as he left, someone else stood to take the same shot.  Before we knew it there was a queue of others waiting to shoot the same.  JC the trend setter.

We walked some of the gardens surrounding the city walls on our way back into the old city.

We then sat on the roof terrace of our hotel which, conveniently, was the same height at the city walls!  So we watched the wall walkers watch us watch them.

JC introduced me to the concept of hot pot tonight. I hadn’t heard the term before but it’s basically a savoury fondue.  We mistakenly ordered a super hot (as in chilli) concoction but it was fun to dip vegetables into anyway.  You can see how many red chillis are floating in our fondue.  It did blow our heads off a bit!