Xi’an Excursion

I’ve been back from Xi’an for a couple of days now. And although I was thinking a lot on the trip, probably too much, I haven’t exactly been chomping at the bit to write this posting about traveling to Xi’an but it seems there are expectations.

Not only am I writing for people back home, but now my blog has become known to my Tsinghua MBA classmates as well as who knows how many back at Sauder. Nan nan’s boyfriend in Swedan found it the other day, but he wouldn’t say how.

I forgot to take my journal to Xi’an and I deliberately didn’t bring my PowerBook. I did start jotting down notes on a scrap of paper, but that was mainly song titles for the mix CD I’m making as a souvenir for all who went on the trip.

Our Traveling Party

I guess I’ll start there, after two reschedulings, Danna, Julia, Salina, Emlyn, and myself set out for Danna’s old home town and the capital of numerous Chinese dynasties, Xi’an. Notably absent was Ron who we had previously rescheduled the trip for. Apparently he had no less than three excuses. I pointed out that now we had no Americans with us, and there was much rejoicing.

We caught the train on Wednesday night. We shared a six bed cabin amongst ourselves. I got the bottom bunk but I didn’t sleep at all. This wasn’t much of a surprise to me. We were met at the Xi’an train station by Danna’s parents and ferried to our hotel. Our hotel was officially rated four stars by the Chinese government, and you can always trust the Chinese government.

This post was one of the longer ones I wrote while I was a student at the Tsinghua School of Economics and Management in Beijing. Our traveling party consisted of fellow students and eventually relatives of students. In 2024 I expended considerable time and effort trying to get all the pictures and text to render correctly and I also tried to fix links that were now long busted. I’m not sure there will be a positive return on investment for all these.

Eventually I wrote my official MBA exchange report and I even turned it into HTML. That HTML will also need updating as I fear it will also suffer from the same problem that a lot of the links I made almost twenty years ago no longer work and worse domain squatters have taken over.

Eventually I lived and travelled a lot more in China and put additional content and photos into this post, but I did so at the bottom, now I am adding more text and pictures at the top as most people don’t read websites they just scan, so I’ve include more of the hundreds and probably thousands of pictures I took while living and traveling in China. Eventually I’ll load even more on to Flickr as I try to keep my personal web hosting costs down especially as I’ve been paying to keep this website online for over twenty years.

The Terracotta Warriors

The first attraction we went to was the Terracotta Warriors. Some have called this the 8th wonder of the world, but until they dig them all up and put them back together it is mostly a whole lot of dirt. More interesting to me, was the man behind all this, Emperor Qin Shi Huang, who eventually made an appearance in Sid Meier’s Civilization. You can also build this wonder of the world in that video game.

In addition to the terracotta army, Emperor Qin Shi Huang had a massive tomb built for himself. The tomb just looks like a big hill with a garden around it, but inside was a lot of impressive engineering. Emperor Qin Shi Huang was a ruthless tyrant who killed all the people who built his tombs. After his death, there was little enthusiasm to finish the rest of his terracotta army. The army and numerous other stuff buried in the area surrounding his tomb were all to accompany him in the afterlife.

After the Terracotta Warriors and Qin’s Tomb we were running out of daylight so ultimately we headed back to town. On the way Julia stated “I’m against democracy if it leads to us skipping dinner.” So we went to the Bell Tower downtown and ate at a nearby restaurant. We also sought a place to get ice cream, as someone had a craving. We also checked our email for the only time on the trip.

The City Walls

The next morning we set out on foot for the city walls. After walking around on them for a while we went to the forest of stone stile. Danna and possibly Emlyn enjoyed this a lot, but it wasn’t that exciting or photogenic.

We went for lunch and I insisted we have meat on a stick and beer. Meat on a stick goes great with beer, it’s a pairing that spans almost all cultures. It was such a successful meal we went for meat on a stick for dinner too!

However before we did that we met up with more of Danna’s family including her monkey uncle and cousin Du Du. We went to both the big and small Wild Goose Pagodas, but never got to climb either of them. In Japan you aren’t allowed to go inside the pagodas but apparently you can in China, but our timing was off.

A memorable Mongolina dinner

We went for dinner at a Mongolian restaurant and ate in a tent. I was bonding with Danna’s uncle which led to much beer, meat, and fire water consumption. I have a lot of experience with crazy uncles so we got on swell. I wasn’t drunk. Even though I seemed to have been forced to drink and eat a lot. I even danced with Julia, with no incidents. We did a half waltz, half polka to some live Mongolian folk music, I even dipped her at the end. However while goofing around with the monkey uncle I fell and hit my head on a chair.

I got up immediately complaining that I broke my glasses. It must have been a big tumble because everyone was worried about me. I was bleeding from my face. They insisted on taking me to the hospital. I told them I was fine, it was just a scratch. My left knee hurt more, but there was a lot of blood so off to the emergency room we go.

I had to have surgery. My surgery was me lying on an operating table while being stitched up. Although I was mad at myself for acting stupid, I had all my wits about me. Danna’s family was really worried so I had to use my limited Chinese to communicate that I was fine. I even wrote it down really simply on some paper in the doctor’s office. This is now to be framed I believe.

While on the operating table being stitched up, with eyes closed I reached into my pocket, pulled out my wallet, fished out a business card, spun it around and handed it with two hands to the orderly. I’m suppose to be memorizing an introduction in Chinese but in the heat of the moment I wasn’t doing so well orally so I gave them my card, because every situation is a networking opportunity.

While waiting to have antibiotics injected into my ass, I recalled this snippet of poetry likely from my Grade 10 English class with Mr. Dr. Hargraves:

"A sadder and wiser man, he rose the morrow morn."


So if there was any doubt about me being drunk that should dispel them. I mean who else would recollect a line from a poem from high school English class after such an ordeal?

The Drum Tower

The next morning we set out from the Drum Tower after breakfast. I think we slept in. My left knee was really hurting, but everyone was more concerned with my face. Now with two bad knees they made me climb up a tower. Then we went to the nearby Muslim quarter. We waited in line to go to a Chinese Muslim restaurant. The girls abandoned Emlyn and I to standing in line duty. However the joke was on them, the restaurant was a lot bigger inside than out, we didn’t wait long.

After we were seated on the fifth floor, Emlyn became worried as we had taken up half a table but with only two guys, who weren’t ordering anything. Eventually Danna and the others got back with food. Apparently in China you can bring in food to an eating establishment. We had dumplings, or something dumplingesque. Either way they were no comparison to meat on a stick. I ate approximately two.

Afterwards we did a lot of walking, mostly standing actually while I waited for others to shop. I ended up getting my chop made and bought more postcards. I also had a guy try to steal my camera right out of my pocket. I had zipped my pocket up too. I caught him red handed but I didn’t go berzerk. I was more surprised than anything. Next time I catch someone trying to steal from me, I’m kicking his ass.

The Great Mosque

After entirely too much shopping and me standing on my bad knees we finally went to the Great Mosque. This was the highlight of the trip for many. It is at the end of a long alley lined with shops selling all manner of knick-knacks and souvenirs. I bought a wooden mask for my mom. Salina proved to be the best bargainer so she and Danna’s mom helped me pay only 100 RMB.

After the mosque we (just the foreigners) were dropped off at a modern Chinese tourist attraction. It is a giant park in the Tang dynasty style. At night it also had a fancy light show. It was actually really impressive but involved lots of standing and walking.

After this we drove to this little resort village in the hills. We had dinner with more of Danna’s family and slept there. The next morning we hiked in the hills. I was half blind and had two bad knees as you recall. Eventually we turned around and went back to the houses.

We drove back to town. We visited the grave sites of Danna’s two grandfathers then the houses of her two grandmothers. We met yet another aunt and ate a home cooked meal and too many pieces of fruit. Finally our time was done in Xi’an and we went to the train station.

Train ride back to Beijing

This train was nicer and faster. It was four bunks to a cabin, so I was put on my own. Each bunk in this train has it’s own LCD screen and headphones. I was the only person in my cabin not to use mine. I didn’t sleep much again.

Back in Beijing I couldn’t find my ticket which caused a little chaos. Eventually I found it but it was annoying that I couldn’t leave the train station without it.

There are talks of more trips though it is unlikely we five will travel together again. We were a pretty easy going group. I’m making a mix CD right now to commemorate the trip. Because I’m picking almost all the songs it will be pretty melancholic.

Update February 2017

I still have a small scar on my face from this trip to Xi’an but worse I really did chip my kneecap and not a damn thing was done about it, for years I couldn’t kneel, for years my now chipped knee was my good knee because my right was repeatedly injured playing sports. But after a lot of hard training I seem to have damaged my left knee worse than my right and the tiny scar on my face doesn’t affect me at all.

I have lots of health problems still but I manage, my life still hasn’t truly gotten better but I did return to China and editing old postings to try and optimize my WordPress blog. I also wrote about which were my best posts about China and I included this misadventure.

My mom doesn’t understand it but I saved that bloody Mongolian scarf, I was always going to frame it, but it sits in a bag in a drawer at my mom’s house.

2024 Update

It is now many years later and I haven’t seen any of these people in a long time. Some I’m still connected with on social media. For instance, I added a link to Emlyn’s newest blog above. However, the purpose of updating this blog post and hundreds of other blogs posts in 2024 was to redo my taxonomy. I am adding a travel category which obviously this post should go in.

There have been many WordPress updates since 2005 and my theme and CSS are likely not optimal. Inline images probably do rank better in search engines but I have higher resolutions of all these photos on my MacBook Pro and some of them are on Flickr. I added more pictures to this post about seven years ago. Now I’ve actually been going through Apple Photos to see if I have more photos I could add to certain posts.

This post is very long with many many photos and probably should do better in search engines. I don’t know how many people have read it over the years, Google changed how it is letting people track their content’s performance. Regardless it is probably in the top 10% or at least quartile of posts I’ve written so I’m giving it extra TLC. I wrote many many more blog posts about traveling in China and some people even took my advice.

If you have thoughts or questions you can leave them below. This is the last post I’m editing this evening. I actually have a concert ticket. I’m going to see the Supersuckers. I was on the guest list to see the Supersuckers during my time as a Sauder MBA student, but as some people know, that didn’t work out. I try not to write about it anymore, but even in 2024 I have not forgotten what was said and done.

This entry was originaly posted on November 17th, 2005, it was last edited on May 6th, 2024 and is filed under: Travel and tagged: China, Terracotta Warriors, Xi'an.