Women hui lai le! Xi'an snow adventures

Women hui lai le! (We are back!)

Xi'an snow adventures

This weekend Claudia (another infoyear attendee in Beijing) and me went to Xi'an.

We had the chance to discover an unique Xi'an. Why? Firstly, the main season for Xi'an trips starts in spring. Then it can be really crowded. Secondly, we experienced Xi'an with snow or better said: even snow chaos. It was constantly snowing and everything was covered with a layer of snow.

In our youth hostel, Xiangzimen Youth Hostel, which is built in the form of an old hutong house with many Chinese decorations and very helpful staff, located right in the centre of Xi'an, we had a Chinese style room. Very nice!

Already the way from the airport to the youth hostel took us ages because the snow was so much without any winter service on the road.

On Saturday, when we head off for the Terracotta soldiers, it was still snowing. There are more than 7000 Terracotta soldiers and some horses. They were built by the first Chinese king in approximately 200 AC in order to protect the king's tomb. This must have been quite a lot of work! The site is impressing. Our Chinese guide at this site was quite funny. He had a weird way of seeing things (like: "in the XY province of China, gypsies steal a lot" or other discriminating things like the treatment of farmers).

On Sunday, we mainly staid in the town center which in some parts looks old in Xi'an, like a real old city centre (something that does not exist in Beijing). We visited the Muslim Quarter with the biggest mosque of China. The Muslim Quarter was quite interesting. First we passed a muslim style market with many different nuts, dried fruit (we bought dried melon, dried pineapple and dried kiwi) and other sweets. In the quarter we tried some "green bean cake" and typical bread from the small shops there. We didn't try / buy neither pigs' claw (Schweinepfote) nor sheeps' head (Schafskoepfe) which were also sold there.

Another highlight was the Giant Goose Pagoda ("Da Yanta"). Supposed to be the "most well-known pagoda of China" (the Chinese really love superlatives) it is quite a big pagoda. Covered with a lot of snow it looked nice. We were surprised to see some swastika on the buddhist sculptures. They were in fact swastika opened to the left side and thus different from the nazi ones. We found out that these symbol is used to resemble the sun and is an old buddhist symbol: "In Buddhism, the swastika signifies auspiciousness and good fortune as well as the Buddha's footprint and the Buddha's heart. The swastika is said to contain the whole mind of the Buddha and can often be found imprinted on the chest, feet or palms of Buddha images."

Of course we climbed up the pagoda until we couldn't go any further. Going back into town, it was hard to find a taxi because it was still snowing hard. One taxi driver said he would bring us for 50 Kuai (the way there had cost us 15 Kuai). We didn't want to accept this kind of price increase. But after some time we found a normally priced taxi.

Our plane back to Beijing was delayed due to the weather conditions, but yesterday night, later than scheduled, but still, we arrive back in Beijing.

As always I attach some photos for you to have an impression of Xi'an.