Give Me Your Baby: Xi’an Part 2

I’m sitting down to write this while my laundry agitates in our ersatz little washing machine that attaches to our shower. It’s been a long dusty day, which I will document fully in a future entry (it involves four mountains, illegal trespassing, and tigers), but right now I have to finish my description of last weekend before I feel any more like a delinquent blogger.

On Saturday morning we woke up and met our guide for the day, Mr. Jackie. Mr. Jackie was a former middle school teacher, the kind who had always tried to be “that cool teacher” to his students, and his past was clearly reflected in his humor. However, at 8 in the morning we were a little less receptive to his routine than I think he was used to. He spent most of the trip to our first site trying to wake us up by any means necessary: singing, freestyle rapping, or, most memorably, really unfunny jokes. Try this one: “A woman gets angry at her baby son and says to him, ‘I will feed you to the wolves in the morning’. A wolf outside hears her and waits outside the window. The morning comes but the mother does not throw the baby, and the wolf is, ‘oh I am so hungry you said you would give me your baby’ and he says, ‘so, all women are liars.’”*

….cricket….cricket…

Yeah, we didn’t think it was funny either. We couldn’t even tell when the joke was over except that Mr. Jackie started physically applauding his own comedic stylings. We figured if we clapped along he’d shut up, but it seems we only egged him on. It was a long car ride.

After a short stop at the Banpo settlement, an archaeological excavation of some of China’s oldest dwellings, we came to the centerpiece of our trip to Xi’an, the Bi Mai Yo, or Terracotta Warriors. The TCWs, along with the Great Wall, represent the most iconic, I think, attractions in China, and I couldn’t let myself come to this country without seeing them in person (even if it did mean taking an unapproved jaunt for the weekend). Before one can even approach the army of Emperor Qin Shi Huang though, one must first breach the garrison of cheap souvenir hawkers that surround the famous site on all sides for what I’m guessing was at least a kilometer walk. The TCWs are certainly imposing, but if I’m looking for an army to protect me, I think I’d pick these vicious vendors over the impressive yet stationary troops buried in the ground.

Finally we fought our way through the sea of humanity into the actual warrior warehouse itself. The site is still an active excavation, it’s just that they’ve built a massive building on top of it so that they can generate tourist revenue while they continue to dig. As the so-called 8th wonder of the world, the army is very impressive, through it was tough for their majesty to overcome all the touristyness of the experience. Still, it was certainly worth the trip. There are actually three different buildings housing the various trenches, though only one of them has a substantial number of standing warriors. Through the way the warriors are usually shown, the media propagates the myth that TCWs were all found standing at attention, ready for whatever might threaten the Emperor on the other side. This, though, is simply not the case. The only warriors that are actually standing are those that have been painstakingly restored. Their comrades lie strewn around the site, waiting for the Humpty-Dumpty doctors to put them back together again.

At this point, I’m going to skip ahead to Sunday because I’m a little pressed for time, even though we did plenty more driving around and looking at old things on Saturday. Before we had to fly back to Dalian, we had the morning free to putz around the old city. The weather wasn’t especially cooperating, but we wanted to make sure to climb the ancient city wall before we left Xi’an. Apparently, this is the oldest and most well preserved city wall in the world, which led Barry to comment, “If I ever need a wall built, I’m contacting the Chinese…they seem to know what they’re doing”. Clearly, they do, because this sucker is like1300 years old and it doesn’t look a day over 450.

There’s not much to do on the wall other than explore around it. Since it forms a square about 2 miles on each side and it was pouring rain for most of the morning, walking it wasn’t an option. Instead, we succumbed to one of those absurdly lame tourist traps and paid Golf Cart Man to drive us from the south gate to the west gate. Needless to say, I had initially been apprehensive about this, mostly because I associate this type of activity with old white people too out of shape to move themselves around, all wearing matching tour hats and personalized name tags identifying them as, “Dale Jones, Denver, Colorado”. All in all though, for the three bucks we paid for the trip, it was worth it. We got to see a whole new part of town, and didn’t get gawked at too badly in the process. From there, it was a short walk back to the hotel, then off to the airport for what was a mercifully less exciting trip than our first plane flight.

OK. Now that I’ve got last weekend covered, I can move on to the events of this past weekend…..later.

*This is completely unedited.