When we last left off we were on our way to mainland China. Our first stop was a town called Xi’an. The main reason for this stop was to see the famous Terracotta Army. The Terracotta Army is an archeological site that was discovered by a local peasant digging a well back in the early 1970’s. The site consists of over 10,000 life sized statues of warriors made out of Terracotta (flower pot material). The warriors were all facing the tomb of Emperor Qin, the first Chinese emperor, and were all supposed to be guarding the tomb. Amazingly, each statue had unique facial features and carried a weapon. The site is still being excavated and is considered to be the 8th wonder of the world. It was pretty cool, but “8th wonder”…we were not so sure about that. One thing we were sure of was that Xi’an had very little to offer in the way of other tourist attractions. Xi’an did, however, introduce us to the dust of China. We were all surprised to discover how dusty China was.
During our stay in Xi'an we noted that the number of people that spoke English in Xi’an was 3.5 (including us). We did pretty well with hand gestures, whistles (Robe’s specialty), and grunts (Chris’s preference). We realize how well we have honed our charades skills and are up for any games upon our return if we have any challengers. One of the unfortunate things about the language barrier is eating. You quickly learn that you are limited to whatever someone else in the restaurant is currently eating so you can point to their meal and hold up three fingers (indicating…”we will have three of what he is having”). This adds a whole new dimension to the already challenging game of trying to find a place to eat. First, we have to ask ourselves "Does the place look like a decent place to eat?", and secondly, "Is anyone eating anything that we could stomach?".
We were lucky enough to meet the other half of an English speaker in town and he was thrilled to practice his English on us. He said his name was Edraenadstxicc, so we asked for his name in English and he said it was Mike. Needless to say we opted to use his Chinese name. Edraenadstxicc took us around for a good part of a day and then agreed to take us to a good local Chinese restaurant for some “local Chinese food”. We were excited about the prospect of having some good Chinese food and assumed that we would be enjoying some vegetables, rice, noodles and maybe some meat. When the food came it was just skewers of meat.....like hundreds of them! By the time Chris had polished skewer number 30, we were pretty sure that they were not planning to bring us anything else. We asked Edraenadstxicc if we could get some rice and he looked surprised. He said something to the owner that sounded like xzllsdkahglk and then the owner went running down the street, soon returning with two bowls of steamed rice. We could not believe that an authentic Chinese restaurant did not even have rice on the menu. Live and learn. For you quantitative folks out there, the final skewer count was: Bill- 32, Robe-42, Chris-46.
The next planned stop was Beijing. A Notre Dame friend of ours who is currently living in Beijing had suggested that Pingyao was a good place to stop between Xi’an and Beijing. Our Lonely Planet guide book did not mention this town, so we really did not have much to go on other than the recommendation. We decided that we would go to the train station and figure things out. Turns out that stopping in Pingyao would mean taking a night train to Pingyao and another night train from Pingyao to Beijing. The other option was an express night train from Xi’an to Beijing.
If you have not guessed from our previous stories…our primary objective has become avoiding night trains…AT ALL COSTS! Since the Pingyao stop would double the number of night trains that we would have to take, it was not looking like we were going to see the city. Then one of our most valuable lessons from the trip was proposed by Robe…”Let’s flip a coin…it worked for deciding which Kilimanjaro route to take”. So flip we did; Heads-we head to Pingyao and Tails- we high tail it to Beijing. Now we would not be writing about this event if Chris’ lucky 1 Baht (Thailand) coin had landed on tails…so off to Pingyao it was!
The night train proved to be one of our most challenging (we say that about every night train, but that makes it no less valid!). We cursed the coin flip many times during the night. It was not as bad as our Vietnam ride (that we wrote about several weeks ago), and we kept reminding ourselves of that fact. We had reserved beds on the train known as “Hard Sleepers”. In retrospect the name was a bit punny. The hard sleeper ended up being a piece of plywood covered with diner booth vinyl. Now think about that on a hot night train, and you gotta love it. By 5am we had sweated all the way to Pingyao. We were thrilled to get off the train but badly needed to find a place to sleep. We got on the first rickshaws we could find and said “Hotel please” which they did not understand until Robe made his sleeping gesture (two praying hands on the side of his head with his eyes closed). The town looked ok, but we were not really looking at anything other than the insides of our eyelids. We ended up at a nice place and slept till noon.
At noon we came out of our hotel to find an amazing little ancient Chinese town. It turns out that the town had a history of being the banking center and as a result had some beautiful architecture that was nicely restored. Even the ancient wall around the city was in really great condition. We also found out that the town had recently been the location of several movies that were filmed since it was such a superb example of an ancient Chinese town. The town really was a remarkable place and one of our highlights of our stop in China.
When it was time to leave we bought tickets for a night train that we were dreading. Due to the lack of communication we bought “Hard Bench” seats. Turns out that there are 4 options on Chinese trains (listed in order of comfort) Hard Bench, Soft Bench, Hard Sleeper, Soft Sleeper. Things went from bad to worse when a local looked at the ticket and said, “this ticket basically gives you the right to get on the train and that is all”. We wondered where this translator was when we had tried to book the tickets. We braced for the worst. Luckily, a local helped us get seats and we ended up having one of our better night train experiences.... highlighted by Rob breaking out his acoustic guitar (as a request by the locals) and playing rocking versions of Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison, Beautiful Day by U2 and his favorite Backstreet Boy tunes (just joking - they were NSYNC tunes). The locals enjoyed every minuted of the performance, even though most knew not one word of English.
That left us with four days to explore Beijing and the out-lying area (including the Great Wall and the Forbidden City). There were several highlights, including meeting up with some fellow Notre Dame friends that we had not seen in years and the trouble Bill caused out at the Great Wall. Allow us to elaborate…
We decided that doing a hike on the Great Wall would be a great way to see the wall and get away from all the tour groups that would be mobbing the more touristy sections of the wall. So four hours after leaving our hotel in Beijing we arrived at the wall and had just begun our hike when we came upon what appeared to be a lemonade stand. The stand was an umbrella in the middle of the path with 3 elderly people huddled under it to avoid the noon-day sun. As we approached, we quickly realized that it was not a lemonade stand but rather a homemade donation center. They had a hand painted piece of plywood that read, “These trees are our lives….Please donate 1 Yaun” To put things in perspective, there are currently 8 Yaun to the US dollar so they were asking for a donation of less than 15 cents. None of us were excited about paying this donation since it was clearly not an official booth but rather someone’s idea of how to get some money out of the tourists. We looked around for an alternate route, but it appeared that there were none. Keep in mind that they spoke no English and our Chinese is a bit rusty. At first we pretended that we did not understand what they wanted, but after 5 minutes they made it pretty clear that they wanted us to pay 1 Yaun each. Since it was a “donation” which implies “optional”, we opted to walk by without paying. We wish this was the end of the story, but if it was, this would be a pretty boring story to write about. Turns out that they resisted our attempt to walk past their station. We spent the next 5 minutes trying to charm our way though, but they would have none of it. Chris decided to go back the way we came to look for a way to bypass the makeshift tollbooth. This is when Bill saw his opportunity (foolish as it would turn out to be)… with a relaxed guard station, Bill made an attempt to storm past the group. Well, the elderly guard apparently played football in his youth and decided to throw a pretty mean block on Bill. Bill managed to get through the group and started down the path. The old man persued. After five minutes Bill rounded the bend and the old man started yelling in Chinese. Turns out there were a group of workmen near by. The men stop working and start heading towards Bill….
Meanwhile, the guard station was nearly unmanned and Rob just walked though with out any problem and shortly thereafter Chris did the same. Before long they came upon the scene that was unfolding with Bill and his new Chinese buds - "the Great Wall Mafia". One of the workmen said some Chinese that amounted to something like “Hey Bill, wana pay this old man?” and started throwing rocks at Bill. He and another workman started walking up the hill after Bill. Robe and Chris could not believe their eyes. So after what seemed like hours of negotiations Bill paid the men their 1 Yuan and the problem was solved. The moral of the story….If you are in China hiking on the wall and someone wants the equivalent of 12 cents…pay them!
We continued our hike on the Great Wall and got to see some spectacular sights. Several days later we took an afternoon trip to the touristy portion of the wall closest to Beijing, and with all the crazy tourists mobbing the place we were happy we got to see both parts of the wall.
After finishing our time in Beijing we flew to Bangkok for a quick layover and were happy to find that there were no water fights or other unusual national holidays taking place. The next morning we continued on to Katmandu, Nepal, where we will be for the next three weeks. We're looking forward to some great trekking, white water rafting, some beautiful scenery and much more comfortable temperatures - and hopefully NO RAIN! We are coming very close to the monsoon season here in Nepal.
Our next update will be after returning from our trek which will probably last a couple of weeks. If you send us emails and we don’t respond right away…WE ARE TREKKING! Later!
-The Crew
