Trip to Xi'an

Earlier last week, a few of us decided that we wanted to travel, and we quickly decided on Xi’an as our destination. We didn’t really know too much about the city, except it’s claim to fame as the home of the famous Terracotta Army.  So this trip basically had two phases: the long train rides there and back, and our time exploring n Xi’an.

This was our first time booking a trip on our own, so we were still a little bit unaware of the train situation. We ended up with a nice even number of 10 on the trip, which ended up working really well on the train.  Initially split up in random seats, I was able to befriend a Chinese dude and get him and his buds to switch with the rest of us, so we could all sit by each other.

There are a few things that are different about trains in China than in America.  First off, there are two different types of trains: high-speed and regular. High-speed trains are much nicer, cleaner, more spacious, about 2-3 times faster than regular trains, but also more expensive.  On the other hand, regular trains are more cost-effective, but much less enjoyable. One cool thing about regular trains is that you can choose 1 of 4 types of tickets: soft sleeper (nice beds and own cabin), hard sleeper (decent cots), a normal seat, or standing. Yeah…that’s right, standing.  

So both of these train rides were…how should I say this…an experience.  We got regular seats on a regular train, so we were in the lowest class of transportation possible, what we now fondly call “the cattle car”. We really didn’t understand what we got ourselves into until the first night on the train. It was kind of like we stepped inside a crowded, sketchy alleyway, and got stuck in it for 20 hours.

During the evening we played games and watched movies, and had a crowd of Chinese standing ticket owners – or standers - around us at all times. We were basically the equivalent of onboard entertainment for the passengers. We were the only foreigners on the whole train, and legitimately would have at least 5 Chinese people staring at us constantly. I honestly did not think I was that intriguing, but apparently on Chinese trains I am ridiculously interesting. If we were writing on our computer, they would be reading it.  Or if we were playing a game, they would stop and watch.  A guy walking past even picked up a card off of one of my friend’s laps without saying anything, looked at it, looked at all of us, and set it back down. I honestly had a guy try resting his butt on my shoulder while trying to block off my view of our showing of “Mean Girls”; safe to say I was not too pleased. Overall there’s definitely a different set of socially acceptable actions over here, which I’m not going to get into for the sake of keeping this blog short.

Hot, sticky, smelly, loud, smoky (because you can smoke cigarettes freely), and just all around uncomfortable, we got minimal sleep at night. Standers slept on the ground, in the sink, against walls, basically anywhere there was an open inch. Standers would snag an open seat faster than you could even notice, and then you would have to play the awkward ummmm-that’s-my-seat game and send ‘em back to the floor.  There was a nice wake up at 5 AM though, when the soup and mystery meat lady would haul down the aisle belting it out that spicy, salty breakfast was served.  Whenever a window was opened, it was amazingly refreshing to get the stench oozing from the squatting toilet room out of the air.

Finally, after rides of 20 and 24 hours respectively each way, we were ecstatic to get off the train. We definitely saw a different side of China that we hadn’t really spent a whole lot of time with before.  In summary, we survived, and it was an eye opening experience…but never again.

 We went crazy with the Ramen noodles.

Americans: pure entertainment.

 Probably the least crowded the train was on the entire trip

 Now to the fun part: the city of Xi’an. Unfortunately, we only had a short time in Xi’an, but we were able to see a lot. Before I got to the city, I knew absolutely nothing about it. As it turns out Xi’an is actually a city of about 9 million people, and is not solely a tourist destination for the terracotta army, because the army was only discovered in the 1970’s. Right away, we went to check out the army, which is actually about 45 minutes out of the city.  When we walked into the first, and largest pit, it was like stepping inside of a national geographic show. All lined up and standing tall, they were quite the sight to behold. Since the excavation of many of the warriors is still in progress, there were some without heads, missing arms, and some that were still completely rubble. Overall, it was super cool to see in real life.

Some of my favorite pictures of the Terracotta Army:

At night, we were all pretty tired, but because our hostile was so centrally located we decided to walk to the town center. The bell tower we visited was literally in the middle of the 4 main roads in Xi’an, with a 5-lane roundabout circling it. After we checked that out, we did some more sight seeing and shopping around town.

The next morning, we were able to do something has been one of my favorite things in China so far. Since Xi’an is a very ancient city, there is a 40-foot rectangular wall around the main part of the city. This 14 kilometer long wall is flat on the top, and the city rents out bicycles for people to ride on top. When we walked up to the rental, Mike and I saw that they had tandem bicycles, so of course we got one of those. So we rode around the wall, which even had some ramps and made for a very interesting ride on a tandem bike.  Overall the time spent in Xi’an was awesome, but there’s no way I’m ever taking a 24-hour train ride in a cattle car again.

Here's some pictures of our ride on the wall:

I’m currently on a high-speed train (thank God) headed to Beijing for our mid-semester break. I’ll be sure to give some updates on this next trip sometime soon!