Xi'an

My six-week vacation is finally over. The last two weeks were largely uneventful except for a visit from Mark, a friend from McGill, and his boyfriend Andy. I met them in Tiananmen Square and we spent an hour or so at a nearby teahouse. Other than that I slept in most days and continued working my way through The West Wing.

So it was a relief to set off Wednesday night for two days in Xi'an (photos here), which is about 12 hours away by train. Someone from the hostel met us at the train station and waited while we went to buy return tickets, but we couldn't get tickets for the day we wanted because Spring Festival was ending and all the students were traveling back to school. Buying tickets for the next day would have required standing in a different line, so we decided to get settled at the hostel and worry about it later.

First on the list, of course, were the world-famous terracotta warriors. On the way there we stopped at the train station to have another try at buying return tickets. The ticket windows were crowded and the staff had no patience for foreigners, trying to direct us to another line, but we persisted until they sold us something. We weren't clear on the details, but based on the price we assumed we were taking the bullet train. Everywhere we turned someone was talking at us, like the woman who kept saying, "Shí diǎn lái" ("Be here at 10 a.m."). People in China are very friendly and eager to help, but when you're surrounded by several people talking at once it can be overwhelming. We couldn't figure out why they were treating us like such idiots.

We pushed our way out and found the bus to the Army of Terracotta Warriors, which is about an hour outside the city. The warriors, elaborately detailed and each with a unique facial expression, were meant to help Emperor Qin Shi Huang rule the heavens as he had ruled in life. During his 36-year reign (247-210 B.C.) he unified China, built roads and standardized currency, measurements and writing. Local farmers discovered the first pit in 1974 while drilling a well, and the three pits together have yielded some 8,000 warriors, horses, chariots and bronze weapons.

Thursday was the Yuan Xiao (Lantern) Festival, marking the end of New Year celebrations, which meant more fireworks. After dinner we spent a quiet evening at the hostel playing cards.

On Friday we walked to the Bell Tower and Drum Tower, which both date from the 14th century and once contained bells that were rung at dawn and dusk, respectively. We wandered through the Muslim Quarter on the way to the Great Mosque, then stopped at a restaurant to try yángròu pàomó, a Xi'an specialty combining lamb, bread cubes, rice noodles and broth.

Before heading back to the hostel we walked along the City Wall, which was built in 1370 and encloses the city. We lay around for a few hours, then joined the hostel's weekly dumpling party - rolling dough, spreading the pork filling and trying in vain to match the artful examples provided by the chefs. Then we spent another night playing cards and shooting pool with the hostel manager, whose English name was Jim Beam.

We took a cab to the train station the next morning and plodded along in the line to get in. When the attendant looked at our tickets, however, he paused and held us back.

"These are bus tickets," he told us.

Sure enough, when we looked at the tickets more closely they said "qìche" in big red characters at the top. It turns out the bus station and train station were right next to each other and we had failed to notice. From across the street we could even see the building was labelled, in Chinese, "Xi'an Bus Station."

They must have been waiting for us. We entered the waiting hall at the bus station, but didn't see our bus on the boards. As we stood in the corner a man came up to us and asked, "Beijing?" then motioned for us to follow him. He led us through a maze of buses and deposited us at the right one, which we never would have found by ourselves. As we boarded, the driver handed us plastic bags in which to place our shoes (?) and directed us to the right bunks. The other passengers looked at us like we were from another planet.

Bus travel in China worries me, because every so often you hear about one tumbling off a cliff and everyone being killed. But there would be no bullet train for us. Instead, we were in for a 14-hour bus ride on a sleeper, which has about 35 or 40 narrow bunks arranged such that it is absolutely impossible to sit up. We had no way to play cards, almost no food and no reading lights. And oh, the smell.

To our surprise, it wasn't that bad - except for the last couple hours in the dark, which were agonizing. We only stopped when it was time to switch drivers, although one time they made the switch while the bus was in motion on the highway. The bus dropped us off just after 1 a.m. not far from Niall's neighborhood, so he got in one cab and Brian and I took another across the city.

Classes resume tomorrow, and as usual no one has told us our schedules. Fortunately, one of my students called (because students always know these things before the teachers) to inform me we have class for four hours in the morning. I guess I'll find out about the rest of the week then.

China Fun Fact: Beijingers alone sent out 600 million text messages on New Year's Eve, about 38 per person (I got two from my students).