Saw So Much, Learned So Much!

What an amazing historical journey it was!

I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of my holiday though it was pretty tiring, now that I am feel it when I arrive home...

Yes, if u want to dig into the early history of Chinese civilisation, Xi'an is the place to go. There is a saying (translated from Chinese): if you want to see the last 10, 100 and 1,000 years of China, go to Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing respectively. But if you want to see the last 5,000 years of China, you have to go to Xi'an.

Before the trip, the little thing I knew about Xi'an is the famous Terracotta Army of the Qin Emperor. But there are so many sites to visit - from mountains to mausoleums (imperial tomb site), museums to temples. For further `references', fellow blogger fatchipmunk has also posted quite a bit on he and his wife's recent trip to Xi'an.

We travelled in a company of 7 - consist of family members and an old friend, and our vehicle was a (not very new) van handled by a skillful but pretty reckless driver. We had a very cute tour guide. A fresh-graduate, she was so bubbly, cheery and funny, so although my dad complained she was not experienced enough and did not know how to take care of older folks, we could easily forgive her. Having spent 8 days together, I kinda miss her when I came back!

It's hard to imagine my `owlish' lifestyle has been totally changed there. Every morning for 8 days, I had never woken up later than 7:30am. Some times we had to wake as early as 6am as some of the sights required some travelling, and as the days were short, all the places were closed by 5:30pm.

To think of it, it was quite a leisurely tour as there were five senior citizens (my parents, my aunt and uncle and Uncle Joe (family frien)) and then there were the young-er ones - my cousin and me. In fact, some of the elderly people (no names mention ;)) were taking their own pace to much that we had to tighten our schedule in the last three days, so that we could cover as many places as we could!

I thought I was quite selective but ended up taking 400 photographs on my new digicam while my cousin recorded the explanations on various sites by our tour guide on his canggih Nokia phone/camera/camrecorder.

Anyway, following is a brief `synopsis' of our program and places we visited - mainly from my memory with a little help from my camera (chronology of pix). Since I've always been using Hello from Picasa, I spent ages posting up these pix directly from Blogger..

Enjoy...

p.s. I almost got killed by the two Js when I came back last night! Jojo pounced and jumped onto me non-stop and Jelly too...looks like they missed me a lot.. I missed them too!


My Eventful Xi'an Trip

Day 1 - Friday - Xi'an
(nb. - Thurs for me was spent in Xiamen, dad and I flew the next morning to Xi'an)
Spent 4 hours plus in Xi'an airport waiting for mom and the others to arrive. Dad and I had lunch and I had a hair wash and blow dry with more loittering.
When they arrived, it was already quite late in the afternoon so we had time to visit Beilin, or Forrest of Stone Tablets. It has the largest display of stone tablets in China with inscriptions by historical figures from 1000s of years backl as more recent political figures and important personalities.



Day 2 - Saturday - Xian - Yan An
Packed for two nites and we began our journey Northward and on the way, visited Huangdiling - the mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor, the first ancestor of the Chinese nations (a bit like Abraham being the father of the Jewish nation?) - but this is like 5,000 years ago. The area was huge! It's also here we saw a 5,000 years-old tree and a new one planted by Jackie Chan!



By evening, we finally arrived at the Yang Jia Ling Cave Hotel in Yan-an, it was freezing! (literally as the temperature was at sub-zero) Had another big meal. The particularities of Yan-an is the cave-like housings so the hotel is modelled after that.




Day 3 - Sunday - Yan An - Hukou

An interesting day for the elder generation as we visited Yang Jia Ling - a place of political significance where the communist leaders used to have their headquarters there in the 1940s. Saw how modest and simple Mao Ze Dung and his officers used to live.

We then headed towards Hukou, a famous waterfall along the Yellow River. On the way, we saw the amazing Grand Canyon-like landscape of`Huangpu Gao Yuen' (The yellow earth highland) but the river itself was a tad bit disappointing. It was quite dry and looked muddy but the waterfall was pretty cool but I didn't walk all the way down as I didn't want to get wet. The strange man in the photo was a professional `poser' - he charged quite a bit!

It was mom's birthday and we celebrated over dinner with a beautiful dish (but not tasty). However, the hotel had no cake and instead we used some Chinese bread instead and oil candle!

Day 4 - Monday - Hukou - Xi'an
It was a 6-hour journey back to Xi'an and with a comfortable lunch break, we had no time to visit any sites back in the city. Instead, we had a`Dumpling Feast' (Jiaozi Yan) which consisted of 18 different dumplings in various shapes - rose, duck, fish, you name it. After that we went for a show at the Sunshine Lido Grand Theatre that showcase dance and martial arts from the Grand Chapters of the Tang Dynasty. It was pretty good especially the elaborate costumes.

Day 5 - Tuesday - City Wall - Mt. Huashan
On the way to the famed mountain, we visited the old City Wall and was given a long talk on Fengshui l by a teacher and my mom and aunt was so convinced that they each bought - with lots of bargaining going on - the figurine statue of a supposedly very auspicious legendary animal called `bi xiu'

Climbing Huashan, with its breath-taking and precarious-looking cliffs and awesome landscape surrounding, was a great experience. But we cheated as the cable car already took us 1,000 meters up and we only had to `climb' for less than 1/2 hour and reached the North Peak. Here is found a stone with the words `Huashan Loon Jian' - written by the famed author Jing Yung who penned some most famous martial art novels. I have incidentally read some as well as watched many which have been turned into HK evision series..

I was so attracted to the sword but was told I would have difficulty brining one home pass the custom. Well.. and if there were time, I would have wanted to `conquer' another peak - North Peak was the easiest to reach.

Day 6 - Wednesday - Wild Goose Pagoda, Hua Ching Chi, TerracottaWarrior Museum
The last two days in Xi'an was very eventful - we covered many sites. Today, we began with the Wild Goose Pagoda which has a serene and quite ambience. The Pagoda was built for the famous monk in the `Journey to the West' legend. The creatures like the Monkey King did not exist but the monk was a real person. Hua Ching Chi was a beautiful resort garden of sort for the Tang emperor and his famous concubine Yang Gui Fei. The Place was huge and scenic and has (the ancient version of) spas and baths enjoyed by the emperors, concubines and even the eunuchs!

The highlight of the trip of course would be seeing the amazing terracotta warriors, described by former French President Jacque Chiraz as the 8th Wonder of the World.
The Museum of Qin Terracotta Warriors and Horses is huge - with three pits and many other exhibits in various places. Pit 1, double a football stadium, was especially an awesome sight.

We spent a good three hour and more there before retreating back to the city and ended up eating dumplings at the Muslim Street.

Day 7 - Thursday - Qian Mousoleum, Famen Temple and Famen Temple Museum
Drove another almost two hours but this time to the West (yesterday was East) and visited the mousoleum of the only empress of the Chinese history - Wu Zhe Tien. The land was huge and near the mountain where she was suposedly buried, was other tombs of her descendants.
Famen Temple, famed for the discovery of Buddha's finger bone in an underground palace, had much to see. I can see why it is like the `Mecca' for Chinese Buddhist. And the treasures discovered along side the four finger bones (only one was genuine) were just amazing. So although i was having a slight flu, what we saw was interesting enough to get me going.

Day 8 - Friday - Xi'an - Kuala Lumpur
Xi'an getting hazier and hazier. Rushed to see the Bell Tower with mom in the morning after we packed. Only managed to spend 40 minutes or so there before coming back to hotel and joined the entourage to the airport. The five older folks are carrying on their holiday to the scenic Jiujaigo. Cousin was going to Beijing (transit for two nites) while I headed.... home sweet home!