Xi'an Overview

Saturday, June 13, 2009, was the first full day of my two-day tour of Xi'an, arranged by the China Culture Center, which commonly produces events for expats. My tour group included Brits, Scots, South Africans, Canadians, and more. It was mostly women (eight), as opposed to three men.

Xi'an is the capital of Shaanxi province in China, a former (ancient) capital of China, and famous for its tombs containing thousands of life-sized terracotta soldiers. As an indication of the city's history, consider that construction of the subway has been repeatedly delayed as the construction crews discover buried tombs.

The terracotta army was astounding, easily worth the trip to Xi'an. It's enormous, and each figure feels real, as if modeled off a particular person. Nevertheless, each of over ten thousand figures is unique. (Yes, they used molds, but the faces, eyes, hair, etc. were all finished by hand.) Creating them all is an almost unfathomably large undertaking.

Other things I noticed about Xi'an:

The first thing I noticed about Xi'an is that the air is very fresh and clean, compared to Shanghai at least.

I also observed a surprising number of people on the streets at night. I say this without, in retrospect, ever being on the streets of Shanghai after 10pm. (Maybe I should try that?) I wonder if this has to do with different sunrise/sunset cycles: Xi'an is a 2.5 hour flight west of Shanghai but in the same time zone, which I think means the sun rises over an hour later there.

Oh, and Xi'an is hot in mid-June, certainly substantially hotter than Shanghai at the time. (Xi'an's average high is 90 F / 32 C.)

By the way, our tour guide/trip leader was great. She had many stories of Chinese history to tell, e.g., about concubines. She also always seemed to know the answers to any questions we had. But perhaps because everything was arranged well, and because I mainly interacted with the tour guide and other people in our tour group (all of whom spoke English), I wrote in my notes at the end that "traveling as a group like this doesn't make things seem foreign enough."