Gansu Sister Cities Program 2007: City break to Xi'an

This weekend 13 of us from the group decided to take a trip to Xi'an, Shannxi Province. Called Chang'an in ancient times, Xian is one of the birthplaces of ancient civilization and 13 dynasties such as Western Zhou (11th century BC - 771 BC), Qin (221 BC - 206 BC), Western Han (206 BC - 24 AD) and Tang (618 - 907) placed their capitals here. Many tourists travel to Xi'an to see the Terracotta Warriors that were unearthed after a group of peasants found some pottery while digging for a well near the royal tomb of Qin Shi Huang in 1974. Upon ascending the throne at the age of 13 (in 246 BC), Qin Shi Huang had already begun to work on his mausoleum (which took 11 years to finish). Today the museum covers an area of 16,300 square meters, divided into three sections: No. 1 Pit, No. 2 Pit, and No. 3 Pit respectively. They were tagged in the order of their discoveries. No. 1 Pit is the largest, first opened to the public on China's National Day, 1979. Seeing the warriors was definitely top of our list of things to do in Xi'an.

We took the overnight train from Lanzhou on Friday night and arrived in Xi'an on Saturday morning. After checking in we all went our separate ways for breakfast. I'd like to say that I resisted the temptation to go to Starbucks.........but I didn't! We then took a bus to see the Terracotta Warriors. Unforfuntally Pit 2 was closed as work was being done to the roof. Pit 1 was worth the visit alone as it is very impressive. At first I thought that making the warriors was probably not the best use of time and money however, with the number of tourists who visit they have probably paid for themselves already.

Afterwards we visited the Huaqing Hot Springs. These Springs were a popular retreat with Emperors more than 2,500 years ago. The legend says that in the Qing Dynasty Emperor Xuan Zong fell in love with an ordinary girl, Yang Guifei, after whom the Springs are named in honour of her beauty. Xi'an also has a large Muslim area with many excellent restaurants and a very good market. The next day I visited the local market for some shopping. Visiting when there are less tourists made it easier to get better prices than normal. As soon as you started to walk away from a deal the price fell rapidly. The train back was a little cramped but you can't really complain when it costs $12 to travel 9 hours. Fortunately most of us were so tired that we slept all the way home.