Xi’an: Warlords and walls

Train 2, City 5. Armed this time WITH toilet paper we rolled slowly to Xi’an on the sleeper. Alas a poor young Dutch couple who were also on the Yangtze cruise boat boarded the train too … they were very sweet about it all and showed enormous patience as the kids latched onto them like limpets, invading their carriage. They were still smiling when early the next morning we checked into the same hotel in Xi’an, the ancient capital of China (several times).

We loved Xi’an almost at first sight. After high rise Shanghai and Hong Kong and the industrial sprawl of cities we’d never heard of lining the Yangtze, Xi’an was blissfully spacious within mighty Ming walls, with wide avenues, low-rise and ancient buildings. From our room we could watch people doing their early morning Tai Chi, see green taxis battling bicycles, admire the Bell and Drum Towers and spy the Muslim quarter with its fabulous market streets.

The Pritchards, I’ve decided, are far too easily influenced by those around them. With happy, lively companions, we’re happy and lively. If we have to be with serious or sulky people, guess how we behave? Well beautiful Xi’an was accompanied by our beautiful guide Ruby, who made us laugh and was pretty laid back. It was a winning combination. OK, she did persuade us to see a cultural show that left Rowan giggling under the table, Jenna sitting shellshocked with hands over her ears, pleading “can we go now?” and Joe and I at our most sarcastic and incredulous, but otherwise Ruby was nothing short of perfect. She managed to keep the kids entertained through a museum, walking the city wall, the Great Mosque and a pagoda, and we learnt loads. Even the kids could recite the names of at least five dynasties after a couple of days in Xi’an. All that BEFORE we reached the terracotta warriors – which Rowan and Rhys are writing about – so I won’t spoil it.

It’s humbling learning more about Chinese history. While we Brits were scrabbling around and going ‘urgh’ in our roundhouse mud huts and feeling pretty clever for discovering farming, the Chinese were creating masterworks of art and recording their history like no other race. There they were, inventing paper, printing, the compass and gunpowder. A thousand years BC there were walled cities ruled under feudal systems, and the Chinese were writing early versions of modern Mandarin characters. This is a thousand years before Britain was a glint in Julius Caesar’s eye. We visited the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, still standing and impressive – built in 652 AD. This is shortly after Augustine arrived in the UK and started spreading Christianity to the heathens. OK, enough historical comparisons because we just lose out every time. But hey, at least we’re not Americans – then it would be REALLY embarrassing :-)

We didn’t just immerse ourselves in all this culture and history though, no, no – we went shopping, too. We bought all those incredibly useless things like calligraphy sets and chopsticks that you spend fortunes sending home to never use again. But it’s the fun of the thing. I loved haggling with a calculator. She typed in a number, I typed a lower one. She typed one in the middle. We eventually reached an amiable conclusion while I frantically divided by 15.4242 to make sure it was as much as a bargain as we thought. Some of the buys undoubtedly were bargains, some certainly weren’t. It’s fun, and it’s also how come Joe ended up posting yet another 18 kilos of the stuff home via the scarily efficient China Post.

Xi’an is perhaps the perfect advert for old meets new China. Stuffed full of history, its got a great cosmopolitan vibe. A modern CBD with shiny new bank buildings doesn’t have to mean wall-to-wall high rises; you can still have wide tree-lined avenues. Millions of people needn’t feel claustrophobic. You can have your designer shops and your tiny streets full of stalls, smells and sounds. But when you look at the pictures you can also see the smog, and we were to see much more of it as we headed further north and inland.

One of my favourite surreal moments was jolting awake before 7am to unearthly and extremely loud strains of some kind of tuneless jazz wailing ringing out in the streets below. Is this a sophisticated form of torture? Do the Chinese appreciate being woken thus? Alas we shall never know. But it seems to be common practice in many cities and no one has been able to explain it yet.