Owendennis.com Blog

This post is not about Sean Connery.

I’m on a plane to Harbin as I’m writing this (actually we’ve been sitting on the tarmac for 2 hours so far). I should probably be wearing faded skinny jeans, a shirt from threadless.com, and a scarf. The only thing that could make me more cool than using my sleek silver Macbook on the plane would be to be drinking a mocha cappuccino/chai tea/my own feces because I look like an asshole. I really do like my Macbook, genuinely, but I don’t like the snooty message it brings with it. You just can’t escape it though. If you have an apple computer you look like an asshole. I mean just go to the apple store and talk to the technicians there (Note: The official title of their job is “Genius,” one guess as to what type of people call themselves that).

Anyway, off topic much?

While we were in Hong Kong we saw Avatar in Imax 3D. It was much more awesome this time. The 3d glasses worked better and there were English subtitles! Except there were Chinese subtitles the whole time so by the time an English subtitle popped up I had learned to ignore them and I would miss them… :-/

While on the plane I couldn’t help but notice these fun images on the safety guide. I love the stuff they pointed out that needed to be banned. At home all I can think of them banning is cell phones and maybe laptops at certain times during the flight. Maybe I just have selective memory:

Dang kids these days with their Walkmans and hand held Tyco electronics.

I’m also going to point out that on the plane apparently you must be entertained at all moments. Those TV screens were on playing a mix of Chinese Top Gear, Days of Our Lives in China, and China’s Funniest Home Videos for 2 and half hours. Also keep in mind that in China there is a tremendously high number of people that turn on their cell phones and blast awful music for everyone to hear. Still fun though, definitely not the hushed “inside voices” of a US domestic flight.

So when I arrived in Xi’an I would say the first thing to greet me was the smell (oddly enough one of the first things to greet you in many parts of China). It smelled like something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It was kind of like wood smoke. Then as soon as I walked off the plane and up into the airport I noticed the haze. There was haze inside of the building. Thick haze too. It was sort of a brown gray color. It was so pronounced that I figured some natural disaster had occurred nearby. Like it smelled like wood smoke and everything looked like my eyes were half closed.

The other immediate thing I noticed was that everything was covered in dust. Everything. Like walking into house that no one has lived in for 10 years, that’s how thick the dust was. You could tell how long a car had been parked in one spot due to the amount of dust on it compared to the plants nearby.

The only other time I had experienced these things was in junior high when I went to Yellowstone and there was a big forest fire nearby. So I figured maybe, as ridiculous as it sounded, there was a forest fire nearby? No way could a place be so dusty and dirty and smoggy all the time.

Wrong. Lady at the hotel desk told me so. The city is just really dirty. It’s very dry in Xi’an so there’s no rain to wash it away.

So I hitched a cab ride into the city to my parent’s hotel. We were going down the access road for the highway at like 80 miles an hour (pay a toll? Eff that). It was a little scary at first, not because I was afraid of the speed, more because I was afraid of the speed combined with the fog. The smog in the city was so thick it made a fog that , though light, still obscured vision. It was the exact kind of fog the deer LOVE. My eyes kept darting to those spots that deer like to hang out near the edge of the road. I kept expecting a deer to come bounding out of the woods and smash into our car. Forgot it was China though, there aren’t any animals here.

So then I just sat back and relaxed as we sped through the night. Christmas tree and neon lights were all over the place and the driver blasted a remix between AC/DC’s TNT and My Humps by Black Eyed Peas.

My parents chose to stay at a Hyatt so I stayed there with them. I’m not sure I’ve ever stayed at a Hyatt before. Really ritzy. Made me uncomfortable. It’s one of those places where they try to put the napkin on for you and do everything for you. Really awkward. It’s the exact opposite of the place I’m staying in Harbin tonight (lol a bunk bed).

This was the view from the window. It pretty much sums up Xi’an. The smog was a lot lighter this day than the day previous. This seems like a city that doesn’t get blue skies very often:

So the next day is of course terracotta warrior day. Can’t really go to China and certainly can’t go to Xi’an without seeing the terracotta warriors. So we went over there, grabbed a tour guy, then had him show us around and stuff. It was a pretty cool thing. Here’s a big puppet of a warrior and an innocent little girl (you can tell she’s innocent because she’s wearing a dress and her toes are pointing together):

There were also these huge copper chariots that were made for one of the emperors to ride away to the afterlife in. Pretty cool. They were made at maybe… half scale? They were buried at the foot of the emperor’s tomb about 2 miles away. Apparently these chariots unlocked a lot of secrets about the intricate details of chariot design in ancient China. Over time all the wood from various chariots decomposed so they couldn’t get a good look at them. However, these chariots were supposed to look exactly like the wooden ones, every detail the same. So they were quite happy to find metal versions. I’m pretty confident the glass around them is to make sure Jet Li doesn’t pop out and start wrecking havoc on the world:

Aright so finally: the terracotta warriors. I don’t really have a lot to say about them that hasn’t already been covered by history class (thousands of them, each has individual features, etc etc). They were pretty cool. The whole warehouse smelled like clay oddly enough. Now for some stereotypical tourist photos from slightly above where they are:

So one thing that’s kind of cool is that it’s still an ongoing archeological dig. This means you get to see them still in their various stages of excavation. It’s winter though so they’re not digging.

Oh hey it’s me and my mom! Family fun time!

This is the other section of the dig that they won’t dig up. All the crinkled looking shapes are planks of wood. All the warriors had planks of wood above them. They won’t go down further than the wood because they don’t want to oxidize and damage the paint on the warriors underneath. They noticed when the air hit the warriors that all the paint flaked off and disappeared (thus why they just look like dried out clay). It’s kind of odd thinking about the statues in Greece being painted or the warriors being painted, but that’s how they were. They had some photos of what they looked like before the oxidation process; cool, but tacky. I’m guessing that ancient Greece and the ancient terracotta army looked a lot like an ancient Las Vagas.

You too can have your face photoshopped onto a terracotta warrior!

The gardens outside of the museum. In summer they’re a little more colorful, but I kind of like it all cold and dreary and past-it’s-time looking:

This is a happy frog I liked in the gift shop:

So guess what the terracotta gift shop area has that I haven’t had in months? A Subway! Look at that sandwich being made by the skillful hands of an expert sub sandwich craftsman:

I got a foot long Sub Club on honey oat bread. It was a hard choice between that and the Spicy Italian. Also the Chicken Teriyaki. Also the Chicken Breast. As you can see I basically shut down when I was faced with so many choices laid open at my feet/mouth. I got the Sub Club with Pepperoni, Salami, and Bacon added on for extra umph. Then I got the works in vegetables. I also had them add mayo and vinegar. I’m looking forward to going home so I can add cheddar and salt and pepper as well. Whoof… I’m getting all hot and bothered thinking about this sandwich:

God that looks wonderful. I’m so hungry right now. Why did I decide to work on this post? What novice mistake.

Outside the terracotta warriors you could also buy furs from vari… ous… animals…? Are those-? Yes, yes they are. Purebred too:

Why go through all the time and expense of owning a dog when you can just buy the fur instead? No taking it out for walks in -20 weather, no worrying about a sitter when you’re away, no paying for costly food and vet bills. Not only that but it’s easy to store! Just fold it up and put it in the closet! I’m just going to point out, there were lots of shops with these. It’s not like there was only one, there were quite a few.

Next up, this is the emperor’s tomb (Qin Shi Huang, first emporer of the united China). I remember reading about this tomb in college I think. Supposedly it has a ceiling made of diamonds and rubies to emulate the stars. The floor is a vast map of China with rivers of mercury running through it. They refuse to open it up though. Oxidation fear again. They want to wait until there’s technology to do it without damaging the pieces. Good on them. They did however do a bunch of testing around the site and found really high levels of mercury (which in turn shows that the tomb contains really high levels of awesome).

View from the top:

Then we went to the hot spring bath house nearby that wasn’t really real. It was burned down in the cultural revolution and then built again in like the 70’s or something. There were some rather tongue in cheek (for westerners) moments when they were explaining various things that happened in the cultural revolution. Definitely felt as though they were leaving certain bits of information out of the placards.

There was a sweet fountain that was a dragon’s head. The hot spring water would come out of it and make steam come out as well. It was awesome:

CLICK ME FOR A VIDEO

“Take your hat off in front of the naked statue sweetie.”

Apparently you can wash your feet in one of the caves? Or something? I don’t know, I never thought about visiting someplace to wash my feet. This place is very much more of a community center than historical site. They keep adding additions on to this place that I highly doubt existed before (like a big pool full of ropes and pulleys with fireworks display areas, really well placed bathrooms that are built for many many people, a concert hall, a ballet school, etc etc.) I’m sure this place is a blast in the summer. In the meantime however, it’s mostly got a foot washing cave in it:

After that we went to another archeological area. It’s a super super old village that’s however many thousands and thousands of years old. I don’t know what it is about going on trips with my parents but wherever we go we always find someplace to look at holes in the ground:

Normally that’s all we get, holes in the ground.

“This was where the fire pit was…”
“This was a storage room…”
“This was a post hole…”

The one thing that made this set of holes in the ground so much different from the other holes in the ground that I’ve seen over the years is that these holes in the ground had people in them:

They had all these various specific ways of burying their dead. It was kinda cool. Then I realized I was taking pictures of dead bodies and got a little weirded out so I stopped.

Probably one of my favorite things about Xi’an was the city wall. It’s the one of the best preserved city walls in the world. Only fitting that the former capital city have something so cool, but it’s really only useful against trebuchets and arrows, not so much against satellite-guided smart bombs. So it’s kind of just this big ancient thing that all the traffic goes in and out of. The whole city is based around this wall and roads kind of radiate outwards from it. It’s really cool. It’s so odd because it’s just normal to everyone in the city. It’s just this big huge old thing that’s still there and doesn’t really have a use anymore, but you can’t really get rid of it, so it’s just going to stay there forever as a standing monument to a feudal past:

It’s cold enough that the motorcycle taxis have built in gloves:

When I came back the maid had folded yesterday’s clothes and put them neatly on the bed. In Hyatt’s you are clearly not supposed to just throw your dirty clothes in the corner… :-/

The hotel serves hamburgers! Not the cheap Mcdonald’s kind that is the only kind you can get in this country, but the higher upper class style (though it still used American cheese instead of like cheddar or something… also there was an egg on it?). Look how satiated I look:

Something pretty cool about Xi’an is the lights they have. Right near the entrances to the city wall they have these lights up in the trees. Everything is lit up at night and it looks really cool. One thing I will definitely give China is that even though they like to waste power on spotlights, neon, string lights, and gaudy signage, it’s still pretty cool to look at:

Each of those downward white streaks was a special kind of light that made a dripping effect. Each tree had a bunch of them and they were all synched to “drip” at the same time.

VIDEO OF LIGHTS

The city wall at night:

This is the first time I’ve ever seen Chinese people patiently wait in a single file line.:

In the center of the city there are these two big towers called the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower. They’re about one block apart. Consistent with their names they each have bells or drums in them:

This is the Bell Tower. It was built during the Ming Dynasty. It was mostly a defense-ish kind of thing. They had a bunch of bells inside the tower and hundreds of years ago they would ring the bells at specific times of the day to ensure the city dwellers that all was well. Also it warded off dragons:

Inside the tower they had some people doing traditional Chinese music and dance:

This is up on the drum tower. Inside of the tower was an exhibit full of old drums (which people just couldn’t stop themselves from hitting as they walked past).

Up on the 2nd floor of the drum tower they had an exhibit on furniture including possibly my favorite, most inspiring piece of furniture:

FYI Desk lions are as large as my torso.

In between the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower was enough space for people to set up shops and such. Apparently it was the place to sell kites. They were long looooong strings of kites, hundreds of feet long. You’re going to have look hard at at some of these pictures to see the kites. Wipe off your computer screen so don’t mistake them as dust:

Of course, not 30 feet from the kite salesmen are the kite eating trees:

This was right next to the Muslim quarter (Xi’an was the end of the silk road), so we went down to check out the markets and stuff:

Then we went back to the hotel. The room was all cleaned again, but I put my clothes away so the maid wouldn’t have to clean them. Then I threw some stuff on the bed and we went down to dinner where I had cheesecake that has now made me suspicious of all cheesecake across China. It was made with American cheese, not cream cheese. Have you ever had cheesecake made with American cheese? Nope. I have though. Don’t do it. It’s a horrible experience. I couldn’t even finish it it was too much of a disappointment:

Seriously? I was out of my room for half an hour and the maid snuck in and folded all my stuff again? Wth? How did she know? Why doesn’t she go home?

One last look at the city wall before we leave:

Next post is one to look forward to. I highly doubt you’ll expect what you’re going to see. Stay tuned for the some the most fantastic displays of face to palm action!