BEIJING -- XI'AN

October 9, 2014

October 9th, Part 2

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We slept in a bit on this morning before going to the Beijing Airport to catch a flight to Xi'An. Upon leaving the terminal, we met Mervyn, our tour guide for this historic centre. More...



Mervyn told us a lot about Xi'An, the cultural centre of China. Xi'An was the home of Qin, the emperor responsible for the unification of China. Although an unliked emperor, Qin was responsible for two of China's main historical sites: the Great Wall and the Terracotta Soldiers (which guard his mausoleum). The soldiers we'd be seeing tomorrow. Today we went to walk Xi'An's city wall. This wall surrounds the old city and is the only COMPLETE city wall in China. Its perimeter is 14 or so kilometres. I walked the west wall's southern half. The pictures posted here are from that portion. After our city wall excursion, we were taken to a theatre restaurant where we sampled 18 different varieties of dumplings. Not only were the dumplings delicious, the were also pretty little things. The fish dumpling had eyes, fins and a tail. The duck dumpling had a beak and wings. My favourite (both taste AND shape) was the walnut dumpling. Our cute little waitress became one of the Table 1 Club. She did a BIG spill. Poor thing. We were laughing because she fit right in with our group but at first she didn't understand that we really didn't mind her mistake. Once she did, she was laughing right along with us. We even got more free beer & coke out of it. It was John's birthday and the theatre restaurant had one of the dancers bring out a birthday cake for him. After cake, we watched the Tang DynastyMusic & Dance Show. It was very good and SOOOO colourful!