Shaanxi - 8000 Warriors

Sunburnt, dehydrated and exhausted, how happy I was to be leaving Henan. I was left with a heavy feeling my in heart that perhaps my trip was destined to be less than I hoped for, that I would spend more time struggling than enjoying myself, but I had a little hope that Shaanxi would offer up some joy. I am pleased to say it did not disappoint.

I took a hard seat train from Luoyang to Xi'an, Shaanxi's capital, a small city of eight and a half million residents. The journey was a quick five hours, and from my seat I was able to see China's untamed beauty as we sped past some of Shaanxi's verdant unpopulated landscapes.

My journey was pretty uneventful, aside from sitting with five Chinese people who could not have been more desperate to stare at me, by who were all attempting to do so with some barely concealed discretion. It took them all four hours of quick sideways glances before one girl finally managed to work up the courage to speak to me, perhaps encouraged by the fact that I didn't bite after all, everyone else managed to find their voices. Perhaps the most surprising thing that arose from the conversation was that one guy accurately picked that I am Australian, as opposed to the usual 'meiguoren' label I am given, my least favourite name to be called (sorry Americans!). When I asked how he knew, he told me it was because of my "height and five skins". Now either I mistranslated what he said even though I did ask him to repeat it, or this is a Chinese idiom I'm not familiar with, because I'm almost certain I have only ever have the one skin... 

Shortly after this I arrived in Xian and made my way to my hostel. As far as bit Chinese cities go, Xian is beautifully laid out and has a fantastic public transport system, set within Xian's original city walls and laid out in an easy to navigate grid. I stayed in the city centre a mere five minute walk from the Drum Tower and the Muslim Quarter.     

Naturally the first thing I did in Xian was look into visiting the Army of Terracotta Warriors. The warriors would have to be one of the world's most well-known archaeological finds and the army consists of over 8000 life sized terracotta statues. 

After unifying China in 246 BC Qin Shi Huang became China's first self-proclaimed emperor. It was for him that the terracotta army was created, for what particular reason archaeologists are still uncertain, though it is popularly believed to have been built in order to protect his tomb, to boast his power and to show loyalty to him after his death. Qin Shi Huang also instigated building various sections of the Great Wall, a national road system and his own city-sized mausoleum which reputedly took 38 years to complete and required over 700 000 workers. 

One of the most striking things about the thousands of warriors is how no two soldier's faces are alike. I was told by my guide that this is because each warrior was made in the image of an artisan, and that after each one was completed, he would have his life sacrificed in order to preserve the secrets of the army. 

Qin Shi Huang had some pretty amazing accomplishments during his time ruling. He created an efficient government which later dynasties would replicate, he standardised measurement, currency and writing, initiated the building of two of the world's most iconic wonders and conquered 6 kingdoms all before turning 40. Despite how impressive this all is I can't help but question his sanity. Qin regularly ingested mercury capsules made by his alchemists in a bid to (ironically) gain eternal life, he had over six thousand concubines, and routinely buried scholars alive in an attempt to stifle any political opposition. And when you consider number of those who lost their lives after creating his tomb, the artisans sacrificed for the army, the estimated 5 million who died constructing the great wall I do not think you can help but be shocked by antics of such a ruler.   

 
Despite the morbid undertone permeating throughout my trip to visit the Army of Terracotta Warriors, I still couldn't help but be overwhelmed by it. The three pits contain some amazing sculptures, much larger and more impressive than I had imagined, and all really quite marvellous.

Xian had some other great sites to offer, the most important to me being that this is where I got to see my first real live panda since I was five years old. As most of you who know me are aware, I have a slight obsession with pandas, and I have done for some time. I remember going to Sydney's Taronga Zoo when I was a wee little thing with my parents and getting to see some real pandas way off in the distance. Being so young I only have a faint recollection of it but for years now I have had an overwhelming desire to see them again. And so after getting up at a crazy early time and driving for nearly two hours out of Xian I finally was on my way to seeing another panda.

We arrived at the sanctuary and circled the large bushy enclosures, desperately hoping to glimpse a panda out and about before it got too hot. Pandas prefer cooler climates and during the hot summer months in China, the pandas in captivity prefer to stay inside in air-conditioned comfort, so the best time to see them during the warmer months is as early as possible when they come outside to eat. After maybe 40 minutes of waiting for a panda to appear, we finally spotted one hiding!

Can you see her?

She sat hiding in the bushes eating her bamboo for quite a while. But we waited, and waited... and then she popped out toward the side of her enclosure to do a little sniffing!

After a while we left this lady panda and went in search of another. We managed to find a boy panda who was much less camera shy. He really turned it up for us. I have to admit, I got a little overwhelmed here and had a little teary.

What a happy little panda!

These pandas are only 6 years old. They're full sized now, reaching around 4ft when standing and weighing around 100kgs. While they are designed to be carnivores, pandas lack the necessary skills to be effective predators, and over thousands of years have instead developed a great love of bamboo. Unfortunately because they are not genetically designed to eat bamboo, they gain hardly any nutritional value from it, and need to consume around 20 kg a day in order to gain the energy they need to live their fairly inactive lives.

After checking out the pandas and a few other animals in the sanctuary it was time to head back to Xian. I spent the next few days checking out Xian itself, visiting the Bell and Drum towers, checking out the late night water show, eating delicious food in the Muslim quarter and weaving in and out of the night market to the cries of "looky look lady". 

Eating some delicious jiaozi and drinking orange drink!

I enjoyed my time in and around Xian greatly, stayed in a fantastic little hostel and met some very cool people. Some of those people I would go on to meet with again in Sichuan province, which was to be my next destination. After my five night stay in Shaanxi province I felt relief at knowing my trip was shaping up to be the fun adventure I was hoping and I was getting very excited to move on to my next destination. Sichuan has been a province I have wanted to visit for years, but at the last minute things were not looking good due to some severe flooding which were cutting off roads, but I decided to push on anyway and try flying instead of taking the train. I am very glad I did.

  

Henan: "South of the River"

Early last month I began my 6 week backpacking journey around China, with the intention of visiting six of the country's provinces. I worked my way counter clockwise around the central and southern provinces, starting in Henan and finishing up in Guangxi before returning home to Wuxi, in Jiangsu.

I started my journey by leaving Wuxi on a 16 hour overnight train to Henan's capital, Zhengzhou, with the intention of then taking another train the day I arrived to Luoyang. However, right from the outset the cards were not stacked in my favour.

The apartment where I currently reside is on the very outskirts of Wuxi, in an 'up and coming' district, which basically translates to lots of construction, minimal taxis, buses that do not run past 8pm and no one actually knowing where I live. Do not get me wrong, I like how clean, quiet and new everything is, but it can make life a little difficult. 

The night I was planning to leave, my train was departing Wuxi station at 10:45pm, and being as anally retentive as I am about being punctual, I planned to leave at 8:30 in order to allow for the 30 minute taxi journey to the station, and to leave myself a spare hour and 45 minutes just in case. What exactly I consider to be this 'just in case' scenario is, I will never know, as I inevitably arrive far too early to everything and end up twiddling my thumbs for ages... This particular time it turns out I would need this time. The taxi sent to collect me could not find my apartment and ended up taking nearly an hour to turn up. I arrived at the station with minutes to spare. It was all very dramatic, running through the station, knocking people over only to arrive at the gate just as they were closing the ticket check. However the surly train attendant took pity on me and allowed me through, with a tut and an eye roll, before I ran over to my almost departing sleeper train. 

It had been close to ten years since I last took a Chinese sleeper train and could hardly remember the journey I took from Shanghai to Beijing all those years ago, but I do remember being quite impressed with the experience. Clean beds, lovely staff, room to move and free food offered at regular intervals. Oh how different this experience was...

I know what you are thinking... "Oh Katie, what are you complaining about, that looks fairly reasonable!". Reasonable indeed, but bear in mind that I was travelling during peak season and was only ever able to book upper berths. Just take another look at how much room there is between the bed and the roof. It is physically impossible for me to sit upright at all, and in order for me to to get in and out of my bed I was required to do some pretty amazing gymnastic moves, the likes of which I'm pretty sure would have left Nadia Comaneci impressed.

Being that high up had some upsides though... I hardly ever felt like my bad was going to be stolen as I spent all night hugging it and also - no, no that was it. 

Having a bed placed so high up meant it they were never cleaned properly and I would often spend the first 5 minutes of each journey picking bits of food off my mattress. I also had the air conditioner  about a foot away from my face, afforded me a great of the impossible filthy filters, allowing me to not only be freezing cold all night (despite being provided with bedding) and to be able to think about all the black crap coming off it that I must be inhaling. And the bedding.... oh the bedding.... I'm so very glad I decided to take my own pillowcase. Unidentified stains were many and varied and frequently smelt of urine. Consequently I often chose to forgo the filthy items and shiver under the delightful AC.

Once I managed to get past these initial setbacks I was all set for a night of peaceful slumber before starting my real adventures the next day. How wrong I was. 

On the whole I find Chinese people can be quite loud. Taking a phone call between the hours of 11pm and 5am in a train carriage where people are sleeping is perfectly acceptable. Doing so at a volume verging on shouting? No problem! Sufficed to say that between the yelling, the crying babies, the music being played (the Chinese also seem to be partial to sharing their music with others.... or an aversion to earphones, I'm unsure which) and the early morning wakeup call of spitting, minimal sleep was got that first night on the train.

Anyway! 16 hours later I finally arrive in Zhengzhou, but I was unable to get a train to Luoyang and needed to catch a bus instead. Four hours later I'm dead on my feet but finally at my destination. Now to find my hostel! My taxi driver left me outside a large apartment complex and my hostelworld instructions were quite vague so I decided to call the owner. Somewhat typically this is the point at which my phone decided to pack it in. 

After standing in the sweltering heat in the apartment courtyard, shouting down my phone (Chinese style!) to no avail, I finally found a local to help me locate my "hostel". It was in fact some Chinese guy's apartment on the 8th floor. Good fun with a huge backpack in 40 degree heat. But at least my room had air conditioning!! Or at least it did for a few hours. The first night of my stay in Luoyang the electricity cut out in the middle of the night, and didn't come back on the whole time I was there. No AC (try sleeping in a 35 degree room with no breeze), no wifi to book the next leg of my journey... and no hot water!! 

However I wasn't in Luoyang for the hostel. I came here for one reason, and that was to visit the Longmen Grottoes. Considered one of China's top three grottoes and a UNESCO World Heritage site, the Longmen caves are an enormous and epic sight to behold. The caves run along a 1 kilometre stretch of the Yi river and carving first began in AD 494 during the Northern Wei dynasty.

West Side Caves at Longmen

In the 200 years it took to complete over 100 000 images of Buddha and his disciples were chisled into the limestone cliff faces on both sides of the river. The sizes of the figures vary greatly, from thousands of tiny one inch carvings, to the epic 20 metre high Losana Buddha. Coming up against the Cultural Revolution, anti-Buddhist purges and in influx of ruthless collectors in the early 20th century has meant that many of the figures have been badly damaged, decapitated or been removed entirely over the last two hundred years. Despite all this there are some truly amazing sculptures to been seen here.

For perspective you can see that the small squares carved into the
cliffs are large enough to crawl into. 

Ten Thousand Buddha Cave, each Buddha is an inch tall.

Unfortunately, this one sight was the highlight of my 4 days in Henan. I found both Zhengzhou and Luoyang to be big ugly cities, with possibly the worst air I've ever encountered in China. One day into my Henan trip and I was coughing like a hard core smoker first thing in the morning. The rest of my time was spend desperately trying to avoid the stifling heat, which was only made more intense by the constant haze generated by the pollution in the atmosphere. I can't even say that I enjoyed the food, as everything I tried was stodgy, fatty, dripping with oil and generally unpleasant.

Four days into my big adventure and I was already missing home and feeling quite disenchanted by my experiences. If not for the gentle encouragement of my dear friend Zoe via text messages ("Katie, don't be a dickhead") I might very well have given up at this point. Nonetheless, I continued on to my next province, taking a hard seat by train to Xi'an in Shanxi. Best decision I ever made.

Standing in front of my favourite Luoyang statue.