China the 8th.
Must...finish...writing about China! I'm so unmotivated, but if I don't finish these soon, I know I'll forget stuff. Haaah....alright, here goes. Day 8, May 5th, Friday. Terra Cotta Warriors and Basketball.
So the day began as any other; a simple buffet breakfast at the hotel's 'Western' restaurant, which had country western music playing in the background, so you knew it was authentic. There was this little kid who was standing by the toaster oven as I put in my bread to make toast, and he was staring at it with almost frightening intensity. When the toast popped out in the bottom, he laughed and applauded. You'd have thought it was christmas (or the Chinese equivalent, I guess) by his joyous reaction when I double toasted the same pieces of bread. Anyway, after that we headed to our main destination for the day, the Terra Cotta Warriors Museum!
This place was one of the coolest parts of the trip, without a doubt. They built the museums around the excavation site for the terra cotta warriors, which are now called the eighth wonder of the world. The warriors were constructed during the reign of the first Chinese emperor, Qin Shi-Huang, as guards for his tomb and body in the afterlife in around 220 BCE. As soon as he unified China, he began construction on his burial tomb, realizing that everyone whom he betrayed and destroyed to achieve his power would be waiting for him in the afterlife. The whole tomb is really an incredible feat of engineering prowess, especially for its time period. The warriors are an entire army, as there are over 7000 soldiers in total, and the army is complete with officers, generals, and even two half scale chariots. Every individual statue was handcrafted, and each soldier has a different kind of body type and face. The emperor's actual tomb is equally impressive. It hasn't yet been unearthed, as archaeologists are still waiting to figure out the best way to excavate it without damaging it, but the ancient records tell of a room with incredible treasures and such. The floor of the tomb supposedly had a scaled map of China drawn on it, complete with flowing streams of mercury to represent the Chinese rivers. Apparently there was some device that kept the mercury flowing throughout the room, which, in and of itself is pretty amazing. Anyway, getting to see all the warriors in person was a mindblowing experience. To think that those warriors were constructed over 2000 years ago, and they're still as detailed and intricate as they were was a great feeling. It really appealed to my historical side, not that that's all that hard to accomplish.
We had lunch, and it was my favorite meal of the whole trip. We got to eat handmade 'stretchy noodles', which are, as the name implies, very long and stretchy noodles served in a beef stew. And man they were good. The only downside was that there were a lot of plates and bowls, so naturally, as I got back to my seat, I spilled a little seaweed (or something) soup on Maia. Oh well, sorry about that. Ahem. After lunch, I scrounged together enough money to buy an official Terra Cotta Warriors book, which I wouldn't have normally done, except for the fact that one of the farmers that discovered the warriors in the 70's was signing those books. So I got the book and waited in line for the guy to sign it. This guy was ridiculous. He looked like he was about 70, and he had these light, round sunglasses on, and he moved ever-so-slowly to sign the books one by one, as they were handed to him by his assistant. His assistant looked like he was just as old, and smoked a cigarette every five minutes or so. This guy was just blowing through his cigarettes like nothing, it was incredible. The best part was, right before he signed my book, he swallowed a couple of pills out of some bottle and kept chugging along. The pills must make signing books all day every day a little less tedious. So that rocked. And then, after a fruitless attempt at finding the actual tomb's burial mound with Cecilia (it's a mile or two away, and totally off limits), we got back on the buses and went back to Xian.
On the way back to Xian, about a block and a half away from the hotel, I happened to notice a large public basketball court area. After remarking about how cool it would be to just go over there and play with them, a couple of us got to thinking that it would totally be possible to do that. We had two or three hours to spare before we were gonna eat dinner, so we decided to get a group together and head over to the local courts for some pickup hoops. There were seven of us in all: Me, Zach, Brian, Anthony, Dan, Cecilia, and Aubrey. When we arrived at the courts, we picked one at random and figured out that they wanted us to wait for them to finish their game, and then they would play us. And so, they finished and we took the court, 4 on 4 half court, first to 10 points wins. All of the sudden, there was an enormous crowd around the court, because it's evidently a rare occasion when any foreigners go to random public basketball courts in Xian. The Chinese spectators were very interested to see Anthony play especially, since a black person is even more rare than a foreigner, let alone one that is his size. It ended up being a total blast, probably one of the coolest parts of the trip. The spectators were also quite surprised to see two girls play when Aubrey and Cecilia got in the game, since no girls ever play basketball over there, apparently. Plus, I totally made a layup in one of the games, so I was satisfied. There you have it, my very first game of pickup street basketball was in Xian, China. And we totally kicked ass too. Good times, good times.
Later that night, we went out on the town, starting with dinner at KFC. The dinner was, of course, an excellent choice, as the ridiculously greasy original recipe chicken absolutely hit the spot. Ahh, real American food, kind of. After that, we went to the local shopping mall, which was almost completely vertical, similar to those malls in Toronto and Montreal, the Eaton Centers. It was seven or eight floors of shopping goodness, and the top floor had a food court with a bar. In fact, the little plaza on the bottom floor sold beer and pop at a little kiosk. It's a very strange feeling to walk around a mall with a beer. Following this, we ended up checking out the 'Mix' dance club that was also just downtown. We had heard from Black River back in Beijing that Mix was a hip and popular brand of club, so when we saw the one in Xian, we decided it was absolutely necessary to check it out. We got in and got our drinks and Brian and I began playing the cool dice game that we learned back in Beijing. We taught it to the others, who were somewhat less interested, until a couple others from the band happened to wander in and find us. Then we all enjoyed the dice game until we got invited to a VIP booth by some Chinese guy that liked Americans. It was also very cool, and he had a very tasty mix of tea and Johnnie Walker that I probably shouldn't have drank. Things continued to go smoothly for a while, buuuuut then I got sick. After that, my memory begins to get a little hazy, but from what I hear, our Chinese friend made us leave, due to the increasing danger of late night Xian. We had been warned by Black River in Beijing that Xian has some pretty rough people, and this local seemed to agree. When we asked to stay for just a little longer, he was very firm in letting us know that it would be too dangerous to be out any later, and we should leave right then. So we took his advice and got out of there. Apparently, for the duration of the cab ride home, I filled in my cabmates with the entire history of the terra cotta warriors and the emperor's tomb, which I don't recall at all. They said they were very appreciative of it, actually, since the others didn't pay attention, and Anthony had overslept and missed the whole museum early in the day anyway. After that, I vaguely remember returning to the room, being aghast to find Zach and Aubrey still awake (they're almost always sleeping), and demanding the lights be turned off so I could sleep. Moral of the story, don't let a festive and noisy atmosphere cloud your judgment! And that was the one rough night of the trip.
So the day began as any other; a simple buffet breakfast at the hotel's 'Western' restaurant, which had country western music playing in the background, so you knew it was authentic. There was this little kid who was standing by the toaster oven as I put in my bread to make toast, and he was staring at it with almost frightening intensity. When the toast popped out in the bottom, he laughed and applauded. You'd have thought it was christmas (or the Chinese equivalent, I guess) by his joyous reaction when I double toasted the same pieces of bread. Anyway, after that we headed to our main destination for the day, the Terra Cotta Warriors Museum!
This place was one of the coolest parts of the trip, without a doubt. They built the museums around the excavation site for the terra cotta warriors, which are now called the eighth wonder of the world. The warriors were constructed during the reign of the first Chinese emperor, Qin Shi-Huang, as guards for his tomb and body in the afterlife in around 220 BCE. As soon as he unified China, he began construction on his burial tomb, realizing that everyone whom he betrayed and destroyed to achieve his power would be waiting for him in the afterlife. The whole tomb is really an incredible feat of engineering prowess, especially for its time period. The warriors are an entire army, as there are over 7000 soldiers in total, and the army is complete with officers, generals, and even two half scale chariots. Every individual statue was handcrafted, and each soldier has a different kind of body type and face. The emperor's actual tomb is equally impressive. It hasn't yet been unearthed, as archaeologists are still waiting to figure out the best way to excavate it without damaging it, but the ancient records tell of a room with incredible treasures and such. The floor of the tomb supposedly had a scaled map of China drawn on it, complete with flowing streams of mercury to represent the Chinese rivers. Apparently there was some device that kept the mercury flowing throughout the room, which, in and of itself is pretty amazing. Anyway, getting to see all the warriors in person was a mindblowing experience. To think that those warriors were constructed over 2000 years ago, and they're still as detailed and intricate as they were was a great feeling. It really appealed to my historical side, not that that's all that hard to accomplish.
We had lunch, and it was my favorite meal of the whole trip. We got to eat handmade 'stretchy noodles', which are, as the name implies, very long and stretchy noodles served in a beef stew. And man they were good. The only downside was that there were a lot of plates and bowls, so naturally, as I got back to my seat, I spilled a little seaweed (or something) soup on Maia. Oh well, sorry about that. Ahem. After lunch, I scrounged together enough money to buy an official Terra Cotta Warriors book, which I wouldn't have normally done, except for the fact that one of the farmers that discovered the warriors in the 70's was signing those books. So I got the book and waited in line for the guy to sign it. This guy was ridiculous. He looked like he was about 70, and he had these light, round sunglasses on, and he moved ever-so-slowly to sign the books one by one, as they were handed to him by his assistant. His assistant looked like he was just as old, and smoked a cigarette every five minutes or so. This guy was just blowing through his cigarettes like nothing, it was incredible. The best part was, right before he signed my book, he swallowed a couple of pills out of some bottle and kept chugging along. The pills must make signing books all day every day a little less tedious. So that rocked. And then, after a fruitless attempt at finding the actual tomb's burial mound with Cecilia (it's a mile or two away, and totally off limits), we got back on the buses and went back to Xian.
On the way back to Xian, about a block and a half away from the hotel, I happened to notice a large public basketball court area. After remarking about how cool it would be to just go over there and play with them, a couple of us got to thinking that it would totally be possible to do that. We had two or three hours to spare before we were gonna eat dinner, so we decided to get a group together and head over to the local courts for some pickup hoops. There were seven of us in all: Me, Zach, Brian, Anthony, Dan, Cecilia, and Aubrey. When we arrived at the courts, we picked one at random and figured out that they wanted us to wait for them to finish their game, and then they would play us. And so, they finished and we took the court, 4 on 4 half court, first to 10 points wins. All of the sudden, there was an enormous crowd around the court, because it's evidently a rare occasion when any foreigners go to random public basketball courts in Xian. The Chinese spectators were very interested to see Anthony play especially, since a black person is even more rare than a foreigner, let alone one that is his size. It ended up being a total blast, probably one of the coolest parts of the trip. The spectators were also quite surprised to see two girls play when Aubrey and Cecilia got in the game, since no girls ever play basketball over there, apparently. Plus, I totally made a layup in one of the games, so I was satisfied. There you have it, my very first game of pickup street basketball was in Xian, China. And we totally kicked ass too. Good times, good times.
Later that night, we went out on the town, starting with dinner at KFC. The dinner was, of course, an excellent choice, as the ridiculously greasy original recipe chicken absolutely hit the spot. Ahh, real American food, kind of. After that, we went to the local shopping mall, which was almost completely vertical, similar to those malls in Toronto and Montreal, the Eaton Centers. It was seven or eight floors of shopping goodness, and the top floor had a food court with a bar. In fact, the little plaza on the bottom floor sold beer and pop at a little kiosk. It's a very strange feeling to walk around a mall with a beer. Following this, we ended up checking out the 'Mix' dance club that was also just downtown. We had heard from Black River back in Beijing that Mix was a hip and popular brand of club, so when we saw the one in Xian, we decided it was absolutely necessary to check it out. We got in and got our drinks and Brian and I began playing the cool dice game that we learned back in Beijing. We taught it to the others, who were somewhat less interested, until a couple others from the band happened to wander in and find us. Then we all enjoyed the dice game until we got invited to a VIP booth by some Chinese guy that liked Americans. It was also very cool, and he had a very tasty mix of tea and Johnnie Walker that I probably shouldn't have drank. Things continued to go smoothly for a while, buuuuut then I got sick. After that, my memory begins to get a little hazy, but from what I hear, our Chinese friend made us leave, due to the increasing danger of late night Xian. We had been warned by Black River in Beijing that Xian has some pretty rough people, and this local seemed to agree. When we asked to stay for just a little longer, he was very firm in letting us know that it would be too dangerous to be out any later, and we should leave right then. So we took his advice and got out of there. Apparently, for the duration of the cab ride home, I filled in my cabmates with the entire history of the terra cotta warriors and the emperor's tomb, which I don't recall at all. They said they were very appreciative of it, actually, since the others didn't pay attention, and Anthony had overslept and missed the whole museum early in the day anyway. After that, I vaguely remember returning to the room, being aghast to find Zach and Aubrey still awake (they're almost always sleeping), and demanding the lights be turned off so I could sleep. Moral of the story, don't let a festive and noisy atmosphere cloud your judgment! And that was the one rough night of the trip.