Xi'an

Not sure why the rest of my entry didn't come up in the last entry, but anyway, here it is:

By the way, as I mentioned earlier, I went to Xi'an for the weekend. It was a bit of a whirlwind trip - leaving right after class at 4.30pm on Friday afternoon and arriving back in Beijing on Monday morning at 7.15am, just in time for the 8am start. I find Xi'an a really special city - so much history! I think, if I remember correctly, Xi'an is considered to be amongst the 4(?) ancient civilisations of the world. There, we visited the Banpo museum where the remains of a 6000 year old village was found. Unlike Beijing, a lot of the old historical buildings and the city wall has been preserved in Xi'an. We also visited a factory to learn how the Terracotta Warriors were made (using the traditional method, of course!) and have the opportunity to buy good quality but quite expensive reproductions of the Terracotta Warriors. Later we also visited the actual Terracotta Warriors. They were actually found in the tomb of the Emperor Qin, and were there to protect the Emperor in the afterlife - the tomb is very extensive and the Terracotta Warriors even have a their own command centre - really!

The other highlight for me was visiting the Xi'an Beilin Museum. As paper records are easily destroyed, a lot of China's historical records, Confucius teachings, Buddhist translations, important Poetry, etc, are carved on stone tablets. This museum contains a fantastic collection of these stone tablets. It's quite awesome (for me anyway), to look at a stone tablet (and even recognising some characters!) that was produced in the year 640AD. I would love to come back one day when my Chinese is a LOT better and be able to read and understand what is written on these tablets.

Other places we visited included the city wall, a dumpling restaurant - Xi'an is apparently famous for it's dumplings and we experienced a dumpling banquite - 16 different types in total - delicious! Afterwards, we also enjoyed a Tang Music and Dance Performance.