Xi'an

For those of you who do not know about Xi'an I will try and fill you in with my limited knowledge. It was the acient capital of China at its peak it was the largest and most important city in the world. It was the capital of the great Han and Tang Dynasties. It is also the home of the Terra Cotta warriors. Which if you do not know is an entire army of over 9000 uniquily made clay soldiers. It was absolutely spectacular. I was warned that before I went that I may be dissapointed with it but I must tell you that I was not it was even more impressive than I thought it would be. I had goose bumps when I walked in. I know alot of you have probably seen pictures of it but I do not think they are able to captue the scale of how grand they are. If you ever come to China I would highly suggest you see the Great Wall and the Terra Cotta warriors. I just cannot say enough about either of them. Other than we went to the Famen temple which is believed to hold a bone of the Buddha that was sent there from India. We also visited few tombs of the great emperors of China. It is really quite bizarre because surrounding Xi'an you can see these piles of dirt everywhere out in the middle of fields I litereally mean everywhere and they are all tombs of some emperor or the emporors brother, mother or favorite concubine. I mean the amount of history in that place is extraordinary. The only problem was after the Terra Cotta warriors everything seemed anti climatic. I enjoyed the rest of the trip but it could not comparte to the warriors.

Train ride continued

The train was fun for about 6 hours then it got a little old. We were able to see a lot of the countryside which was in some parts were beautiful and others parts were depressingly dirty and poor. One funny thing that happened was around 8 oclock a guy came around selling flashlights ones that did not need batteries. He came on our car and gave about 5 minute sales pitch in Chinese and we did not pay much attention to him we just thought it was funny how he would selling them the way he was and was not just pushing a cart like the other people. Then around 10 Oclock the lights went out and that guy just happened to be in our car and about 15 of us bought a flashlight from him for 10 Yuan ($1.33) It was slightly humerous. Sleeping on the train was not quite as funny. It is kind of hard to sleep on first off there are people walking by and all sorts of things going on while you are trying sleep and second of all the train is moving constantly. Luckily though the do have little straps that come down that keep you from falling off the bed when the train stops which is does about 45 minutes at certain train stations. It was easy to sleep when the train was moving but once it stopped it would wake you a up and you would have to start the whole process of falling back to sleep again not too much fun but it i something I am glad I did once.

Riding the train to Xi'an

This weekend my group and I took a trip to Xi'an the ancient capital of China. It was the capital of China around 2000 years ago. It is about 450 miles from Chengdu roughly. Since this trip was not covered in our USAC tuition we wanted to save a little money so we decided we would take the train to Xi'an. It is a 17 hour train ride and it costs about 150 Yuan(20) which is a pretty good deal. It turns out the rail system in China is great and alot of people use the train to travel around the country because they do not own their own cars and flying is too expensive most of the time. The train was a lot of fun but it is something that i do not think I will make a habit of taking. We got what was called a hard sleeper and it earned every bit of its name. On one side of the rail car there were walls dividing areas where their were kind bunk beds set up 3 high against the wall. So six people would be in one area stacked on 3 beds and their was a little walk way for people to walk through the cart. I was say there where around 60 beds to a car. They had bathrooms at either end of the car that you could use at your own risk. The also had a dining car that was kind of expensive but not too bad. I think I am going to need to star another post. Check train ride continued.

Thanksgiving in China

Hello everyone sorry I have not posted very many new things on here recently but the truth is not much has happened until recently. Well as you know Thanksgiving was on Thursday and just because we are in China does not mean we cannot celebrate one of the most American of holidays. It was however difficult to get a turkey here though. In china most people eat Chicken or pork. So we had to special order our turkey from a local western food restaurant. We also had to have it cooked for us. Because in China most people do not use an oven. None of our apartments has an oven. Most of the time Chinese food is cooked on the stove top or fried in woks or things like that. We only had one microwave to use while cooking our Thanksgiving dinner. We ended up with about 5 different types of potato's So we had to pay the restaurant to cook and cut our turkey for us. Because we had to get two it got pretty expensive we got two turkeys cooked, cut and delivered with gravy for 960 Yuan($128). which probably is not too bad. We had all of the people in our program over and we invited some of our teachers and Chinese friends. It came out to 40-45 people. It was almost like being at the Burke family Thanksgiving just with out all the little kids running around. We ended up at the end of the night drinking beer and singing Christmas carols it was not quite like being home but it was pretty darn close. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I am still alive

Sorry to everyone I have no been very good at keeping up with my blog these last couple of weeks. That is because not that much has really gone on. It turns out that I am going to school here and I have had a final and bunch of papers due. The only thing that happened to me that was interesting was last weekend when I went to a Diwali celebration at an Indian restaurant here that was run by Tibetans who had lived in India for several years in exile. Diwali is one of the biggest holidays for Hindus so we went there and ate some pretty good Indian food and watched some Indian belly dancers. the only reason that I went is because I have made friends with an Indian guy who is from America who told us about the restaurant and the holiday. It was just a little bizarre to be celebrating a Hindu holiday in China with Tibetans and Indians in Chengdu. Other than that though I am sorry nothing out of the ordinary has happened. This fact slightly worries me because that means that all of this craziness that I see on a daily basis is starting to become normal now which is becoming a little frightening. Thing should pick up this week because I will be celebrating Thanksgiving on Thursday which should be fun and then we are going to Xian which is the Ancient capital of China and where the Terracotta Warriors are so be looking for that.

Tea House and Mahjong

Hello I hope everyone is doing well I just have few things that would like to share with everyone about my week. Although it was not as crazy as last week I still had a great time usual. It started on Friday afternoon after school got out it was a rare sunny day in Chengdu. So myself and 3 of my friends decided to go to the park to hang out at play some mahjong. So we went to a really beautiful park next to the river that goes through the city. It was 130 PM on a Friday and the tea house where we stopped to play mahjong, was packed. I could not believe it this is a very laid back city people definitely move at there own pace. I have figured out that in China you either work 12-16 hours a day or 3-5. I am not for sure that a real 9-5 job exists here. There is a huge gap between the have and the have nots. You can see it on the streets people are either driving a BMW, Audi, Mercedes or bycycle or the bus. Anyway we ended up playing mahjong and drinking tea at the park for five hours. It is an excellent way to waste an afternoon. Every so often we would have Chinese looking over our shoulders trying to help us. The enjoyed watching the foreigners try and figure the complicated game of strategy it really was a lot of fun. If you have never played mahjong I would suggest you learn it is just as much fun as cards or dominos.