xian - the city that sold itself to the tourist

i arrived in xian alive and made it to a hostel right near the train station. this is another walled city that, if you can believe lonely planet, used to vie with constantinople and rome as one of the greatest cities in the world. i wouldn't say that anymore. not to say that it wasn't a fun city and to be perfectly honest i was only there a day, but it was crowded, dirty, sleazy and a giant tourist trap. the main attraction is china's second most visited site after the great wall, the terracotta warriors. i bused out to see them and was pretty dissapointed. they were old and the history and everything is quite awe inspiring but the government has built this disneyland museum complex to house them. it is all shiny and new and full of metal and glass but i felt that this took away from the warriors themselves because you had no sense that they were created hundreds and hundreds of years ago for a chinease emperor. they just look like clay statues behind glass. anyway, i was really hot and sweaty and maybe was a little jaded by that. but it was cool to see. i shared a room with a korean guy who didn't like chinese food. he had a suitcase full of soju though so we drank and ate a lot of fruit and these little dried fishes that you pull off the head and dip them in some paste. the next day when i woke up at five to catch my flight to shanghai, i realized that maybe the fruit had parasites or something because i couldn't stop going to the bathroom. my stomach wouldn't hold food and i looked a mess on the plane. soju and fruit are a bad mix. again i can't load my pics on yahoo. sorry.


xian children