I thought about how I wanted to post of my experiences while being gone for a week with limited access to the internet and this blog. I was able to update you guys briefly on some of my experiences from my phone, but I also wanted to go a bit more in depth on some of the experiences had on each day. If I were to sit down and write about everything from Sunday to Friday in this one post, well I would be writing till the early morning, and you would be reading for quite some time haha. So, I decided to go ahead and write about my events in parts. I will post each night on what I did exactly a week ago. So tonight, being Sunday, I will be writing about my experiences last Sunday when we arrived in Xi'an by train.
Depending how much I am willing to write, I may be combining more than one day of my trip on any given night, so just watch out for that =]
Alrighty then, I want to talk about my experience of getting to the great city of Xi'an (pronounced Shee-an) by sleeper train and also what we did on the first day.
I really had no idea what to expect when riding on this train, as I have had no previous experiences on trains that went such distances. My furthest train ride was about 3 hours where we sat on hard seats the whole way there. The group of 5 guys that I decided to go with wanted to see what it was like to get a soft bed sleeper for our 14 hour train ride. I had numerous ideas of what this might be running through my head, but really had no inclinations of what this trip might be like. As we arrived to the train station in Shanghai, masses and masses of people like I have never seen flooded the station attempting to buy tickets, waiting to board, and all with the same purpose; getting back to their families for the Chinese New Year. Because of this, I was quite nervous that we would miss our train, but luckily we found our terminal, boarded our train, and found our sleeper cabin!
As you can see by the picture above, the room has two bunks that fits four people quite well. The beds were more or less small pads on a hard surface, but the room had a comfy feel to it nonetheless. Both Elliot and I were quite happy as you can see that these rooms were actually decent for a 14 hour train ride.
As you can see with this picture, the top bunk is set up pretty similar as the bottom bunk. You were given one pillow with a blanket for the trip. There were tv's for each bed, but they weren't working for this trip for some reason.
Now some of you may have been doing the math in your head saying 5 guys, 4 beds, something does not seem right. Well this would be correct haha, one of our group actually stayed in a similar sleeper with three Chinese guys going back to Xi'an to see there family for the New Year. Because of this, we spent the majority of the night being spoiled by our new Chinese friends. One of three Chinese guys spoke as much English as we spoke Chinese, so the act of hanging out with them was actually a bit difficult. Regardless, whatever words were spoken, they seemed to understand that we were good guys that were just wanting to have fun. They ended up buying much beer and snacks for the room so that we all could have a good time.
It was at this point that I actually surprised myself by actually having short conversations with one of the Chinese fellows describing who I was, what I was doing in China, and other random talking topics. Although the conversations were short, it was great to atleast try speaking and understanding others in a different language. This went on for much of the night until every one was pretty exhausted and went to bed.
On another note of the train ride, if squatters weren't hard enough to use the way it is, there were multiple ones on the train. I did not try it, but thinking about it just doesn't make much sense to me haha.
We pretty much were able to sleep most of the way until we pulled up to the station in Xi'an. We were able to book a hostel ahead of time, so a man was waiting for us with a sign that said Cartin Horman (suppose to be Carlin Hormann) who took us to the hostel. At this point it was still pretty early in the day, and we arrived at the actual building around 10 in the morning.
Above is actually the entrance to the place we stayed at that was taken from the city wall on Wednesday. This was also a new experience for me staying at a place like this. Hostels are pretty much hotels but for much much less for those who are wondering. This place was very nice having many different styles of rooms, a cafe, a bar, free wifi (spotty though), and a great staff. We were staying in a dorm style room that slept 6, 2 bunks and 2 beds. Because of the one extra bed, we did have 2 different roommates during the duration of our stay....If you want a good story, read tomorrow and Tuesday's post because both have to deal with those roommates and how they didn't stay for very long haha!
Once we were settled in, we were all itching to go out and explore this new terrain that we immersed ourselves in. We kind of just walked around inside the gates coming up with possible game plans for the next coming days. There are a couple major buildings that are a must see inside the walls of Xi'an. Two of these are the Bell Tower and the Drum tower. The Bell Tower is the center of attention in the inner city because it is in the exact center of all the walls. The South, West, North, and East streets all connect around the Bell Tower creating one of the biggest round abouts I have ever seen. We were about a 10-15 walk from this tower which me made quite a few times.
Before it got dark, we headed back to the hostel to come up with an actual gameplan for what we wanted to do on Monday. We decided that we would get up early and see the world famous Terracotta Army. If there was one thing I wanted to see on this trip to Xi'an, it was these statues. I was definitely not let down but what I saw the next day which will be in my next post! =]
After the game plan, we headed back to the Bell Tower to take pictures of it lit up against the dark night sky. Below is the best picture I took that shows both the Bell Tower and the Drum tower in the distance.
This was a pretty amazing sight to see, and it amazes me that people actually live here in see these every day. To them, they aren't some famous relic that has been around for the past thousand and some odd years, but a beacon of their own city. I find this often times hard to comprehend at home, not having the same ancient backgrounds. I once visited Boston not too long ago and saw all of my own "ancient heritage" and where it all started for the United States. By the time those buildings were built, these two buildings have been aging in history and had already withstood a thousand years. We see certain buildings in the States and think that they are special, and they are, but these buildings really do encompass more than just a timestamp. They represent the ever present culture that still is seen in every day lives here in China. If anything blew me away the most on this trip, it was thinking about this.
Who knew you could get so much out of a building haha, or maybe I just read into it too much. Regardless, it fascinates me either way =]
After seeing these buildings, we headed back to the hostel where we got acquainted to the bar in the basement. Because we were staying there, prices were discounted for us, and much fun was had playing cards and just spelling out what was to come. We called it a early night because we were pretty exhausted from our train ride, and an early morning was ahead of us. Little did we know that a little past midnight, our roommate would be waking us up with some interesting antics.
That is all for now, Part 2 will include our first roommate story and also our trip to see the Terracotta Army with was amazing! There will also be more pictures to come =]
Hopefully this read was good, and you will come back to read the next one =]
God Bless,
Corbin
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