Stranger No More

My third and final day in the ancient capitol began easily. I slept in and it was not until nearly 9:30 that I checked out. Grabbing a taxi to make my way to Anne and Evan I was beginning to anticipate breakfast at Dad’s. Once at the hostel I found Evan patiently waiting for Anne who it seems is quite the deep sleeper. Since I was planning to leave that day it was decided that I would be wise to go to the nearby train station to buy my ticket in advance and drop off my loaded up backpack. Along the way we ran into Jackie, our guide from yesterday, and when finding out I was leaving he wrote on a piece of paper what I needed so I could just present it to the ticket agent. Apparently 10:00AM is too late to beat the rush and after waiting in ‘line’ for about twenty minutes I was able to get my ticket. I use the word line very loosely as the Chinese aren’t too keen on the concept. If not for the rails at the train station it would no doubt just be a throbbing mob of people jockeying for the ticket window. Kind of like it is at China Post now that I think about it. A glance at my ticket before tucking it safely in my wallet let me know that I would depart at 11:41PM. We then safely stored my bag at the, um, bag storage place and I was looking forward to another day in Xi’an with Anne and Evan.
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Despite only about three and a half hours of sleep I was up by 7:30 and on pace to meet Anne, (despite whatever I may have led you to believe, it turns out her name is not in fact Anna. Oops.), Evan and Dave at their hotel near the train station. We had pretty lofty goals with plans to hit the terracotta warriors, a Neolithic village, hot springs and the First Emperors tomb. First we had to manage to get all of us into the same room. I swung by McDonald’s and grabbed a breakfast sandwich for everyone before taking a taxi. I arrived to find Evan in the lobby but Dave was still trying to take a non-Doobie Brothers shower. That is to say it was ‘old black water’. Eww. It was not long before Anne joined us and it was decided that since Dave would be leaving that afternoon at 5pm that we would allow him to get his shower while we went back downtown. I wanted to buy a new camera and Anne needed gloves and such. We headed back to the McDonald’s I had earlier visited with the plan to meet back there after we each accomplished our goal. I found a camera store right above the McD’s and found a camera that would meet my requirements. I began negotiating and even left once eventually driving the price down by ten percent. Since we had agreed on a price I needed to get cash so I asked the store owner where a Bank of China was. I was sent a block and a half and around the corner only to have the tellers at the branch tell me that since it was not my branch that they could not help me. Wow. Beginning to worry about time I jogged back and was able to draw the cash from the BoC ATM I had passed. A fistful of cash and no idea where Anne and Evan were I was pretty quickly alerted to their presence as they snuck up from behind and stuck their hands in my pockets. Jokers. They headed to McD’s while I went to complete the purchase of the camera. I explained in a ‘charades’ sort of way to the Chinese man that was helping me in the camera store why I needed a new one and he teased me. It turned out he is one of many photographers that stand near scenic spots and wait for Chinese tourists to pay him to take pictures of them. With my new Sony DSC-W1 in hand I went back down to the McD’s to show it off to the kids. From the door I made eye contact with a lau wei and said hello. Dan is from Southern California, lives in Korea and was traveling alone during his holiday. With another stray we now numbered five. Now that we were nearly half an hour late to meet back up with Dave we jammed ourselves into a taxi and headed to the hostel.

Tick tock. We were starting to get concerned about time which was really nice of us since it was us who were late. Now we couldn’t find Dave. Read the rest of this entry »

Back from Jiangyou and chilling in Santai I decided that I would spend some of the remaining days by taking a trip and I knew I’d better soon or else run the risk of lollygagging away my holiday. It is a hereditary risk.

After talking with a couple of female teachers I was encouraged to go to Chongqing with the enticement being that ‘there are many beautiful women’ in Chongqing. So with no other plan or great idea I took Reashan up on his offer to help me by having him come over to write some things down for me in Chinese. You know, basic stuff like, ‘I would like a soft sleeper train ticket.’, and other helpful phrases. Since I had just bought a map of China and hung it on the wall he showed me where I would be going which led to a discussion of where else I might go. Since it was decided I would be the better part of a full day on the train I reasoned that maybe I could go somewhere more interesting or with greater history in about 12 hours. It was pretty quickly decided that I would leave the next day for Xi’an, (which despite the geniuses on The Amazing Race it is not pronounced zi-en but rather she-an). Reashan explained to me that Xi’an was the capitol of China for many years including the First Emperor, it is where the terracotta warriors are, (the clincher), and has been the home to 13 dynasties. I was pretty excited. I remember as a young boy of 10 or 11 when news of the terracotta warriors broke in the Western media how I read in awe of this discovery. If I recall correctly it was after my family had taken a road trip from our home in Eugene, Oregon to Seattle, Washington to see the touring display of King Tutankhamen. I was pretty immediately excited about my upcoming adventure. I packed pretty lightly, threw in a book to read and departed Santai around 5pm the next day to catch the train in Mianyang.
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I stayed in Santai for the Chinese New Year and it was pretty amazing. In America we like to think that the Fourth of July is a pretty special day and that the fireworks are great to watch. Yeah. I enjoy the Fourth and look forward to the spectacular displays as much, (and as little), as the next American but the displays in the States are so structured and arranged that they can seem redundant and even get stale. Not so much in China. The fireworks began early in the day with lots of things going bang and a few pretty large BOOM’s as well. Not just in one specific area either.

I began walking about the town around 9:30 with the hopes of finding some dinner. Eventually I returned home because most restaurants were closed for the holiday. No doubt off to make things go boom. Along the way I stopped and bought some fireworks near where I usually rent videos. Nearly every store had a supplemental business of fireworks for sale. I was pretty quickly surrounded by some kids so I bought some to light right then much to their delight. Once back at home I cooked up some rice while the sounds of a not-so-far-away war raged outside and decided to head back out around 11:30 and boy was I in for it. I seriously could not walk more than a block without a pretty significant display of fireworks. I had run into Shirley, Reashan’s daughter, and asked her for a suggestion on where to see the fireworks from and she suggested I stay home. She may have been right but the experience I got from walking around, under and even through these spontaneous celebrations was remarkable.

I ended up, as frequently happens, at Allen Story which despite being on a tightly tree-lined street had a flurry of fire starting activities in the street in front. The number eight is a lucky number in China so the first thing I saw them light was a very large roll of 880 firecrackers. Wow. They immediately involved me in lighting simple sparklers to large 18″ square boxes that shot large roman candles into the air as well as some pretty hefty rockets. I was pretty excited. All of this was with seeming disregard to the electrical wires overhead much less the neighbors. With the large boxes beginning to clutter the street it was only necessary to keep them in a straight line so traffic could continue to pass. As rickshaws, taxi’s and police weaved through the exploding boxes I couldn’t help but smile.

As I type this, a week later, I can see roman candles lighting up the sky with red, yellow and green bursts. S’wonderful.