Terracotta Day

To we caught a local bus to the site of the Terracotta Warriors. This was not a tour bus and it was not all duplicated in English like the Beijing subway. But with the good grace of locals and the little bit of Mandarin we know we made the 1 hour trip by Bus to this historic site. They claim it is the Eighth wonder of the world. I wonder how many places in the world claim that. We have already visited another with the Great Wall of China also laying claim to that place.

The Terracotta Warriors where made for an old Chinese Emperor over 2000 years ago to protect his spirit in the next life. He had over 6000 unique warriors, infantry, cavalry (with horses) and archers individually sculpted for his protection. Then he buried the lot around his tomb where they remained hidden for nearly 2 millennia. Until they where accidentally discovered by some locals digging a well. Since then a massive effort has been made to unearth and then slowly reconstruct from the broken fragments thousands of this life-size clay statues. 

It was great to visit this impressive site and find out a little more about Chinese history.

Our new room

We are so happy with our Xian Hostel! Especially as we are paying less then our Hostel in Beijing (for 3 nights the total is £21 each)

Tomorrow the Terracotta Warriors

Sleeper Train in China

We are successfully booked into our next Hostel in Xi'an, which is epic but more about that in our next post. We have completed our first trip on a Chinese sleeper train and we travelled in luxury! Travelling on a major train line we had the option to take a Deluxe Soft Sleeper ticket which means that we were in the lap of luxury with a private cabin for just us two and a private bathroom (which was bigger then our bathroom in our Beijing Hostel). We are not sure if we will get the chance to buy this type of ticket again., so we were very happy to enjoy it for our first trip! Especially as it was not hugely more expensive than sharing :D 

The Beijing West train station was huge in itself, truly giant. Not only did we have luxury on the train but our soft ticket gave us access to a special waiting area with deep soft armchairs. We had our first western fast food in a little KFC meal. Michelle had fun ordering it ( a lovely Chinese teenager came to her aid!). Whilst we were waiting for our train to be ready to board (long wait we got to the station early) I went down to the underground ticket office and spent an hour sweating in a que to buy our next ticket. Sadly not a Deluxe option that time. 

The train when it finally allowed us to board was awesome. We loved our little cabin and had a reasonable night sleep. We woke up a few times when the train made various noises and also Gareth was woken up on the bottom bunk when Michelle's Kindle slipped from the top bunk and hit him on the head. But not a bad night sleep. I even got a nice hot cup of coffee delivered to our cabin in the morning to help us wake up. Obviously for most of the trip it was black outside but in the morning we had over an hour watching the scenery and saw a much greener part of China compared to the grey of Beijing which was a nice change :D 

never complain about english ticket ques

Just spent an hour in a long long que to buy our train tickets from
Xi'an to Chengdu. it was swelteringly hot and humid. If you imagine
the most stuffy humid London tube ride you have been on and then make
it louder and hotter and you have a rough idea what the ticket lounge
was like. but after an hour que i was able to speak to a assistant in
English and book our train with minimal fuss and half the price of
using an agent. lets hope its as easy in the rural areas!

Good Bye Beijing

We have changed the setting so it is easier for anyone to comment on our blog. But we are just about to go to the station to catch our first train in China. When we get to Xian we are not certain if we will able to get online regularly, so post may be less frequant and with less pictures. Thank you for all your comments so far its fun to read what people think about our little adventure.

Lama Temple, Confucius Temple and Hutong

Today was our last full day in Beijing. Tomorrow we leave for Xian for our first ever sleeper train, excited. We started the day by visiting the Buddhist Lama Temple. The biggest and one of the most important Tibetan temple outside of Tibet. It was good to see a Temple taht was being used actively for worship. The air was thick with the smell of incense. We then went on and did much pondering at Confucius' Temple. It was nice to be able to fit in a visit to both places.

We then went on to visit a Hutong (another long walk away). The Hutong is a narrow street between low houses and courtyards and this one was a busy market street. Loads of people and interesting shops.  We bought some postcards, just need to work out how to post them now. It was good to see another side to Beijing. 

This evening we went to a local restaurant and after struggling a little with the language barrier we got Sweat and Sour Pork balls (which where so sweet it tasted like eating honey drenched pork), a whole Peking Duck with pancakes, two bowels of rice and a couple of drinks for just £13. Some things are very cheap here. We are leaving our first Hostel tomorrow and repacking was very difficult but we got it done. 

We are not sure about how good the internet will be when we leave here so our blog updates may be more sporadic and possibly with less photos. . 

  

Temple of Heaven, Old is young and Kung Fu

Today we got up early to go to the Temple of Heaven which is another
beautiful example of architecture surrounded by huge grounds. The
palaces, temples and buildings where pretty spectactular but what we
found most interesting was the activitives of mainly elderly people
around the park! People of all ages from young children to what
looked like retired people where doing all sorts of physical activity.
From what we think was Chinese Zumba, to amazing stretching, crazy
push ups and muscle work outs. Their was even an outside gym set up
with bars and poles to do gymnastics on! We saw people doing circus
diablo (a couple that looked in their late 50's?!), waving ribbons and
playing this curious game, that seems very popular in China with all
ages, it's kind of like kicking about a hacky sack but with an
oversized shuttlecock with bright feathers. Slightly odd but popular
across Beijing and especially with people over 30. They seem to
regularly meet in parks to play this game. It was a wonderful glimpse
of Chinese people today and not just Chinese history. Again Michelle
was asked if people could take pictures of her which she is finding
very odd and blaming her curly hair for ! :D

Also today Gareth tried fried scorpion on a stick. The little ones
tasted liked crisps but the big black ones where a bit to chewy. In
the evening we went to a Kung Fu show. I wish we could show you
pictures of this but we weren't allowed to take any photos. The actors
were amazing fit and strong. Balancing on top of spears and breaking
metal bars over their head. An amazing evening.