Xian, the troublesome, the nice and the tour

Xian means "western peace" in chinese. To me, Xian means "a place of no International calling cards". Jon and I walked all over Dongdajie, Xian's longest and largest street and couldn't find a place to buy a IP (International calling card). There were plenty of cell phone places that had a sign indicating that they sold IP cards, but when we asked the sales associates, they said, oh, we don't have those. Jon and I finally found a place and bought a card. My parents were quite happy to hear from us. Though, now I'm worried that our search for a IP card in Yichang will be even more difficult. Ok, enough venting about the inconvenience of getting a IP card in Xian, time to talk about the interesting aspects.

We arrived in Xian quite early in the afternoon, so we decided to tour the city. We went to McDonald's for lunch because I was quite sick of Xian after the tiresome search for an IP card and useless sales associates. I missed the States so much...
After lunch, Jon and I went to the Muslim Quarter to take a look at the Great Mosque. The Great Mosque is really interesting because it had a very Chinese feel to it. The architecture is completely Chinese...Tang dynasty architecture with tile roofs and upturned eaves. We also did some souvenir shopping in the Muslim quarter.

Jon and I joined a CITS tour when we arrived in Xian. The tour took us to the Bingmayong (terra cotta warriors), Huaqing pool (winter palace), and the Big Goose Pagoda (famous for being the pagoda that Shen Zheng designed when he returned from India, Journey to the West). The tour bus also took us to a tourist trap where we were urged to purchase terra cotta warriors of the best quality (best quality = baked in a kiln). The Huaqing pool was built in 1950 in the place of where the ancient pools were located...I personally think that the Huaqing pool was built because you really can't spend a whole day just seeing the bingmayong and Xian needed more tourist attractions. The Big Goose Pagoda was very peaceful, except for some hammers pounding and 5 cranes that can be seen in the distance just behind the pagoda. The bingmayong is awesome and as such, the Xian government has successfully turned the site into a very tourisy place. Books, postcards, sculptures, and many other museum-like items. The varying facial features of the bingmayong leads one to wonder at the artistic abilities of the peoples of ancient China. They also must have had a lot of clay around to sculpt so many warriors and horses...quite amazing. Though, the movie that they showed in the movie theater (yes, there is a movie theater on the site) was more of a Qin dynasty movie showing some actor dressed as Qin Shi Huang. I would have liked to see a documentary on the discovery of the bingmayong since it is an historical site afterall.

Xian food is ok, nothing spectacular. We had some dumplings that were decent. Starbucks was also nowhere to be found. Being from Seattle, I'm a little bummed about not getting my coffee fix. I had to get coffee from McDonald's and let's just say that Xian doesn't really know how to make good coffee. I'll just have to wait a few more days before I get back into Seattle for some sweet, brewed goodness.