Xi’an 西安

Xi’an （西安） 

大家好!  

Currently, I have left Beijing and am on my study trip for the semester. This semester, I am making my way to Yunnan Province. During the study trip, we have to do research on something that can either 1. pertain to Yunnan Province or 2. be on one of the ethnic minorities in China. My research project is going to be on the Naxi People in China. They are an ethnic group that live in the northwestern part of Yunnan Province and the Southwestern part of Sichuan Province. I will be researching the Naxi people’s religion, Dongba, and how it is related to Tibetan Buddhism. However, this post isn’t about the Naxi people or Dongba. It is about the first city that we’ve visited on the study trip, Xi’an (西安） 

西安 was the old capital of China during the early dynasties (Western Zhou, Qin, Western Han, Sui, and Tang). It is one of the oldest cities in China. Today, it is the capital city of Shaanxi Province. The name 西安 itself means “Western Palace.” The city used to be called 長安 which means “Perpetual Peace.” 

On the first day in 西安 we went to a food street near our hotel. There were stalls upon stalls of restaurants and people trying to get you to go into one. The place that we went to had very good food. I got to try something new that I hadn’t had while in Beijing. I got biang biang 面 (the character for biang is too complicated to write) and 泡馍 which is meat and bread soup. Both were delicious and definitely would like to eat again. After dinner, we walked around the street. There are shops where you can buy souvenirs. You may have to bargain though. I have yet to go to a place to bargain and the places that I have been to that require bargaining, I haven’t bought anything, so I didn’t need to bargain.  

The second day in 西安 we visited the Terracotta soldiers （宾马俑） The soldiers were built by the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. These soldiers were discovered in 1974 by a local farmer. We actually got to meet one of the local farmers who found them. He was just 18 years old when he discovered them. The soldiers include warriors, chariots, and horses. Each soldier is unique. Even today, they are still excavating the tombs and reconstructing Terracotta soldiers. The tomb of the emperor remains unexcavated because it is potentially boobytrapped. Our tour guide told us that the emperor has his coffin laying on a river of mercury and anyone who goes in there would die from poison. Our tour guide also said that the Terracotta soldiers are the “Eighth wonder of the World.”  We also visited the 西安 city wall. The wall is one of the oldest, largest, and best-preserved city walls in China. It was built under the Hongwu Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang who was the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty. The wall was a military defense system. Today, it divides the old and the modern in 西安。 

The third day we went to the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda (大雁塔). The Giant Wild Goose Pagoda is a Buddhist pagoda that was built in 652 during the Tang Dynasty. The pagoda was later rebuilt by Empress Wu Zetian in 704. It was meant to hold sutras and figurines of the Buddha that were from India. At the entrance of the Pagoda, there were a bunch of older ladies dancing. We stopped to watch them for a while. Apparently, older people gather in the mornings and on the weekend and will do dancing exercises. They were pretty good.  After the Wild Goose Pagoda, we went to the Great Mosque of Xi’an (西安大请真寺). The previous day we had a lecture on Islam in China. This is the largest mosque in China. The majority of this mosque was built during the Ming Dynasty. It was very interesting learning about Islam in China. Our professor was even Muslim, and there were generations and generations of Muslims in his family. Chinese Islam and Middle Eastern Islam are very similar but Chinese Islam is not as strict. We finished off our visit to 西安 with a group dinner and then headed to Chengdu 成都。See you there! 

再见！ 

马乐