Smoke and Oil: It's Worth Much More Than You Pay For It!

So says a sign at the Terra-cotta Warrior museum only a short drive out of the city of Xi'an in China's "wild west." Agreement with that sentiment was a little hard to come by as our reviews of the city (and it's warriors) was more than a little mixed.

We (Myself, Chris, Denis and Nicole) set out for Xi'an from Shanghai's Pudong airport in the late afternoon of December 31st.

The spacious and zen-like Pudong airport.

A digital macro shot of the airplane seat fabric. I love my new camera.

The bean paste bun they served us on the plane.
In China, there is almost always a surprise such as this in an unsuspecting bun.

The flight went smoothly and we reclaimed our checked bags with no problem. We should have known something was up. A moderately too expensive cab ride into the city, and we were dropped off in one piece at our hotel.

Nicole did some really wonderful travel agent work, and found a five star hotel (the Sofitel) for only $60 dollars a night. Scroll down a bit to see pictures of our incredible hotel rooms. We were upgraded to suites because it was the "off season" and we requested to have rooms closer together. We very quickly learned why Xi'an is so barren during the off season.

The first adventure out of the Sofitel and into the chaos of Xi'an on New Year's Eve.

Perhaps the most beautiful part of Xi'an.

I continued with my Guardian Lion theme.
This one is outside of a busy and very bright traditional Chinese family restaurant.

Nicole's birthday is May 1st. She likes buns. Enough Said.

POPULACEDIRECTBUSEYEGLASSESSUPERMARKET

Why would you not want to buy glasses there?!

New Year's Celebration and a huge night market.

The Logo of our first (atrocious) attempt to eat a good meal in Xi'an.

Udon noodles we had for dinner. It was a good thing that they were relatively tasty, because we ended up with four orders. Oh, the perils of not speaking Chinese in China.

You WILL enjoy your Udon!!!!

I wonder what goes on there at 8:30 . . . ?

Wal-mart with a "Do not enter" sign. Enough said.

The next three photos were my best of the night. They resulted from having a few drinks at dinner and losing my inhibition to take pictures of people on the street.

Ok, so, I said you would be able to find pictures of the hotel. Here they are. First, there are pictures of the dessert plate I made at the buffet at one of the hotel restaurants on the last night of our stay. Try not to be too jealous.

Here is the room. There was a living room, a bed room, and TWO bathrooms. It was basically awesome!

The second bathroom

The main bathroom

The main bathroom continued.

And so on

And so forth.

This was the "rain effect" shower head.
Don't worry, if you didn't like that, there was a hose and two jets.
Oh, and the bath tub.

The view from the bedroom.

It was late and cold and dirty, and we had all been beaten-down by the unfortunate dinner experience. So, we gave up and headed back to the comforts of our warm and soft hotel.

The following days plans included riding bikes on the ancient city wall and checking out the bell and drum towers in the city square. But first, we stopped for breakfast.

Bakeries are very popular in China, and one of the best is called Bread Talk. I purchased three breakfast pastries. The one below is unquestionably the cutest. The problem with buying cute food, however, is that it must be comsumed sooner or later, as documented in the pictures below.

It was sad. But, then again, when it is a bun filled with chocolate, it is not so sad that it cannot easily be eaten.

After breakfast, we headed to the South Gate of the wall and ran into the Bell Tower. It was a whopping 40 kwai entrance fee, so we decided to see what we could for free. Oddly enough, in the shadow of the massive bell tower in the middle of a bustling city square, this is what I saw first.

The tiniest kitty ever.

Underneath a huge tower.

Shenma Xi'an?

We felt really bad for the kitty, who was tiny and shivering, so we went across the road and got it a meat stick. It devouered the whole thing quicker than any of us would have been able to.

I held the cat for a while, in an attempt to warm it up. Feeling that my gloves might have been diseased, I left them behind and tried to make a little nest fo the cat in some bushes.

The Xi'an Kitty Incident was the highlight of our trip. (Remember: we saw the Terra-cotta warriors; the self-proclaimed Eigth Wonder of the World. That is saying a lot.)

After the Xi'an Kitty Incident, we headed to the Ancient Wall. There was a near scuffle at the entrance gate, as there was some confusion as to whether we had to buy a ticket or not. In the end, the women in the ticket booth made themselves very clear by physically blocking the gate with their bodies. I was sent up as a sheep to scope things out. This is the picture I took then:

I was able to convince everyone else to come up. I even convined Nicole to put on her face mask for an Ancient Wall Photo Op.

Here is the sign for the bike tours, which we decided not to take. We decided this for a few reasons. First, it was far too cold. Second, it was far too polluted. Third, it was far too desolate, making us believe that we would look like crazy westerner's biking around the city wall when it was clearly inclement to do so.

Some old roofs.

The way to Moon City. Duh.
(Much props to Nicole for her interpretive pose. It is hard to convey such emotion with a big black mask covering three-quarters of your face.)

Once we finished playing around on the wall and gazing at the picturesque views of factory smoke stacks and shopping malls, we headed to a place recommeneded by Josh. With a name like this, how could you resist?

"The Legendary DaFe Chang Resturant is Renownded for Its Superior Delicious Dumplngs"

This is merely one of the delicious dumplings.

Nicole's got skills when dunking a dump.

Digital Macro. Enough said.

After lunch, in an attempt to get warm, we stumbled upon a grocery that sold imports. In it, I found this jewel.

It does seem that in the current day and age, the usage of sex to sell commodities has become gratutitous. However, this is Asparagus juice. Asparagus juice! It NEEDS sex to sell. Honestly.

After a quick rest at the hotel and a shower to breifly cleanse ourselves of the "Xi'an Fog" (also known as smog) it was out to the Muslim district to check out the night market scene. The following are the photos that transpired:

Literally hundreds of meat sticks.

What happens to sugar cane when you make juice out of it.

Sugar cane before juice making.

Skull. Enough said.

Although, to the untrained eye, most of the foods in the night market would have seemed unidentifiedable, this wasn't our first Ro-DE-0. We have been in China a little over five months now. There isn't much we can't idenitify. Until this:

After Denis tasted it and displayed on his face perhaps the widest range of expression I have seen from the modest and stioc Denis, he passed it off to Chris. The resulting pictures tell the tale.

Skeptical uncertainty. That is Xi'an at it's finest.

Buying thirty kwai of dried fruit (that is A LOT of dried fruit) was the grand finale of the evening. Much less notable (not even picture worthy) was how the night actually ended -- in another failed attempt at eating in a resutarant. This time it was Korean.

Upon returning to the hotel exhausted, we tasted the dried fruit. Much to our surpise, it was especially delicious. The dried bananas, kiwis, and pinapples I got were the best I have ever had, China or no China. If there is anything Xi'an should be famous for, it's dried fruit.

We got to sleep early, because Chris advised us that it would be a good idea to get to the Terra-Cotta warriors early.

This is what it looks like when you get to the Warriors a little too early.

Yup, that is Denis and Nicole freezing outside of KCF, where we were forced to have breakfast. This is what a KFC breakfast at the ancient site of the warrior army looks like:

And this is what the Terra-Cotta Warriors look like:

It was earth-rammed.

Shenma?

In this picture, I look fairly normal. Perhaps a bit cold. Perhaps thawing my inner organs. But, other than that, fairly normal. Chris, on the other hand, looks like some strange combination of a Soviet field worker and/or mafia member mixed with the unibomber. No wonder the Chinese think Lao Wai are so strange. Thank, Chris.

It's true, all of the thousand year old relics unearthed from a hidden well near the tomb of one of the most important emperors in Chinese history were pretty typical.

What follows, however, is totally atypical,

But very China.

Nicole wanted to join in on the creepy gigantic warrior-little school girl action. Of course, we all encouraged her.

Ahhh. Here's to recreating wonders!

The bus ride from hell even before we knew it was going to be the bus ride from hell.

For me, the rest of the day was spent recovering the the hotel, taking a swim in the most beatiful indoor pool I have ever seen, and going to the hotel buffet (where I consumed the entire dessert plate you saw earlier).

After that, I kind of refused to leave the hotel until we got in a cab to go to the airport. This cab to be exact:

We arrived at the airport a little early. It's funny what happens when you get four travelers together who all believe in and live by the motto, "Better one hour early than one second late." The time was put to use by testing out all of the modes on my new camera.

Here is Nicole being a fish in an aquarium: