Beijing Diary: May 2006

Tour Retrospective

We're back in Beijing and recovering from the long trip! We visited 7 universities and 8 cities in many parts of China in just over 3 weeks. It was a hectic schedule, but we saw many beautiful sights and fascinating objects, and met many interesting people. Here is a map of the places we visited. Below are a set of pictures, one from each city, summarizing some of what we saw on the trip.

Shanghai

Hangzhou

Xiamen

Guilin

Kunming

Lanzhou

Dunhuang

Xi'an

Another Warrior Picture

Looking through my too large collection of pictures from the Terracotta Warrior Museum on the plane back to Beijing I found this one. I think it shows the individual character of each figure better than the ones I posted before.

Terracotta Warriors

The Terracotta Warriors were the guardians of the tomb of the first emperor of the united China, Qin Shi Huang, who died in 210BC. They were first unearthed in 1974, and since then enormous effort has been put into excavating and restoring the figures, and building a museum and viewing sites around the excavation pits. The combination of the massive scale of the terracotta army and the individuality of the life-size warriors faces, expressions, and poses is most striking. This is certainly a place to see if you come to China!

Warriors

Kneeling Archer
The daunting task of reconstructing the warriors is still going on in the viewing halls.

Fallen Warriors

Reconstruction

The Terracotta Warriors are about a mile from the actual tomb of the emperor. The scale of the tomb is impressive too - it is a hill 50m high (originally 100m) and 500m on each side. We visited the tomb on the way to the Terracotta Warrior Museum. This was useful in setting the scene for the warriors to come, but there is not actually much to see: although there are stories of wonderful things buried in the mound, no excavation has been carried out yet. Nearby to the tomb two bronze chariots, about half life size, were discovered. These are now on display in the Terracotta Warrior museum. They are wonderfully detailed and lifelike.

Bronze Chariot

Xi'an

The last stop on theour "grand tour" of China is Xi'an. This city was the capital of China in ancient times, and is now a big bustling city with historical sites in the middle of modern developments. A city wall surrounds what was once the old city, and recently parts have been reconstructed to make a complete circuit. In the morning we rented a tourist tandem and rode the 13.74km (according to the sign) around the wall.

City Wall

You can ride around the city wall

Modern City from Old City Walls

The most impressive place we visited in Xi'an was the Forest of Steles. This is a collection of large stones (many maybe 8ft by 2ft) inscribed with historical texts such as the "Four Books" and edicts of emperors - a large and very heavy library of Chinese writings. One stone that emphasized for me the incredibly long history of China was a stone describing transferring a tablets to the museum - over a thousand years ago!

Making an Ink Copy of a Tablet
The Big Goose Pagoda is another of the sites to see. There is a good view from the top, including the Musical Fountain that just started as we arrived.

Big Goose Pagoda

Candle Offerings

Musical Fountain

Dunhuang

We took the overnight sleeper train from Lanzhou to Dunhuang (actually to Liuyuan in the middle of nowhere, and then another 2 hours by car to Dunhuang). Despite this being a desert with almost no rain, we arrived at Liuyuan in a heavy downpur, and got quite cold looking around for the waiting car. Dunhuang is an oasis in the harsh desert, and was an important town on the Silk Road. The main reason for going there is to see the amazing Mogao Caves - hundreds of caves carved out of the soft sandstone, with Buddhist figures lavishly decorated with colorful art from the 4th century onwards. Due to the isolation and dry climate, the paintings are well preserved, and much survives unretouched from the original times. The caves are now all enclosed for preservation, and only a few are opened each day for guided tours - with no photos allowed inside.

Dry Desert near the Mogao Caves

Cliff of Mogao Caves
In the evening to fill out the day we visited the Singing Sands Mountains (Mingsha Shan) just south of Dunhuang. These are impressive sand dunes, with the highest one rising to 1700m. They have been turned into a desert playground, with sand slides, camel rides, dune buggies, hang gliding, and any other desert activity you can imagine.

Dune Playground: Tour Bus, Sand Slide and Staircase

Camel Depot

Camels Preparing to Depart

Camel Ride

Camel Closeup
My host Wenshan and I climbed part way up the dunes, and enjoyed the views, and watching the avalanche patterns form in the sand after our foot steps.

Sand Patterns
(The "cliffs" are about 1cm tall)

Crescent Lake and Pavilion

Sand Dunes

Lanzhou

Lanzhou is our next stop, to visit Northwest Normal University. We arrived at 1am last night (this morning!), and I am to give a talk in the afternoon, so we didn't do too much sight seeing. We planned a visit to the museum, but it turned out to be closed, so instead we wandered around Donfanghong Sqaure in the downtown area. On the square is a small roped off area for feeding pigeons, and both people and pigeons seemed to stick to the rule!

Donfanghong Square

Monk Feeding Pigeons
Lynn and the pigeons seemed to enjoy each other.

We had a lunch of the famous Lanzhou noodles, accompanied by sanpo tea made from 9 different ingredients (tea, loquat, rose buds, wolf berry, jujube, chrysanthemum, large sugar crystals, and one other dried berry).

Noodle Chef

Sanpo Tea

The first bridge across the Yellow River, now pedestrian only, and a musical fountain, provide an evening gathering place on the banks of the river.