This past weekend we had Friday off from class as a short mid term break after we took the midterm on Thursday. It was really nice not to think about our intensive studies and experience a different city other than Beijing. We took a slow sleeper train on the way there Thursday night so we started our busy sightseeing schedule Friday morning. The first thing we did after eating lunch and quickly visiting another university there was go see the terracotta army, what Xi’an is most famous for.

I didn’t realize that the warriors were only discovered in the 1970s but have been in existence for over 2000 years. I was also surprised to find out that there are over 6000 warriors and it took about 40 years to build all of them. That night we also went and saw a performance of the famous poem 长恨歌 about an emperor in the Tang dynasty’s love story. It was cool because this story took place at the place where the performance was at. It was a very high tech performance and a great way to end our first day in Xi’an.

On Saturday we first went to the Xi’an city wall where we were able to ride bikes for a couple hours around the whole thing. The wall is quite tall so it was nice to see the city from a higher perspective. Luckily the weather was great the whole weekend we were there which was another nice break from the seemingly endless pollution of Beijing.

We then went to this Xi’an Muslim street that was filled with street vendors and street shops that was similar to the pearl market but more outside.

That afternoon and the next morning we went to the small and wild goose pagoda respectively. Our tour guide there told us that the pagodas were built after Buddhists in India prayed during a famine and wild geese fell from the sky for them to eat. The small wild goose pagoda had a museum at its site and the big goose pagoda was surrounded by Buddhist temples with active monks practicing there. As for the food in Xi’an I overall enjoyed it but they had some foods distinct to Xi’an. One of them was where when we got to the restaurant we each had our own circle of bread like food (don’t know how else to describe it) and we had to break it into little pieces where they then proceeded to make it into a soupy noodle dish.

My time in China is flying by and these past 4 weeks have definitely been some to remember.