One of my favorite activities of my time in China was riding bikes on Xi An’s city wall. Xi An is one of the China’s oldest cities and is home to some of the most treasured artifacts from China’s long history. While we were in Xi An, we visited many historical sites including Emperor Qin’s Mausoleum, which is home to the famous Terracotta Warriors. We also visited Xi An’s Muslim Street, a street bustling with food vendors leading to a few beautiful Islamic mosques. Finally, we rented bikes and rode all the way around Xi An’s city wall. This wall no longer surrounds the perimeter of the city. However, the city decided to keep the wall while other cities, like Beijing, destroyed their city walls a long time ago.
Riding bikes on the wall was so much fun for me. For one, I love riding bikes. And two, we could see so many beautiful views of the city while exploring the city wall itself. At one point, I stopped to look down over the wall and saw a beautiful, green park. This is something I hadn’t seen much of in Beijing. There were old men going on walks, and people playing ping pong at the bottom of the wall. For me, this was a refreshing sight, and one that I will not soon forget from my time visiting Xi An.