Today was a less packed day, given that we arrived early this morning on the overnight from Beijing to Xian. Our local guide met us and got us to our hotel where we ate a good breakfast and then got into our rooms to shower and change. We had the morning free to settle in and left midday for our first stop which was the Shaanxi History Museum. It is a first class museum of the history of the many dynasties of China with very thorough and well done displays of Chinese history and artifacts from pre-history through the end of Imperial China in 1911. Going through that museum really brings home how ancient is this civilization and how great a civilization it has been for millennia. We Americans have no concept of a sweep of history so deep and broad as do the Chinese with literally thousands of years of complicated and complex history behind them.
After touring the Museum we went to the Xian City Wall, one of the only remaining city walls in China. It was built by Hongwu,the founder of the Ming Dynasty. It is an imposing structure, 40 feet high and 8.5 miles long. We climbed up to the top of the wall and then a few of us rented bikes and rode a lot of the wall, getting great views of the city from up on high! They have soothing Chinese music playing from loudspeakers as you traverse the wall so I kept feeling like I should be stretching out for a massage rather than pedaling my bike! It was really fun to bike the wall though. Pretty bumpy ride as the wall is made of bricks and they are uneven and pockmarked at this point in time so it was a bone rattling ride around the wall.
After we left the wall, we went to dinner. Tonight we sampled something known as Mongolian Hot Pot. Everyone has a small bunson burner with a small pot of water which you bring to a boil. Then they serve multiple dishes with ingredients that you put into your boiling pot. There is a banquet table dedicated solely to sauces and spices that you mix together to create the dipping sauces. Then as you take the food out of the pot you dip it into the sauce or various sauces to eat. We all had a little trouble figuring out how to make a sauce we liked and we were not always successful! We had lots of food however - beef, lamb, shrimp, crab, tofu, noodles, and many vegetables. It was a lot of work, and many of us decided we prefer it when the Chinese chefs do the cooking and we just eat what's put in front of us!
After dinner we returned to the hotel and then walked over to the Muslim Quarter which is very near our hotel. There are many shops and markets over there selling all kinds of foods and other goods. The place was teeming with people as it is a lively spot for the many night markets. I couldn't get over seeing Chinese Muslims! Chinese women in hijab looked a little funny to me!! I also couldn't imagine how those Muslim shopkeepers were managing to cook and sell all that food while it is Ramadan and they are fasting from dawn to sunset. That is real discipline!
I returned to the hotel after wandering the market and was delighted to see a bar with gin, so enjoyed a G&T after many days without my nightly fix!! All in all, a good day! The pics tonight include a Chinese print from the museum, me on my bike on the Ming Wall, a shot of the wall as we rode it, the table set for our Mongolian Hot Pot meal and a shot of the night market in the Muslim quarter.
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