The China Files Wrap Up (I)

Previous installments:
Arrival
August 26 - Beijing
August 27, 28 - Beijing
August 29 - Beijing to Xian.

Picking up where I left off:

August 30 - Xian

We spent the day running and taxiing around Xian. Here are some highlights:

Great Goose Pagoda

This is a big pagoda, with I forget how many levels. You can go inside and climb up, which we did, and once we were up a ways we were able to look out onto the construction site adjoining the pagoda grounds, where they were putting up concrete replicas of Ming era buildings, because I guess the pagoda itself isn't impressive enough for tourists. (See some of of the finished products here.)

Shaanxi History Museum

A good museum, as far as museums go. Traced the history of the area from about a dozen millennia ago or so, which was cool, although we'd already seen a lot of the same kind of material at other museums. Lots of focus on Qin and his crazy terra cotta army (more on which later).

Small Goose Pagoda

Actually more photogenic than its Greater counterpart, I thought. Picture here, with me at the bottom being really amazed or something.

Random food

We had lunch at a restaurant that we picked pretty randomly, without any help from the guidebook. We guessed that the restaurant specialized in local Muslim cuisine (there was a sign behind the counter displaying what looked like Arabic calligraphy), but we weren't sure (for reasons to be discussed shortly).

The menu had no English whatsoever, so I had to muddle through by picking out kanji here and there. I managed to locate tea, and ordered what I thought would be green tea, but the waitress shook her head when I pointed to it, and pointed at a different kind of tea instead. I decided to go along with her suggestion. It turned out to be camomile. It could be that the waitress thought it would be more to the taste of westerners (actually we really like green tea, and kind of dislike camomile), or maybe it was just that the camomile was the most expensive kind of tea on the menu.

I also managed to pick out a couple of dishes, with decent results. When we got the food, we were duly impressed, especially by this one dish. It had some sort of tomato-based chili sauce, these really tender potatos, and about two dozen cloves of garlic. Mmmm, garlic. Unfortunately, there were also these little bits of meat--bits of meat which seemed to include bones shaped and arranged like ribs--tiny, 5mm wide ribs. I'd been pretty sure that the description of the dish had the character for cow in it, but inspecting the meat led me to doubt my understanding of the menu. I must admit, I'm no expert on bovine anatomy, but, as far as I know, no part of your average cow's body matches the above description in the slightest.

We briefly considered the possibility that we were eating cat or something, but we were pretty sure that cat isn't Halal.

So, when you're in China, don't be afraid to stray off the beaten path and eat at random restaurants, because they can be really good, and there's a chance you'll get to eat some kind of meat you've never eaten before, some kind of meat that you'll never be able to identify, nay, not unto the end of your days.

Traffic

We climbed up a number of buildings that provided a good view of the city. The Bell Tower, for example, stands in the center of the old city, with main roads heading out from it in the four cardinal directions. Here's a good representation of Chinese traffic (if you click on the picture, you can zoom in and see more detail). I think the chaos pretty much speaks for itself. Note the number of cop cars (see the red and blue lights) cruising along in the midst of the chaos.

Great Mosque

This didn't merit much mention in the guidebook, but we thought it was sort of the highlight of the day. Among the virtues of the place was that it has yet to be turned into a tourist trap (the local Muslim community might object to that sort of thing). The grounds were arranged like a Chinese courtyard, but instead of being built along the standard south-to-north axis, it was east-to-west, facing Mecca. The structures were a seamless mix of Chinese and Arabic architecture.

The fellow who took our tickets at the main entrance to the place was obviously mentally disabled. Now that I think about it, he might have been the only seriously mentally disordered person I saw during my whole time in Asia who was leading a half-way productive life. (I seem to recall reading somewhere that Islamic tradition has a more charitable view of mental disorder than is common in many other cultures.)

The Muslim motif continues

We had dinner at a Muslim restaurant, this time one recommended by the guidebook. It was good food, but we feel the guidebook's write-up of the place was a little incomplete. Here's my tip to travellers: if you're in a Muslim restaurant (possibly only in a Muslim restaurant in China, or maybe only in this part of China in particular), and they give you a bowl with a round of dense flatbread in it, then you should tear up the flatbread into little pieces (without eating it), leave the little pieces of bread into the bowl, after which they take the bowl away, pour some soup/stew over the pieces of bread, and bring it back to you. Then, and only then, do you commence eating. The flatbread is not an appetizer. If you fail to follow the above steps, everyone else in the restaurant will look at you like you're doing something terribly impolite, which you probably are.