The China Files Wrap Up (II)

August 31 - the Chinese tour

The biggest tourist draw in Xian is Emperor Qin's tomb and his army of terra cotta warriors. We knew we would probably have to take a tour for this one, and picked up a brochure for one at the hotel. Kate went down to talk to the front desk staff (it was always easier for her to talk to the Chinese people, since if I tried they'd just expect me to speak Chinese). She ended up booking a tour for us--but a Chinese one, with no English-speaking guide. It actually turned out to be a great experience.

The tour group

The rest of the tour group was absolutely fascinated with us, and a couple of the women especially were really friendly towards Kate. They couldn't say much, of course, but they spent a lot of time smiling at her.

There was one fellow in the group with decent English. He was fairly old, and one heck of a curmudgeon. He didn't take no crap from nobody. He shouted at the tour guide when there were delays, when they took us to a pointless tourist trap, when a tour stalled on something boring. He walked out of the restaurant we stopped at because it wasn't up to his standards, and managed to get the majority of the rest of the group to go along with him. (Kate, who had the misfortune of visiting the washroom at the place, agreed with his appraisal.)

As I think I mentioned in an earlier post, some of the poorer people around tourist areas collect empty bottles from tourists in order to make a little cash. Well, at one point in the tour we were approached by an especially aggressive fellow who wanted our bottle despite the fact that we were still drinking it. Before I could really react, the old guy noticed what was happening, and apparently the situation infuriated him. He ran up spitting out a long string of angry Chinese until the other fellow ran away. For a moment I thought it might come to blows, but the old guy just turned around, I gave him my best "xie xie", he flashed a crooked grin, and we were on our way.

A taste of nationalism

This is one thing we would have missed with an English-speaking guide. Part of the Chinese-language tour took us to the site of the Xian Incident, where Chiang Kai-shek was captured and temporarily imprisoned by his own generals, who thought he was too obsessed with fighting the Communists despite the threat in Northern China posed by the Japanese. The average Westerner probably doesn't care much about this period of Chinese history, but Kate and I thought it was great. If nothing else, was an interesting glimpse into Chinese nationalism as cultivated by the Communist government.

The villa where Chiang was staying has been preserved, complete with the desks where he and his assistants worked, the beds they slept in, and the bullet holes in the walls. The generals responsible for capturing Chiang have, I suppose, been hailed as heroes in the history books; you could, for a fee, get your picture taken with a look-alike of one them (Zhang, I think it was) in a replica of his office.

When the villa was attacked, Chiang was alerted by the gunfire and fled up into the nearby mountains. He must have been quite the athlete, because he sure made it a long way. We got to see the place where he was finally captured, several meters up a crack in the face of a steep part of the mountain. Chains have been put in so that tourists can climb up to the very spot where Chiang was spotted, and there was a mob of people struggling their way up and down so that their relatives could take their pictures at this historic location. (The old guy mentioned above went up all the way.)

The Chinese tourists were every bit as enthusiastic about visiting the site of Chiang Kai-shek's capture as a little kid would be about going to Disneyland. This level of nationalism is remarkable. You don't see Canadian tourists flocking to the Plains of Abraham to get their pictures taken with someone dressed up to look like General Wolfe or the Marquis de Montcalm. (Is there a similar phenomenon in America? Nationalism can be pretty potent in the US, but I'm not sure if the same could be said for interest in American history.)

Song and dance

The tour took us to a pyramid-shaped tomb of someone or another--I think it was Emperor Qin's, but I'm not totally certain since there are apparently a whole bunch of pyramids in the area. In any case, we had to wait some time in the sun while some dancers went through this ridiculous dance routine complete with replica Tang-era costumes (made of polyester, nylon, and fake fur) and plastic axes and swords. (We thought this would be the low point of absurdity on our trip. Oh, how wrong we turned out to be.)

Terra terra cotta cotta

Archaeologists are still digging out and reassembling Qin's terra cotta army, and tourists can take a look at the work in progress. We decided to ditch the tour guide at the dig site, and walk around the complex on our own. (We ended up feeling pretty bad about this when we met back up with the group, and the tour guide apologized to us, her "foreign friends", for having such bad English.) The site is split up into museum exhibits and a series of pits in various states of excavation. In one tent, you get to see rows and rows of fully assembled soldiers and horses, while in others you get to see legs sticking halfway out of the ground, horses in 4 pieces, and whatnot.

On our way out, the tour guide stopped us and made a little speech. It was pretty clear what she was talking about, since just outside the gate was a phalanx of souvenir-hawkers, most of them brandishing miniature replicas of terra cotta warriors. Being with a Chinese tour group really paid off for us here, I think, since we got harrassed about 10% as much as probably would have been if we'd been in a group of westerners. We let our Chinese companions break through the ranks of the hawkers (which they did with ease) and we just followed in their wake. One guy with a small terra cotta warrior set shouted out some prices at Kate--I can't remember what they were, but I think that in the end we pretty much could've gotten the whole set for about a quarter. (So if you're in China and you're thinking of buying some of these things, keep in mind how much they're actually worth.)