Return from Xi'an

Weather: 52F and overcast
Time: 11am

It was a short trip that felt long a long time.  A group of four of us got out there and did as much as we could with the 29 hours we had to work with.  We visiting the terracotta warriors and went to Mt Huashan.  The train rides were longer than expected.  We are back in Shanghai and working at school til this weekend's F1 race.

Train to Xi'an
I was hoping for a very nice train ride to Xi'an and in retrospect, it was a rather nice ride there.  We left at Friday at 8pm and were scheduled to get in at 10am Saturday.  The train car was a private four bed "soft sleeper."  I would not really call it soft, but maybe they mean nice amenities.  It had a door and four televisions (that did not work).  There were two bathrooms per car, each car holding 36 people.  Small but somewhat comfortable.  Probably a lot of room of a Chinese person and kind of small for an American person, in terms of comfort space.  We did not arrive until noon, which hurt our time table a bit, but really hurt morale more.  I did not enjoy the extra time on the train.  My roommate's Kindle (from Amazon) has some internet access so I tried using that without killing the battery.

Private Driver
Getting off the train, we were approached by a broken English speaking man trying to drive us to see the warriors.  Our plan was to see the warriors and continue to the mountain, so we needed  a special driver not just a bus.  We eventually hired him for 700RMB for the whole day.  He drove us 30 minutes to TerraWar and then another 2.5 hrs to Mt Huashan.  He was the brother of the broken English character and unfortunately spoke little English.  One of the four of us spoke enough Chinese to get us where we needed to go, that was not me.

Terracotta Warriors
An interesting exhibit.  The idea here was to protect the emperor in his after life.  They built many pits and put roofs over all the clay soldiers at the time of construction.  As many people know, each one is actually based of a real solider.  Each was hand painted and colored.  Over time, the roof collapsed and crush ALL of the warriors in all of the pits.  They started in pit 1 and they've been restoring the originals by gluing them back together.  The paints that were used have faded in all of the pit 1 soldiers.  Since this has happened, they did not uncover pit 2, which is over 6000 m^2 of soldiers.  They will not unearth these statues until they have found a way to keep the paint from fading.

Pit 2 from Terracotta Warriors Panorama


Mt Huashan
We arrived 15 minutes before the Gondola closed.  We arrived at the top with no map and one flashlight.  We asked a man where to get a map and he gave us his.  Then we started walking to the east peak.  We wanted to see the sunrise and get some hiking in, so we did.  It was getting dark quickly and it was more than a two hour hike.  We ended up hiking one of the more dangerous mountains in China with just a headlamp and no idea where to go.  This is not because we can not read a map, this is because it a map in chinese and more of an artistic rendition of where to go rather than a typically american trail map.
We eventually made it to the East Peak and found a hostel/hotel to sleep at.  It was a bit expensive, but it was a four bed; room.  I hope to post the pictures in the future to explain this.  There was no way to call home and internet on the Kindle did not work either.  The wind was gusting beyond 50mph with 30mph sustained.  The door faced the wind and leaked air around it.  With the windows closed, the curtains still moved around and blew in with the wind leaking around the window.  Air temp was just over 40F and it was a cold night sleeping in bed.

Sunrise
We guessed the sun would rise about 545 so we woke at 530 and moved out.  We climbed up to the viewing platform less than 5 minutes away.  There were thick clouds but it was still very beautiful.  We never saw the sun come over the peaks, but the sky got light enough to takes some cool pictures.  We continued moving because of our tight time schedule.

Climbing
There was a small stone temple like shelter that was only reachable via a series of rock climbs.  Kyle and I rented some equipment and set out to get some pictures.  It was not easy to capture the angles and footholds on camera because it was fairly vertical and curvy.  It was a good warm up for the planks that would come later in the morning.

Planks of Mt. Huashan
A fun find and my main reason for going to Xi'an.  I am always looking for a thrill like this and for $4.38 it is hard to beat this.  It was really too bad the clouds were too thick to see the bottom.  This is a plank walk that leads to a small temple carved into the mountain side.  It is 1000 meters from the bottom of the mountain on  a vertical rock face.  I recorded some video and posted it to youtube.  I am slightly embarrassed by my comments, but since mostly my friends and family will watch it - there is no secret that I say stupid stuff all the time.
I did not do any editing, so it is REALLY shaky.


Train to Shanghai
This was a hard sleeper.  It is a smaller compartment with six beds.  I had a top bunk which gave me about 2 feet of vertical room.  It was really really boring.  I did not enjoy this 16 hr stint of my life.  I would not wish to travel by hard sleeper too many more times, especially not knowing other people in the train car.  There was no door for security or anything.  Loud people up early in the morning and only the other Americans spoke English.

This week
The Forumla 1 race is this weekend.  It will be nice not to be out of town for awhile.  I am eagerly looking forward to coming home.  I also look forward to seeing all my friends who haven't left Purdue for the summer and seeing all my GE friends too.

Biber