Geographically, Xian is located in the heart of China. In terms of cultural geography however, Xian is on the western edge of the main area where most Chinese reside. Farther west, it is a vast outlying area that is dry and dessert-like, through which the historical trade routes known as the "Silk Road" wind through. The area in which Xian itself sits, however, is a rich river valley - the Wei River joins the Yellow River not too far away from Xian - and the area is able to support a large agricultural population. This particular location of Xian explains, to a great extent, the historical success and importance of the city - it is part of the "civilized" China, at the same time, it has access, thin and difficult as it is, to the influence from Central Asia. No wonder then, historically, the region surrounding Xian became the political center of several imperial dynasties of China. The Qin Dynasty, which unified China as a true empire back in the 3rd century B.C., was based here. Two other powerful dynasties in the later centuries, the Han and Tang, also built their capitals here, leaving behind a huge treasure of historical artifacts. Today Xian is one of China's largest cities, with a population of nine million. It is also one of the few major cities in China that has kept it ancient city-wall intact, which testifies to the attention paid to the city's lustrous past, in spite of the tremendous development in the modern times. So nowadays when tourists go to Xian, they still do so mostly for its historical attractions.

Huimin Jie - Street for Snacks and Souvenirs

Huiminjie is a street in central Xian. Lined with numerous food stalls and small shops, the street attracts large numbers of people, both locals and tourists. The name of the street means "Muslim Street", although by the look of it you can hardly tell. It is so called because the neighborhood has a high concentration of Muslims, whom the Chinese call "Huimin".

They do not appear to be very different from other Chinese, except here and there you'll see a woman with a scarf on her head, often of bright colors, not black and no veil over face. The food is delicious and the shops sells a wide of range of small goods. The street is several hundred meter long. It leads off north from the Drum Tower, which, along with the Bell Tower nearby, stands in the heart of Xian. Shops in the street here mostly sell souvenirs and handicrafts, many of which with local flavors and appeals. The food is good too, mostly snack-like that you can take in your hand and eat as walk about.

Some shops also sell a kind of underwear that looks like a belly cover, for adult women, for kids, or both. They're mostly red in color, red being an auspicious color in China, especially in Northwest China. So the underwear is partly for good luck, just as some Chinese girls would have a red string around their wrist or ankle.

This is Xian, so among the souvenirs offered there must be the First Qin Emperor's terracotta warriors, large and small. You have to put a few of these on your coffee table or bookshelves back at home so that you can casually tell your visitors "I bought those in Xian..."

On sale are also a large variety of piying shadow puppets. Piying is a kind of puppet show popular in North China, in which silhouettes of puppets are projected onto screens. A sort of primitive movie show, one may say. The puppets are cut out of leathers, painted in dramatic colors. They're mostly characters in old tales and make fascinating souvenirs.

Xian is located in Northwest China, where peasants mostly cultivate dry crops such as wheat. Lamb is also more commonly seen here than in other parts of the country. This shows in the local cuisine, which offers many delicious dishes of noodles or flour buns with lamb. The best known of these dishes is probably yang rou pao mo, "buns in lamb soup".

The First Qin Emperor's Underground Army of Terracotta Warriors

It's a drive of 40 minutes from Xian to the famed First Qin Emperor's underground army of terracotta warriors. The historical site is located about 35 km northeast of Xian, connected with a freeway. One line of the subway system that is under construction will link the First Qin Emperor's Mausoleum to Xian, that won't become reality until 2013. It was in 221 B.C. that one of China's Warring States, the Qin State, defeated its rivals and unified the Chinese territories into one vast empire. This was before two hundred years before the founding of the Roman Empire in the West. Furthermore, once created, the Chinese empire would survive in its basic form, more or less, to our time today. For this reason, the man behind the Qin unification, Ying Zheng, better known as the First Qin Emperor, became one of the most notable figures in China's long history. It of course took a great deal of ambition, not to mention ruthlessness, to bring a vast territory under one man's rule, and Ying Zheng evidently was just such a man, whose sense of power had no bounds. It was said that once the First Emperor was touring South China when his entourage was caught in to a storm. The emperor was so enraged that he ordered all the trees on the nearby hills be cut down, so as to warn the local gods for their impertinence.

The First Qin Emperor's ambition spread beyond this world. While he was alive, he ordered the construction of a huge tomb for himself. The full scale of the burial place is still unknown as much of it was not yet excavated. We do know, however, part of the imperial mausoleum was a large underground army of thousands of terracotta warriors, which was discovered in the 1970s by a few peasants who were digging a well in a field about 30 km east of the modern-day Xian.

Three exhibition halls shelter the pits in which terracotta warriors have been excavated. Of the three, Pit No. 1 is the largest, measuring 230 m in length and 62 m. There are a total of 6,000 soldiers, horses and chariots in this pit, with 1,000 of them unearthed and for viewing currently. After entering the exhibition hall, visitors can go around the pit to look at the warriors from different sides but they're not allowed to go down into the pit (some VIP's did get this special treatment. There are pictures, for example, Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy happily posing with the warriors down there.) A short distance north of Pit No. 1 is Pit No. 2, which is 95 m in length and 85 m in width. Figurines in this pit represent the various components of the Qin army in formation, including archers, chariot-riders and cavalry. Pit No. 3 is the smallest of the three excavation site. Here the ceramic soldiers stand in a formation shaped like a square, which were probably guards for a commander.

"Terracotta" means "baked earth." It is the ceramic of which the Qin Emperor's warriors were created. The terracotta warriors are are real-life sized, and they were mostly handmade instead of molded. Individual figures thus have their expressions and individuality. Given the number of the soldiers and horses found in the pits, the creation of the underground army was evidently a tremendous public works project - well, back then there was nothing more "public" than the the emperor, who embodied the whole state.

The terracotta warriors were painted in colors when they were originally created. The moment they were unearthed and exposed to air, however, the coat of paint evaporated. So, in that aspect, the figurines we see today look different from they used to be. Also, there were signs of fire and destruction at the excavation site, which have prompted some scholars to speculate that at a certain point of time some people, coming upon part of the underground army, set a fire and tried to desolate the site. The rebels who overthrew the Qin Dynasty were the most likely culprits.

In addition to the three halls that shelters the three pits where terracotta warriors were excavated, there is an exhibition building where one finds showcased artifacts from the site and good background information on the construction of the First Qin Emperor's tomb and the discovery of the terracotta warriors in 1974. One of the local peasants who came upon the warriors while digging a well, by the name of Yang, is still around and signs books about historical site. For once, it is not a five-minute fame kind of thing for an average guy. Looking at the terracotta warriors really make you think about life. Here is a guy who conquered a vast country and became the most powerful of his time. Still, he could not avoid death and had to hope, merely hope, that his glory would continue in the other world...

Walking away from the excavation site, one leaves history behind and faces the bustling albeit mundane life today. When you walk back to the entrance of the museum ground, you go through a corridor lined with many shops and small restaurants, with the vendors eager to get your business. You can pick up a few souvenirs, pose for photos with sculptured warriors, or get a snack for yourself. Among the food vendors were the noodle makers. Popular is this part of the country is la mian<> or "stretch noodle." A cook would kneed his dough, stretch it with both hands for thousands of times, until the dough has turned into thin noodles. A couple of them set up a little counter out there in the street to demonstrate their noodle-making skills.

Mt. Li and Huaqing Hot Spring Palace

Lishan is a mountain a short distance south of the First Qin Emperor's tomb. The terrain of the area surrounding Xian is generally flat, Mt. Li stands out as a notable landmark. That was, of course, one reason for the First Qin Emperor's decision to have his mausoleum nearby (south of the tomb is Mt. Li and north of it is the Wei River, together the two make good fengshui. Lying in the east-west direction, Lishan extends for about 20 km reaches up to over 1,200 m in elevation.

At the foot of the northwestern end of Mt. Li one find Huaqing Hot Spring Garden. The warm springs here became famous back in the Tang Dynasty when the imperial family built a palace on at the site. Supposedly this was where two of the best known royal lovers in Chinese history, the emperor Xuanzong and his consort Yang Yuhuan, hung out. (These two lovebirds didn't end well. A rebellion broke out, Consort Yang was denounced as the cause of corruption, and she was forced to kill herself. Xuanzong, unable to save his lover, was heartbroken. It was said that spirits of the two would meet at their hideout that is Huaqingchi.

That's the thing with Xian - the city and surrounding area has so much history behind, every rock, brick, not to mention hill or river, have their own tales to tell, which often go back over a thousand years. Many of these sites are now in ruins, with little left to show; still, it boggles one's mind to think what dramatic events took place at the very spot so many centuries before our own time. The monarchs, the consorts, the rebellious generals... where are they now? The particular emperor mentioned above, Xuzong, lived in the late 7th and early 7th century. He reigned over one of the glorious eras in Chinese history. Later in his life, however, the emperor preferred pleasure in his palace than ruling over his empire, probably quite tired of all the state business. When surly generals rebelled, ministers blamed his lover for all the troubles. When they killed the woman and her relatives as the court was in flight from the national capital, the once mighty emperor could not do a thing about it. The heartbroken emperor abdicated in favor of his son, but now had neither to live for, empire or woman.

Huaqingchi is also known for the Xian Incident, an critical event in the history of modern China. It was here that in December 1936 China's nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek was captured by a mutinous general. The general was reluctant to fight the Communist rebels, believing the Chinese should unite and resist Japanese advance in China. Chiang, who headed the Republic of China at the time, was of the opinion that they should wipe out the Chinese Reds first before they could consider a war with Japan. Chiang had his reasons but his position was not popular among the Chinese at the time. In late 1936 Chiang came to Xian to push General Zhang in the campaign against the Communists. Zhang rebelled. One night he sent in his guards to arrest to arrest his commander-in-chief. Shots were fired, a number of people were killed, Chiang fled to the hill in the back of Huaqingchi, but he was found and captured. He was later forced to sign an agreement that he would stop the civil war in China and fight the Japanese instead. The next year, a full-scale war with Japan broke out.

From Huaqingchi one can take a cable car to get up to the top of Mt. Li that stands in the back of Huaqingchi. The mountain is not high and it is a short ride. Up the mountain there is Laomugong - "Old Mother Temple". This is evidently a Daoist shrine. The day I visited, it was a pilgrimage day, and large throngs of farmers from around the region came to pay their respect to the Old Mother and wish for good luck. Many of the worshipers wore a red band with characters "Old Mother Blesses".

Big Wild-Goose Pagoda in Dacien Temple

After visiting the First Emepror's terracotta warriors and Huaqingchi, I returned to the city. It was late afternoon now and I decided to take a look at the Big-Goose Pagoda before it got dark. 

The pagoda is part of Dacien Si (Temple of Great Maternal Love), which is located in the southern part of Xian. The temple was originally built by an emperor of the Tang Dynasty in remembrance of his mother. It later provided shelter for the famed Buddhist monk Xuan Zang. A devoted friar, Xuan Zang had traveled all the way to India and brought back to China a large mount of treasured Buddhists sutras. He was installed in Dacien Si, where he engaged in translating the Buddhist scriptures into Chinese. What is now called Big Wild Goose Pagoda was built on the premise of the temple in 652. Originally the pagoda went by the name of Wild Goose Pagoda; it became the Big Wild Goose Pagoda because later a smaller pagoda was erected nearby, which came to known as the Small Wild Goodse Pagoda. As for the wild goose in the names of the pagodas, it came from an ancient Buddhist tale.

Since I came to Dacien Temple late in the afternoon, there were relatively few visitors at the site. As went in the back of the compound to take a look at the pagoda from all directions, few people were still around. For me, this was the best part of being there - it was about sunset time, in twilight, all alone in a court yard where, over thirteen centuries before out time, Xuan Zang had tredded.

By the way, it is a fact of life in China that almost always there are people around you. Rarely there are occasions when you can escape the company of other human beings. After all, 1.3 billion people live in China. On the upside, rarely will you feel lonely since there is so much going on around you at all times.

Xuan Zang the monk is the historical figure whose adventures provide main plot in the classical Chinese novel Journey to the West, also known as The Monkey. In the story, Sun Wukong, the monkey with magical powers, goes on an arduous and thrills-filled journey to the West to retrieve Buddhist sutras, accompanying and protecting the devout but credulous monk. The elephant now standing in the courtyard in front of the Big Wild-Goose Pagoda indicates the connections among the temple, Xuan Zang, and India.

Outside Da Cien Temple there is a large public square where numerous tourists gather. There are also quite a few restaurants nearby. I was quite hungry by now, after a long day of walking about. I went into a dumpling place. Food was good and the tea really drenched the thirst.

Xian City Wall

The next morning I decided to go to take a look at the city wall. Xian is one of the few large Chinese cities that have a well-preserved city-standing. In the old days, almost all Chinese cities have walls around them. A wall was not only good protection in time of wars. It also stood for authority. In most cases, in a county there was only one walled city or town, and that was where the magistrate of the county governed. Xian was the capital of China during a number of dynasties, so the city was walled up from very early on. The wall in its current form dates back to the Ming Dynasty, which started to rule China in the 14th century. By that time, Xian was no longer the capital of the country. (During the Ming period, first Nanjing on the Yangzi River was the capital but the imperial court soon relocated to Beijing) Xian nonetheless remained the most important city in the northwestern part of China.

I started my tour at the southern gate, which is called Yongning Gate - Gate of Eternal Peace. The southern was the main entrance of the city because traditionally men of power supposed to sitting facing south. This was true both at home and in a city.