20th March - Xi'an to Shanghai

We checked-out of the hostel for the second time and made our way to the 'Muslim quarter', where there were backstreets of stalls selling all sorts of conterfeit and cheesy things. James had to buy some warmer things for the Trans-Siberian leg of his journey and we had lots of fun watching and helping him barter. The prices were inflated to at least 6 times what they were worth and many of the people selling on he stalls could be quite good humoured if approached the right way.  James did get on the wrong side of one woman though and she hurled abuse at him all the way down the street.

Matt was tired of his innappropriate Chairman Mao bag already and although he didn't take too long finding the one he wanted, seemed to take forever choosing the colour. His bartering skills were quite impressive though and he bargained the bloke down to just 41Yuan.  I quite liked the same bag and since my rice sack bag was perishing unsurprisingly quickly, I was getting quite needy. However, since we already had not one but two matching coats, I didn't want to take it much further.

We stopped for lunch where Matt had local speciality - Yang Rou Pao Muo. It's a kind of lamb soup with shredded bread and noodles but the meat looked far too flobbly for me so I had beef noodles but without the beef. At least they were accommodating though because quite often they just refuse to serve me once I show them my little sign.

After a bit of dried fruit shopping to try and keep the vitamin levels up and a trip back to fetch me a matching bag after all, we said our goodbyes to James and headed to the train station.

The queues at the station were horrific. We had to join one of about 8 queues stretching the out into the square just to get through the door. Once inside, we headed to our gate where they seem to have a special queuing system. Basically, this involves anyone who can't be bothered queueing down the middle while the less patient jam themselves down either side of this queue until eventually no-one can move and we're all just a tangle of bodies and bags.

The train itself wasn't bad though, even though we had a 16 hour journey. Now we knew that they take your ticket so they can wake you up before your stop, we were a little more relaxed. The Chinese are disgusting eaters though so I had to keep going for walks when the bloke next to me started clacking and panting his way through the obligatory pile of stinky food that they all seem to carry. Everyone seems to travel with a carrier bag at least half their size and just eat constantly for the entire journey.

The train company also put you to bed which is quite interesting. They start warning you about 9.30 so that you can have a wash and fill up your bottles with hot water, then a man comes round and closes the curtains and moves anything dangerous off the tables, and then about 10pm they turn all the lights off so you have to go to bed. It's actually quite a relaxing process.

19th March - Xi'an

We checked out of the hostel and kept our fingers lightly crossed that we were able to book tickets for tonight - just because otherwise we'd wasted our time doing the hateful bag-pack. We collected James and found a booth nearby the hostel where bookings could be made without having to infiltrate the train station and, athough the lady was very helpful, there was nothing available until tomorrow.

We weren't too bothered about the tickets because we hadn't had time to explore the city or it's walls properly. We were heading down a street dedicated entirely to the sale of calligraphy related items when we bumped into Henry, who James had met the night before and was from the south of England.

We needed to eat before we walked the 13km perimeter of the walls and discovered a street stall selling nice looking vegetable noodles that had actual vegetables in and not just soup. I think it may have been the best food we've eaten so far in China.

Ready for action, we headed up onto the wall. The wall was quite impressive in itself but the views that it offered were mostly unremarkable and usually pretty dull. We mostly saw the back-end of buildings, tatty gardens and wastegrounds.

Part of the way round, we found some statues of the terracotta warriors and had a great time dressing them up in our clothes and posing with them. There was a shop behind where they were stood and the ladies in there were very amused by our efforts. We spoke to them for a while and I tried on a traditional Chinese dress - it wasn't hard to put on but they still insisted on sending someone in to dress me. I was amazed that they found one to fit me but when I checked the label it was XXXL. I wish I'd got a photo though because really liked it, even though it had no chance of making it into my practical capsule wardrobe. There was a nice lady who worked there called Belinda and who taught be a little about Chinese marriages and encouraged me to get a wealthy husband. She also said that my nose was 'lovely' though so I think she might have been a bit crazy and I might hang fire before ditching Matt just yet.

Further around the wall we saw our first appealling section: the Lama Temple. It had very attractive buildings and some lovely gardens but we couldn't get off the wall to take a look at it.  A map that we had also indicated that there was a big garden further round but it was called the 'Unambitious Garden' so we didn't hold out much hope for it. As it happened, it was so unambitous that we missed it altogether.
We did come across a Chinese driving school though and that was much more interesting. It was basically a patch of wasteground with a number of obstacles set up around it. It had ramps, home-made traffic cones and bizarrely, a burning pile of rubbish.

Our favourite bit was a section where the driver had to keep the wheels of one side of the vehicle on a kind of ledge. One bloke even took his hands off the wheel to wave them out of the window at us while driving along it. Not sure if he passed but judging by most drivers on the road, he probably got extra credit.
Henry was quite an interesting guy to speak to. He'd done some kind of finance related degree and after a year working, he'd decided that it wasn't for him and that he wanted to pursue his interest in Chinese culture and language.He had spent the last year in China learning Mandarin and teaching English. He'd planned to stay in China for longer but had met a French girl and fallen in love. She'd gone back to France and he was doing a few weeks travelling before heading to join her. He was planning on completing a Mastersin France, despite not really speaking the language. He figured that he had more Mandarin than most people on the course and could read French ok so would do alright. And for a measly £300 to complete the qualification, it was easier to do than in the UK. He really was a super bloke though and I enjoyed talking to him.
After one more short stop to marvel at the ear-splitting warbling of a singer at a small public gathering we could see through the arrow slits in the wall, we completed the wall walk.

There was a little exhibition of more traditional forms of entertainment at a stand in the courtyard and we spent a while 'coloured-cock kicking'. We've seen lots of people playing with these kind of shuttlecock things, which have coloured feathers on top and little weights to counterbalance them on the bottom, but we had no idea how hard they are to play with. We've seen everyone from young children to very old men standing in groups and playing keepy-up with them but we had very little control over the thing.

Next stop was the little restaurant near our hostel. It didn't look like much of a place and the chairs looked like people had been taking bites out of them but it came recommended and so we gave it a go. They had an 'English' menu which had so many hilarious translations on that it was hard to choose, though some sounded so disgusting that you'd never want to eat them. In the end we opted for 'Ants on a tree', which was, according to Henry, a more literal translation, and 'Customer get angry', which was actually the nicest dish they brought out so we're not sure where the name came from. James took lots of pictures of the menu so will have to remember to ask him to email them to me, along with the picture of him holding a terracotta warrior baby but with my head!

The evening's activity at the hostel was a quiz. We were quite looking forward to playing as a team and James was trying to fire everyone up by saying we were going to wipe the floor with them but then the hostel split us all up into teams that they'd made. My team got the pitiful score of 5, which reminded me of the time I went to the pub quiz with Heather and Julie and we ended up pretending we weren't teachers because we were doing so badly. We would have scored more highly if I could have persuaded a very insistent guy that cats aren't part of the Chinese zodiac and fish do have hearts. Matt's team also got 5 though and the winning team (James' of course!) only got 8 so it wasn't too shameful.

18th March - Xi'an

I felt very ropey when we woke up this morning but after tea in bed from Emma and toast in bed from Matt, I started to feel more human again.

We'd arranged to go and see the Terracotta Warriors with James and were planning to try to make it by public transport instead of taking a pricey tour. It all ran quite smoothly but after a late start and 2 fairly long bus rides, we were concerned that 2.30 was quite late to be getting there. We needn't have worried because, although it was interesting, there wasn't that much to see.

We were found by a very sweet tour guide called Lena, and she encouraged Matt and James to use their driving licenses to get the student discount, saving them half of the hefty £15 entrance fee. She agreed to show us the pits backwards because we'd read that it was better to save the best until last. She also confirmed what we'd heard about Emporer Qin Shi Huang's tomb not being worth the long walk to see it because it hadn't been excavated and was basically just a hill.  It is believed that there are rivers of mercury running through it.
The surroundings of the warriors was not at all what any of us were expecting. We'd expected more of the 'farmland' that they were found on and instead it was all concrete and airport hanger style buildings.
The first pit we looked at had not been excavated fully yet. It is called the 'command centre' and the soldiers there are the generals and the higher ranking officers. They have been pieced together carefully and reinstated into formation in one section but there are also areas where there are piles of crumbling soldiers still piled on the ground and partially covered by earth.

The second pit contains around 1300 warriors and horses and is still being excavated. From what I could gather, they did not want to excavate all areas yet and are waiting until they had found a way to preserve the paint on the soldiers because it had very quickly eroded from the quarry that they'd dug up previously. Only one bit of colour remained on one soldier and he was kept in a glass case.

The third pit was definitely the most impressive and contained row upon row of terracotta soldiers, each with unique faces and markings. 2000 are on show but it is believed that there are 6000 soldiers here - it really brought home how vast and crazy the whole endeavour was. The thought of the work and craftsmanship that went into them is mind-blowing and the murder of all of those who slaved away to make them is unthinkable.
In typical Chinese style, it is possible to get special photographs of the warriors. Because you can't go near them, they have stands with carved backdrops where you can have your picture taken so it looks as though you are stood amongst them. Stranger still, it is also possible to get your face super-imposed onto a warriors body. The example pictures on the wall were really quite frightening.

Lena was very interesting to talk to and was really interested in comparing countries ao we learned as much about China as we did about the warriors. One of the stranger things that we found out was that Chinese people find 'double eyelids' more attractive and that some people even have plastic surgery to add an extra layer of eyelid. It hadn't even registered with any of us that there was such variation in eyelids and so we spent much of the time after we found out just staring at people and identifying their eyelid type.

After we said goodbye to Lena, we decided to treat our hangovers to a Dico's. It tuned out to be like KFC but not so nice but it did do the trick and set us up for a long bus journey.

Back at the train station we were planning to book the tickets to go to Shanghai tomorrow but the queue to even get into the station was insane. There were several and they stretched the whole length of the station so we decided to leave it until tomorrow and go to say our goodbyes to Emma, who was leaving for Pingyao.
The second bus back to the hostel stopped in a bit of a strange place and at a weird angle but everyone got off so we followed. I noticed that the bus in front of us was also parked at a jaunty angle and that there was a guy sat in front of it, looking dazed and holding his head. I thought that he'd been hit by the bus and we were about to go and see if he was okay when the bus driver appeared. He was holding a tyre iron and was clearly the cause of the guy's injuries as a nu,ber of passengers were holdinghim back to prevent him having another go. We bid a hasty retreat and went to say our goodbyes instead.

17th March - Xi'an

We'd heard about a free tour run by the hostel and so had arranged to go with Emma and James. James was staying at the sister hostel down the road and so, after he'd shown off his fancy room and massive shower, we headed to Shaanxi History Museum with the rest of the group and our lovely guide, Angel.

Angel was a Chinese history student and voluntarily ran the trips whenever she had the time. She was really very sweet and worked very hard trying to explain the exhibits in the museum to us. There was a Malaysian guy on the tour who she asked to help out translating once in a while but she did a valiant job. The museum was huge and so we spent the most time focusing on just a few dynasties, including the Qin and the Han. It was interesting but we were quite tired and it was dark and hot so we struggled to maintain focus.

Angel then took us for lunch, which was great because she ordered for the table and we just picked what we wanted. Most of it was pretty nice and it was really good to know that we were definitely going to be able to eat something we liked without it being veg noodles. There were still a few odd bits though and Matt bravely made his way through a funny looking clear soup containing spam and some pretty hideous looking preserved duck eggs without wincing too much.

We chatted some more to Tracy, an American girl who was in China teaching English at one of the places that we plan to go, and her parents, Tom and Diane, who were over visiting. It was interesting to learn more about teaching English overseas and I found myself wishing that I had got my TEFL under my belt before we came.

After dinner, Angel pointed us in the direction of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda and mentioned that there was a fountain show there which started at 4. The group split up a little and we explored the surrounding park with Emma and James and stopped to watch the hundreds of kites being flown in the nearby square. It was a sunny day and we spent a while pointing out our favourite kites and our favourite people flying them. The winner was a monk with a big yellow smiley kite.

Being around so many kids, I also noticed that I am becoming desensitised to the fact they are all bare-bummed. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before Chinese people have this odd belief that it is better for a child's health if they leave their bums and bits exposed. Babies are potty trained early and have splits in the groins of their trousers so that fresh air can circulate. This was particularly odd to see in Beijing when it was -6 degress and the kids were wearing clothes several inches thick but had their bare bums on freezing cold stone benches when they were sat down. Now we've been here a while, I hardly find it strange when a see a little todger hanging out or a bare bum in the air when a toddler falls over.

Anyway, the fountain show was spread over a huge area and was actually quite impressive. The fountains 'danced' for ages to the classical tunes and there were lots of people watching and enjoying the show. Most of them totally ignored the signs to stay out of the fountain area and walked in the middle, blocking the view, but it did mean that we got to see a few people pelted with water so that made up for it a little.

Since it was St. Patrick's day, the sister hostel down the the road were having some celebrations in the evening and we decided to spend the evening down there. Our hostel was having 'traditiona games night' though so we hung around to learn how to play Mahjong first. It's quite like rummy and not really a complicated game but the tiles had Chinese characters and the guy explaining wasn't very clear so it was quite a challenge to get the hang of it. Thankfully, I had the fabulous Emma on my team. Matt was trying to look up the rules online as we played but there are so many regional variations that it wasn't much help to him.

When we finally got to the sister hostel, James was gutted because we'd missed the Chinese girls in sparkly, green, skintight outfits Irish dancing and the "consonant free" covers of Adele songs. It was a fun night though. The hostel had run out of the beer we liked so we kept getting into trouble for sneaking it in from the supermarket and we got to chat to lots of interesting people. I played table football and can now see the fun in it, although I'm really not very good and scored a couple of own-goals.

We were quite merry by the time we got back to our own hostel. The doorbell was broken so we thought that we might have to go back for more but thankfully, we managed to get through to them on the phone. We don't use the phone much but it does come in very handy when we do and has saved us a few times.

16th March - Pingyao to Xi'an

We woke up in our huge bed and I spent the morning catching up on a few emails while Matt did some planning. It's hard not being in touch with people but we hope they know we're thinking of them all constantly.

After a quick trip out into the town we got back to the hostel to ask about the night bus to Xi'an. Mr Dheng had told us that he couldn't book it until 2pm but his wife called earlier and found out that there were no seats left on the night bus. She did however manage to find outt hat there were 2 seats left on the 12.30 bus. Which gave us exactly half an hour before its departure.

We paid for the tickets and quickly ran out to buy some fruit while Mrs Dheng booked the taxi. After an impatient few minutes where Mrs Dheng reassured us that the driver would assist us to get the right bus, the 'taxi' finally arrived at 12.17 and we gathered up all of our bags and rushed out. Once the driver had manually turned his golf buggy around we sped there at the mind-boggling speed of about 4mph. Matt rackoned it was closer to 5mph but judging by the age of the old men who were overtaking us on their bicycles I think that might have been a push. Matt and I were rocking in our seats trying to make it go faster but it trundled on at a steady pace.

When we got to the highway where we were due to catch it, the driver told us it 'may be 10 minutes, may be 20 mins, may be half hour' so we sat watching the large screen TV that was set into an antique looking statue in the middle of the road and appeared to be showing a documentary on Pingyao. It seems the Chinese like an impressive TV stand so I'm waiting for Matt to start getting even grander ideas than the time he wanted to set a telly in the side of the shed.

The bus was reasonably comfortable but constantly vibrated but made our fat bits feel a bit weird. Matt was entertained by watching Chinese films whilst I took advantage of the long journey to write the blog. I stopped after my eyes went funny and just sat back to watch the incredible scenery. We passed cave-dwellings, plains, terraced fields, bodies of water and bridges.

At Xi'an, we thought for a moment they were going to drop us off at a petrol station nowhere near the bus station we were expecting to get to. They didn't but they didn't drop us off at the right bus station either. As we looked at the crappy lonely planet map and tried to locate where we were, we were 'helped' by lots of locals.

We'd tried too call the hostel several times earlier in the day to let them know that we were arriving a day early but each time someone picked up, spoke Chinese and then put the phone down on us. We tried again and this time, if we really shouted, they could hear us. They told us which bus to get on and a friendly local confirmed that it was going in the direction that we needed. A further not-quite-as-friendly local helped us to pay our busfare; he doubled the fare from 1 to 2 Yuan (20p) and split the proceeds with the driver but he did tell tell us where to get off so we didn't care. Meanwhile, Matt discovered that there was protective film over the microphone of the mobile and so that should avoid further screamed conversations in the street.
When we arrived at Hang Tang hostel, it was a hive of activity. We had arrived on 'dumpling night' and the current guests were milling around making dumplings and drinking beer. We were pretty hungry but by the time we'd dropped our stuff off in our room and changed out of our stinky clothes there were only 2 left. They did let us eat them though so we decided we liked them.

We joined one of the groups and spent a really nice evening chatting to a great group of people who were all staying at the hostel but travelling seperately. There was Jordan, an Australian snowboarder who used to work at the hostel where I stayed in Sydney; James, an animated Australian chatterbox who had left his obscenely high earning Deli counter manager job to travel; Emma, a beautiful, sincere nurse who knew a whole manner of interesting facts about things and was also Australian, and Mike, who maintained maps of fibre-optic cables within Manhatten and barely got a chance to get a word in edgeways.

We stayed up late chatting to James and then were chuffed to find that we were sharing a room with Emma and so finished off the evening with a lovely sleepy chat in bed.

Day 44 - 15th March - Pingyao

Upon nearing the train station at about 7.30am, our original ticket was returned to us (so not sure why they didn't just let us keep it) and we squeezed ourselves and our bags to the door. Just outside the station we had the pleasure of an unexpected pick-up and so made it to Harmony Guesthouse without any haggling or uncertainty.

After a welcome drink of hot water, we were shown through the impressive courtyard to our room. The bed was humungous and took up over 80% of the room. Unfortunately, this left little room for anything other than walking to the bathroom or out of the door and so we had to keep the bags on the bed. There was already a bed-top tea-table on there so it was almost a squeeze in the end.

We were offered a chance to share a taxi and guide to see the Wang Family Residence (which made me smile and think of Eve's wanging exploits) and some cave-dwellings where people still live, but it was quite pricey and we've taken out £400 since we arrived in China so we had to refuse. We thought we'd explore the city first and then start looking outside it if we want to later.

The Lonely Planet raves about Pingyao and it's actually in their Top 30 places in China but it wasn't doing so much for us.  There are quite a few 'attractions' but they looked quite dead and included such dubious delights as the 'Rishengchang Financial House Museum' as well as quite a few temples. It was also possible to walk around the city walls but everything was all on one ticket and we were loathe to spend another £30 on one day of looking at stuff we wont remember missing in the grand scheme of things. It wasn't really helping that it was the first dull and overcast day we'd seen in China and we were quite tired. We were initially glad that we were there out of season since Wiki travel suggested that there were 3 times more tourists than the capacity of the city during high season, but it was definitely lacking in sunshine and life.
We found the supermarket and went in to buy some fruit but it was all a little confusing and I guess we were too hungry because we came out armed with all sorts of Chinese munchies and sweets. I think I can see all of the weight we lost in India creeping back on due to my current reliance on carbs and fast-food and there's not even enough room on the floor (or our huge bed!) to do some yoga.

We were determined to try the local specialities after missing out on the steak of Pokhura and the duck of Beijing and so headed to a little cafe restaurant for Pingyao beef and rolled noodles. Matt really enjoyed the beef which was almost like posh corned-beef/pastrami and was served cold. My noodles were like a giant honeycomb of pasta and looked like they may have once belonged to the digestive system of a large mammal but the lady was determined that they complied with my previously prepared written request  to show me the dishes that did not contain any animal. Luckily, she did serve it with a kind of tomato chilli sauce which was quite tasty because otherwise it would have been gooey stodge.

We'd pretty much covered the whole walled section, as well as a brief venture out into the not-very-alluring city outside the town, and it had got pretty cold and started to snow so we headed back to our room for our while.

A too-long nap later and a quick mandarin lesson from the owner, we headed out again to see if darkness had changed the town at all. One of the things that I love about travelling is how different places come alive at night. At home, things either close or become full of drunken people but it seems that in lots of other countries, you really get to see a different side. The whole town seemed to be lit up with Chinese lanterns and the traditional towers that we'd seen earlier were sparkling with fairy lights.

Day 43 - 14th March - Beijing to Pingyao

Packed up, checked out and headed to the subway station to go to the Temple of Heaven. We were hungry by he time we got there and I could not face any more vegetable noodles so, since we had heard that KFC served all sorts of 'proper' rice based meals, we ended up there. I ended up with a shrimp burger, which was very tasty, if not a bit odd, and a welcome relief from pasta.

At the park of the Temple of Heaven, we walked down the 'Long Corridor', which was chock- full of old people playing cards and people selling little animals, bags and hats that they were crocheting on the spot.
The 'Long Corridor' linked 'The Animal Killing Pavilion' to the Main building: the 'Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest'. It was quite impressive building and was architecturally significant because the wooden pillars supported the ceiling without any nails or cement. It was built 1420, was hit by lightening and burnt down in 1889, and was rebuilt in 1890.  It was beautifully decorated with recurring images of dragons, painted in blue, red and gold.

I particularly liked the section with the '70 Year Door'. The emporer's men had built it when he was 70 and was finding it hard to make complete the full procession required of him. He gratefully recieved it but was worried that his kids might get lazy and so decreed that none of them could use it until they were also 70. None of them lived to 70 and so he was the only person to ever use it.  Matt didn't see it though because he was busy taking too many pictures of someone elses wedding.

Other attractions included 'Round Alter' which was based around multiples of the number 9 and had a central spot which 'made your voice sonorous'. Matt stood on it to sing a song but chickened-out so we don't know if it worked or not. The acoustics in there must have been quite good though because there was a man talking so loud on his mobile that he could have been communicating with someone on the moon.
Nearby, there was also the Imperial Vault of Heaven, an octaganol building with an echo wall but Matt lost the ticket at the 'Round Alter' and so we could only peek at it from a distance.

We explored park a little more and found the 'garden of 100 flowers' where all the flowers were wrapped up in green tarp against the cold, as well as unstoppable dancing troup of middle aged people and various singers and musicians - one of which turned out to be a lampost!

We'd been promising ourselves Beijing duck but we had to set off for the train 2 and half hours early because of the traffic so there was no time. After our second fast food joint of the day (the Chinese have ruined McDonald's burgers by making them taste of eyeballs!), I lamented the loss of Indian food and that the only thing that I wanted to try in China was out of reach.

We used the little sign provided by the hostel to catch our first bus and tell the conductor where we wanted to go. Beijing West station is ginormous. The electronic board didn't give platform details but waiting room numbers which filtered off into four different gates, which in turn led to 12 different platforms for that waiting room. Our ticket was swopped for a different one before boarding the train and we assumed it would be the one that opened the gate at Pingyao.

The immediate difference that we noticed compared to Indian trains was that they were warmer, and each bed had its own duvet and pillow. It was  generally much quieter without mobile phones and shouted conversations but there was piped music and we had to have a giggle at the announcements that had been translated into English. Each section also had a giant hot water flask but although I had my supply of tea bags, I didn't have a cup to hold it nor enough head room to drink it in.

Despite the improvement in conditions, a combination of the fact that we couldn't chain our bags up and fear of missing our early morning stop meant that we didn't get much sleep. The incessant coughing of the guy in the bed below mine added to our restlessness and the frequent punctuation of loud burps and farts meant that we were often shocked out of any sleep we had managed to grab.