Xi’an: Day 4 & 5 | 西安：第四五天

5月27日－5月28日
只会吃
只会逛

I want to say, we enjoyed ourselves the most these last 2 full days in Xi’an. Mainly because all we did was eat and shop – and those are 2 things I love the most. We spent the last 2 days in Xi’an walking around the Muslim Street/Bell Tower area where there were a lot of shops and food and it was great.

Bell/Clock Tower (I don’t know which one)

We started off the day with brunch, because we both get up at terrible times when we have nothing too extravagant planned.

Cute restaurant!!

Cold noodle 凉粉

Bell/Clock Tower (I don’t know which one)

Then walking around Muslim Street, we found this store that apparently had the best biangbiang面 which is a wide flat noodle and is one of the most popular dishes in Xi’an. Fun fact: the character ‘biang’ is also the most complicated character in Chinese – so complicated…you can’t even type it : )

It tasted really good though.

biangbiang面

Muslim Street Market 回民街 – the first 2 character in the white sign is ‘biang’

We also stumbled upon this Qing Dynasty Mansion/Museum while wandering around Muslim Street and it was pretty cool.

Qing Dynasty Mansion/Museum

Muslim Street Market 回民街

SK-II promotion area again so pretty *__*

View from the 广场

Overall, I do recommend Xi’an for those who haven’t been but I’m not sure if I would go back again. If I do though, it would definitely be during Winter or around March/April otherwise the heat would make me want to cry again.

I think my favourite place overall is Tang Paradise and I think I would like to go back there again. A bit sad I didn’t get to appreciate the Terracotta Warriors as much as I’d like to but hey, what can you do. We also didn’t get to climb Hua Shan so maybe I’ll have to do that sometime in the future? ^^

Until my next travels (Korea, Japan, Taiwan & Hong Kong – SO EXCITED), this will be the end.

Exchange, Travels

Xi’an: Day 3 | 西安：第三天

5月26日

If I had one day of regrets, this was the day. After the second day, we both felt so exhausted we thought to ourselves – hey, let’s take it easy today. Let’s visit places close by where we live.

So, we decided to go to the City Wall since it right opposite where we lived. The day started well but ended with us both feeling like we were going to faint. I want to start off by mentioning the weather this day was also around 35 degrees and we had decided to ride bikes around the City Wall. The City Wall in total is around 13km and for some reason, we decided to ride the bikes from 1 – 3pm. Even though we got there at 11. So…many..regrets….

First thing you see when you enter

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The first 15 minutes of the bike ride was quite pleasant and we were like…hey! this is not too bad after all but after the first hour or so had passed, it started to feel like a calm ride around the wall and more like a chore that needed to be completed asap. All I remember thinking was how much I wanted to be able to finish the course and go home and lie in our air-conditioned room. Sue echoed my sentiments.

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Note to self part 2: Don’t ride bikes/do any strenuous activity in 35 degree weather, especially, during 1 – 3pm. This is a short post because after that bike ride, we were both felt like we had some sort of heatstroke and decided to skip going to Beilin Museum and just go home lolol.

We vowed to ourselves to actually take it easy the next 2 days, especially since it was going to be 36 – 37 degrees and just spend our days eating the street food and shopping.

Exchange, Travels

Xi’an Day 2 | 西安：第二天

5月25日

Alright kids, let me tell you one of the greatest (tragic) love story in Chinese history (or what I remember of it from what Sue told me). In the Tang Dynasty, there was this emperor (Emperor Xuanzhong) who had a favourite concubine (Yang Guifei) and he was so in love with her, he spent a loooot of money building this luxurious palace just for her – which is how Huaqing Hot Springs came to be. Yang Guifei was supposedly one of the four most beautiful women in ancient China but apparently, what she was most famous for was actually her skin. However, the tragic part of the story is that because of some rebellion, the emperor’s guards persuaded the emperor to have Guifei murdered and due to the pressure, he did.

Huaqing Hot Springs/华清池 is really pretty and you can really appreciate how much these monuments have withstood history. In particular, the bathing areas (no pictures unfortunately), were preserved so well, you could actually see quite a lot of detail left on it!

Huaqing Hot Springs 华清池: Emperor Xuanzhong & Yang Guifei

Entrance of Huaqing Hot Springs 华清池

Huaqing Hot Springs 华清池

So Huaqing Hot Springs is located at the bottom of Mount Li and Sue really wanted to see the Remonstrance Pavilion which is where Chiang Kai-shek (the then President of PRC) was hiding because he didn’t want to fight the Japanese invaders during WWII (lol). Now, let me tell you….I have no idea how Chiang Kai-shek climbed so fast and so high up that mountain during the night because it…was so tiring. But we made it up, and I, of course, had to take a photo with it to show that I made it. This event, also known as the Xi’an Incident, is extremely well known in China but to me, someone who knows nothing about Chinese history, did not feel as important to me. But hey, at least my dad was interested!!

Along the way up to the Remonstrance Pavilion, you can also see the old housing of previous emperors which then eventually housed where Chiang Kai-shek and his generals stayed. You can see their rooms, bathing areas as well as bullet holes from the Xi’an incident. I think reading the history prior to heading there is a good idea, unless you’re going with someone who loves Chinese history (like me) and they’ll just feed you the information as you’re going up the mountain hahaha.

Climbing Mount Li

Mount Li

View from Mount Li

Remonstrance Pavilion

Emperor Qin Shi Huang (first emperor of China) also built his mausoleum (tomb) at the foot of the mountain which means, the terracotta warriors are very close by. I think an important thing to note is that this guy…is extra af. The area of his ‘tomb’ is huge. H U G E. From the Hot Springs to the Terracotta Warriors was around 30 minutes by bus and from the Terracotta Warriors to the Mausoleum was another 10 minutes or so which meant that the entire area we covered, Qin Shi Huang had turned into his resting area.

I was super excited to visit the Terracotta Warriors because I had recently watched a BBC documentary about it but on the day, the weather was so hot and I was so tired from waking up around 5 in the morning, that I didn’t get to enjoy this place as much as I would’ve liked to. However, you can still really appreciate the sheer enormity of the place and how intricate the terracotta warriors are.

Terracotta Warriors

Terracotta Warriors Pit 1

Seriously, how AMAZING is this? These were some of the warrior statues that were at the back of Pit 1 so I suppose they were still under construction?/getting excavated.

Up-close

Pit 3

In total, there are 3 pits but after some tour guide told me there was a 4th pit? Not sure about it because I never saw it…

The last stop of the day was Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s Mausoleum and this area was enormous as well. For some reason, all of the solo travellers got put into a tour group so we had a lady giving us a tour of the place and giving us a lot of information about the Emperor and the history. Unfortunately, I was feeling so dead by this time (seriously, those photos were taken around 5:30pm and look at that sky) that I didn’t pay attention at all, although I feel like if I did, I would probably still only understand about 50% of what she was saying.

Mausoleum of the First Emperor Qin Shi Huang

Note to self in the future: Don’t go to places where you need to spend lots of time outdoors walking when the weather is 35 degrees.

We walked nearly 15km that day, and though we were exhausted towards the end, in a way, it was worth the pain and exhaustion.