Raft of the Medusa

As last week was technically a holiday in China (you wouldn't necessarily know it if you saw a snapshot of the intern lab at MSRA), I thought it would be foolish not to take the opportunity to visit something that would be a little harder to get to on a normal weekend.  I'd heard mixed reviews about Xi'an, a town in the interior of China with a really rich history, and most famous for the Terracotta Warriors ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terracotta_warriors ...if you're not accessing the web in China), but I was really excited about what I heard about it so I decided to go despite the mixed reviews.  My colleagues were a little worried about me going by myself (but that's because it seems like they NEVER do anything by themselves...it's interesting to see a country full of only-children...) but I like doing things by myself much of the time and figured I could handle it.  I took the overnight train Thursday night, arriving on Friday morning.  After getting to Xi'an, I went to buy my train ticket back to Beijing (in China you can't generally buy your ticket back at the same time as you buy your ticket...you usually have to wait to get to the place you're going, which is fine if you know people in the place you're going, as everybody else on this train inevitably did, as they can go to the destination train station and buy the ticket for you...).  At the ticket window I was met with disaster.  If I wanted even a seat, not even a bed, but a seat, I was going to have to wait until Tuesday night, arriving back in Beijing Wednesday morning, making me miss two days of work.  I grumbled, called up some people that knew the system, they spoke some Mandarin to the ticket agent and confirmed, and bought a standing room ticket.  Awesome.

 

I headed to find a room with some people from New Zealand.  We knew that we were getting screwed on the room, but didn't think the $4 we were getting screwed was worth the hassle, and put our stuff down.  We headed to see the Terracotta Warriors, which were an hour out of town, and were AWESOME.  It was pretty cool to see something that old and hear about the history of it all.  It started off with this 360-degree video which embarrassingly reminded me of 300, that helped you picture the time period and the emperor that created them all.  (This emperor unified China for the first time.)  Afterwards I headed out of the site amidst people trying to sell me mini-terracotta warriors, smashing them against each other "see?  will not break!" to show me how high quality they were.  I was SO hoping to see an Aladdin reenactment, "will not break...will not break....it broke."  Instead, when I laughed at them and walked away, they said, "I love you!" which was just as hysterical.  Some woman tried to sell me a pomegranate for 5 yuan, and I asked her if she realized that literally every 10 feet for the next 10 miles (not exaggerating) other people were selling the exact same thing for much less, but they use the metric system in China so she didn't understand.

 

After I got back I went to the Bell Tower (picture above, but the pic doesn't do anything but the traffic and the green taxis justice...it's quite beautiful), the symbol of the city, where I saw this really cool musical performance.  The musicians were all dressed in traditional clothes from the Ming dynasty era, and there was also this dancer that did some pretty cool stuff with two ornate fans.  I think they should get her some ribbons or balls or whatever and she'd do great in rhythmic gymnastics or one of those other Olympic pseudo-sports.

 

We went and got some dinner, which was soup with soggy bread but delicious, especially with the spices that graced my streetmeat and street eggs and Bob had informed me came from the area.  The New Zealanders were hot to go out, but I was seriously ill from the pollution in the city (WAY worse than Beijing) and lack of sleep from the night train.  It about killed me not to go out (I was really kicking myself after they came in at 4:30 AM, showed me pictures and told me stories from the night), but I knew that if I was *sick* and standing on a train for 12 hours the next day, well, that might prove to be less than pleasant.

 

The next day my routine involved a lot of prepping for the overnight ride.  I went and did homage to two religions in hopes that their leader would take me to a train seat, at the Big Goose Pagoda ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_goose_pagoda), which was awesome and makes me want to learn about Chinese architecture, and also the Great Mosque in the Muslim quarter of Xi'an.  I ate some delicious food from the Muslim quarter, got discriminated against at a random booth (when I countered her price she stared me down, pointed towards the door, and said "GO"...she really should just put up a sign that says "NO AMERICANS ALLOWED" and save us all some time), went to the Drum Tower and saw an awesome concert (similar to the one at the Bell Tower), and prepped some more for my train ride by buying dry socks (it was raining all day) and the smallest box of tissues I could find for my runny nose, which still had 16 different mini pouches of tissues.  Throughout the day I got asked for many pictures and was told over and over again "You are very beautiful," but what they really mean is "You have blonde hair," it's just that they don't know the words "have," "blonde," or "hair."

 

I got on the train and started trying to upgrade to a seat.  No dice.  The aisles were packed.  People piled on top of each other.  Body limbs everywhere.  It was seriously a scene out of Gericault's Raft of the Medusa .  I'm pretty sure there was some cannibalism going on.  I started playing snake on my phone, actually, I was playing rapid roll, but a girl I met in line came and found me 7 cars away, spoke some Mandarin magic to another passenger, and found someone I bought a scalped seat ticket off of.  It would have been worth pretty much any price, but it was a nice $12.50.  The guy also spoke some English, and we chatted a lot.  He was encouraging me to take pictures of all of the craziness because he knew this must be so foreign to me, but my camera was in my backpack that was above the seats, and I wouldn't have stood up for anything short of a live birth.

 

While all this was going on, I asked anyone that spoke a word of English how they got their ticket, because I figured there had to be a way to avoid this sort of situation despite what the MSRA engineers had told me.  It really seems like there isn't; actually, there is, but that solution is that you buy a plane ticket.  I suppose back in Beijing I could have bought a scalped ticket for the way back, but there's little guarantee that your ticket is real when you do that.  My friends say though that it was only because I travelled during the holiday that I had a problem.  Any other time....that ship would've never left the horizon....

 

Xi'an...liked it...Chinese trains during holidays...could be better.