It’s so much fun to ride these trains. To get to Xi’an we took another high speed train from Beijing. It left precisely at its 2:00 PM departure time. 16 passenger cars with 68 to 85 passengers per car, over 1200, and not a single vacant seat. The stations and cars are clean, comfortable, beautifully designed and efficient and the train runs so smoothly you’d never guess you were traveling at close to 350 kms (over 200 mph).
So smoothly that it reminded me of the television commercials run by Lincoln Continental during one of the final decades of the last century to market their Grand Marquis luxury automobile. To demonstrate its smooth ride they sat an Antwerp diamond cutter in the back seat and had him cut a million dollar diamond while riding around the streets of mid town Manhattan. One bump and the valuable stone would have been worthless dust. SNL’s parody where they had a Rabbi perform a circumcision under the same conditions was hilarious.
The ride on these fast speed trains is so smooth your acupuncturist can precisely place the needles without fear of error.
And just as the train left precisely at the scheduled departure time so too did it arrive at the station in Xi’an.
It is said “that if you have not been to Xi’an you have not been to China.”
China was first unified in the 3rd Century BC by Emperor Qin Shi Huang. In fact, the word China was derived from his name Qin.
Xi’an (then known as Chang’an- Everlasting Peace) served as the Capital of unified China for more than 1100 years long before anyone knew of Beijing and its Forbidden City.
Xi’an was the beginning and end of the Silk Road and during the Tang Dynasty enjoyed the prestige of being the largest city in the world.
Most foreign dignitaries first visit Beijing when they come to China but Bill Clinton, Rhodes scholar and student of history that he is, came first to Xi’an
Although little remains of Emperor Qin’s Weiyang Palace constructed in 200 BC, it was the largest palace ever built on Earth, covering 4.8 square kilometres (1,200 acres), which is almost 7 times the size of the Beijing’s Forbidden City.
Qin also ordered the building of the original Xi’an city wall which was started in 194 BC and took 4 years to finish. Upon completion, the wall measured 25.7 km (15.97 mi) in length and 12 to 16 m (39.37–52.49 ft) in thickness at the base, enclosing an area of 36 km.
At the same time that Qin ordered the construction of his Weiyang Palace as a nice place for him to live and from which to rule in this life, he constructed another massive complex from which he planned to rule in the next life 30 kms east of Xi’an.
The complex not only contained his mausoleum, it was surrounded by its own city wall and protected by the army of Terracota warriors that was discovered in 1974.
The Chinese have spent the past 40 years exploring, excavating and piecing together several thousand of the Terracota warriors and other figures and estimate that it will take another century to piece together what has been found to date much less all that has yet to be uncovered. It’s one of the world’s most extraordinary archaeological sites.
The Army of Terracota Warriors tourist complex like almost every new development I’ve seen in China is well planned and designed to accommodate current demands and huge and anticipated future growth. Incredible as it seems, last year a record for single day attendance of 140,000 people was set on National Day (Oct. 1). Disney doesn’t release daily attendance figures but the number is likely triple the attendance at Disney World on its biggest day. It’s evident that the Chinese economy once so heavily dependent on manufacturing for export is moving to one that will be more largely based on internal domestic consumption and domestic and international tourism.
In the evening we attended the performance of the Song of the Everlasting Sorrow at the Huaqing Hot Springs which have been in use for over 3000 years and were a favored retreat for Tang Dynasty nobility. Yang Gufei, the most famous concubine in China’s history bathed here and the production relates a complex love story involving her the Tang Emperor Xuanzang and his son.
The production is spectacular involving dancers and acrobats, lights, water, fire, flying doves and every kind of media imaginable.
Xi’an is an imminently walkable city. Wide boulevards and sidewalks, clean and orderly with polite and pleasant people.
One morning I made my way to People’s Park (I think every city in China has one) and was delighted to see how the Chinese love communal exercise of all kinds from Tai Chi to QuiGong to Yoga to table tennis to dance and everything in between. And as hard as I tried to find one, I never saw a single homeless person sleeping on the street or in the park and was never panhandled not even once.
The historic central city is intact and Xi’ans city wall has been fully restored. It’s the largest city wall in the world 12m high, 18m wide and 14 kms long. You can walk the entire 14 kms or rent a bike and pedal around the entire old city and it offers beautiful views of the city in every direction.
And a visit to the wall is great fun because it’s a very popular spot for young betrothed couples to have their first photos as couples taken. They dress in fancy outfits with red being the favorite color.
I really really like Xi’an. Until fairly recently, last 25 years or so, it was a relatively small place of about a million people contained mostly within the original city walls. In the past 20 years, it has doubled and doubled again to its present size of more than 10 million. But the development has been incredibly well planned and executed. The character of the old city within the walls has been maintained and development outside the city walls is amazing. Wide boulevards with flower lined meridians, spacious sidewalks, new buildings with lots of green spaces, bus and bicycle lanes and a great subway. The development serves the existing population and is clearly planned to provide for enormous anticipated future growth.
The truth is 2 days in Xi’an is not nearly enough. I wish we had had time to visit the Big Goose Pagoda built in 652 AD which houses Buddhists sutras brought back from India by Monk Xuan Zang. The Shaanxi History Museum, Xi’an Museum and the Temple of the Eight Immortals, a Taoist Temple dating back to the Song Dynasty are all things I hope to see on a return visit along with the Muslim Quarter, the Great Mosque and Guangren Temple, the sole Tibetan Buddhist Temple in the province.
Next up Episode 6, Chengdu and the Great Pandas!