Xi'an and its Warriors

The Olympics being officially over, it was then time for the Paralympics. I personally didn’t really have a chance to participate in them nor to assist any of the competitions but my friend Benoit Pelosse http://pages.videotron.com/benzoid/ from Montreal was in town to take photos for the Canadian Paralympics team. He took advantage of that to prolong his stay in China and to visit around. I too was in dire need to get out of the city so we decided to go visit Xi’an. Xi’an was about a 12 hours train ride so the best way was to do it over night and sleep it through. I had never bought train tickets before and we were a little bit at the last minute to get good tickets. The day before departure, all there was left were hard seats, which was promising a long back breaking ride. We were a little bit short on time so we decided go with it anyway and hope for a last minute cancellation of beds. As Ben was saying: “To be lucky, you have to take chances.” That ended up being our motto for the whole trip and it was off to a good starts because lone behold, 1 or 2 hours before departure, 2 side by side beds became available.

Xi’an was surrounded, at least part of its center, by massive high walls. If I understood correctly, it once was, a long time ago, a capital at the east end of the Silk Road. Nonetheless it still was a big Chinese city so it wasn’t really the change that we were looking for. We strolled around the artistic neighbourhood. Back at the hostel, we met with 3 happy fellow Quebecois. Together we went to see a water fountain/light show at in a nearby park. We had good fun.




















































The next day, Ben and I, went to visit the famous Terra-Cotta Warriors not too far from Xi’an. These are one of China’s most important historical sites along with The Great Wall and The Forbidden City. The little that I know about them would be too long to explain for this blog but if you want to find out more about them, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terracotta_Armyedia.org/wiki/Terracotta_Army Despite no big surprises, I was still quite happy to see them in real. The huge hangars that they built over them adds a lot to the their grandiose.








Mt. Huashan was next on our list. This was a sacred mountain that offers a breathtaking view. The only problem was that once we arrived at the top via a gondola, we were completely engulfed in thick clouds so we couldn’t see a damn thing except some big chains full of padlocks and red ribbons. At first we were quite intrigued until Roxanne, our walking encyclopaedia or now known as Roxypedia, explained us that these were in fact vows of love. Lovers came here, and thousands of them by the looks of it, made their vows of love for each other, locked the padlocks and through the key off the cliff, forever lost, forever in love. However romantic that was, it didn’t solve our issue with the view. We had spent considerable time and money to come all this way and you could barely see a few meters ahead of us. There were bunks/hotels on the mountain for those who want to be there early for sunrise. We decided to take a chance and try it. We had little hope for a major weather change since it had been raining ever since we stepped foot in Xi’an. The beds were little more than wood planks covered with dirty half inch thick “mattresses” with yellow stained pillows, but whatever, it was just for one night.

The next morning, well it wasn’t exactly a big blue sky day but we were still lucky enough to be sort of in between two layers of clouds. It was just enough so we could have a glimpse at neighbouring mountains. We explored a little bit, lots of steep stairs carved in the mountain itself. We didn’t get to see all that much of it but it was still quite astounding. Actually the all the clouds and fog hovering around gave it a mystical, surreal and peaceful aura. We had to leave early since we had a long way back to Xi’an and a train to catch to get back to Beijing. That time again we came very close of coming back on hard seats but thanks to our hostel’s staff we were able to, with a generous commission of course, get comfortable beds once again.