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Xi'an, the old capital of China13 Oct 2007
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Old Xi'an
City Wall drawbridge
New Xi'an
Xi'an was a disappointment. The hotel was OK but there was no heating and, at this time of the year, Xi'an is a bit on the cold side. We arrived in very late and started a bit later the following morning.
Our first stop was the Xi'an City Wall which are huge and fully encircle the old city centre. The bike rental place estimated 100 minutes to do a full circle but we didn't have time for this. We continued on then to the Bell tower and Big wild goose Pagoda. These were not particularly good. They were nice enough but after the sights in Beijing they were not very inspiring.
In the evening we had the Dumpling dinner and Han Dynasty Show. This was really good. The food was great, better than we expected with 15 varieties of steamed dumplings alone, never mind all the other stuff. The food just kept on coming. We were not expecting a lot so it was great to be surprised like this. We headed off to the show looking like dumplings ourselves.
The show was a music and dance performance of the historic arts from the time of the Han Dynasty. Again, this was better than expected. This type of thing is generally not my (Eamonn's) cup of tea but I really like some of the percussion music.
The best parts were probably the first and last thirds of the show with some great music and dance. There was one part showing the dance where the women have the really long sleeves, like in House of Flying Daggers. This was very impressive and very well done. Another part had a guy using pipes to play bird songs. This was pretty funny as he was able to produce some weird sounds himself without the use of instruments! Towards the end there was a section of percussion music with 5 guys with drums and symbols. This was also excellent. The only flaw in the evening was having to move a cranky old American guy who seemed to think he was entitled to 10 square feet all to himself!
