Today I spent my time with my brother to explore the Xian city in greater depth.
1) City Wall, Xian - started our morning visit to the old city wall of Xian, paid Rmb40 per person and entered the City Wall via the South Gate. Some stretches of city walls are no longer passable, others were restored or rebuilt. The walls have solid foundation and each gate has a watch tower.
1) City Wall, Xian - started our morning visit to the old city wall of Xian, paid Rmb40 per person and entered the City Wall via the South Gate. Some stretches of city walls are no longer passable, others were restored or rebuilt. The walls have solid foundation and each gate has a watch tower.
2) Shanxi History Museum, Xian (Rmb35) - this museum has some 400,000 pieces of artefacts from the Shang, Western Zhou, Qin, Han, Western Wei, Northern Zhou, Sui Tang, Ming & Qing dynasties, spent 3 hours and took our time to look at the various objects on display.
3) The big and little Wild Goose Pagoda, Xian - Entry to the little goose pagoda costs Rmb30. Originally built in AD707, this pagoda housed the old Buddhist scriptures brought back from India by a devoted pilgrim.
The big wild goose pagoda was built by Emperor Gaozong (Tang Dynasty) in AD648. This pagoda housed the Buddhist scriptures brought back by the famous travelling monk, Xuan Zang ( following the Silk Road trail) and did all the translations into Chinese scripts in this pagoda until his death. You paid Rmb20 to enter.
Yesterday, I paid a small service fee to our hostel reception to help purchased two train tickets for our trip to Turpan (Rmb255 for a sleeper bed). We arrived at the Xian train station at around 4.00pm and found the departure hall very congested and packed with people, luggage and hand carried goods were lying everywhere at the seating area. Our train departed Xian at around 6.10pm.
To avoid the large crowd, we bought an early entry train ticket voucher (Rmb5) which entitled us to enter the train a few minutes earlier to find our seats, slept in the train for two nights for this journey to Turpan, Xinjiang (2 1/2 hr by bus from Urumqi)
" Xian, Shaanxi - many places of historical interest spanning over 13 dynasties for more than 1,062 years. The Chinese has this saying if you do not visit the Emperor Qin Si Huang's Terra Cotta Warriors & Horses when in China, you cannot say you have been to China ! "
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