First morning in Xi’an-Professor Liu brought us bananas, so that was definitely a plus. Things are just as cheap here (if not cheaper?), which is also a plus. We don’t have a good water boiler here, or a fridge-two things we were given at Bei Da-so I went last night to stock up on water. Three 1.5L and two 20oz bottles of water cost me a grand total of 7.60rmb, about $1.15 US. All the sugary and starchy snack foods are so good too, and there’s SO MUCH ice cream. Eating this crap on top of stuffing myself every meal, I’ll need an extra seat on the plane in order to get home.
We got to sleep in a little bit this morning-around 10:30am, we left to go meet up with a bunch of English-speaking Chinese students from Shaanxi (where we’re staying) to have the next of our “issue discussion” sessions. There were about 10 students this time, and they all had the same major-teaching Chinese as a second language (in English speaking countries). They were very interesting, and were overall very talkative. There was one guy in particular, a recent grad school graduate, whose English was very good, and he asked us a lot of questions just as controversial as the questions we were asking him. We asked about how their government officials got elected, he asked about the Iraq War. Then he asked about gays in America, and we asked about gays in China. Though he denied it vehemently, we all suspected that he himself was a closeted homosexual, and some of the girls got to know him well (every girl wants the gay friend, even internationally apparently).
After the discussion and lunch, we went to downtown Xi’an, a bustling metropolis, where there’s lots of “real history” as our tour guide liked to put it. Remember a few days ago, when I was so bummed that the Drum and Bell Towers in Beijing were closed? They have Drum and Bell Towers in Xi’an too! Not as tall, but they were open, and we went in and climbed up. Each tower had a drum show or bell show (respectively) that we got to watch (drum show was better), and they gave us a good view of the surrounding area. Xi’an is in the process of building a subway system (part of the Y4 trillion stimulus package), so there was a lot of construction going on. I imagine that’s pretty much the norm everywhere I’ll go in China.
Last item on the agenda for the day was the Muslim sector of Xi’an, featuring the Muslim Market and the Great Mosque. The market was pretty much just like all of the other markets we had been to, except none of the street vendors were selling pork. The Muslim people there for the most part weren’t Chinese, but just lived there, and probably had for a while. While we were there, the skies opened-fortunately, I didn’t have my big camera bag and did happen to bring my rain coat, so all was well. We ate some of Xi’an’s famous dumplings for dinner, along with tofu noodles and fresh vegetables (and they were delicious-pray I don’t get sick!). We didn’t make it in the Mosque, but it was nice to look at. Most of the group got pretty sullen and moody when they got wet, so we just went back to campus at that point (it was pretty late) and called it a night. Only 2 more days here…
