14th May – Xi’an tour

We get to have a lie in this morning as our bus departs the hotel at 9 am to take us to the Great Wild Goose Pagoda.

The pagoda was built by Xuanzang who journeyed to the west to India to study Buddhism.  When he returned to China in 645 AD with the Buddhist scriptures and relics he pleaded with Emperor  Taizong to build the pagoda so the scriptures & relics could be stored in it safely.

When China’s first female Emperor ruled she had it rebuilt with 10 stories as 10 is more feminine than 7.  The pagoda was later damaged by an earth quake and was rebuilt as 7 stories, which still remains today.

The Buddhist temples around the pagoda are beautiful, with 1 telling the story of Buddha from conception when his mother dreamt of elephants through his life as a student and a teacher to his attaining Nirvana. This story is a mural that fills a room & has been made using jade figures. One of the temples has a thousand gold Buddhas and another one is the money Buddha that people pray to.

The pagoda has a bell hanging from each corner of the roof on all of the levels and they are making a beautiful tuneful sound as they move in the breeze. The gardens around the pagoda are beautiful.

We climb to the top of the pagoda and get an excellent view over the city, to the gates of the city wall and over the musical fountains.

After a break back at the hotel we visit the Bell Tower which sits on a roundabout right outside our hotel. There is a really good underground walkway that is under the road and leads to the other roads that come off the roundabout, the rail system & the Bell Tower. We climb to the top of the tower and have a lovely view across to the Drum Tower.  Bell Towers were built to house a large bell that was struck at every 2 hours throughout the day to let people know what the time was, as they didn’t have clocks.

We descend back underground and come up next to the Drum Tower which is adjacent to the Muslim quarter. We are approached by some children asking us if they could practice their English and proceed to ask us some questions.  Their English is very good, Ryan is 8 years old and his sister is 6, we tell them about our trip, show them a photo of our car and they can’t believe the trip we are doing . They are very confident speaking English and we have no problems communicating with them & they ask if they can take some photos of us with them.

We have a delicious Chinese beef hamburger for lunch.  The beef is slow cooked in a sauce, then chopped up on a stone with spring onions, coriander leaves and some of the sauce from the pot.  A small muffin size bun is heated and spread with a chilli oil and then the meat is also spread on, yummy!  We also couldn’t resist the frozen yogurt that was mixed on a frozen stainless steel plate with blueberries, then spread out until its very thin, and served topped with go berries and nuts. It’s so creamy and delicious.

After lunch we visit the Drum Tower which not only has a display of drums but also a display of antique furniture.  Like the Bell tower the drums were played to let the people of the city know what the time was.  They were played 3 times through the night, once at dusk to signal the gates to the city were closing, once at midnight and once at dawn to signal the gates to the city were opening.

We are very fortunate that there is a concert performance while we are in the Bell Tower, which is terrific.

When we return to the Hotel our guide Green introduces John and Michael to Tonny (TV Tonny), a camera man from the government run China Central Television.   Tonny’s Director has sent him to Xian in order to film us and in particular Tony on our Silk Road trip so they can make a documentary about it. TV Tonny has all sorts of camera’s he’s using to film us including a drone.

Tony was given a couple of dozen cans of beer in Beijing, that have his photo on them, so he’s chilled them down and we have beer, peanuts & chips in the car park with our MG’s at 5:30 pm, it’s just like being at a National Meeting!

We have dinner in a private dining room of the restaurant adjacent to the car park and they serve us a wonderful Chinese banquet.  Each car reflects on what the highlight of our trip to date has been, we think our highlight so far was the evening we spent in the Baijiu shop in Guanling drinking tea & baijiu with the shop owner and talking using Google translate.