At any rate, part way through, we noticed a friend in our group, a particularly tall, blonde, blue-eyed and fair skinned lad, was being stared at and stopped quite a bit. At one point we turned to look back and saw him surrounded by a group of widely smiling Chinese people having their picture taken. This began the theme for our trip.
The train was substantially more comfortable than I had anticipated. All week, I had had anxiety about this train ride, with visions of chickens running up and down the aisles and old ladies tethered to goats and packed in like sardines. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that our teacher booked us a soft bed car. Four people to a room, but the beds were very comfortable. In fact, they had actual mattresses on them, which is more than I can say for my dorm bed.
There are vendors on the platform who try to sell you drinks, including beer, and there's a drink cart on the train. The Chinese beers are a welcomed change from the U.S. They often come in a bottle twice the size of a standard beer bottle and have twice as much alcohol content. They're also half as expensive. Needless to say, it was a good ride.
When we arrived at Xi'An and stepped off the train, it was like a circus train had come to town featuring exotic animals. Chinese people stopped in the street and stared at us like they'd just seen a Yeti. It was so much worse than the train station in Beijing. We learned quickly, that the oldest city in China is very sheltered and there's a good chance that most of its inhabitants have never seen a white person live and close up.
From the train station, we took a bus to our hotel where we dropped our bags and had breakfast before setting out on our first trek. Upon getting off the bus though, we were promptly approached by beggars who follow you closely, holding out their hands and saying "xiexie, xiexie, xiexie," ( shyeah, shyeah, meaning thank you). We walked through a dirt market and down an alley to get to our hotel where I thought at any moment I'd be approached by an old Chinese medicine man trying to sell me a Maguai (Gremlins).
Once we got back on the bus we moved recklessly through the city, dodging bike riders, pedestrians and other buses. We passed the city wall, over 630 years old, and other fascinating sights. Our first stop on the trip was to visit the Bingmayong, the eighth wonder of the world. It is a tomb for one of the emperors that was unearthed in the 70's and is over 2,200 years old. It holds over 7,ooo terra cotta statues of soldiers, each with a different face. All the soldiers were created in the likeness of actual soldiers in the emperor's army. It is an amazing site and quite ominous. Again though, vendors yell at you to buy their wares the whole way from the bus parking lot up to the tomb. They try to drag you by the arm to their stand, ring really annoying bells at you to get your attention and shout broken English phrases like, "Hello, cheaper! Hey lady! Hello! Hello cheaper! You like shirt? I give you cheaper!"
It wasn't long though before we started noticing once again, this strange fascination with our group. We kept hearing people say to each other things like "Bai ren! Bai ren!" and pointing at us (bye ren, meaning white people). Children would point and look at their mothers and start to cry at the shear shock of seeing such monsters invading their world. At one point we kept hearing a particular phrase repeated by people everywhere we went but we did not know how it translated. Eventually, we asked our teacher and she said it meant, "the white devil." This mythology of the white devil comes from way back when people believed the devil would re-appear to them with pale skin, light hair and with blue or green eyes. Apparently, many people in Xi'An were under the impression that this was their day of reckoning.
When we got back to the hotel, we waded through beggars from the bus to the hotel entrance once again. One of the girls in our group was being particularly harassed by a young boy with no shirt, no shoes and covered in dirt. When she told him in Chinese that she didn't have any money, he spit on her. This boy later was scolded by our Chinese tour guide, getting yelled at fiercely in Chinese and beaten and then shoved away from the bus.
The next day, we went on another outing to a Buddhist pagoda, a museum and then to a Muslim mosque. Both the pagoda and the mosque were amazingly peaceful and beautiful. When we got to the mosque we roamed the gardens and took pictures of its serenity. While I snapped shots of the ancient architecture, I turned to see several small children playing in the garden. I went over and began taking their pictures. Every time, they'd grab for my camera and say "wo kan kan, wo kan kan!" This means "let me see!" We had a long conversation in Chinese and a really fun visit together and when I finally walked away, which was so hard for me to do as in my mind I was already strategically planning how I could get them into my luggage and bring them home, I felt spiritually lifted for the rest of the day.
We spent the rest of the day that day roaming the open air market and tasting interesting food. By the end of the trip and on our way back to the train station, I was sad to leave Xi'An and promised myself that one day soon, the white devil will return to the ancient city.
No comments:
Post a Comment