24 April 2018
Shining beacons of ancient
The drum and bell towers of Xian
This evening I did not really go far and I did a bit of a repeat of last night. Mainly because I was starving and my legs were tired from the soldiers path up Huashan from earlier in the day.
I still think Xian is fantastic, I am just scratching the surface. I am yet to see the terracotta warriors, do a lap of the city wall, or see any of the ancient pagodas. You could spend a week here easily.
Tonight I experienced something I had read about, Chinese restaurants that no longer take cash. The only way to pay was one of their mobile phone payment systems where they scan a barcode on your phone generated by an app after you scan a barcode on the cash register that no longer has cash.
When I did find somewhere I could pay cash, they forgot to bring me my change, so I summoned over the waitress and told here in Chinese that she had forgot to bring my my change, and she understood me exactly and apologised. So that was pretty good.
Later on I went to the giant supermarket and hunted around for a cold drink fridge. They all have lots of fridges with drinks in them, but generally the fridges are turned off, very frustrating. This resulted in a staff member enquiring why I was opening all their fridges and feeling their drinks. I was also able to explain to her that I wanted a cold drink not a hot one, which she understood, and pointed me to their cold drink fridge.
For my final activity this evening I delivered on a promise I made last night, to photograph the bell tower and drum tower under lights, scroll on to see those, they are spectacular.
My journey this evening started with a visit to what I thought was one big junk store, but is actually numerous little junk stores sharing the same building. Very interesting, they were closing quite early but I feel as though you could buy anything from here, and most of it would one day short circuit and burn your house down.
Chinese Stationery shop. Lots of pens that work for about 5 minutes. Actually, I remember reading recently that one of the things China has never been able to make are the balls in the end of ballpoint pens, they are all imported from Japan or Germany.
This is the alleyway between the drum tower and bell tower, very busy, quite a few beggars trying to scam tourists.
The drum tower looms large in the distance, or is it the bell tower? Who knows which is which.
This store is only selling bread sticks of various flavours.
Where as this shop is huge and only sells pre packaged spices.
Here we have some guys with hammers pounding nuts which are then made into a slice a bit like a dryer version of baklava. There are lots of varieties. The hammers are all for show of course. Their power bill must be huge because the lights are terrifyingly bright orange, messing with my cameras exposure compensation.
I wanted to go to the train restaurant, but they dont take cash!
Instead I found a very delicious place in basement level 2, claiming to serve a local specialty. It had lots of vegetables, many of them pickled, aged smoked meat of some kind, little nut things and rice noodles. It was very nice and something I have not had before.
Now for the night photos of the buildings under lights. This is the bell tower thats in the middle of a big roundabout.
This is a huge plant pot full of plastic plants.
Here we have some trees lit up with blue lights, whats that to the right?
It is the magnificent drum tower. The bell and drum towers are quite close to each other, I cant see a bell or a drum on either of them.
Last photo for tonight, dried milk things. You may have heard about the powdered milk drama, and how Australia foolishly wants to ban it being exported for some stupid reason. In China they are so desperate for milk they are now turning it into compressed blocks of dried milk. There are lots of brands and shapes to choose from.