The great loop of China - April 2018 - Page 4

Here is ZZ central station, I thought it would be really old inside, it was quite modern, it had a KFC but no Starbucks or Mcdonalds. Very busy even though this was around 7:30AM - things dont generally happen early in China.

My 10 minute journey deposited me at the western station, here it is. I walked away from it hoping to find something to amuse myself with, I found nothing. I could not wander far as I was dragging my suitcase.

This is the entirety of the inside of the station, now you might think this looks large, but for a Chinese high speed rail station its tiny. Some of these station serve over a million people each day. This one strangely does not even have a single shop, and no vending machine, nowhere to buy water!

Most trains went straight through without stopping, when mine came only a few of us thirsty individuals clamoured up the stairs with our bags to board the train. There were no escalators or lifts, and at least 50 stairs up to the platform.

Here is Xian, the bell tower to be precise, wheres the bell? This is just a taste of Xian, more on this later. The city seems futuristic, tourist friendly, up market. All because of some clay statues.

This is the view out of my hotel this time, I guess those are the shared gardens for the apartments surrounding them, with skylights into the car park below.

My room is a bit smaller, but very western, very modern. It has a strange entrance and waiting lobby for the separate Shower and Toilet, its all like a Japanese hotel, but probably twice as big.
One unusual thing, it has a well stocked FREE minibar. Yes free. Theres no alcohol but there are chips, chocolates, soft drinks. I remember one time in Nanjing the minibar was free too.

Since I had not eaten, it was time to select a bakery, only 5 to choose from 100 metres from the door of my hotel. I chose one claiming to be Taiwanese, and got a sushi roll sandwich and a huge cake. Both amazingly delicious. I want more of the cake, it had crunchy stuff in it, candied cockroaches perhaps.

There is no lack of modern shopping malls. As you will see they started out huge and got bigger and more awesomely ancient Chinese in design.

Here is a random street scene looking back towards the bell tower. Again I probably went the wrong way, but then again there probably is no wrong way in Xian, everywhere is nice.

A store has set up on a staircase leading to another store.

Here is a pedestrian street. Pffft, it may look nice and clean and modern, but this is the crappy pedestrian street, keep going.

I made a brief stop to challenge some guys to a radio controlled car race. Mine went under an electric bus so I just ran off.

There will not be a lack of modern malls. They are also all joined together by an underground network of tunnels.

The picture doesnt convey this, but this is a book store in a street underpass tunnel. There is nothing else in this tunnel. What the photo doesnt show is that its a steep downward slope. Its like its meant to be a drainage tunnel, but instead its a book shop, maybe its both.

The modestly sized local government office. I presume they have more money than they know what to do with.

Miles and miles of flowers and manicured trees.

I stopped to get my bearings crossing a major road, bell tower again.

Still more flowers. Lots more were being planted, most stores had giant sculptures made out of flowers.

A truly magnificent spectacle. The long building on the right is all restaurants...and a starbucks.

This is a department store. Along here all the stores are ancient China themed. Some might think thats silly but I like it.

This however is not a department store. It gets dark very late here because its a long way west of Beijing. Later on in the distance I could see this was brightly lit up, I will provide a photo on another night.

Now we enter the amazing Muslim street market area.

It is so good its worth 2 photos.

The main food is sheep, we call it lamb, they prefer to call it mutton, some times they call it baby mutton when they mean lamb. There are lots and lots of stalls carving entire sheep like this in the street.

There are also numerous spice shops, mainly chilli, thats fine by me. This one was featured on CCTV. Just like in Japan, if you have been on NHK, the same applies in China if you have been on CCTV, you should have a sign informing everyone. My number one business plan is fake I have been on CCTV signs. I am sure its already been done.

Running off the network of main streets are these alleyways with signs saying they lead to the Xian mosque. I could not find the mosque, I was looking for minarets though, maybe it doesnt have minarets?

Clearly, Muslim Chinese, or perhaps regular Han Chinese visiting the Muslim Chinese amusement park, enjoy having their feet nibbled by fish.

Just another one of the streets a few blocks away from the main chaos. Someone is making drinks with liquid nitrogen here...dangerous!

Another large chilli shop, this one has not been on CCTV, however they do have the giant stone grinding wheel in use.

Most of the streets have a variation of this bright red lantern thing hanging from the trees, I like it.

Just another gate with cool lighting.

This is the entrance to a KTV, going in is probably ok, but I believe people drink to excess in these places. How would you go coming down these steps at 3AM blind drunk? It was flashing bright colors at epileptic speeds.

That is entirely all shopping mall. I was amazed.

Nearby I saw a sign advertising backpacker hostels, and sure enough, bar street.

After all that, I chose dinner poorly, I was in a rush to get back to my hotel as I still have some research to do for tomorrow. I ended up at this Japanese place where I ordered Gyu don (beef bowl). Instead I was given pork schnitzel bowl, with a raw egg on top. I didnt really want crumbed deep fried pork, and in China I dont really want any raw egg. It wasnt great! Not to worry, nearby was a supermarket with the fruit salad bar for second dinner.

Here is the entrance to the Huashan mountain park, the entrance fee is enormous, $40 Australian dollars. I felt bad for poor Chinese families who may have been spending a huge amount of their income today in such poor weather.

The all important, AAAAA rating. There are not many places in China that get this rating for tourism.

This is where the 2nd shuttle bus ends its journey. Every single other person then headed straight to the cable car, not me...

Locating the start of my path was very easy. In China its all paths, with steps and guide rails, no trails!

I took one last look at a non foggy world, rocks jutting up everywhere. Actually it was already very foggy.

Starting my ascent, there is the bus station, now we head into the fog and rain.

Huge rock faces, I think! Reminded me of Taroko gorge in Taiwan.

This valley had a brief clearing in the fog, it would be the last, there are the cable cars overhead! I was enjoying myself, I did not wish I was on the cable cars at all.

Very eerie ascent.

This is a famous spot on the trail, the 80 degree steps. As you can see theres a couple of different options for how steep you want to go. Also note the rubbish bins, this park was also absolutely spotless, and there were a few brave old folks assigned to emptying the bins.

I then climbed this waterfall.

Despite this being the difficult path, there are still a couple of good quality public toilets built on the edge of a cliff.

Another brief break in the fog, and when I say break in the fog, I mean slightly less dense fog.

The steps went on and on, you can tell by the way those people are coming down how steep they are.

And here is the summit of the North peak, so much fog.

Enjoy the great 'view'. Apparently its one of the greatest views in all of China!

Time to keep climbing and look at a lot of padlocks. I had my lock picking kit with me so removed about 20 and hurled them off the cliff.

There are of course temples, shrines, restaurants and even hotels! This one is around the central peak area I think. It was hard to know where I was at any time.

Here is a hotel lobby. An old lady sits at the head of the table and issues warnings to all those who dare pass.

And here is a restaurant, a few people who took the cable car up still walked an hour up the mountain to here in the rain to go to lunch.

Another one of the peaks. You can buy the ribbons and padlocks to attach to the wires.

Obviously a lot of people buy the ribbons, so they have bonus wires to attach them to all over the place.

I now tried to find another way down, hunting through the fog.

It was a really great path.

Very happy with this photo.

I made it to the West cable car station (there are 2 cable cars) thinking there would be a path down from here. Not only could I not find the path but the cable car was not operating. I think its being upgraded? There is however a Dicos thats open despite there being no cable car, and therefore no people!
A Dicos is Chinese Mcdonalds. Without the cable car operating to get to here people would have to walk about 90 minutes from the other cable car.

I broke into the construction zone and explored the new tunnel to where I guess the updated cable car will leave from. Thats enough use of the term 'cable car' for today.

Time to descend. Coming up are the two soldiers I had a lengthy chat with. They were envious that I have no children and no pressure to have children. They dont want to have children. We all agreed that children are useless, and should be thrown off a cliff.

Although it was the same path that I took on the way up, it occasionally split for going up and going down direction, I followed the signs that literally said 'the going up direction'. On the way down this part went out over a sheer drop, I have no way to know how far down because of the fog.

And finally, I am back at the bus station, soaking wet. My camera was starting to play up, fogging over, not turning on.... It seems ok now but is still fogging up hours later.

I came down from up there.

As I got back to the park entrance, the mountains seemed to come out of the fog briefly.

Here, have another. They certainly look like spectacular mountains.

Last photo, the Huashan north high speed train station. It has a shop! I was able to get a ticket back to Xian departing in only 20 minutes, which was good because I had mild hypothermia by now.

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.

On my walk to the bus to the terracotta warriors, I went outside the northern gate of the city wall. I hope to show some more of the city wall and the view from it later tonight.

China loves their toilets so much, there are now shops set up inside of them. Really this is the hand basin washing area of a huge toilet block.

Here is the city wall outside of the main slow train station. It was very nice of the ancient engineers to leave such a nice space under it for people traveling to the train station hundreds of years later.

In my continuing series of Chinese train stations, here is the Xian main station, which serves only old slow trains. Most of them heading out to the forbidden wastelands of Xinjiang.

This is where you get off the bus at the terracotta warriors museum parking lot. I read all kinds of stories about how the only realistic way to get here is a private expensive tour. Nonsense. The bus was very easy to find, cost $1.50 for the one hour ride, no wait, everyone gets a seat, and no one even bothered me to take the fake shopping tour bus. I think a lot of people come to Xian for the day and go straight from the airport to the terracotta warriors and back to the airport. Those people are missing out!

Here is the entrance. Similar story here. I read everywhere about 4 hour lines, tickets sold out, pushing, fighting, crying. There was none of that. The line to buy tickets had ZERO people, the line to get in through security was also zero people. It was a smoother experience than going to the movies in Australia, because no one demanded I hand over my drink.

This group of air hostesses was very happy to be here.

I spotted the Australians! Really, they were Australian, GO GO TEAM WADDLE! You might think I am being rude, but this lady was offered a wheelchair by the staff for the 200 metre walk to the excavation pit. She was highly offended, I was highly amused.

The grounds were very nice, and like all AAAAA Chinese tourist attraction zones, spotless. I was also surprised at the cafe, I was able to buy a delicious walnut muffin and big bottle of coke zero for about $3 AUD.

And here they are. Everyone has seen the photo before. The shed over the top is also impressive.
I believe the roof of the tomb was originally just above the heads of the warriors, it wasnt a huge open cavern like this.

It was really not crowded at all, I could get a spot on the fence immediately. Very surprising given all the stories I had read. Some people who came all the way from the other side of the world just to visit this hole in the ground said it was a terrible experience and they wished they had never come because when they finally got here they couldnt see anything.

Here is a horse. Apparently there were also wooden chariots but they all rotted.

I think there is still a lot of excavation and restoration going on. This is still the main pit, there are 3 pits to visit, but its really only the big pit number 1 that has a lot of warriors.

Some of them are covered in glad wrap. Many of them are put back together from pieces of broken pottery.

None of these are in their original positions.

A couple more photos of the main pit...

Last one! I hope you got to see enough of one of the most photographed tourist attractions in the world.

On my way to the cafe I went through this high end gift shop. Westerners were actually buying stuff. A guy bought a little jade statue for $1800 AUD.

This is Pit 3. I did the pits out of order. The smallest of the pits. Somehow it looks new.

I am pretty sure these were placed in here.

If you pay enough money you can have your photo taken with a mummified warrior.

Here is a particularly well restored warrior. Notice he still has his thumb! Recently in the USA a man took a selfie with one of them that was there visiting, then stole his thumb! What is he planning to do with a clay thumb?

Now we head into pit number 2, where theres not a lot to see at all. It is quite large.

They built a boat ramp down to it.

A bit more of the surrounding grounds and the amazing small mountains in the background. I did some research, no accessible path up, but there is a cable car to a restaurant where you can hike around at the top. Whats the point if you cant climb?

Time to exit via a series of shopping malls. Despite further warnings of chaos, no one tried to sell me anything.

The local fashions are very awesome. Coconut chic.

The last store before the car park / bus boarding location was selling dead cats. I bought 3!

After getting back to the city I walked back to my hotel a different way. There is no shortage of malls!

The whole wall is also surrounded by a moat, the area between the moat and the wall is a huge park. I peered over the edge numerous times and saw dancing, ping pong, badmington, painting in the park, running, opera etc. I yelled insults at them all knowing I was safe on my fortified wall.

This is the southern gate where you get on the wall. You can get on and off at a lot of places, but apparently this is the biggest gate. They frequently have performances here and in front of it. I found out later there was some kind of advertising event at the northern gate, and by the time I got back to the southern gate that was closed off also for an outdoor concert.

I have no idea what this is, befouling my wall. Get this crap off here!

Time to head off into the sunset, target number 1, those 3 buildings on the horizon.

I made it to the south eastern corner, here is the view back from where I had come.

Everywhere you look in Xian, its nice!

Time to get cracking on the next part of the epic journey. There are of course public toilets every few hundred metres, and also a few little cafes.

Here is the western gate. You will soon realise the gates are similar.

Each gate has 2 structures and a big hole in the middle. Even when this was built in 1300 they enjoyed outdoor shows.

I now ran for a while, sunset was approaching.

Heres a main road outside the city walls, heading west. This is not where the main big buildings are, those far to the south of the old city were a lot bigger. Xian is huge.

I arrived at the golden palace, looked over, saw 3 Lamborghinis go past. Chinese people much prefer a Lambo to any other kind of fancy car. I think the owners lived in the golden temple area.

The wall going off into the horizon and beyond.

Very clear here after the rain, which stopped at about lunch time. I was surprised more people were not on the wall enjoying the sunset. I know I was.

Cool sign!

Here is a street heading through the old city, taken from near the north gate, looking south. How is everyones geography going? And when I say everyone, I mean my one reader, my mother?

This is the north gate. I think a launch of a make up brand was happening. You can rent out any of the gates for any purpose. I plan to shoot my next youtube unboxing video here.

Here we have a long exposure looking south from the old train station. Buses do a U turn here, hence the cool light trails.

I was here at the old station earlier to catch the bus to the terracotta warriors, only then I was at ground level. Now I am at wall level. I am happy to provide photos at multiple elevations for your viewing pleasure.

The red lights surround the entire wall. It is actually very dark, you have to watch out for the occasional cyclist. If I lived here I would run laps up here often, it is very quiet if you take a couple of steps back from the edge. There is also a building in the distance shooting lasers into the sky.

Looking East outside the wall, there are malls outside the wall as well. No shortage of malls in Xian!

As you can see, they light up all the towers, but not too brightly, just bright enough to let the invading forces know where to aim.

Except they did light this one up very brightly, and its pretty awesome. It was near here I got thrown off the wall just before returning to the South gate where I started, where there was now a concert in progress on the wall.

I descended and beat everyone at beer pong. Street beer pong no less.

Now this is what I call a telescope. The guy set up on the bridge in Melbourne needs to up his game.

It was very late by the time I got off the wall, dinner choices were limited, I ended up in a fast food joint, only it was noodles and dumplings fast food. It looks very clean, but the price for a huge bowl of soup and 6 huge steamed buns was alarmingly low, $3. Id prefer it if it were double the price!

The soup was indeed pretty average. Everything in it was overcooked. Probably better than undercooked or cold. I did not eat most of it, it was way too much food for $3.