Weekend in Xian

Night in Xian

Last weekend we went to Xian - one of the places in China that I have wanted to visit for a long time.
Xian is located south of the Qinling Mountains in the central Wei River valley on the western shore of the Yellow River. Having the mountains in the back and a river in the front means luck and maybe this is the reason that so many emperors lived and rest around Xian.

The most famous is the Yellow Emperor, Qinshihuang. He is the father of the Chinese nation and rests in a tomb in Lingtong close to the Lishan Mountain. This mausoleum is better known as the "Terracotta Warriors". He started to build the tomb over himself as soon as he became a king, at the age of thirteen, 221 BC. For a time as many as 700 000 craftmen and convicts worked with the project and still it took almost forty years to complete the tomb.


















Totally in the 3 pits there are over 7 000 pottery figures unearthed, including soldiers, chariots ans horses. The total area for the mausoleum is more than 56 square kilometers.





















Every day when the visitors have left the museum the archologists start their "nightwork" trying to solve the great puzzle getting all the peaces together. If they during one workshift can find one peace fitting on one of the warriors they are happy! This must be the he biggest puzzle in the world and nobody knows where it ends - new warriors are find all the time.


















Here the puzzle beginns. When the tombs are opened the warriors are all found
broken like this and is restored peace by peace.

In one of the tombs this sword was found. The surface contains chromium, with a thickness of 10 to 15 micron, which protected the coating against corrosion. The chrome-plating technology was invented by Germans and Americans in 1937 and 1950, but it had emerged in China 2.200 years before. How amazing is this!

Around Xian it is not just the Terracotta Warriors You should look at - there are many other culture sites of interest and a weekend it not enough to explore it all:

Big Wild Goose Pagoda where Buddhist scriptures are stored, brought back from India by the traveling monk Xuan Zang.

Happy Buddas.....

Hot springs in Huaqing whesre the emperors spent their summers. Here also a critical part of Chinese history took part in December 1936 when Chiang Kai Shek (leader for Kuomintang) and in civil war with Mao Zedong (leader for CCP). Chiang was captured and forced to give up.
From this office in Huaqing he ruled over China for a while before Koumintang had to retreat to Taiwan.

The underground museum in Hanyangling. Here are the warriors in "toy-format" but the muesum is amazing down underground.














Islamic street and Great Muslim Mosque in Xian

The Bell tower and part of the Great City Wall

ShiZhiting with our guide Sun Yin and our driver Chang WeiFeng

Thank's for a great weekend! We will be back!

Ticket sales break down

On Tuesday it was time for the second sales of tickets for the Olympics 2008. But this was more than anybody could have expect!
The BOCOG Ticketing Center had to stop the domestic ticket sales because of a communications jam. When the web site was opened for ticket sales on Tuesday morning eight million viewed the website in the first hour of sales, far exceeded the original system capacity to handle one million PVs per hour.
The ticket applications submitted reached 200,000 -- also overrunning the system capacity to process 150,000 per hour.
At the same time, there were more than 3.8 million phone calls to the ticketing hotline (+8610 952008) at the call center.
So, now BOCOG will try to improve the systems and reopen on November 5th.
There is a great interest for the Olympics also inside China. I will do a new attempt to get tickets for Carolina Klyfts final day - I already have for the other.....

My new friend

I have got a new friend in Beijing - a bike!

Since we moved to Park Avenue we got longer distance to our grocery store Jinkelon and to Jeni Lou where You buy "western food" and drinks.
It was a bit to long to walk (15-20 mins) carrying bags with milk, food and beer so we got lazy and used taxi almost every time.
A few weeks ago I bought a new bike at Decathlon (399 RMB - tree gears) so now I can go to Jeni Lou in 7 minutes. With a big basket in front on the bike and a parcel cariier in the end there is plenty of room for both the grocery and the beer...















Bicycling in Beijing is quite exciting (and sometimes dangerous). There is plenty of bicycle lanes but these are used also by motorcycles and cars. Also it is not one way - all direction on both sides. So, in the beginning it was a little scary but I have learned and now Shi Zhiting tells me that I am driving worse than most of the chinese.... It is also a good way to exercise and I enjoy some time with "my friend" almost every day.