Sat, August 1
Mike
Curtis had a hankering for McDonalds Egg McMuffin and hash browns. Since no breakfast is included in our hotel price, off we went at 8 AM (for the first time in several days, we were not getting up at 5:30 or so). On the street, I got two fried pies: one with a meat paste and one with some kind of veggies (1 Y apiece) and then a crepe with veggies in it (2 Y). In the McDonald's Curtis got his fix, and I got an iced coffee with whipped cream (9 Y) in order to sit down and eat my other goodies.
It was time for the Bell Tower. Admission was 27 Y for one attraction, 40 Y for both the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower. For old folks (lao) the price was 13 Y each, so I convinced them I was old (over 65) and got both tickets for 26 Y. Into the Bell Tower at 9:10 AM, just in time to have missed the 9 AM performance of the bells and other instruments. We toured the building (a three story temple), and then walked the 200 meters over to the Drum Tower. We were 15 minutes early for the 10 AM drum performance. It was remarkable, and Curtis recorded some of it on his camera as a movie.
We were disappointed that we had not heard the Bell Tower music, so we went back and asked. They honored our ticket, and we were in time to hear the 10:30 AM performance, with bells and other instruments. One of the pieces they played was "Old Lang Syne" which, if you delete one note, is pentatonic; not clear if the Brits ripped off the Chinese, or vice versa.
The performances were absolutely superb. I believe that Curtis recorded a good bit of these. Afterwards I bought a CD of Chinese classical music for 50 Y. Hope it is as good as the original.
One of the things the vendors sell is an ocarina-like thing, on which they play "Old Lang Syne." Curtis tried it out, but couldn't quite get the hang of it, but he was enticed by the frogs, and so there are a treble and bass frog now in his pack.
The other thing we wanted to do before leaving Xi'an was to get onto the wall. It was starting to rain pretty hard, but we took the bus to the East Gate, paid the admission (40 Y for Curtis and 20 Y for old farts like me) and walked up. It was raining harder, and we were running out of time (it was 11:45, and we had to eat lunch, finish packing, and check out by 14:00), so we walked for no more than 15 minutes, got down, and took a bus back to the center.
We headed for a restaurant that Curtis had noticed fairly near the laundry. There we ordered three things: 1. Sweet pork spareribs; 2. Mixed vegetables of north Shaanxi; 3. Black tea. We were charged 20 Y for the tea.
However, we still aren't doing it right. We aren't getting rice with our meals, and we aren't getting free, or cheap, tea. What is China coming to, no rice or tea with your meal?
Anyway, the pork spareribs were cold, and were served in a sweet barbeque sauce with miniature dates. The mixed vegetables had rice thread, noodles, and some mystery meats. The whole thing was 64 Y (1 Y for the napkins), and quite tasty. We congratulated ourselves that the last three meals we have had all had different local tastes, and all were very good.
Out around 13:25, back to the hotel, finished packing, and checked out at 13:55. We were not going to take the bus in this heavy rain, and there were no taxis to be had, so we went in a motorized rickshaw (20 Y). Nobody gives these vehicles any respect: not the buses, taxis, cars, or other pedestrians, so it was a bit harrowing. But we made to the railway station around 14:30. In preparation for buying the ticket from Kaifeng to Nanjing, I had written everything out in large letters, with Kaifeng and Nanjing in the Chinese characters. It worked fine, except that there was no first class, so we will travel second class. God knows when you have to book to get first class or soft seats on these trains.
There was a woman who came up to us in the station and asked to see our Lonely Planet guidebook to try to figure out where she was going to go next. She was trying to get to Taishan Mountain. I wrote the name of the city she would have to travel to (Jinan) in Chinese characters, gave her the website cnvol.com and wished her luck.
We walked into the train station in plenty of time to get on the 1533 train from Xian. We found our seats. My assigned seat was next to the girlfriend of a boyfriend who really wanted to sit next to her, so we traded seats. I ended up in Seat 8, rather than 48. Curtis was in 47, quietly reading a book.
I quickly was surrounded by folks who wanted to speak English. The next five hours were spent in animated English conversation. One of this cast of characters was the gentleman in Seat 7. He was an English-speaking guide from Louyang who was scheduled to lead a group of 6 Brits the next week. We talked about the Urumqi accident, the Cultural Revolution, and modern China. After about an hour, he moved away. We were then joined by Curtis, a computer networking student, and a med student. Interestingly, only the computer networking student had parents who were middle class professionals; the other two Chines men came from peasant stock. All of them were virulently anti-Muslim. I haven't been to India, but China is certainly in the running for the most virulently anti-Muslim country in the world.
After about 3 hours, the computer networking student asked if he could feel my beard. Of course, I said OK. It was clear that he had been dying to do that the whole time. My beard is such a curiosity here.
Anyway, 20:35 came. We arrived in Louyang and got off the train. A taxi driver came up and asked if we needed a cab, so we followed him. We got out, into a large group of cabbies, and it became immediately clear that none of them intended to run on the meter. I sensed trouble, so we went to a different cab. The first cabbie grabbed my arm, intending to pull me violently into his cab. We started negotiating with the second cabbie ("50," "No, 5," "40," "No, 10"). Finally, a policeman watching all of this said, "15". And that was it. The price was 15, off the meter.
We got to the hotel, hungry, thirsty, and tired. We checked into the room, and then came down to eat in the hotel restaurant. What a strange place. It was a cafeteria. We picked out a cold plate of crispy fish in some kind of a sweet sauce, and cold plate of beef with a dipping sauce sort of au jus, a plate of green beens with a red pepper or two. There was "tea" on the table, but it tasted like barley juice, or something. We ordered a Louyang beer. They came and said: "No noodles?" So we ordered qi shan noodles, one of the Xi'an dishes we had not eaten. It was a huge amount of food, totalling 64 Y or so. The qi shan noodles were a large bowl of soup. All very strange, and none really outstanding.
Up to the room, where we both took showers, and I washed three days worth of clothing. To bed around midnight.
Curtis
I shot a couple of short videos of performances at the Drum Tower and Bell Tower in Xi'an. This partially makes up for missing getting to a performance of Sichuan opera in Chengdu. Just didn't have enough time.
Mike and I took a 2nd class train from Xi'an to Luoyang. They call it "hard seat," but actually it's not so bad. Mike, of course, immediately found several interesting people to talk with. We traded around seats so that we could continue conversing over most of the five hour ride.
The two guys I spoke mostly with were both students: one a Masters in medical school working towards his MD, and the other a student in computer security. He was especially interested in history and wanted a better understanding of European history, saying "American history easy. European too complex." So naturally I enjoyed sharing my own particular spin on how things developed there and enjoyed talking a bit more about Chinese history with him.
We got to Luoyang at 8:30 and negotiated for a cab to the hotel. We had time to get dinner at the hotel's restaurant. It was a rather strange cafeteria style. Let's just say it was nothing to write home about, except for the strange "tea" that they serve: looked like dishwater and kind of tasted like it too. The other odd thing is that here in Luoyang, they don't seem to serve rice with anything. No noodles, no nothing.
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