China Photos Part 4 - Xian
It was hard to leave Yangshuo after only two and a half days days in the area. There was so much more to see and explore but, alas, it was only a 15 day trip.
Our host in Yangshuo, Mr. Wei, arranged for a car to drive us from Yangshuo to the airport in Guilin (~ 42 miles). The car trip was uneventful except for two strange incidents:
1) While driving down a large, four lane highway we passed a crashed motorcycle that was lying in the middle of the road. There were no people or emergency vehicles around, just the smashed bike
2) About 10 miles out of Guilin our driver pulled into a busy gas station and a man, who looked like he’d been waiting for us, immediately walked up to our car. He and our driver, a tiny woman from Yangshuo who was by far the safest driver we encountered in all of China, spoke briefly, then we all (Katy, myself and the driver) got out of the car we’d been in and got into the man’s car. The man took the car we’d been in before and drove away, and we took the man’s car the rest of the way to the airport.
Our theory is that this exchange had something to do with permit stickers and toll roads (many if not most of the big, new highways in China
are toll roads). The second car was a very nice Mercedes so we didn’t complain….
It was about a two hour flight from Guilin to Xian. We took a packed (but comfortable) airport bus into Xian and as we approached the city it was evident that we were no longer in the countryside.
Wikipedia lists the population of Xian as just under 3 million, but any population estimates for China should be taken with a grain of salt. The population is currently in flux as millions of people from the rural countryside are migrating to the booming urban centers in search of better jobs. It has been estimated that 150 to 200 million people have made this shift from rural to urban in the last two decades, making this the largest migration in human history.
For some perspective, the United States has nine cities with a population over one million. China has forty-nine.
Xian is an ancient city rich in Chinese history. It was the first capital of a unified China under the first emperor, Qin Shi Haung (Qin dynasty 221 BC - 206 BC), and remained the seat of imperial power for another 12 dynasties. As result, Xian and the surrounding areas is home to some of the most important archeological and historical sites in China–the most famous being the Terracotta Army.
While the Terracotta Army is what prompted our visit to Xian (the site is actually about 45 minutes by car out of the city proper) we enjoyed spending time in the city itself. It’s packed with historical sites and spending an evening in Muslim Quarter was one of the highlights of our trip.
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| China - Xian |
Enjoy Xian.
- Peebo
December 11th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Loving the photos. I wil incorporate them into my lectures next year. Keep up the posting.
John
December 31st, 2007 at 1:03 pm
[...] Jeff and Katy recently returned from a trip to China, which must have been an amazing journey, if their photos and descriptions are any indication. Some of my favorite posts cover Xian and the Terracotta Army and Shanghai, but there are several others listed on Jeff’s website, Peebo.net. [...]