This adventure started on Thursday, April 12th, 2018. My flight out of Dallas left right on time. Melissa, Benny, and Bea took me to the airport and everything started out just great. I would be flying to Detroit and then to Shanghai and then to Xi'an. Below are a couple pictures over Canada, then Alaska, then I feel asleep as we flew over a bit of Russia, but I woke up in time to snap a picture over Japan.
It was kind of a quick turn around on the ground in Shanghai. I arrived a bit behind schedule. After I got off the plane, I had to go through border patrol and customs. I had a carry on and had checked 2 larger pieces of luggage. One of them had most of my dental supplies and one of them had clothes and food (I ended up not eating ANY of the food I brought). Once I made it through border patrol, I went and picked up my luggage. It was probably 6:30pm Friday night China time... 5:30am Friday morning Dallas time. After grabbing my luggage, I went through customs. No big deal there as you just wait in a big line with a bunch of Chinese people and then walk through. No real examination of luggage. After getting through, I was excited to be in China for real now. I was tempted to go on the street and check out Shanghai, because I knew I had a 2 hour layover initially, but looking at the clock, I realized I'd already been on the ground for an hour plus, and I needed to get a move on.
I went and got in the line to check in for my flight to Xi'an. After getting to the front, the ticket agent told me I was in the wrong place because I needed to be in the domestic check-in and I was a the international check-in. Well, I got to the domestic check-in, waited for about 10 minutes before I asked some ticket agent if I could skip ahead because I thought I might miss my flight and was sent over to another line. I jumped in front of about 100 people and went to the other line where there was only 20 people. I jumped to the front of the line. I felt bad, but I think Americans are already known for being kind of rude, so I didn't feel that bad.
Got my luggage checked in and a new boarding pass and it was off to the races. There was a special security line for people who are late, so I got to go in that one. At this point I was speaking a bit of Chinese, but I was still pretty rusty, but I was really enjoying it. Got through security... it was a little bit of a stalling point when they inspected my back up batteries for my headlight and cell phone charger batteries, but made it through and ran through the airport to my gate.
At arrival to my gate, I walked right through because most everyone had boarded and was ushered on to a bus which took me to the plane. I made it on the plane and was united with the rest of the Baoji group. Brother Tyler was there and so was the rest of the crew that was traveling from Salt Lake City.
We then sat on the runway for 3 hours due to weather. Awesome.
Flying over China it was one city after the next. Lots of people there.
When we got in to Xi'an airport it wqas probably 1 or so in the morning. I knew our hotel was a 45 minute drive so I was anticipating a 2am bedtime. I didn't realize however that all of the SLC group had luggage that didn't make it on to our Xi'an flight. So we spend another 2 hours at the airport all by ourselves chilling while they made arrangements to have our luggage sent to our hotel in the next day or two.
Finally made it to the hotel about 4:30 am China time. That would be about 3:30pm Dallas time. Which would make for about 29 hours of travel time. I was ready to go to bed!
The next morning we were headed to see the Terra Cotta soldiers. These were buried over 2,000 years ago by the first Emperor of a unified China, Qin Shi Huang. Each soldier is unique, like a snowflake. As we entered the hotel lobby, we got the chance to take about a million selfies with some of the locals. Pretty fun to be in a place where everyone thinks they should get a picture with you.
We stopped by a factory that makes replica terra cotta soldiers on the way to the real place. One of the neat things about this place is that thy would charge 10 times what you could pay at the markets for a similar item.
I'd have to dig through some old photos, but I have a picture of me doing this exact pose from 2003 in this exact spot. The progress was pretty neat to see. China seems to be a much wealthier country than last time I visited. Last time I came solo and toured the country by train, staying in hostels that cost $8 or $13 / night. Shared rooms. No toilet paper. It was a very different trip.
Looks like there were a bunch of locals interested in checking out the buried army as well.
This is the main pit, and I think it was the only pit open when I went back in 2003. I think there are around 6,000 figures in this one pit. When they were buried they were brightly colored. These figures were only found in 1974 when a farmer was out ploughing his field. All of this was underground for over 2,000 years!
There were a couple of other pits to explore, none as huge or impressive as the first pit. There was also this little section of the museum that I was able to grab a nice photo of Tyler in. There was a lot of interest in this place. When we got back to our hotel that night, we noticed our lobby had the exact same display, only there weren't 2,000 people crowded around looking at it.
This is day 1 of talking with some people visiting from Chengdu. I had gone pretty much 12 years or so without speaking any Mandarin, so it was relaly fun to see that I could still communicate with the grandmas and grandpas, but it was also pretty sad to see how much I had forgotten. It was crazy how fast it all came back though. I think my language abilities increased about 10 times the first day I was there and then tripled a couple days only increasing by about double each day by the end.
After a day of touring, we went to the Tang Palace Dance show where we were treated to a sort of a Dim Sum meal. I included the menu below so you can see all the food we ate. I had to laugh a little bit when we went in to the performance because it might as well of been in Dallas or Salt Lake or something. It was a very international/American crowd. The servers spoke english, there was an english menu, and it was very much like being in what I imagine Branson or a Viking River Cruise might feel like. I embraced it and it was a lot of fun to have everything described in English.
Tyler and I wanted to squeeze all the fun out of China, so we went out with our cameras to walk around and see what was interesting.
We met these little 9 and 10 year olds out playing on the street. It was fun to talk with them. They yelled out to each other "Waiguoren" when we walked by which is how they say "foreigners", so I called back at them "zhonguoren", which is how you say "Chinese". They laughed and wanted to compare phones and talk about good places to take photos. They were making fun of how thick my phone was until I showed them it was a case for my credit cards I use and then they thought american technology was cool again.
A couple of awesome shots of a couple of awesome dudes.
I didn't snap a photo, but Tyler and I found this yummy treat. There didn't seem to be a good english translation so we'll call it barbecued gluten strands.
We were both pretty tired now, so we had to laugh when we got back to our hotel room and our key card didn't work!
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