The intersection in Xi’an where the Bell Tower stands.

As bad as people have said Beijing’s air is, I really didn’t notice it much during our three days there. Xi’an, on the other hand, is a different story. In fact, the air in Xi’an felt 100 times worse than the air in Beijing. The moment we landed, we could see a haze hanging over the airport and smell a smoke-like odor in the air, kind of like when somebody down the street is burning leaves. The difference, though, is that smoke from burnt leaves eventually dissipate, while the Xi’an “fog” did not. It was hanging over the entire city the whole first day we arrived here, and it was waiting for us early this morning when we went out for a stroll around the hotel. After breathing it the afternoon of the first day in Xi’an, I was feeling a slight burning sensation in the back of my throat, and I could see little bits of black when I blow my nose (presumably coal ashes, since they apparently use quite a bit of coal here). As Courtney said, this is probably what it felt like to live in Victorian-era England.

Compared to Beijing, Xi’an is closer to the China I remember and perhaps closer to the way real life in China is now. Beijing is spic and span, very modern, and very international. Xi’an, on the other hand, is much more quintessentially Chinese. Most signs don’t have accompanying English translations. The streets are much less congested with car traffic but much more packed with pedestrians and people on bicycles and scooters. Whereas Beijing feels like a show house,  Xi’an actually feels like a house that’s lived in. As Courtney said, she didn’t feel too much like a foreigner in Beijing, but she does in Xi’an.

There is one thing that feels like home and yet very much not: the Christmas spirit. We noticed this in Beijing, and it’s much more of the same in Xi’an. Christmas seems to be a big deal here, about on par with New Year’s Eve in the U.S. The display of Christmas decor in Beijing and Xi’an, however, are almost over the top. Every hotel and restaurant we passed had some sort of big display (almost always non-religious imagery), and many of the small storefronts had the same Santa stickers on their windows. Many big hotels, including ours, had big parties on Christmas Eve, and people turned out for those en masse.

Ringing the bell, which used to be done to signal the time of day.

I’m condensing our activities for the two days in Xi’an into one post, since it was a much slower pace than in Beijing. After our arrival, we stopped off at the Bell Tower, which is located smack in the middle of the city, with major roads feeding in from all four directions. It’s an ancient structure and one of the city’s historical landmarks. Yet, it’s right in the middle of modern-day Xi’an, as there was a huge mall right across the street from it on one corner, and a big plaza with various shops (including a Starbucks) on the other. It’s an interesting juxtaposition.

Our first night in Xi’an was spent feasting on dumplings and taking in a Tang Dynasty song and dance performance, both in the same theatre. The dumplings are a trademark Xi’an food. We sampled almost 20 varieties, and most of them were made to resemble whatever fillings they contained (e.g.: a pork dumpling looked like a pig’s head). As for the show, it was a very enjoyable hour and fifteen minutes, and our favorite aspect of it was the array of beautiful costumes on display.

Big Wild Goose Pagoda, standing amid the morning “fog”.

This morning, we visited Big Wild Goose Pagoda, a famous Buddhist temple. It was a serene locale, and at every turn, something pleasant jumps into view, whether it be an ancient pavilion or a beautiful courtyard. The haze still remained, pulling a thin veil over everything.

In the afternoon, we went to visit one of the most famous sites in China — the terra cotta army. The statues of soldiers, created to accompany the first emperor of China into the afterlife, were discovered in the 1970s by three farmers who were digging a well. As a reward for their discovery and reporting it to the authorities, the government awarded each one with a bicycle — a very telling illustration of how far China has come economically in the last 30 years, a development that has relied in part on tourism, to which the terra cotta army has contributed immensely. Three facilities were constructed right on top of the pits in which these statues were buried and excavated. It was an impressive sight to stand in front of Pit No. 1 and take in the rows upon rows of terra cotta soldiers. Yet it was even more mind-boggling to think about the fact that this army was only in the area adjacent to the first emperor’s tomb, not inside the tomb itself. Who knows what kind of mind-blowing riches lie in there.