Sunday 25 Sept
We weren’t totally sure when to get off because some people seemed to be staying on and there were no signs on the platform and no announcements. We rebuffed the taxi touts and found our own way to the hostel. They just keep getting better. This one has Chinese charm and class on top of all the other good things.
After a micro-nap we headed off to the ancillary attractions of Xi’an, leaving the warriors for tomorrow. This is a city of 4.5 million and the air feels like it. It’s what we expected of Beijing. And there are a few mosquitoes here. Our digs are near the old (very) city wall and we walked into the huge highrise hub of the modern city. Right in the centre incongruously are the Drum Tower and the Bell Tower – both huge pagoda-topped constructions which would look right in place in the middle of the Forbidden City. The streets were packed, being Sunday.
Just on the offchance, we asked around for sleeping bags. We still had the slip of paper on which we had got a shop attendant to write the Chinese for “sleeping bag”. This was the product of our attempts in Beijing. J did a charade of getting into a sleeping bag and sketched a bag and a tent. The girls’ faces lit up and they wrote some Chinese characters (rather a lot), which we took upstairs in one of the huge store complexes. There the attendant immediately took us to the tents! Luckily, she had sleeping bags as well, and we made sure she wrote that down (strangely only 2 characters). We will take it to Chengdu and see how we go there.
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