9-24-19 - Xi’an - Trying new foods at the Muslim bazaar
/Day 100. Kyle & Leanne joint blog.
Today we wake up early and pack our bags for our six hour train ride to Xi’an. We drive the 30 minutes to the huge train station and say goodbye to the driver. Once we step into the train station we realize how huge it is, this is a gigantic station on the level of an international airport or even bigger. We are so glad we have Grace to help guide us through the station as everything is in Chinese. We arrive an hour earlier and buy snacks and go to the bathroom. Then we hear something over the loudspeaker and a hoard of people move into the line.
We get through to the train and board and say goodbye to Grace. Those six hours were tough but better than we expected on a train. We then get off and are greeted by a porter with our name on the phone. He is a little eager so we are suspicious at first as our parents that taught us to be cautious in these situations but he walks us to meet our guide Albert.
We get in the van and to our delight he is much more energetic than Grace and it becomes pretty obvious that Albert isn’t just any old tour guide. We learn that Albert has been conducting tours since 1999 and he is very senior with the tour company so he’s normally in the office. He says he does tours occasionally to keep his English sharp. Score for us. Kyle mentions again about needing to buy a Power Ball ticket. Albert was an English major in University and went on be to a college professor of English. More importantly for us, he is a Chinese history buff so he reads and reads and reads. How lucky of us that over the next 48 hours we will get a crash course on Chinese history from 200 BCE to current times from the perspective of a former professor. Albert truly is a walking Chinese history book. Auspicious!
We head over to Xi’an’s city walls and learn so much about Xi’an and its history and even its subways during the drive. We arrive at the city walls where Albert tells us that Xi’an’s city walls are one of the last remaining, fully in-tact city walls of any Chinese city. We learn how the walls and moat were designed as the city defense systems with 94 watch towers built around the top perimeter of the walls. We also learn about the safe house, the slanted walls, the peasant uprisings and the division between the flat inner city and the skyscrapers in the outer city. After experiencing the modest width of the Great Wall, we are surprised at the expansive width of this wall at 12 meters. People are walking, jogging and riding bicycles on the top on the wall and eight miles of the city marathon is run on top of the wall.
We then see The Great Mosque, one of the most peculiar mosques in the world. It is a former prince’s residence turned into a mosque by the local Way people. They have a very informative billboard explaining their beliefs and dispelling the misconception of Muslim religion. We learn about their rigorous five times a day prayer schedule and we see one of the largest China vases ever, at least three times larger than Leanne or Kyle.
So far on the trip, we’ve visited a wide array of places of worship including Catholic, Protestant, Lutheran, Russian Orthodox and Anglican Churches as well as Jewish Synagogues, Japanese Shinto Shrine and Japanese, Korean and Chinese Buddhist Temples and now we’ve added a Chinese Mosque.
We then head through a Muslim market called a bazaar where they sell items ranging from those targeted to tourists, everyday items and a whole host of different types of food. As we have no need for another suitcase and no room for tourist t-shirts, we focus on the food sold along the outdoor walkway. This bazaar is really going to test how adventurous we have become on the food front as we don’t recognize anything.
We enlist Albert to explain what the different foods are. First we (or at least some of us) try a cup of fruit turned into a jellied paste. Next, we see something that looks like a snake wrapped around a stick that looks like a really long French fry. We try lamb on a stick, pomegranate juice and a flattened bread. The kids find a chocolate covered ice cream balls (looks like a Bon-Bon) called dragon breathe balls that are apparently made with dry ice inside. When we eat a dragon breathe ball, we breath out dry ice vapor (hence the dragon breath name) for the next 60 seconds. Leanne warns Kyle that it looks dangerously close to vaping and not to put any pictures of this on the blog. It was vibrant and cool to see.
We are dropped off at our hotel after a tiring day but we still have to eat and dinner is on our own. Some of the kids are too tired to venture out so we along with Justin and Corey venture out agreeing to bring them back food. Kyle has found a dumpling restaurant on Google Maps that is about a 10 min walk. We head out but the walk takes us down some dark side streets that is definitely not the tourist area. It is after 9pm so it is fully dark. We are almost there when the last direction is going 25 meters down a very dark alley with no people and no visible restaurant. After one look, Leanne shuts down Kyle’s dumpling pick and instructs us to keep walking.
We finally emerge onto a bustling main street. Across the street we spy a McDonalds. It’s late and were hungry so there’s no debate on this one. We started out with good intentions to have local cuisine until the Evil Empire intervened. Alas, we hope the phrase about the road to hell being paved with good intentions doesn’t apply to something like the choice of dinner venue.
