Gansu

Following a relaxed sleeper train journey from Beijing, we arrived in Pingyao and were picked up by our hostel from the train station. At the hostel, we indulged with an Americano (coffee is more expensive in China than in the UK). Feeling energised, we ventured out in to the Old Town, managing to blag a student ticket to the town's attractions, saving us a tenner. We decided to gain some perspective over the town by going for a walk along its 800 year old city walls, the oldest unrestored section of city wall in China. Walking along the solid stone walls with a view over the a ancient wooden rooftops of the old town was evocative of an ancient China that often seemed lost in the big modern cities, as were the deep grooves from horses and carts left in the cobblestones under the majestic West Gate. Strolling along West Street, we stumbled across the Ringshengchang Bank, China's first consumer bank, which was housed in a magnificent stone courtyard with rooms crammed with opulent Ming furniture and exhibits about the old Chinese banking system, which was centered on Pingyao and brought it considerable prosperity. The Ringshengchang Bank had branches all across China and Asia, as far away as Moscow. We also visited the museum of the armed escort services, which developed to guard the banks' money on the road and featured interesting displays about martial arts, along with some fearsome looking weapons. Towards the end of West Street lay the town's Catholic Church, a decrepit 19th century building that seemed to be a shadow of its former self. Just down the road from it were the town's Confucian and Taoist temples. The Confucian Temple, while featuring a few effigies of Confucius, was largely designed as the examination Hall for the Imperial Examinations, further clouding our opinion of whether Confucianism is an actual religion or not. Opposite was the far more vibrant and popular Taoist temple, which featured ornate wooden architecture, housing quirky shrines such as a courtyard divided between Heaven and Hell with the Hell side decorated with horrific depictions of what life would be like for sinners. It also had a grand hall dedicated to the God of wealth and stuffed with gold statuery, appropriate for a financial centre which still had a 19th century saloon called the International Bankers Club. Exhausted from a day marching along the cobbles while soaking up the almost medieval atmosphere, we returned to our hostel, situated in a historic courtyard complete with old fashioned dorms held up by red wooden columns. Hungry, we left the old town for dinner, ending up at a canteen style soup place where the locals, who obviously didn't get many foreign visitors, were very excited to see us.

The next morning, after a bit of a lie in in preparation for the hard seat overnight journey we had planned for the evening, we went and hired electric bikes (unfortunately there were only enough for 2 between us) and made our way out to the Shuanglin Temple, an ancient Buddhist temple in the countryside featuring thousand year old sculptures of Buddha and his disciples, exquisitely carved and still retaining much of their colour. Adding to the ambience were the art students sculpting impressive copies of the artwork out of clay. Once we'd had our fill of the sculptures, we zipped around the countryside on the electric bikes for a bit before heading back to town before the batteries ran out. In town, we did a few loops of the city wall before returning the bikes and making our way to the train station for our long and uncomfortable journey to Xian.

Getting off the train bleary eyed from a fairly sleepless night we caught the bus to our hostel, bumping into a friendly Danish guy Philip along the way. The hostel was pleasant and actually had a few western travellers, which had been few and far between on our trip. Short on time in Xian, we hopped on the bus to the Terracotta Warriors, a journey that proved surprisingly complicated considering the Warriors were touted as the eighth wonder of the world. On arrival at the burial site, we paid the extortionate £15 entry before watching a comically 80s style mini documentary about the Warriors, which nonetheless provided some good background on the Qin Emperor buried with the Warriors who was the first to unify China and is the reason we call the country China in the West. We then proceeded into Pit 3, the smallest of the more than two thousand year old burial chambers discovered so far. In some ways, it was fairly underwhelming, with few complete Warriors and predominantly just dusty excavations. Pit 2 was similar, but larger and with a few Warriors taken out and put on display, which did help you appreciate the amazing detail of these ancient Warriors - every single one has individual facial features. We moved on to Pit 1, which was considerably more impressive with hundreds of Warriors and their horses laid out in a massive aircraft hangar. The sheer number of the Warriors was pretty awesome, as was the fact that they had survived so intact for so long. Once we'd admired the massed Terracotta army, discovered by chance by some peasants digging a well in 1974, we returned to Xian. Back at the hostel, in what was a ridiculous coincidence, we bumped into three guys we'd also bumped into in Kunming, all of whom were friends with David's sister at Bristol Uni and one of whom was the older brother of a girl in our year at Fortismere. After heading to the raucous night market for dinner where we enjoyed delicious cold sesame paste noodles and a slightly odd bowl of spicy giblets, we went out for the evening with the guys from England, which ended up being quite entertaining.

The next morning, knowing we had yet another sleeper train to catch that evening, we decided to take it easy. We admired the more restored city walls and the historic Drum and Bell towers from afar - they were very expensive to get into before walking towards the Muslim Quarter, a neighbourhood that had been inhabited by Hui Muslims, descendants of Silk Road traders and their Chinese wives, for hundreds of years. The Hui are famous for their food and we really indulged, enjoying an enormous lunch of Bangbang Noodles (spelt using the most complicated Chinese character made up of over 100 strokes) and then Roujiamo (Chinese Hamburger) followed by out of this world persimmon cakes stuffed with a sweet sesame sauce. Our hunger satiated, we wandered out of the slightly touristy food area towards the bird market, where we saw plenty of beautiful songbirds for sale. Nearby, we stumbled upon a junk shop which had some interesting historic niknaks, including an attractive bottle of Mao Tai Baiju from the year Mao died that Freddie bought as a souvenir. After some more souvenir shopping in the quarter's fairly touristy bazaar, we visited the Grand Mosque, a beautiful building combining Chinese and Islamic architecture, with a pagoda for a minaret and ornate carvings in Arabic. We soaked up the relaxed atmosphere in the 8th Century Mosque's Chinese style rock strewn grounds before gorging ourselves on more Hui food in preparation for our sleeper train to Lanzhou.....Read more