After breakfast we caught a local bus to the East Gate of the Xi’an City Wall. The wall is a fourteen kilometre rectangle surrounding what used to be the old part of the city.
The wall is 10-12m high and about 18 m thick at its base. The upper section of the wall is a nearly flat but uneven brick road of width about 12 m.
The Xi’an City Wall was constructed from rammed earth between 1370 and 1378 during the time of Emperor Hongwu from the Sui-Tang Dynasty. The Provincial Governor of Shaanxi Province, Bi Yuan later had the wall rebuilt with bricks. This occurred during the Qing Dynasty and the vast structure is now regarded as the most intact amongst the many ancient Chinese city walls.
The defence system is quite intricate having a moat, a drawbridge and eight large towers around the 14 km perimeter. The towers are at each corner and half way along each side. Between the towers at spaces of about 120 m are archery towers set as abutments to the wall. These were strategically placed to ensure that archers could fire arrows upon an invading enemy no matter from where the attack occurred.
We hired bikes at the middle of the Eastern Wall and rode anticlockwise for about 12 km to the Southern Gate. The ride was in warm conditions with blue skies and barely a hint of the smog that dominated yesterday’s weather. The worn brick surface tiles made the ride like being on cobblestones. Walls of about a metre along the sides prevent anyone riding over the edge. There were relatively few riders today so the going was easy but gauging from the hundreds of bikes available to hire it must get quite congested during holiday and weekend times.
After our relaxing ride we walked around towards the Muslim part of the city and in so doing we passed the Bell Tower, a famous city landmark used originally to indicate the time to the city’s residents.
We spent an hour or so wandering through the Muslim section where the action was frenetic with many of the markets selling food, especially kebabs and noodles.
Several shops in the main alleyway were preparing noodles by drawing pasta repetitively from a large hook on the side of their shop. The stretched pasta was two metres or so long and then folded back to half a metre and then drawn out again. This process kept going but meant that pedestrians had to stop as the stretched pasta blocked part of the walkway.
There were the usual trinket shops selling jewellery, artwork and fans but most interestingly were shops preparing a traditional toffee and peanut bar. The raw toffee initially had to be beaten repeatedly using two large wooden mallets and was then pressed with peanuts before slicing into strips for sale. We bought a box of the toffee nut delicacy as compensation for the number of photos they let us take and enjoyed a sugar hit which is a bit of a rarity in Chinese meals.
We then meandered for an hour back to our hotel and called Jacquie and Zoe. It was reassuring to know that Jacquie is now recovering, albeit slowly from the dreadful flu virus she contracted last week.
In the evening we all headed out to have dinner in a restaurant located in the back of a shopping area. Without local knowledge one would never have known of its existence.
The food was interesting and a little different from other meals we’ve had recently and was particularly spicy and hot. Paul selected eight different dishes for us to try. Aubergines are a specialty and so are various fungi fried in batter. Another local tradition is to finish the meal with soup. Local wines are generally undrinkable so we had beers with our meal at the exorbitant price of Y4 (about 90 cents) for a 500mL bottle! The cost of the restaurant meal was Y27 (about AU$5.50) per head.
Interesting beer 'glasses'
Paul, our guide, serving soup at the restaurant in Xi'an
One of the 8 dishes for our dinner
Before returning to our hotel we ventured into a nearby supermarket and bought provisions for tomorrow’s breakfast and snacks to eat on the 20 hour train trip tomorrow evening. The supermarket was vast and there was practically nothing labelled in English which made for some guess work. Sadly, in amongst the various shelves we found glass tanks holding small tortoises for sale as food.
At around 21:30 pm we returned to our very comfortable hotel room to relax and prepare for another busy day in Xi’an prior to our departure on our train trip to Southern China tomorrow evening