I was amazed at how upscale the airports of Delhi, Bangkok, and Beijing are. There are no noodle huts here. The stores are on the level of Gucci, Victoria’s Secret, and other stuff that I don’t buy on a daily basis.
One of the many upscale shops at the Beijing airport, for those who want to live the BMW lifestyle
I thought Xian was a small town famous only for the Terra-Cotta Army. Turns out its population is over 8 million, was one of 4 ancient capitals of China, and the starting point for the Silk Road. It has 600,000 university students in 44 public universities and 10 private ones. As in Beijing, the sounds of construction could be heard from my hotel room. It’s a boom town with a very rich history.
Our first stop was the Shaanxi History Museum. I wasn’t really looking forward to this since I’m not a big museum fan in general but I had a good time here. My guide pointed out unusual pieces some of which had good stories with them. I tend to forget the details of history fairly quickly but I’m left with a feeling about some of the most important themes or people.
My Xi’an guide, Ann, is very different from my guide in Beijing. She is much more upbeat and outwardly enthusiastic. Alice had a more subdued approach. Ann also has the best enunciation of any guide I’ve had. It’s very clear when one word ends and the next begins. This makes it much easier to follow her. She has some very cute pronunciations. My favorite, that I thoroughly enjoyed when she said is was using the word “silly”, instead of the word “city”. So the city walls became the silly walls, the city center, the silly center and so on. “Silly” is really a great word anyway. Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks is one of my top 10 or so of their skits. More about Ann later.
Ann informing me that the river in the middle of this map is where we are on a tributary of the Yellow River
We talked about the matriarchal struture of an ancient society here and she pointed out that 95% of the Chinese ledership is male. I remembered Mao’s line that women hold up half of the sky. The 5% have a heavy load.
Model of ancient Banpo village of the Yangshao matriarchal culture (left), the nails in the drinking cup were designed to tell you when it is empty. When the nails start to go into your face, it’s time to stop drinking (right)
One of the consistent themes of China is the duality of nature, the Yin and the Yang.
Yin — The earth, female, square shape
Yang — Heaven, male, round shape
These coins were designed to be round as in Yang, but with a square hole as in Yin.
Horse supposedly worth $6 million. I would think it might even be worth more these days. Don’t think China needs to get more US cash though.
Woman dressed in men’s clothes (left), Woman dressed like a man to play polo (right)
When she showed me the woman above, Ann said plump women were considered ideal back then. She said she should have been born then, I disagreed that she is overweight. I guess bad body image is universal.
In the left picture are ancient figurines representing two of the Chinese signs of the Zodiac. The left figurine is my sign, the rabbit, and the right one is Margaret’s sign, the dragon. The picture on the right is the two of us taken in the summer of 2010 from Yosemite. The main difference between the two pictures is we’re on different sides in the two pictures.
Musicians on a camel
We then headed to the Temple of Thanksgiving. This is not a Tibetan Buddhist monastery but the other kind, whatever it’s called. Ann said 10% of the population is Buddhist, Christianity is the second biggest religion, Islam is third with 17 million, and Taoism is fourth. Many people still feel a little Buddhist, since that’s the religion of their ancestors, and will occasionally go to a Buddhist temple and pray a little. Alice was like this, praying at each part of the Tibetan Temple.
What’s interesting to me about China is that the majority of the people are of my religious persuasion, the “no religion” group. It’s a new experience to be in the religious majority. “No religion” is often the most hated religious minority. Many Christians will say they respect any religion as long as people believe in God, which leaves me out. I’ve noticed President Obama and others talk about freedom to worship any religion and then including me, will talk about the freedom not to worship any religion at all.
Ann remembering the Buddhism of her grandparents
The tower on the left is on the east side and is used appropriately to ring the morning bell. The one on the right is on the west side and is used for the evening drums.
I like the look of this old manI had read a couple of days ago that Bob Dylan would be in Shanghai on Friday, April 8 when I’ll be there. At first, I thought it would be too much hassle to try to get a ticket and I’d rather then relax after sightseeing that day. Today as I was traveling around, the thought kept coming to me that I must be nuts to miss this. I saw him in 1966, a week apart from seeing the Rolling Stones, both at Cornell U. in Ithaca which is my original home town.
Getting a ticket turned out to be ridiculously difficult. I got Ann to help me and after an hour, we realized that it was impossible to get it done on the web site. They had an option for using a foreign credit card but then it said you must call. Ann called and they said they cannot process foreign cards on the phone. They said they would put one aside for me.
I got her to call the next day and they said that they could not put a ticket aside for me if I didn’t pay. I tried a couple of times in this process to be nice then agressive with them and nothing worked. Finally we went to a bank and did a wire transfer of my cash to the ticket company. Ann then called and seemed to feel it was good.
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