Shanghai to Xian

It's Sunday evening and I am now finally, absolutely, incontrovertibly, massively behind on my blog posts. I'm going to try to at least get through Wednesday tonight and then tomorrow deal with everything else. We'll see what happens.

I last posted Wednesday morning. It was the day we flew to Xian to see the terra cotta warriors. When it was time to leave we brought our luggage down to reception and walked to Ben's office to say good bye. His driver would pick up the luggage and then get us at the office. We walked one last time past the park and lake

marveling again at the Shanghai skyline.

We got to the office

and Ben walked us down to the car to say good bye. There was no time for chit chat. He needed to get back to work.

We got to the airport on the freeway without a problem. Once there we marveled, neither for the first nor for the last time, at the incongruity of a country with the fastest trains in the world building new, aggressively modern airports

with toilets which force ladies to pee on their shoes,

not to mention their hands. This is at least true as regards the older crowd, since they're desperately hanging on to their ankles to keep from toppling backwards. God forbid you should have diarrhea! We believe we've finally figured out why oriental folks feel they should take off their shoes when entering someone's home. To be fair to Asia in general, we've only encountered this in China. Poor little Cambodia has but one highway in the whole country, but they have decent toilets. Ah, China. Nancy did figure out that she could use the handicapped stall, and then realized she'd forgotten to bring toilet paper. Imagine going to a public restroom and forgetting to bring toilet paper!

But I digress. We did finally make it to Xian albeit, perhaps, slightly damp. As promised, we were met at the airport and driven into Xian. It took a good hour. Finally we checked into the Nan Fang Hotel.

This was our first experience in China sans Ben and Amy's hand holding. It was time for revelation number two which was that while in Laos and Cambodia, at least in the cities we visited, most people spoke some English, this is not the case in China. It's rather like being in a short, black haired version of France. The thing is, I can sort of deal with French, but I haven't a clue in Mandarin. I've learned "hello" and "thank you", but there are many situations when that's just not enough. Close on the heels of the second revelation came a third, which was that the Chinese apparently think hard mattresses build character and no mattress at all is some sort of ideal. We seemed to have only box springs on our bed in a room scarcely bigger than our luggage. And Nancy's cold was getting worse by the minute. What fun! I would have complained, or at least inquired about, the mattresses, but this was one of those situations in which "hello" and "thank you" proved inadequate. You see the problem.

I decided to go for a little walk leaving Nancy to suffer in solitude. I kept careful track of where I went since if I got lost I would be in Xian forever. It was fun, really. The place was very busy. Here are a few photos.

One of the things that's interesting to me about all the Chinese cities we've been in is that you can go from quiet, tiny businesses, like these people making and selling food on the street,

to huge streets with massive traffic, both cars and people, just by turning a corner.

This is the Bell Tower Pagoda in the center of a huge traffic circle.

Under the traffic circle was an ultra modern underground passage.

The signs are all in English even though essentially no one speaks it.

And, of course, pray to god you don't need to use the restroom.

Here are a few more Xian photos.

Soon it was time to head back. I found our little street, thank goodness,

and got back to the hotel. Just for fun I took a quick photo of the john, which was, like the rest of the room, very small. It was so small you could take a shower while sitting on the john. You could, in other words, if you were so inclined, multitask.

I knew the Chinese were outdoing us in several areas, but had no idea we'd fallen so far behind. Time to crawl under the covers, curl up on our planks, and try to get some sleep.