{"id":1226,"date":"2023-01-28T23:45:18","date_gmt":"2023-01-29T04:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/?p=1226"},"modified":"2023-01-28T23:45:18","modified_gmt":"2023-01-29T04:45:18","slug":"shaanxi-adventures-day-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/?p=1226","title":{"rendered":"Shaanxi Adventures, Day 5"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.shinnphoto.com\/frame\/slideshow?key=93TBBW&#038;speed=3&#038;transition=fade&#038;autoStart=1&#038;captions=0&#038;navigation=1&#038;playButton=1&#038;randomize=0&#038;transitionSpeed=2\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Waking up in luxury, I decided to rest most of the day and make plans.&nbsp; Most importantly, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d run out of clean clothes and needed to wash a few things before I could go anywhere.&nbsp; By late afternoon I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d had a chance to rest and I had some clean togs to wear &#8211; I was ready to hit the town.&nbsp; By then, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d found out the bad news that there were no tickets for the next day to see the Terra Cotta warriors.&nbsp; I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been very anxious to see them &#8211; they were my main reason for coming to XiAn.&nbsp; But no matter, there are plenty of other things to see and experience here.&nbsp; And eat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I ventured out into the pre-evening with a successful taxi ride (no drama!) to Muslim Food Street.&nbsp; I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t done any research into this place before I arrived, so I had no idea what I was in for. &nbsp; Turns out I was in for rather a lot.&nbsp; From entry to exit, my fitness tracker counter almost 4 miles, and all of it was pushing through VERY crowded streets.&nbsp; Food \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcstreet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 is really more of a walking food district, and it was packed to the gills with people. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.shinnphoto.com\/Shaanxi-Adventures-Day-5\/i-ZKkDkRF\/A\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/photos.smugmug.com\/Shaanxi-Adventures-Day-5\/i-ZKkDkRF\/0\/0859809f\/L\/AJS_7511-L.jpg?w=660&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">XiAn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most famous food is Biang Biang Mian.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve become a big fan of the belt noodles, served with oil and meat, from a restaurant near my work in Beijing.\u00c2\u00a0 I was excited to come here to the origin of the famous dish and eat the food represented by the most complex Chinese character (shown below).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/a\/a1\/Biang_%28regular_script%29.svg\/1200px-Biang_%28regular_script%29.svg.png\" alt=\"Biang (regular script).svg\"\/><br \/><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I picked a restaurant because of the presence of a large \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcbiang\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 character on the sign out front.&nbsp; The restaurant was greasy, crowded, and high-paced.&nbsp; The food was relatively expensive, but I was happy to pay the price.&nbsp; This was clearly a restaurant made for tourists.&nbsp; No matter &#8211; I ordered the Biang Biang Mian with beef and waited for my order.&nbsp; I took the only open table in the restaurant, sitting next to a large family who was clearly visiting elsewhere on a family vacation.&nbsp; They were thrilled to meet me, and we struck up the normal conversation: Which country are you from? Can you speak Chinese? Ah, your Chinese is so good! (There are a good many taxi drivers who would disagree with you, I thought.)&nbsp; Can we take a picture with you and our children?&nbsp; I happily engaged this family, continuing my one-man mission to spread friendship between the people of China and the people of the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This conversation would repeat so many times in subsequent days that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll create a separate&nbsp; blog post to cover it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the brilliant things I saw, both in PingYao and XiAn, was foot massage stores in the middle of these high-traffic tourist areas.\u00c2\u00a0 China is great for massage in general, it being a part of general health maintenance in Chinese medicine.\u00c2\u00a0 But the particular placement of these stores was genius &#8211; every tourist area in the world should incorporate this.\u00c2\u00a0 Disney, please consider it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.shinnphoto.com\/Shaanxi-Adventures-Day-5\/i-PtWdHrK\/A\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/photos.smugmug.com\/Shaanxi-Adventures-Day-5\/i-PtWdHrK\/0\/fbb1cd16\/L\/AJS_7488-L.jpg?w=660&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" align=left hspace=20\/><\/a> <p>After eating, I continued walking down the street until I saw a massive dragon emerging from the mist, and heard the sound of drums banging.&nbsp; I bravely walked toward the monster\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s jaws, then disappeared under them into the mist.&nbsp; I was in a cave, with light down a short tunnel.&nbsp; I followed the light and found an empress sitting on her throne, her imperious gaze looking out over shoppers, selecting jewelry and knick-knacks.&nbsp; I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d just found one of the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s coolest store entrances, but the end of the journey left me feeling a bit like Ralphie from A Christmas Story when he decoded his message from the Little Orphan Annie Secret Society: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Drink More Ovaltine? A crummy commercial?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I passed up the opportunity to buy some beautiful hand-hammered travel mugs and wandered out of the store and into the street, where the fading light of day was being replaced by the glitzy, commercial light of neon signs.&nbsp; Further down the street I would find several more such store entrances.&nbsp; I wondered which one was first, and how they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d felt when others had imitated their success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I bought an ice cream, which turned out to be based on coconut milk, and delicious.&nbsp; I meandered around the corner into a less-crowded side street to eat it and accidentally set up my own photo booth.&nbsp; Freed from the press of the crowds and more visible standing alone, I attracted a line of mothers, bringing me their children for photos and to show off their English skills.&nbsp; I had to work to maintain my smile &#8211; I wanted to be eating that delicious coconut ice cream.&nbsp; But when duty calls, it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t wait. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Finishing the photo line, I made a quick departure further down the side street to a less-visible place, where I attracted the other kind of insta-friend: young or middle aged men who wanted to share a cigarette and chat.\u00c2\u00a0 Silently thankful for my foolish youthful experimentation with cigarettes, I accepted.\u00c2\u00a0 Chinese cigarettes (or at least the kind I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been offered) are very thin, sweet, and burn quickly.\u00c2\u00a0 This makes for mercifully brief smoking experiences and concomitantly brief conversations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.shinnphoto.com\/Shaanxi-Adventures-Day-5\/i-BbFzfCk\/A\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/photos.smugmug.com\/Shaanxi-Adventures-Day-5\/i-BbFzfCk\/0\/f9abc1b2\/L\/AJS_7537-L.jpg?w=660&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As I was finishing both, I looked up and noticed where I was: standing in front of the local ministry of justice building.&nbsp; I also saw a rather serious-looking man staring hard at me, probably wondering why I was&nbsp; there with a camera.&nbsp; As I quickly made my exit, I saw him urgently ushing people into the building.&nbsp; I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure what was happening there; once again I find myself with more questions than answers.&nbsp; In that moment I realized again my ignorance of this society, and the years it could take to penetrate the bamboo curtain of language and culture to build true mutual understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My wandering continued, and I resolved to walk this district until I came to its end.&nbsp; I took photos, focusing largely on people.&nbsp; People working are especially interesting to me during this type of observation, and it probably shows in the picutres I chose to make.&nbsp; Also, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re often standing in one place, and frequently in pools of good light.&nbsp; Patience is required is to wait for a gesture that typifies their skill, activity, or character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As I explored the extent of the district, I noticed a change in the place\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s character.&nbsp; It became more local and less touristy, and very slightly less crowded.&nbsp; Finally, a street dumped me out on a main thoroughfare.&nbsp; I was out of the walking streets and back into the modern city.&nbsp; I decided to walk the 45 minutes back to my hotel and call it a night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">*Linguistic note: The name of the city XiAn is often spelled with an apostrophe between the first set of two letters and the second set (Xi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122An).&nbsp; This is a concession to clarify in Pinyin and Roman characters; in Chinese, the word is a clean two character set, one for Xi and one for An.&nbsp; The confusion arises from the fact that there are also a few characters with the sound xian, pronounced as a single syllable.&nbsp; I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve chosen to render it XiAn, with capitals representing where the second character pronunciation starts.&nbsp; I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve chosen this because other Chinese words don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t often rely on the apostrophe to make the Pinyin work &#8211; it seems more respectful to the language.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Waking up in luxury, I decided to rest most of the day and make plans.&nbsp; Most importantly, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d run out of clean clothes and needed to wash a few things before I could go anywhere.&nbsp; By late afternoon I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d had a chance to rest and I had some clean togs to wear &#8211; I was &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/?p=1226\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Shaanxi Adventures, Day 5<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,366],"tags":[337,403,176,404],"class_list":["post-1226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-photos","category-travel","tag-photos","tag-shaanxi","tag-travel","tag-xian"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdZlL-jM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/AJS_7492.jpg?fit=%2C&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1226"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1228,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions\/1228"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}