Xi'an and the Hebei Province
你们好!
A whole lot has happened since you last heard from me, I’ve been traveling quite a lot and seen lots of amazing things! At the start of the month me and my friends took a nice trip to Xi’an (西安市) in Shaanxi province, over 1,125Km away! We got on the train to head on holiday on the 2nd of October only to arrive in Xi’an 20 hours later a train packed with loads of people. When I was booking my ticket I messed up my details and ended up stuck on a totally different carriage from all my friends, stuck behind a wall of other people, on my own for almost a whole day on a slow train chugging through the Chinese countryside.
The journey slowly came to a close as people came and went from the train, we finally ended up in Xi’an. We found our way to the hostel only to discover we hadn’t booked enough beds, so we picked our bags up once more and journeyed to a different hostel down the street. This hostel was right on top of a skyscraper and looked lovely, but unfortunately, the price reflected this. But despite the extra hassle, our day wasn’t over yet. It was only the afternoon and the day was still young. Me and some friends had heard about bikes on top of the ancient city walls, and we wanted to try that. The ancient walls were massive, spanning 14km around the city centre. We decided to cycle the entire length along the cobbled stones of the wall. My arms felt like they’d been put through an earthquake, but regardless I’d had an amazing time and had the chance to see the amazing sites all around the city centre.
A couple of days later we visited what I’d really come to Xi’an to see, one of the wonders of the world, the Terracotta warriors. We headed out early in the morning so we could beat the mobs of Chinese tourists. The Warriors were absolutely mobbed even at the early time we’d headed out at. The first, and largest, hall was packed wall to wall with tourists desperate to see the warriors in all their glory. The whole complex was packed with people but it was awe inspiring to see such ancient effigies in such stunning condition. After leaving the warriors we headed up a near by mountain, Li Shan, which overlooked the far reaches of the city. The site was stunning aided by the lovely day.
A couple of days later it was time to head back to Tianjin, and due to messing up booking, I was standing the whole way back. The journey was a long one, that felt even longer. I was up and about moving seats for almost 20 hours straight. But cutting around all over the train let me meet some new friends. I started talking to an English major from Xi’an who was also studying in Tianjin. We chatted and exchanged WeChats all the way back home.
The journey back finished and an hour after arriving back in Tianjin, it was time to head to class for me and my classmates. The rest of the school weeks flew by with the daily activities, eating, sleeping and studying. A week later, my friend, Ross’ parents came over to visit. They invited Paul, Peter and I out for dinner with them. This was the first time we were able to sit down in a restaurant and actual buy something without worrying about going bankrupt, and it was blissful. They gave us some small reminders of home like a bottle of Irn Bru.
Another week passed and not much happened, until, my fellow scholar Arran invited us on a trip with him and some other foreign students to visit the world’s longest glass bridge out in Hebei province that weekend. And the next thing we knew, we were on a 5 hour bus journey to the middle of nowhere to visit the beautiful Chinese mountains. Just after we arrived me and Paul were chased out of room by possibly the biggest wasp I'd ever seen. So we dropped off our bags and promptly left to go and cry to our friends about the spooky insect that had terrorised us out of our room, so my friend Peter decided to come and help his two homeless friend get their room back from the tyrant.
Soon after getting our room back we suited up and began our hike up the mountain. The cable car up the mountain was far from complete, so it was walking for us. The trek was a hard one, a long way up a very steep set of stair cases. But eventually we saw got to the top and were greeted with some of the best sights of my life. You could see for miles around into the almost alien looking steep cliffs of the Chinese hills. The bridge was over 800 metres long and made of thousands of glass panels. It swayed side to side as we walked across it.
Standing hundreds of metres above the ground with what looked like nothing beneath us was somewhat surreal. After crossing the bridge, it was time to march back down the hill and back to our hotel.
That night we decided to rest our bruised and aching bodies at the local hot spring. It was around 8 pm when we arrived, and it was freezing outside so we were desperate to get our bodies in the water. There were many exotic pools with all kinds of different water. Some pools had various herbs in them such as ginseng. Each one felt lovely to dip into from the freezing cold air. By the time we left, we were all feeling lovely and fresh, ready to hit the hay and rest for the night. The next morning, we were off back to Tianjin.
The next couple weeks passed uneventfully, until we were offered the opportunity to spend the day with a Chinese host family. We happily accepted. The family I was placed with lived in a small 2-bedroom apartment. The 8-year-old boy was already great at English, much better than my Chinese. The father’s English was almost perfect as well. We made dumplings with them and, unsurprisingly, I was terrible at it. Later in the night they cooked us a lovely meal, one of the best I’ve had since arriving in China. There were various pork dishes, fish, vegetables and of course the dumplings we made.
I’ll be heading off for a wee trip to Beijing this weekend and hopefully I'll see lots of exciting things there. If anyone has anything they want to ask, make sure to let me know!