Day 4 - Xi'an

In Xi'an, we met our tour guide Jean. He told us that the city's sky was a little coloured because we were near the desert and it kicked up a lot of sand. I thought it was pollution based. My first impression of Xi'an as we were driving to the hotel was that it had lots of neon lights, even the major roads were lined with them. It made the city very kitsch in that Las Vegas kinda way. They also drove cars bearing the emblem of the United Federation of Planets. We were greeted at the hotel with a bunch of dancers and musicians who were doing some kind of traditional umbrella dance. The hotel was pretty cool, it had inward facing rooms which looked down to the huge lobby.
In the morning, we visited the 8th wonder of the world, the terra cota warriors which were buried with China's first emperor. Having read all about these and seen them pretty much everywhere, I found the visit to be underwhelming. This isn't helped by the understandable fact that tourists arent allowed into the excavation area and only get to see them from a walkway above the perimeter. The coolest thing about this place was that they had a 360degree movie. A dozen or so projectors created a ring of screens around a circular room. The film was about the creation of the terra cotta warriors; it was about 20 minutes long and very fun to watch.
For lunch we went to a restaurant in front of a terra cota warrior factory/store. I ate very little and after the bit of shopping, went to a local restaurant and got a bowl of dumpling soup. It was rough ordering since we couldn't communicate with each other and I resorted to pointing. They must not get a lot of strangers because one of the cooks kept looking out of the kitchen at us (more likely Etienne) and we got more than a few glances from the patrons. In the end, the soup was amazing. The whole came to 7Yuan (1$!), including Etienne's beer, I tried to leave a 20, but she wouldn't have any of it and gave me back 13. I then tried to give her 3Yuan but again she gave it back. It was probably the best dollar I ever spent.
In the afternoon we visited the Wild Goose Pagoda, which is part of a still-in-use buddhist temple and would lead to an in-joke with Serge about a Wild Goose chase. We also saw the walls surrounding old Xi'an. We were told that Xi'an is well known for its sex industry. I didn't really see much of this on the tour, but when we went to the hot springs in the hotel basement, we got some insight into it. We asked for a massage, which the person at the counter didn't understand the meaning of. This lead to two other people coming down to help us translate. Eventually one guy got the gist of it and exclaimed that we wanted girls! 400 Yuan, it would cost. Smelling something fishy, we declined the offer. In no way should a massage cost 57 meals. Dinner was soon, in any case.
For dinner, we had a Dumpling Banquet (more dumplings!) where basket after basket of different types of dumplings were brought to us. The best flavour, because I've never had it before, was the walnut dumplings. They were really something special. After dinner, we were treated to a show of music, song, and dance from different imperial eras during which Xi'an was the Chinese capital. Unlike Peking Opera, only a small number of people fell asleep. It was a really good show with fun music, good dancers, and the girls were really, really talented. The closing act finished with a big "Warmly Welcome Vacance Sinorama" sign. Etienne and I found this hilarious so we decided to take pictures of all the warmly welcome signs we'd see on the trip. Sadly, we never took one of the sign in the first hotel. Bunch of pictures:
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