Xi'an to the Yangtze

Terracotta Warriors

We left Beijing on the 10 April by overnight train.  The cabins held four people and could only be described as cosy!  We shared with Helen and Steve, the guys taking the upper bunks.  It also took some organisation getting all the luggage stowed away.

We settled into our cabin, having brought wine, beer and snacks.  We had a good evening chatting with Steve and Helen, who are about the same age us ourselves. At around midnight we went to bed, although for me it was not a good night's sleep.  I woke at 6am after a restless night on a very hard bed.

The trained arrived in Xi'an about 8.45am, where we disembarked and picked up our coach for the short journey to our hotel, where we had breakfast and then went to our room for a welcome shower.

An hour later we were back on the coach for our trip to see the Terrcotta Warriors.  We were joined by Benny, our guide while we were in Xi'an, a jolly character and he gave us some info about his home town and the Terracotta Warriors, which were discovered in 1974 by farmers who were digging wells.

The background to the Warriors relates to Emperor Chin who started preparing for his funeral when he was 22, employing workers to build the warriors who would protect him in the afterlife and would be a symbol of his  power and wealth.  Emperor Chin died suddenly at the age of 50, his tomb being about 1.5 km from where the Warriors are. I guess there could have been a significant higher number of Warriors if he had lived another 20 years!

We arrived at the site, which is divided into three pits. Pit 1 is where there are nearly 7,000 Warriors, a pretty amazing sight seeing them all lined up.  They are very lifelike and all with different facial features, so no individual Warrior is alike.  It is said that the workers modelled the facial features on themselves.  The Warriors were originally all painted according to their rank, so they must have looked pretty amazing in their original state.  There were also  plenty of horse statues.

The other two pits, 2 and 3,  were not so impressive, being more at the early stages of excavation.

Obviously, many statues were broken when discovered due to the roof of where they were rotting over time and also to grave robbers who destroyed them and took the weapons the Warriors were holding.

Many statues have and are being painstakingly restored to their original state, minus paint .

Camera (East) Gate

On Thursday 12 April our second day in Xi'an, we were taken to the city wall, which is 13 kilometres (8 miles) in length, with a choice of walking round or riding a bike. We opted for bikes, although it had been a few years since I had been on one.  However, the wall was pretty flat and very wide.

We set off and initially my legs protested having been put through walking up The Great Wall, a fair amount of walking generally and when we saw the Terrcotta Warriors.  However, it was good fun, and  Shona, one of the Aussie ladies frequently overtook us and she is 70, so put us to shame!

We stopped at various points to take pictures,  enjoy the magnificence of the wall and also for me to rest my legs!

We were just coming up to completing three quarters of the 8 miles and either my legs were getting very tired or there was something wrong with my bike.  Dave took a look, but all looked okay, but we decided to swop bikes as Dave's had gears and this might make it a bit easier for me.

We set off again and came up to the East Gate where there was a tower in the middle of the wall, which meant cycling round either left or right. We chose to go left, it was slightly narrower because of the tower and there were a group of Chinese tourists blocking the way.  I slowed down and also shouted for them to move.  I obviously realised that they would not understand what I was shouting, but for anyone that knows me, knows that my voice when raised can be somewhat loud (!) and I expected the group to turn round and move to one side.  When I realised this was not going to happen, I applied the brakes.  I did not 'hit' anyone, but nudged a guy who was holding his camera at arm's length, the camera being about a 1-2 feet  from the ground.  Unfortunately, he dropped the camera onto the ground.  There was obviously an immediate reaction and outpouring of Chinese, and hand gestures.  Dave and I stopped, and then Dave gestured that we should move on, however the Chinese group would not let us go.

The chap who dropped the camera would not pick it up to see if it was still working as Dave gestured he should do.  A couple, cycled past and stopped, she was Chinese and spoke English and she said the guy did not want to pick up the camera and wanted a professional to come and look at it (we were not sure what he meant by this).  Then some officials who worked on wall came up and things became a bit clearer, we had also prior to this rang our guide, Jason, who was on his way.  It turned out that the chap had borrowed the camera from a friend for his trip, so we did understand his concern, but could not understand why he would not pick up the camera to check it.

Jason arrived and he managed to persuade the guy to pick up the camera to check if it was still functioning.  The guy took several snaps and all seemed okay, however, he was not prepared to assume this and insisted we go and get the camera professionally checked.  We, along with Jason, therefore ended up on their tour coach and were taken to a camera shop, where we went to a Nikon stand to speak to a sales assistant.  There was much discussion between the assistant, Jason and the guy (who had brought a friend from the tour with him).  The assistant seemed to indicate that the focusing was not working and there was again a lot of picture taking.  Dave then took the camera and realised that it was set to manual and not automatic focusing and explained this to Jason.

However, the guy was still not happy - at one point it was suggested we would have to buy a new camera, at a possible cost of £800.  The assistant then suggested we go to a Nikon service office and gave the address,  although at this point Dave and I were not sure what was going on, we just followed everyone out of the shop.  Jason hailed a couple of cabs who did not know where this place was, but succeeded on about the fourth cab.  We had to split up and get two cabs.   We turned up at what looked like an office block and went to the 8th floor where the service office was.  The camera was given the once over and was deemed to be undamaged save for the ultraviolet filter, the guy looked a little disappointed by this, I think he was hoping perhaps there would be more damage, hence needing more compensation from us.

We then had to find somewhere to buy the replacement filter, so off we went again, although we did not have to go far and it was within walking distance.   The place we ended up at was more like a photo studio than a shop, but we obtained the filter, which Dave said was a slight upgrade to the damaged one, but they could not fit it, so back we went to the Nikon service office, where it was fitted.  The total cost  to us was £36, £23 for the filter and £13 to fit; it could have been a lot worse.  The two guys went off, only the friend of the guy with the camera gestured to us his goodbye.  It was a genuine accident, and I would have been mortified if there had been serious damage to the camera.  The guy also told Jason that I had been going at some speed -- I don't think so - and this did irritate me, as it was so untrue.  However, I have to say that Dave was (as always great) and Jason our guide brilliant in helping resolving a potentially sticky situation.

We rejoined the rest of the group at the Big Wild Goose Pagoda and carried on with our tour.

Chongqing and Cruise on the Yantze River

On Friday 13 April, we flew from Xi'an to Chongqing, a flight of just over an hour.  The flight was due to take off about 3.50pm, but was delayed, we finally took off about an hour late, which Jason said was pretty good for an internal flight.  We were again picked up by coach (our luggage was taken separately to the boat) and driven through the city to where we were due to have dinner.

Chongqing is a pretty amazing city, the size of which as we drove in from the airport we found staggering.  The  population, we were told, is 33 million, so half the UK population in one city - mind blowing! Lots of high rise apartment blocks on the outskirts and as we got towards to centre, these turned to high rise office blocks and shopping centres.  It was very hard to take it all in.

We arrived at the restaurant (Chinese of course!) but as it turned out, we both felt that this was one of the best Chinese meals we had eaten so far.

A little over an hour later we were back on the coach to make our way to the harbour to board the cruise boat.   We made a couple of stops on the way, one was at the main square where we had only about 15 minutes to look around and enjoy the sight of hundreds of Chinese doing some form of exercise e.g. line or ballroom dancing, aerobics, etc.  The last stop was a supermarket to buy water, alcohol and snacks.  As we drive to the harbour, seeing the city lit up was stunning - we both said we would have liked the opportunity to spend more time in the city.

We arrived at the harbour and after a short cable car trip down, we boarded our boat, which was a lot bigger than I had imagined.  After getting our cabin keys, and depositing our luggage, we had an introduction talk by our River Cruise Guide, Color.  I think Dave would have preferred this to be later as he was keen to take photos of Chongqing as we left it behind and by the time the talk had finished, Chongqing had disappeared into darkness.  We were also told by Color that light music and an announcement re breakfast would wake us up early each morning - we soon switched that off in our cabin, but unfortunately you could still hear it in the corridors!

Our cabin was not large, but more than adequate, although again we had single beds (we have yet to get a double) with our own bathroom and balcony and even a fridge.

By the time we woke up in the morning, we had docked.  The weather outside was dull and wet. Breakfast was a buffet, with a pretty good choice of food, I stuck to crossiants, butter and jam, definitely no rice first thing in the morning for me!

There were three trips included in the cruise package, the first one we thought was in the afternoon of the first day, but this turned out to be incorrect and was, in fact, the morning excursion.  However, we had both already decided that we were going to chill out and stay on  board.

We went to see an acupuncture demonstration, which was quite interesting and then I decided to have reflexology.  I have this done regularly back at home, so I was interested to have a session here.  It did vary in that they spent a lot of time massaging your legs from the knees down as well as working on your feet - it was bliss though and very relaxing - apparently I am very healthy, although it turned out they said this to everyone who had this done!  I said to Dave he should try it, which he did later in the day, and he thoroughly enjoyed it too.

That night after dinner the crew put on a show, which was fun to watch and mainly consisted of songs and dancing.  They also included musical chairs and asked for four volunteers; Jean from our group gamely volunteered and that was a laugh to watch.

We went through two gorges, and the scenery was stunning.  The cruise boat had a sun deck, where we went to view; it was a shame that the weather was misty and drizzling with light rain, but it did not diminish too much what we saw.

Next day was a trip in a sampan, which involved an hour on a ferry from the cruise boat to get to the river where the whole group then transferred to a sampan.  This was then rowed by two guys up the river - pretty hard work for them.  We had a guide, Carol, who gave us some history and information.  This was a lot of fun and we passed lots of other sampans on the way, so lots of waving to other tourists.   A highlight of this was seeing the guys get off the sampan onto the bank and physically pulling the sampan by rope, and then pushing off the bank and turning it around for the return journey.  The river scenery was pretty amazing on the sampan and also on the ferry journey.  Along the ferry journey is a 'hanging coffin', this is literally a coffin suspended high in a cliff crevice on what looked like wooden poles.  This kind of ritual is not now used, but the thinking behind it was because they thought they would be nearer to heaven.  The weather also improved on the ferry journey back, with the sun making an appearance.

Meal times on the boat were very fixed and quite early (much the same in the hotels too).  Breakfast ended at 9am, lunch began at 12.30pm and dinner at 6.30pm.