Trek This Out

Our History Module, aka "The Trek" has been going for well over a week now.  We already completed our service project, up in the highest mountains of the GuiZhou Province 贵州, which I'll probably include in a later post.  Since then we have been spending our time in the city of Xi'An 西安。This city is   crawling with history. Considering that it was the capital of China when it was first united over 2,000 years ago, and that it was debatable the most prosperous city in the world for hundreds of years, there is much to talk about here.

We have history class every morning here from 8 til about noon, but after that we are free to explore the city at our leisure.  Here are a few pictures from on top of the ancient city wall.  The wall centers around the old bell tower 钟楼 and I believe squares it off for about 8 miles.  Some of us rented bikes and circled the entire wall, which took over an hour, but was it was beautiful.

Here is a snapshot of what can be referred to as the Muslim District.  Inside the city wall, this place is packed with great places to buy things, and even better places to eat.

Last Wednesday we took a field trip to the Terracotta Soldier Army, over an hour outside the city.  On the way there it was my turn to talk on my history presentation that I had been preparing for about a month.  It was supposed to be a 25min presentation, but after Q&A it ended up being about 45min.  (I just really enjoy talking about China's First Emperor I guess). 

Here is the Terracotta Army of Qin Shi HuangDi 秦始皇帝。 It consists of over 1,800 uniquely made soldiers and over 500 chariots, just to name a few characteristics.  

I cheated with this one.  These soldiers are from the gift shop...

 This tower runs due south of the city bell tower and conveniently enough, where we are staying, at Xi'An International Studies University, is right between.  Therefore, we use this tower as a compass of sorts to navigate the city.  Sometimes we like to call it a "Smog-o-meter" because you can tell how polluted the air is any given day by how visible the tower is.  Apparently it can be so bad that from a mile away all you might be able to make out is a huge sphere hovering in the air.

At the base of the tower is a series of small museums that we visited yesterday.  We took a look inside the Nature museum and saw everything from massive bugs, to Dinosaur skeletons.

In a few days we will be heading to Beijing, and then Shanghai after that, before returning to Xiamen for the rest of the journey.