chin'easy

im going to be writing a series of entries over the next few days to kind of catch up on the events of the past two weeks or so.

so last i left we were heading from guilin to xi'an.. ohh dear.

what an interesting adventure it was on that peach of a train ride. the beast was 29 hours long. chew on that one people, 29 hours on a chinese train. crap.

it certainly did not help that i didnt have a single solitary thing to occupy my attention for the journey (unless the stinky feet and chatter around you in chinese isnt enough). i didnt have a magazine or book. bryan, omri and i were all in seperate train cars so i couldnt even converse with those guys. i had some work to do.

i started by offering my bananas to the guy sitting next to me. he didnt accept.

i offered to fill the tea cup of the little old lady sitting next to me, but i am reasonably sure she thought i was trying to assault her. that didnt go over too well.

so things werent exactly easy for the next 28 or so hours but i made it through.

after having arrived with the other fellers in xi'an we were ready to rock and roll. we were all really tired.

welcome to xi'an! population 6 million. its funny, in a country with such a high population, having cities with 6 million people is kind of normal. detroit has a population of 1 million, chicago 4 million. so its like all through chins there are a bunch of chicago's sprinkled here and there like it is nothing. they are cities, but they just dont have the kind of character that westerners expect in a "city."

but that was ok. we could deal with a sleepy old town. we werent really there to see the city but rather had bigger plans to check out the infamous terracotta warriors.

so listen to this: 6,000 of these terracotta warriors were hand sculpted about 200 years before christ. each one is unique in its form. they were discoverd in the early 70's by an old farmer just digging a well. he was doing some drilling and stumbled upon a pretty big deal. turns out these little guys were all over his farm. they were built back in about 260 BC over the course of 20 years for one purpose-- to guard emperor qin's tomb. now if you ask me, thats a pretty crazy setup to have to simply guard your grave stone.

seeing something that old was really incredible-- really put me in my place. we enjoyed walking around seeing the endless amounts of these dug up figurines that were so rich in detail and life- size. amazing, really. i liked them so much i even buckled and bought a cheesy figurine. perhaps it can stand on my mantle one day reminding me of old xi'an.

onwards and upwards to shanghai! we couldnt get a train booked out of xi'an the next day so we had to pop for a flight. it was super nice to not have to deal with trains, i have to say.

shanghai at first glance brought back memories of the neon-littered hong kong. those negative thoughts drifted away though as we delved further and further in to the life of the city. although huge and experiencing outlandish amounts of growth, shanghai managed to present a pleasant hustle and bustle. it was a happening city with a bit of history to it and a healthy dose of character. it wasnt bland like hong kong, it just had more to it.

after the boring train ride i was really hungry to try and get a decent book. i really had my heart set on finding a copy of "the world is flat." after walking hells half acre searching every damn foreign language book store that shanghai had to offer-- i was empty-handed.

i was forced to settle for the latest issue of the economist (one of my favorite news publications-- you cant be fooled by the bland title). the cover grabbed my eye as it was touting the review they did this month on chicago. the publication periodically "reviews" big cities-- they chart growth patterns, trends (economic, social, demographic, etc), project on future issues and just talk about the general "health" of the city. according to them, chicago is shining like a star in the old US of A. and i'll tell you, that brought a cheery smile to my face as i am moving there in late july to start work.

kind of a funny story: so in china you have to get used to the constant soliciting from people as you walk by. they either want to sell you a rolex watch, DVD's or a prostitute for the night. we were walking in shanghai one night and this particular solicitor really thought that the three of us needed to have ourselves a hooker. he must have hawked us for a good 5 minutes despite our persistent "no, no, no, no thank you."

finally bryan just told him we were gay and didnt like women. the guy paused a moment and looked at us kind of funny. he took off pretty quickly.

later in the evening we managed to hit up the local McDonalds for some late night snacking. We finished up our meal and as we walked out of the place, the same "solicitor" from before had managed to find us at mcdonalds and now had a new proposal. this time he did in fact have some male prostitutes to try and accomodate us.

wow, that lie really bit us in the ass. what a shrewd business man he was. if that guy really keeps up with that kind of customer care, things are looking good for him.