Once Upon A Time In China

In The Beginning

In the beginning there was Xi'an, along the banks of the Yellow River where the Chinese civilisation started. Huang Ti (First King Of China or The Yellow Emperor)'s Mausoleum located near Yan'an near the Yellow River. Worshippers still visit till this day. Now we all know why the Chinese are yellow skinned.
In the first of the OUATIC Chronicles, there was Faizel (yup, he's a Chinaman & the chief instigator for the trips), Jason (Blondie) , Chang (soon to be christianed the PiXiu) & me.

Four For The Trip

It was a 4 nights 4 days trip & we all arrived via Shenzhen from Singapore (that's another story for another day).

Xi'an

Xi'an pride itself as the capital of 13 Dynasties. It's a walled city with surrounding moat. The walls although built only during the Ming Dynasty is perfectly maintained. They also have a Bell & Drum Tower typical of most ancient cities. The bell is rung in the morning to announce the opening of the city gates & the drum is sounded at dusk to close th gates.

Drum Tower & Bell Tower At Night

HuaShan (Day 1)

The Jin Yong (popular Chinese novelist) center of swordsmanship. In Jin Yong's novels, this is one of the 5 major kung fu clan & one of the 5 holy mountains in China. We saw lots of weapons for sale along the way including the hard as metal man tous (paus) that we bought at the makan shop at the foot of the hill but saw no wandering swordsman

After a 2 hour drive from Xi'an we ended up at the foot of the mountain with 2 rows of simple makan places. We bought a map at one of the shops & asked the lady at the shop, how we can walk up the mountain. She gave us a very strange look & say something like crazy....take 6 hours....& we got the message (loud & clear)

Ok, so no sweat. We take the cable car. This takes us to about 1,500 m up Huashan. Easy but still not a ride for the faint hearted...... When we reached the mountain, it was more crowded than Xi'an city. But the autumn foliage made up for the crowd & although we didn't make it to the peak (yes, we didn't), there were several interesting sights along the way like the Golden Lock Pass, Imperial Passage & the Ladder to Heaven.

At the Golden Lock Pass, there were vendors selling 'golden' locks to lovers who wants to bind themselves to each other by placing locks they buy at the Pass. This is a bit like the locks on Ponte Milvio in Rome

The Imperial Passage is for the Emperor when he wants to go hiking & the road is wider with poems carved into the side for this stretch. The Tang Emperors frequently come here to pay respects to the Taoist masters that are secluded in their search for spiritual enlightenment.

The ladder to Heaven is a 4 m 90 degree climb up the face of a rock using a steps carved out of the rock & chains at the side to pull yourself up.

There were also several Taoist temples on the way & probably the reason why Jin Yong chose this as the foreground for Chinese martial arts. Monks & Toaist priest are excellent kung fu exponents like in Shaolin Temple, Wutang Shan and Emei Shan.

The scenery was well worth the effort & there was a lesson in life to be learnt as well :

We encountered the supplies transport for the shops on the mountain. Stuff like mineral water were actually brought up by human mules. In other words, they were carried up on sticks balanced on the shoulders by people. One hell of a way to make a living. That's why we didn't complain about the exorbitant prices of water in HuaShan. What touched us was that at the resting points for the 'mules', local Chinese were offering to share their fruits etc with them. A deep lesson in life for us city types.

East Of Xian (Day 2)

We planned to visit the BanPo Museum, The Terracotta Museum & HuaQing Hot Spring. We had to skip HuaQing Hot Spring as we had a nice & long breakfast that day & someone wanted to come back to the city early for the shopping !! HuaQing Hot Spring is where Yang GuiFei (one oof the 4 most beautiful women in Chinese history) bathes daily to get rid of her BO. It is also the place where the infamous December 1936 Xian Incident happened. Chang Kaishek (then leader of China) was caught in the nearby Li Mountain in his pyjamas by Marshal Zhang XueLiang & this changed the face of modern Chinese history.

So on we went to the BanPo Museum after breakfast. BanPo Museum is actually the excavation site for a Neolithic village. Neolithic means 4500 BC that means the civilisation here is about 6,500 years old. It's a typical excavation site with holes where houses used to be & lots of skeletons & ancient farmimg tools, urns etc. Those days they put their dead babies in jars & are kept at the back of the house. As can be seen they have pretty strong family life back then. It's a matriarchal society so the woman runs the house & decides who she wants to sleep with. Nice.

The primary motive for coming to Xi'an is to see the Terracotta Museum. This is the world famous site for Qin ShiHuangTi (first Emperor of China) life size toy army. They were supposedly built to protect him in his afterlife as well as to protect his tomb from his enemies. This will ensure that his future generations will continue to rule for thousand more years. So much for the army cos the Qin Dynasty collapsed 4 years after Qin ShiHuangTi passed on.

Nevertheless, the cultural value of the Terracotta army is immensed. Every soldier, cavalryman, archer has distinctly different features. In modern lingo that means they were handcrafted & not factory produced. They were fully coloured (when discovered), & in battle formation with real weapons. The wood of the weapons has since deteriorated but it gives archeologist an idea why the Qins were so successful in uniting the country. They had very advanced battle techniques & weaponery like the cross bow & metal chroming techniques.

Incidentally the above information didn't come form our on site tour guide. That guy was a loser & the only thing of value he said was not to buy the terracotta replicas from the vendors outside. This is because those from the museum are made from the same clay as the warriors ! And we are not even sure if that is true. At least those in the museum cost more. Chang & Blondie should know.

LouGuanTai & Ci'En Temple & Golf for Blondie & Chang (Day 3)

LouGuanTai is not found in many of the guidebooks. After checking with several Xi'an natives, most of them were not even sure where it was including our driver. Anyway LouGuanTai's relevance to history is because it was the place where LaoTzu (father of Taoism) spent several years writing the TaoTeChing, the sacred book of the Taoist before disappearing into the Western Gateway forever. Apparently he was very upset with the way the politicians were running the country in those days & opted not to contribute anymore to society.

LouGuanTai is a functioning Taoist temple. This is very different from the Chinese temples we see all over the world including in Shanghai & Beijing. There are no Buddha statues. Instead you have altars worshipping the stars, lohans, other Taoist masters like the Father of Medicine etc.

It is located at the foot of Mt ZhongNan and there are several places of interest surrounding the temple. This includes a Bamboo Research Center with different types of bamboo from all over China, temples, even a kiln that the Toaist used to turn metal to gold. This is spread over a rather wide area. They actually rent you horses to move around. Or if you are a real Toaist, you can ride on clouds to get there. Most of it is uphill, by the way, so we only managed a 1 km radius around LouGuanTai

Since we started the day late (another sumptious breakfast), we were able to arrive at the Ci'En Temple only at around 4 pm which is almost closing time. Ci'En Temple is famous for the Big Goose Pagoda. The Big Goose Pagoda is where the XuanZhang, the monk from Journey To The West, spent the rest of his life after returning from India with the Scriptures. He spent 30 years translating all the scriptures from Sanskrit to Chinese & to Japanese & Korean as well with the help of his other disciples.

This is the one guy who singlehandedly brought Buddhism to the masses in East Asia. And no, he did not have the help of either Monkey, Pigsy nor Sandy.

Forest Of Pillars, Eight Immortals Temple & HanYang Tomb (Day 4)

Time for the party to end & we surprisingly did more on the last day of the tour than any other day. Our driver, Mr Lei has wised up to our activities & being the proud Xian guy that he is, he wants us to see as much of the place as possible.

So this time he picked us up at the hotel with youcharkuay & soya milk ready. We had our usual sumptious breakfast on the move instead.

First stop : BeiLing or Forest of Pillars / Steles. This place has a collection of ancient stone calligraphy from up to 900 years ago. Of course most of the poetry on these stone steles were beyond our comprehension. But they also have Chinese paintings engraved in stone. They also provide rubbings of some selected works. These makes excellent gifts but quite bulky to carry around though.

An interesting part of the museum is an exhibition of parking steles. These are post that people used to tie their horses to. They are really elaborate and normally features a lion figure on top.

Quick exit & next stop is the Eight Immortals Temple. This is another Toaist Temple (so no Buddha statue gain) . The Eight Immortals are one of the more popular gods (fairies) that are worshipped by the Toaists. The famous story of Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea is a popular folklore & probably inspired the story of Why Did The Chicken Crossed The Road.

You have to approach the temple through a flea market littered with antique shops. Some interesting articles for sale include antique Tang vibrators. I wanted to buy 1 for souvenir until Faiz said better not to cos we don't know where it has been.

The temple was actually used by the Empress Dowager CiXi as a shelter during the Boxer Rebellion & thus received large fundings & was probably the reason why it is so well maintained.

Like in most Chinese temple, the emphasis is on how to help devotees accumulate wealth. There is a shop that sells lots of lucky charms & this include the PiXiu. The PiXiu is a mythical animal. It has the head of a dragon & the body of a lion. It is supposed to be the 9th son of the dragon. It is used as a lucky charm because the PiXiu has no anus & cannot shit. So it gathers wealth but nothing comes out. Just like our friend, Chang who eats like a PiXiu & shits like one too.
So Chang & Blondie bought a PiXiu each.

Last stop before the airport, the HanYang Tomb. This is the Tomb of LiuQi, an Emperor of the Western Han Dynasty. It is a small tomb going by the standards of Qin ShiHunagTi. But it is unique in that the whole tomb has been converted into a museum. Although we didn't get to see the actual tomb, on display were the burial items - mini terracotta figurines (minicottas). There were also minucotta animals - pigs, cows etc

The Food

Food is an integral part of any trips when there's the PiXiu & Yaw. We were fortunate that Xi'an is a haven for snacks & her food is significantly different from those in Shanghai & Beijing.

Xi'an has a huge Muslim (Hui) population. The food bazaar behind the Drum Tower is a famous food street. There is an abundance of satays (skewers), kebabs, hamburgers (roujiamo), tidbits like persimmon cakes, honey jelly cakes etc. However, most locals we spoke to say they prefer not to makan there because it is not very hygenic. We ate there once. Gouging ourselves on almost every different kind of food that we see without any adverse effects.

Another favourite Hui dish is the yang rou paomo. It's our soup kambing with lots of unleavened bread. You have to break the bread into little pieces by yourselvs & when you are done, they will pour the soup kambing into the bowl. This dish can be very filling & isn't exactly our favourite. But the same restaurant also serves fantastic grilled leg of lamb & lamb ribs.

There is however another version of the paomo called hulutou. The unhalal version of paomo. Instead of soup kambing, there pour in a broth of mixed pig intestines & other spare parts. This is by far more delicious !! Of course you would not find this in Muslim shops.

Breakfast for us is a ceremony. Mostly either sitting along sidewalks enjoying their rotis (zhuabing), yucharkuay, soya milk, dumplings etc. we believe this is how we can really appreciate the culture of Xian, generations of fine food tradition.

In case you are wondering whether Xi'an is a Muslim city, there's also a wide repertoire of Chinese food. They are famous for their dumplings. We missed the artistic dumplings at Defachang due to our schedule. But had some equally delicious dumplings at a place near the Eight Immortals Temple.

Xian is also famous for noodles like LiangPi (cold noodles), belt noodles & Qishan noodles. The cold noodles take some getting used to. It's cold noodles mixed with sesame paste, vinegar & chilli. But it can be addictive.

And thus we begin the Once Upon A Time In China Chronicles.