You and Whose Army?

The star attraction of Xi'an, the Terracotta Army are located in the mausoleum of Qin Shi Hungdi, and were carved out of terracotta to protect him in the afterlife. One man's afterlife army is now China's tourist cash cow, but if you're in Xi'an a visit is almost obligatory.



We went on an arranged tour from our hostel, and stopped off at a factory beforehand where they made replicas of terracotta soldiers as well as all kinds of other trinkets related to Chinese history. The best thing about this was being to get right up close to the soldiers themselves, something not possible, understandably, with the original terracotta army.



After following our sprightly guide Zhizhi through pit two and pit three, the tour culminated with pit one, the biggest and most impressive. As is probably the case with other sights, looking at my photographs I don't think they do the scene justice. It really is a mightily impressive sight, especially considering how long they've been buried there (since 210 BC).

The crowds are the one bum note of the exhibition, but they're generally unavoidable at an attraction that's as big a draw as this. If you're in China, go see it.


We foolishly agreed to include a Tang dynasty culture show as part of the package with the Terracotta tour. It was an enjoyable show, but very short, and not worth the time spent on the minibus getting to the venue and back. Then again, the Terracotta Army was always going to be a tough act to follow.

Night Kite Flight

Having had a great start to our China adventure in Chengdu, I knew Xi'an (pronounced she-anne), our next stop, would be a different experience. Whereas Chengdu is a modern and increasingly wealthy city with a modest role in Chinese history, Xian has more history than arguably anywhere else in the country. Serving as the capital of the country under several dynasties, this was a place I was looking forward to for entirely different reasons, having read a book on and taken a mild interest in Chinese history before I left Ireland.



Towering above the front of our hostel, the ancient city wall, built during the Ming dynasty in the 14th century, forms a rectangular barrier around the heart of Xi'an. Still in excellent condition, we were able to cycle it's 14km, getting a nice first view of many part of the city in 90 minutes.



Looking quite traditional yet modern during the day, at night the centre of Xi'an was transformed. Along it's main streets neon was abundant (as it was in parts of Chengdu), but the city monuments, like the Bell Tower, Drum Tower and the gates of the city wall, were superbly illuminated in a tasteful gold-tinged yellow, providing a nice contrast to the garishness of the neon.



The centre of activity seemed to be located by the Drum Tower, with kite flyers in abundance – all trying to sell you a kite whilst also skillfully flying them – making it look easy which, looking at the size of them, it definitely was not. Seeing ten kites mingle high in the air illuminated by the glow of the buildings below was one of the sights of China so far for me.

Craic Agus Ceol

Our first night out in Chengdu had also been a form of research for our St. Patrick's Day venue, and the Shamrock Irish Bar fit the bill perfectly. We had no idea how may actual Irish would be there, but we did know from the numerous posters that the bar would be throwing a big 'aul shindig, appropriate for my first St. Patrick's Day outside of Ierland.

On the morning of the day itself I <>, and bumped into a young Irish couple (Conor (Kildare) and Hilary(Dublin)) who were holidaying in China. They were also planning on celebrating the day that it was in the Shamrock. So at least I knew there'd me more than the three of us celebrating.


Conor and Hilary

The festivities (drinking) commenced around six. By eight a Dubliner (Eoin) and an Antrim man (Adrian) had joined the ranks, along with Adrian's Welsh girlfriend Hannah, who was an honourary Irishwoman for the day.



Our numbers having swelled to eight, our festivites (drinking) really began to gather pace. Irish flag shots were being banded about, and the owner of the place generously gifted us with a free round of shots himself. I even sampled the Guinness, and to my surprise it wasn't that bad. I only had the one though – at 50 RMB (a little over €5!) it was outside my budget range.

The average band put on had an American lead who didn't know a single Irish song – a crime that we made him pay for by singing ourselves in between the songs of his set. To be far he did make an attempt at Dirty Old Town, singing the words off a sheet, but it was no match for our version (in our collective opinion anyway).

With more and more festivities (drin – ah you get it by now), the singing naturally progressed to the other way to show our Irishness – dancing. Once the band finished playing we took over the stage area, with Eoin whipping out a tin whistle seemingly from nowhere and laying down some excellent tunes he probably still remembered from 6th class. Next to his stage area on the cosy dance floor the scene was chaotic, with random acts of Irish dancing and arm-locked jigs bewildering the Chinese crowd that didn't realise what they had let themselves in for that night. After eventually figuring out we weren't going to hurt them some of them even bravely joined in, as up for the craic as we were.



With no closing hours in China, it's up to the individual pubs to decide how late they should stay open. The staff eventually got fed up with us at 5.30am, but not after John had managed to procure a stylish staff waistcoat after pestering a poor bar man for half the night. Having added a couple of Danes, the gang left the Shamrock and made our way into the crisp pre-dawn Chengdu air. We decided to get food, and made our way in two taxis to a restaurant that someone thought might be open. We did find somewhere, and the poor staff there had to deal with a gang of cheery Irish at an ungodly hour of the morning. The food was good, I think.



I had heard from others tha spending St. Patrick's Day abroad really brings out the Irishness in you – you feel it's your duty to show the locals what being Irish is all about. In that regard, the night was definitely a success, and the best Paddy's Day I've had in years.

Pandamonium

Read any guide to Chengdu and you'll undoubtedly hear about the Panda Breeding Research Centre. The Panda, being China's national animal, is one of the main reasons to visit Chengdu. In the research centre they attempt to breed pandas in captivity, whilst in the wilds of north Sichuan (and in neighbouring provinces) the very few number of pandas that still live in the wild can be found.

Tourists, of course, can visit the research centre to see this symbol of China. While I hate being labelled with the term 'tourist' (I'm a traveller, or adventurer if you will), this was still something I couldn't miss.



Touring the centre on the morning of St. Patrick's Day (no they didn't paint the pandas green), this was the first time I had seen pandas in the flesh. My first impression was that they look like a man in a suit trying to eat bamboo and convince tourists that this was actually a type of animal. Slouched down, Al Bundy style, munching away, they truly appear as the lazy slouch of the animal kingdom.
Eating nothing but bamboo, the tree has so little nutritional value that they have to eat it for sixteen hours a day to get enough energy to survive (they sleep for the rest of the day).



The highlight and provider of the most comedy value in the complex are the baby pandas. Standing by the pen, we watched as the staff attempted to feed the cubs with what was essentially an oversized baby bottle. Not one of them was interested in having a bottle stuffed in their mouths, meaning hilarious games of cat and mouse between the cubs and the feeders ensued.

Satisfied that I had seen something you don't see everyday, it was time to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.

Chengdu: Cycling, Ear Cleaning, Clubbing

Once I felt well enough after the hotpot incident, we hired some bikes from the hostel and saw a bit of Chengdu by bicycle. City cycling here is completely different to back home, with every street (all of which were flat) having it's own spacious bike lane, and cyclists also have their own traffic lights – the way it should be.



The city tour culminated with me getting my ears cleaned in the traditional Chinese style in a Chinese tea house by the lake of the People's Park. This involved a man with a thin needle and and tuning-fork style instrument operating on my ear whilst around me people drank tea and chatted. This is a normal scene in a Chinese tea house, I assure you. For hundreds of years, the Chinese tea house, essentially the Chinese version of the local pub, is where they go for tea, chat, and ear cleaning. Supposedly having clean ears makes it easier to eavesdrop on the local gossip that gets passed around here, although with my almost non-existent Mandarin this benefit was lost on me.



Tinafu square was the highlight of what we witnessed that day, marking the centre of Chengdu with a large paved open area, with a statue of Chairman Mao ominously watching over it. You could tell that the square was built with the intention of displaying the might of communism, and mightily impressive it was.

Having seen the communist-build heart of Chengdu, that night we ended up in a place where we couldn't feel further from it's pseudo-Puritan idealogy. I had gained a contact in Chengdu through my old boss at DSI, Brendan Lawlor. He happened to have a Dutch software industry colleague working in Chengdu. So that night we met up with Erik Wiersma, who worked for IJO Technologies, the Chengdu software house who cater exclusively to the Dutch market. Being in the same industry ourselves, it was a natural link-up.



Meeting in the bright and glitzy club and restaurant district, he took us to quite possibly the largest and most spectacular restaurant I had ever eaten in. An enormous statue of an ancient Chinese warrior stood by the door, and the interior I saw was decorated with tasteful and intricately carved wooden wall trimmings and furniture. We sat outside in the garden, and had our first truly delicious Chinese meal whilst chatting about life in Chengdu (it's pretty good by the sounds of it).



From there Erik took us to Soho night club a short walk away. Stepping inside, my preconceptions of China as a developing and old fashioned country were blown away. As modern a night club as I've seen, the neon frenzy inside had numerous stages where male singers and scantily clad female dancers performed their stuff, with cheesy Chinese pop blaring through the soundsystem. With far less dancefloor space than a typical Western club, most club-goers were standing around tables, a large proportion of them playing the dice game we were introduced to that night. I won't bore you with the details of the rules, but essentially if you guess wrong you have to down your ice-tea and whiskey (it's what everyone was drinking – not the nicest combination I've had, but not the worst).

Oh and from what we saw Sichuan girls most definitely do not dress conservatively – more of that please.

The Hotpot Incident

Having wasted most of our second day in China due to the antics of the night before, we decided to head out that night to try our first taste of authentic Chinese cuisine. Wandering aimlessly around the vicinity of the hostel, we ended up in the first place we saw that didn't look too expensive, but didn't look too dodgy hygiene wise either.

As soon as we entered the door heads turned, but we were used to that from India. What we weren't used to was the massive language barrier we now faced. No one in the restaurant had a word of English, and likewise none of us have a word of Mandarin, a fact that triggered incredulous laughter from the staff when they realised.



A paper menu with just Mandarin and checkboxes was placed in front of us. We were preparing to just pick things at random, when the waitress grabbed my Mandarin phrasebook (god bless it) off me. She then showed extremely commendable patience in going through the menu reader section, pointing out things to us which were on the menu, at which point we'd nod and smile or shake our heads. It was a slow ordering system, but it worked.



Sichuan province is famous throughout China (and the world they claim) for it's fiery cuisine, and the most famous Sichuan cuisine of all is huguo, or hotpot. This dining experience involves a big gas-heated cooking pot in the middle of the table, which is filled with a cooking oil of your choice (and plenty of hot chillies) and then into which you place your food to cook it. We had unwittingly walked into a hotpot restaurant, which I slowly realised as I watched our waitress pour in the oil and turn on the gas.



Relieved that we had overcome the initial ordering challenge, we now got ready for the next one: chopsticks. John and I had never used them before, ever, and Gearóid's experience was limited at best. After our first batch of food had stewed over in the pot long enough, we tried to retrieve it, with huge difficulty. Still hungover from the night before, my brain was wondering what the hell was going on. It felt so alien, eating with them. Still, we all just about managed, though there was some mess on the table towards the end of the meal.

Feeling proud of myself that I had almost survived my first restaurant experience in China, and hotpot at that, I gleefully picked away at what was left over in the pot. Accidentally eating one of the red hot chillies, I instinctively grabbed some of the lettuce that was still sitting on the tray of ordered food by our table to cool my mouth down.

After a bad night's sleep due to an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach, the next morning I had to pull out of the trip to the Panda Breeding Centre – I was bound to the toilet for the second time on this trip. The moral of the story is: when having hotpot, absolutely everything must be cooked in the pot – even the fucking lettuce.

There's No Way They'll Stay Open That Late

Sim's Cozy Guesthouse was recommended to me by someone who had toured China last year, so it became our first Chinese base. Straight away the atmosphere within it's big gates seemed different to the empty shells we had been occupying in India and Nepal. Finally, a proper hostel, with dorms and communal areas and even other guests!

There was no time to enjoy that yet though, it was our first night in China, and more important matters were at hand. Manchester United were playing Liverpool, and there was an Irish pub in town that I was certain would be showing it. I know some of you are probably gasping in frustration at why I'd want to watch a soccer match when I've just arrived in a great new country, but I also know those of you who know me well won't be one bit surprised.

We arrived at the Shamrock, and they were showing it, and I watched it, and United got thumped 4-1, and then I wished I hadn't watched it. Such is soccer. There was also a crucial Ireland versus Scotland rugby game on, but that wasn't starting until 1.30am local time, leading to John to utter the now infamous phrase “there's no way they'll stay open that late for the game”.



Jump forward to 4am, and you have the sight of a small gang of Irish goading the Scottish owner of the bar after an Irish victory, the beer still flowing. Back home, no drink is served after 2am, and things tend to shut down around 10pm in India and Nepal, so we weren't used to being served alcohol this late at all!

John and myself ended up drinking whiskey back at the extremely plush apartment of a Dubliner (who was working in Chengdu) named Eoghan. The next morning (afternoon) we woke in an empty living room, left the apartment quietly and wondered out into the suburbia, in a new country, in a new city, massively hungover and with no idea where we were. After showing a poor taxi driver with no English our hostel in the book, he took us to where the book indicated. It turns out Sim's Cozy Guesthouse had moved to a new location a couple of months ago, and my 2007 Lonely Planet showed the old location. Luckily, on the gate there was a piece of paper with Mandarin characters, which we chanced showing to the cab driver. He seemed to understand, and ten minutes later I was in my hostel bed for the first time, wondering if every night in China would be like this.

And Now For Something Completely Different

When I was a student, specifically in the first year of my third-level education, I used to live in a house that was – without mincing my words here – an absolute dive. Seven (sometimes eight or nine) lads living in a dilapidated old house, with not one of us bothered about cleaning, meant at times the house became so disgusting I think back and shudder at the thought of living there again. At the weekends I used to go back home to a spotless pristine house and I really noticed and appreciated the cleanliness much more than I used to. Going from India/Nepal to China is a similar experience.

Like Lhasa, the first thing we noticed about Chengdu airport was the cleanliness. Not a spec of dirt was in sight. And once again it was all so well organised. But this time it was far from empty, which was to be expected in a country with over a billion people.



To minimize our arrival pains in a brand new country, we had arranged for our hostel to pick us up from the airport. On the car journey into the city centre, my eyes never left the window. The freshness of the surroundings was invigorating – everything here was different to where we had just come from – the buildings, the signs, the roads – everything was bigger and bolder. Immediately this country seemed more confident and sure of itself (and with far more civilized driving).