Xian and the 2,200 years old Terracotta Warriors

The overnight train journey to Xian was eventful. Some of the group were lucky enough have be in soft sleepers, so nominated they cabin to be the party cabin.

The hardsleepers we're very 'hard': used bed sheets, pillow and duvet! Even I brought out my sleeping bag for this journey.

Xin taught us a 'devils and angels', a game where at 'night' a devil kills an angel and the 'next morning', we have to try and find out who the devil was. Losers had to have baizhou, a nasty Chinese spirit. We neutralised the taste by have sweet biscuits that looked like pigs' ears.



As promised by the cabin attendant, they played 'Beijing huan ying ni' as we entered Beijing. The past two hours on the train was spent being entertained by a young girl who came into our cabin with her grandfather and wanted to dance to the music coming from my speakers.

We had to get off at South Xian, 30km south of Xian. While we waited for a minibus to take us into the city, we witnessed a police raid on the platform (we think drugs related) and a little bit took an interest in each of us, finally wanting a photo of me and caught my attention by calling me the 'black one'.

Xian is the ancient capital of China, having been the capital from around 1000BC to 1000AD. We walked around the centre of the city and the vibrant Muslim quarter. We had a great meal, including awesome kebab sticks. Chris and I also were informed of the trip gossip, which we were not aware of at all! We then went to a bar briefly and then headed back to our hotel. However, on our way back, we lost Nicola! She refused to cross a 6-lane road, decided to tackle the subway instead and got lost. Chris, Chris and I went looking for her and found her, but not until 20 minutes of panic. No harm done in the end.

The next day, we went to see the Terracotta Warriors, which are around an hour out of the city. The Army was built to guard the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, China's first emperor, about 2,200 years ago.



The Army was only discovered in 1974 when peasants we're digging a well. There are three vaults, of which Vault 2 is yet to be completed uncovered as they are still struggling with maintaining the Warriors once excavated. All in all, it was very impressive, although very touristy.

After an afternoon of chilling, some of us met up in the evening. We were bar hopping, first at the ride Hutong Bar, then at the cheap, but empty Kingsway Bar, and finally at the 1+1 club, which was brilliant fun. The night ended around 4am.

The next day, I hadn't done any sightseeing the day before in the city, so was determined to check out as much as I could before we got a train to Beijing at 5pm, even though it was raining.

I managed to see the Big Goose Pagoda and the Small Goose Pagoda, both very impressive. The Small Goose Pagoda was set amongst beautiful gardens and artifical lakes, and was also next to the very impressive Xian Museum, which explains well how civilisation developed in Xian and the Shaanxi Province.

I then bumped into Leon on the City Wall and we decided to rent bikes and cycle around the 14km perimeter. It began to rain heavily and we got soaked. Worse, we walked back to the hotel as we couldn't find a taxi and ended up rushing for a shower before leaving for our overnight trip to Beijing.