China Part 2 - Chengdu to Xi'an

Thankfully we had pre booked a hostel here that offered a station pick up service, as Chengdu station was an unbelievable sea of people. Our initial impression was that we had just arrived in a refugee camp, as literally thousands of people along with huge bags and sacks of what appeared to be their entire worldly possessions were sprawled out all over the place. In reality it later transpired that it's pretty much exactly what train stations actually are, as a reported 100 million people (of a nation of some 1.3 billion people) are migrating from their homes in the country in search of a share of the wealth pie that is being created in the cities. For a country of China's size it has very few cities for these millions to migrate to, hence the mayhem.

The hostel turned out to be something of a revelation, and certainly not something that you find in China very often, kitted out with all the facilities, amenities and services you could hope for (bar, restaurant, wifi in room, pool table, table tennis, a gym, DVD lending, travel agency etc) - called Sims Cosy Guest House, and it came as no great surprise to discover that it was not Chinese owned or run...

First up on the attractions list for Chengdu was the Panda Breeding Centre, getting there for feeding time at 8am to see them at their most active, as the rest of the day they pretty much just sleep. We had our reservations about the place, fearing it may just be some zoo where the pandas are kept in poor conditions (China not having the best reputation for zoos) but we were pleasantly surprised to find a huge enclosure out of the city, with many large areas for the pandas to eat play and sleep.

The adult pandas just sit back like an old man in his armchair and chomp away on their bamboo oblivious to the fact there is anyone there, while the baby pandas provide all the entertainment, climbing trees, falling off logs and play fighting with one another. It is apparently the most successful breeding centre for the panda, now near extinction in the wild and only around 50 pandas exist in zoos around the world, the breeding centre in Chengdu has 50 giant and red pandas of all ages, 'red pandas' being a genetic mix of panda and raccoon, for which there is also a very successful breeding program here.

Wandering around the city in the afternoon it was quite apparent the rate at which the economic wealth is growing, whilst there are still large areas laid out in the traditional Chinese style, the main part of the city is all high rises and glitzy shopping malls with as many high end designer shops in Chengdu as there are in Milan. All of them remain completely empty the entire time though, mere showrooms to create aspirational desire in the newly rich - all of whom apparently catch a flight down to Hong Kong and buy up all the designer gear down where there are significantly reduced taxes, and hence cheaper prices.

The following day we hooked with Raphael, a Swiss guy staying at the same hostel as us, and made our way to the town of Leshan, a couple hours out of Chengdu to go and pay a visit to the largest 'Buddha in the world' - carved into the side of a cliff overlooking a river, hundreds of years ago. The giant sitting Buddha is some 71 metres tall, but he is not alone in this area, also carved into the same cliffs is the longest reclining Buddha in the world as well, that lounges across the cliff face some 170 metres. There are in total over 3000 Buddha’s carved into the surrounding hills, some hundreds of years old, some more recent replicas of significant Buddha’s from elsewhere in China, along with a series of hilltop temples still home to communities of Buddhist monks.

It was also while in Chengdu that Jonny bought a guitar for the princely sum of £17, enabling us to get cracking with our new travelling 3 piece band; 'Dangerous Brian & The Casino Brothers' now the stupidity can really begin...

Having a day of sampling the local culinary delights as we wandered through the different districts of Chengdu, we found ourselves in a canteen place that had been recommended to us, with no English words, pictures or anyone that spoke any English, we somehow ordered up some dumplings that were pretty much just sugar inside, not quite what we had had in mind, but interesting nonetheless. Following on from this we thought we would wash them down with a nice cup of tea or coffee and having learnt our lesson about tea shops already in China, we headed to the Tibetan quarter and ordered up their take on tea. It turned out to be very light on the actual tea flavour, and incredibly heavy on the boiled salty yak’s milk it was made with, an acquired taste that we were apparently unable to acquire. Making our excuses we made our way out rather swiftly to the somewhat bemused stares of the owners, wondering why these strange westerners had just walked in, ordered a huge pot of 'tea', taken a couple of mouthfuls then left over the asking price as they shuffled out of the door as fast as possible...

Finding the buses and trains yet again fully booked as we planned our onward trip to Xi'an, and not really fancying the 16 hours on the rickety old sharrabangs that were left on offer, we took the easy option, said a quick good luck prayer and booked ourselves on a flight with that most reputable of airlines, China Air, to Xi’an, home of the Terracotta Warriors. Chengdu was a really nice city, cold and grey at this time of year and apparently humid and polluted during the summer, it had a nice feel about it; no one was in your face and it was home to the best hostel in China.

One safely negotiated China Air flight later, we touched down in Xi’an and took a bus into town. Along the way we passed by an incredible network of new motorways and fly over’s, putting Birmingham's spaghetti junction to shame, with many more still under construction. The encouraging thing about some of the development that is going on is that China appears to be considering some renewable energy technologies to their urban planning in certain areas, with things such as solar and wind powered street lighting lining the sides of the roads.

Xi’an is an old walled city, and outside of those walls, it is pretty uninspiring, once inside however it is a different story. 21st century glitz and glamour line the streets, every designer shop under the sun, high end jewellery stores and an abundance of Range Rovers, Merc's and BMW's, set against a mixture of ultra modern architecture and ancient Chinese architectural grandeur from an illustrious past. It was here we hooked up with Alva, a young Irish girl who had spent the previous 4 months teaching English and studying Chinese in Chengdu.

Heading out that night, the 4 of us ventured into the Muslim quarter for dinner and with Alva being able to communicate significantly better than us, we went to a restaurant with no English on the menu again and were actually able to make semi informed choice of what we eat that night. It was pretty impressive how much of the Chinese characters Alva was able to understand, and how much she could converse with the waitress with only 4 months of learning. We ended up having a fantastic beef and lamb noodle soup with homemade noodles, delicious! Being a Muslim restaurant however, all the Chinese in the world was not going to get us a beer mind you.

The food in China to date has been superb, much better and more varied than your average Chinese restaurant back home has on offer. The street food snacks you can get are great, perfectly barbequed meat skewers that you roll in sauce and chilli flakes to your taste, steamed buns with a variety of veg or meat fillings, the delicious steamed wanton dumplings and strange but remarkably tasty dried yaks meat, not entirely dissimilar to a slightly sweeter beef jerky.

Xi’an at night is a lively place, the main centre of the old town is called 'New Times Square' and they are certainly giving New York's time square a run for its money with huge cinema screens projected onto the sides of building, neon lights adorn every wall and rooftop, huge laser beams shot up directly into the sky supposedly pointing out various stars and planets that you can then view via huge telescopes that are wheeled into town on the back of push bikes, not to mention hoards of kites that fly in amongst the city centre power cables, that consist of one very long piece of string with 20 or 30 small kites attached to each one. There might just be one of those in the post for Jake.

Awoken yet again by the dulcet tones of someone hocking their guts up in the street outside our bedroom window, we tucked into a breakfast of delicious steamed pork buns jumped on the local bus headed out of town to the Terracotta Warriors. At least we thought that was where we were headed, 20 minutes or so later, we realised that we were actually heading in completely the opposite direction... the indecipherable characters having got the better of us yet again. An about turn back the way we had just come, a bus change at Xi’an train station (yet again resembling a refugee camp with people and their possessions all over the place), we arrived at the archaeological site where the Terracotta Warriors were unearthed.

Originally discovered by a local farmer while he was digging a well in 1974, there is now a huge area that has been uncovered incorporating three separate pits, though there are plenty more still believed to be buried. Acting as guardians to the tomb of an ancient emperor, it took 38 years to complete. Each warrior was handcrafted to resemble an actual member of the army at that time with no two Warriors the same, even down to hairstyles and the tread on the shoes. There are also horses and chariots, as well as all manner of weaponry supposed to prepare the Warriors for battle if anyone attempted to raid the tomb.

The tomb itself, still remains buried, as metallurgy tests carried out in the area have confirmed local myths that there are rivers of mercury surrounding the tomb and all manner of triggerable devices set to impale and maim anyone coming close. It has also been discovered that not only were the Warriors all intricately hand carved some 2000 years ago, but they were also all individually painted.

To date, the Warriors that have been unearthed are all just their base material colour, as the chemical reaction between the paints that were used and the oxygen in the air causes it to completely degrade within 30 minutes of exposure. It is for this reason that the huge area that makes up pit 2 remains largely covered over still, while tests have been carried out to find a way of ensuring the paint doesn't degrade. They have now cracked this problem and so progress to unearth the rest is being started shortly.

Thousands of these life size figurines are in the fields and in the largest pit, Pit 1, it contains over 6000 figurines. When you think about the effort and man hours that went into creating it all you can't help feel that not only is it very impressive but also completely insane and possibly somewhat pointless. The whole area has been laid out really well, and for one of China's top tourist attractions it is good value for money (c. £9), compared to a lot of the more minor attractions which are pretty overpriced, as we were to find out on the next stop of our journey north east - Pingyao.