China Trip: Xian Smaller Section

We spent a few days in the city of Xian where we were able to see the touristy city as well as an ancient village still living within the boundaries of the Great Wall.  It was interesting to walk around the city and notice the old mixing in with the more modern stuff in both architecture and culture.

The first thing that we did when we got into Xian was take a tour of the city wall.  Xian is basically what China considers a small city bordered by 4 walls that they conveniently call the North, East, South and West walls.  The walls were built around the city to protect against unwanted armies with outpost every few meters for soldiers to protect the city.  The big touristy thing to do on the wall is rent a bike and ride all the way around it.  However, with my pregnant belly and all the bumping of the wall's stones we decided against doing that part of the tour and instead we just walked along the East wall while the rest of the group rode around the wall.  I am glad that we chose not to do the bikes because it took the group about an hour and a half to get all the way around the wall and I am sure I would have had a really difficult time with that!  Here are some pictures of the wall.

The entry into the wall's east side.

The outpost were something like 120 meters away from each other throughout the whole wall.

Here is the rest of our group getting their bikes for the ride around the wall.

Matthew sitting at one of the outposts.

Notice on the outside of the wall there are skyscrapers and such where as inside the wall you can see some trees.  Yes there were trees inside but there were also a lot of buildings, however, none of the buildings stood over the height of the wall or as tall as the skyscrapers outside.

Matthew was able to ride a bike along a section of the wall when our tour guide offered his bike while he took a break!  (That's Matthew on the bike in the picture above.)

There was a random anime soldier dude at the bottom of the steps so Matthew took a picture with his small face inside the soldier's huge face! 

Still have that cloudy haze that we experienced the whole time in China but never-the-less it was a beautiful sight.

Also when we were in Xian our tour guide took us to a restaurant that he claimed was the house of the best noodles in all of China.  He was super excited to take us all there! 

We were able to walk to the kitchen side of the restaurant and watch as the noodles were prepared.  They actually prepare the dough by hand, cut it, roll it and boil it all right in front of you.   

That large block that guy is touching is how the noodles start out looking.

There were basically 3 size bowls to order and that was all that you could get.  The sizes were: small, regular and extra large.  Everyone in our group except me got the regular sized plate.  I got a small.

This guy was basically beating up the dough!  It was awesome!

The girls in the kitchen prepared the bowls with all the seasonings and toppings then threw the noodles in as they came out of the boil.

Oh and there was this Plum juice there that was one of 2 drinks offered.  Our tour guide said we had to have the plum juice so we all tried it.  I loved it!  Matthew did too!! It was one of the best drinks I had there and one of the only things that I wish we could find outside of China!

This is my small bowl of noodles!

This is Matthew with is regular sized bowl.  

I had a time with the chop sticks and still could not finish my whole bowl of noodles for two reasons.  The first reason is because there were so many noodles!  The second:  it was spicy!!  My lips were burning about halfway through the bowl.  Matthew got further than I did in his regular sized bowl but it was spicy for him too.  The crazy thing was that our tour leader got the extra large bowl after everyone else in the group had already started eating theirs and he still finished before everyone else!  He cleaned out his whole bowl and it was huge!  They were really good noodles and definitely fresh but a little too spicy for my taste.  

One last thing that we did while in Xian that is noteworthy is out tour of the small town built up off the wall.  You had to go though a city gate to get into it but it basically looked like a run down town that had succumbed to the bigger businesses setup for tourist outside their walls.  Most of the businesses had had better days and the houses were what us in America would consider run-down and poverty stricken type of living.  Here are some of the pictures we took of that small town.

The entrance.

As far as you can see in the picture is about how many small stores there were and vendors set up but after that, nothing.

The group played this game of ring toss and no one was able to ring anything.

Once we passed all the shops we turned down an alleyway to see where the people really lived.

This is the entrance into someone's house/front yard.

We were pretty sure that these goats were for sell for their meat.  There were about 5 just tied up and eating across from a shop.

These were they first and only chickens that we saw in all of China and they were in a coup that was attached to a house.  The chicken actually walked in and out of the house!

Notice the guard dog on the roof!  Awesome!  Another thing that we noticed was that even though this small town looked run down most of the people were dressed really nicely in fancy clothing.

There was also something interesting that we saw all over the place.  The making of this crushed nut candy that was very popular.  Below is a video of the way that they made to candied nuts.  

This post was about the smaller section of Xian.  The next section goes into the bigger city of Xian.

Thanks for reading!