Xi'an

Today we had a full, full day in Xi’an (She-on) Home of the Terracotta Warriors.  We stopped by a large park where there were thousands of people doing exercize and activities.  We stopped at groups and participated in their activities. 

First  we joined young adults doing some exercises to popular Chinese music.  Then Hacky sacks, then fan/umbrella dancing.  They had a “drum major” or traffic officer kind of conducting the traffic of the dancers.  Each group had at least 25 people, some groups had hundreds.  We also participated in general exercises, ballroom dancing and Chinese country line dancing.  We passed by a bunch of men… in a storytelling group and a co-ed singalong group. It was invigorating and the locals loved us being there, taking pictures of us participating. 

We went to a lacquer shop (I guess the best lacquer is here and comes naturally from trees). We didn’t buy a thing.
Then  we stopped at the Terracotta warriors.  They  were amazing… We spent almost 3 hours there. Pretty much blown away.

We had a dumpling dinner and finished our day in the Muslim marketplace.  Haggling.  

  In the market place I noticed a young adult taking a picture of herself behind us so I put my arm around her so we could get her a real picture of foreigners.  She loved it.
We wanted to take the bus back… #12 for 1 Yuan each which is about 17 cents.  We waited a while and finally a bus came but it was so full, and people still kept getting on.  We took a motorcycle cab which ended up being quite the colorful back-roads experience.  That cost 20 Yuan but was worth the extra $2.
We are winding down in Beijing tomorrow.

Trying pigs feet