The Bus

It was our first Chinese bus ride. Based on the traveler reports that I had read, I hoped for the best but expected the worst. We stood at the street corner, that in no way resembled a bus stop, for over an hour - the bus was late - but I was pleasantly releaved when a big, clean, modern-looking bus pulled up that bore the Chinese characters for Xi'an.

On board we were subjected to a continual stream of bad movies from the video monitor in the front. Luckily the volume was tolerable and our ears weren't ringing from people karate-chopping each other to bits. The Chinese love their violence, second only to sex in the movies. If people aren't trying to extract secret formulas through sexual acts, they are wounding each other through multiple gunshots and heavy explosives.

The highway was smooth and fast and we settled back for our seven hour trip....But then (it wouldn't be fun to read, if there wasn't a 'but then') just outside a toll booth, the bus stopped. The driver and two others got out and John watched then through the window. "There getting out a tool box," he reported to me. "This doesn't look good."

"What happened?" I asked a man near me. "We broke," he replied. And so, somewhere, several hours short of our destination, we sat. And we sat. And we sat. The ticket lady on board made several phone calls. She even flagged down another bus (a bigger, nicer bus) that had enough seats to accommodate us all. We all jumped out, grabbed our bags and jockied to a mob in front of its door. But there was a dispute over money and by the time John and I figured out what was going on, the bigger, nicer bus pulled away leaving us standing, sweating with our luggage in the road. We piled back into our own bus, back to the AC, another bad movie and more waiting.

Our eventual rescue came not in the form of a knight on a shining horse, but in the form of a young bus driver in an old minibus. "Oh joy!" The AC was poor, the driver's window didn't go up all the way, we were crammed shoulder to shoulder (Some people sitting on seats in the aisle), and to add to the comfort level, the driver smoked. John and I had the good fortune to be sitting in the seats directly behind him.

I propped my leg up on the spare tire and craned my neck to see the TV screen above my head. Someone was rifling down someone else. Well, at least he was in a fancy limousine when it happened.

My seat position gave me little choice but to look out the windshield and watch our driver maneuver through traffic like only a Chinaman with no fear of death could. I was reminded of a traveler's account of a bus ride that I had read in the guide book. He advised sitting in the back of the bus so that in the event of a collision, you would have more time to slow down before you hit the windshield.

I tried to watch the landscape instead but so little of it was visible through the haze and smog. "Made in China," I commented to John. All those things that we buy that bear that mark might more aptly say "made a mess in China". We passed a truck with a wide load on board - an enormous concrete smoke stack. I looked over to the tall peaks that disappeared into a chocking, grey pudding of smog and wondered where they would possible find room to put another smoke stack.

The total time for the bus trip that day was twelve hours. There were two bathroom stops where John and I were able to grab ice-cream bars, but those and a few cookies and a tomato were all we ate. We booked a room at the first hotel that we found in Xi'an - directly across from the bus station. I was so tired I didn't know whether to eat my dinner or fall asleep in it.

We shared our dinner table with two travelers from Argentina who apparently have been following our steps on this trip. "We were in Severobaikalsk then too," they said. "You're the couple with the white back packs? We've seen you all over." But from here they go north and we head south. They had already visited Xi'an, and we were just starting.

Xi'an is a typical Chinese city. Tall buildings, lots of shopping and plenty of traffic. It lacks the atmosphere that Pingyao offers. There are no painted panels or red paper lanterns handing from shop fronts, no green and yellow tiled roofs or pagoda-shaped towers. It's draw card actually lies 40 minutes by bus outside the city.

I wasn't quite ready to board another bus just yet, so for the first day in Xi'an we wandered the winding back streets of the muslim quarter and watch bearded men in white skull caps bake bread over coal burning stoves, stretch dough into long noodles, and play checkers on street corners. We strolled through the shopping areas and looked at bright peasant paintings and bargained for cheap souvenirs. It was enough of a break so that the next day we were ready to get on another bus and head out to see the famous terracotta warriors.

The terracota warriors are fascinating. They were discovered by accident when peasants were drilling for a well in 1974. They pulled up part of a clay sculpture and from there the digging began for what turned out to be one of the major archaeological discoveries of the 20th century: an underground vault of earth and timber that yielded over 6000 life-size terracota soldiers and horses in battle formation. They were constructed over 2000 years ago to be an underground army to guard over a tomb for eternity.

A massive excavation effort was undertaken to find and re-assemble the soldiers (they were attacked and broken by an army some years after their completion) and today the three pits so far discovered are impressive. Rows and rows of soldiers in detailed exact military dress can be seen. There are no two faces alike. Along with the soldiers and horses were found two smaller chariots in four kinds of metal using techniques that were not though to be in use at that time. The detail workmanship on them is nothing short of amazing.

The memory of our bus ride faded quickly and we enjoyed our time in Xi'an. Now it was time to move on. Kunming won the vote as our next destination as we flipped through our guide book. The next question was how to get there.