Travel in Xi'an                                                        NYCHINATOWNcom

The 1974 discovery of the Gin Terracotta Warriors, the opening of China’s doors to foreign tourism, and the partial deregulation of the economy changed everything.  The warriors were kept secret until they were ready for display, but after that tourists rushed to visit them in numbers rivaling those at the main sights of Beijing.  Meanwhile China’s economic boom brought both a forest of shiny new towers and the severe pollution caused by industry, motor vehicles and increasing population that almost hid them from view. The city has re­-expanded to cover almost the same area as at its Suí and Táng peak, although the Silk Route is mentioned only to attract tourists. A monument of stone camels has been built near where the Táng city’s west gate once stood, and is officially designated the Routes’ starting point.

Xi’an Chéngqiáng (Xi’an City Walls)               

Constructed in 1370-8, during the reign of the first Míng emperor on the remains of Suí and Táng palace walls, these are the largest and best preserved in China, running for nearly 14km around the center.  With a core of mud covered by three layers of brick, they undergo almost continuous rebuilding and restoration while being casually breached elsewhere to widen existing roads or add new ones. There are numerous salient and corner turrets, and four main city gates. A surrounding moat was originally draw-bridged.

The gates are all double towers, with a courtyard between. The outer towers have rows of small windows for archers, and the inner ones are the gate towers proper, triple-layered and nearly 35m high. These now all contain shops, some labeled as ‘exhibitions’. However, the South Gate has a fine exhibition of stele rubbings, which is free. The West Gate has views of a pretty humpbacked bridge over the moat to the south. The East Gate was almost completely rebuilt in 1996. Lesser towers can be seen to the north repeating them until they disappear into the smog.

Zhong Lóu (Bell Tower)                                  

First built in 1384, the 36m-high tower was substantially restored or rebuilt in 1582, 1740 and 1953, but maintains its typical Ming architecture. Of brick and wood, its three layers of eaves contain a two-storied interior, the upper story being double height. Climbing the outer staircase of the brick plinth and entering the tower, you will find the inevitable gift shops enlivened by occasional performances of traditional music by somewhat inexpert music students on a variety of percussive, stringed and wind instruments. Upstairs, a small exhibition of filing porcelain, furniture and fine, if somewhat mildewed, Chinese paintings includes items of considerable beauty poorly lit beneath a colorful ceiling of overlapping beams. The balcony gives views along Xi’an’s main arteries, sclerotic with traffic, to the main city gates.

Gu Lóu (Drum Tower)                                       

Within sight of the similar Bell Tower, the Drum Tower is less visited and much quieter. It contains an “exhibition” of Hùxiàn Farmer Paintings and substantial gloomily varnished Chinese traditional furniture, all at prices well beyond reasonable. There are views to the north up Anyuan Mén with a roofscape of how we foreigners would like China to look: curly-eaves, pigeon lofts, washing lines, a satellite dish or two.

Dàyàn Ta  (Big Goose Pagoda) & Dàcí’en Sì     

The temple was originally built in AD 648—652 by Táng Crown Prince Li Zhì to honor his mother the Empress Wén Dé. Having returned from his scripture-collecting trip to India. The Buddhist monk Xuánzàng requested the construction of a pagoda similar to those that he had seen on his travels, resulting in a plain tapering structure, intended to house the rare texts. Such was Xuánzàng’s enthusiasm for the project, he is said to have carried bricks personally.

The temple has been destroyed and rebuilt several times, and in its Táng heyday it was the most important in China, with an added monastery that housed 300 monks. Its current scale dates from about 1466, although it was destroyed again several times after that. The pagoda was set ablaze on a few occasions and its top shaken off by an earthquake in 1556.

Stupa. Dagoba,  Chorten, or Pagoda?

The original purpose of stupas (the Sanskrit name) was to house the mortal served to commemorate key events in his life, being built at the place of his remains of the historical Buddha—later of other key Buddhist saints—and served to commemorate key Buddhist saints-and birth, death, first sermon, etc. Later, they housed sacred texts and images, or simply existed as symbols or reminders, sacred in their own right as supporting objects for meditation. Originally a hemisphere topped by an umbrella spire, the stupa assumed different shapes in different cultures, including the flask shapes of Tibetan monasteries such as Labrang and Kumbum, and at the White Dagoba Temple in Beijing -‘dagoba’ is Sinhala for stupa, and the Tibetan word is chorten. By this stage of development, each part of the stupa, from the multiple levels of its now square plinth to the increased number of umbrellas or ridges on its spire, capped by a solar disc and crescent moon, was symbolic. All Buddhist processions proceed in the direction of the sun, and reverence is shown to a stupa or its contents by processing around it in a clock­wise manner.

In China, Japan and Korea, the stupa developed into the pagoda, a four- or eight-cornered tower of wood or brick, still often with a spire or ridged roof of similar symbolism, and doing the same job of housing relics or texts. Additionally, the pagoda claimed some kind of beneficial geomantic influence on its surroundings. They usually have an internal staircase, which makes you go clockwise as you climb, thus showing veneration as you ascend. The central pillar represents the Buddha and his position at the center of the universe, and the passages or windows pointing towards the four points of the compass are associated with other individual Buddhas, and aid meditation. The multiple stories represent different worlds on the path to enlightenment, and the octagonal plan pagodas suggest the eight spokes of the wheel of dharma, the principle that what you do in one life affects what you are in the next.

Xi’an Yingchang (Xi’an Film City)

Qín Gongjiànjie (Qín Palace) and Qínhànchéng              

(Qín-Hàn City)

Xi’an’s Film Studio achieved international status as the birthplace of work by a generation of post-Cultural Revolution cinematographers and directors. Although it is a popular attraction for Chinese, few foreigners visit the Film City, and it should be understood that it is no high-tech Universal Studios-style theme park. As with all film and television sets, the first thought is how fake things look, and to wonder how they appear real on screen. The second, more worrying thought, is how similar the buildings look to supposedly historical ancient sites that you have visited, Is China one big fake?

You receive two tickets, one for making a circuit beginning to your left as you  (the Qín Hàn City), and one for the Palace. The City is a jumble of lanes, castles, stockades, gates, banner-strewn hilltop forts, a waterwheel, ancient carts, and so on. The circuit crosses the route to the Palace via the upper floor of a gate, which also has beautifully made models of various period buildings. You can be carried in a palanquin up to the Palace along an avenue of enormous guardian figures. The courtyard has a variety of military transport from horse carts to rusting armored cars, which look to be of genuine civil war vintage. Inside you can dress up, be made up, and have your photo taken on a partial set. One room on the left-hand side is littered with props, and on the right there is an exhibition of stills and posters from film. Other entertainment includes a haunted house-cum-obstacle course full of skulls, snakes waxwork corpses and walling sound effects.

Shanxi Lìshi Bówùguan

(Shanxi History Museum)

Those already disappointed by poor curatorial standards, poor display and discourteous staff at many Chinese museums will not be impressed by the claim that this is probably the best museum in China. Nevertheless, if you were to visit only one museum in the whole country, this should be it. It has a large, well-chosen collection, well illuminated, with English introductions to every room and English labels on every item.  It stands on Xiaozhài Donglù in elegant modern buildings.

On the ground floor avoid the middle entrance ahead of you, which is merely an overpriced shop, and take the left-hand one. There is a superb display of archaeological items in chrono­logical order beginning 1.15 million years ago and proceeding to the filing: fossilized skulls, early tools, weapon, cooking vessels, and funeral objects. More unusual items include the equivalent of modern-day gold bath taps and two shoe soles made from jade. Upstairs there are many funerary objects, including a green glazed model of a workshop from the Eastern Hàn, and a charming collection of ceramic camels including one from the Táng dynasty carrying a collection of musicians. Other impressive items include more than 300 miniature Ming figures which were only discovered in 1990. There’s rare Táng glassware and evidence of the cosmopolitan nature of Táng Xi’an in Arabic coins dating from AD 661 to 750.

Beilín Bówùguan (‘Forest of Stelae’)

Also known as the ‘Shanxi Provincial Museum’, this is housed in a former Confucian temple not far from the Míngdé Mén (south gate).

The temple was founded during the Sòng dynasty in 1090, and has an impressive gate, and fountains at the entrance. The central path through pleasant gardens is lined with small stone figures. The first hail on the left, The Exhibition of Ancient Buddhist Images’ is, for once, an exhibition not a shop, and has an introduction in English. The items begin with the Northern and Southern dynasties (AD 420—589) and proceed through Suí and Táng (AD 581—907). Altogether more than 100 exhibits, including fine Buddhist statues and relieves with photographs of their original locations, are intelligently and instructively arranged to show developments in style—the gradual Sinicization of originally alien figures, and absorption of Daoist and Confucian ideas.

Xiaoyànta (Little Goose Pagoda) and Jiànfú Sì                                  

The Jiànfú Sì, outside the city walls to the south, is entered from the rear (north) side, in Youyì Xilù, reached by bus 29 from the Bell Tower. Originally founded under a different name and on a different site in AD 684 and moved here at the end of the Tang dynasty, the temple was the storage place for Buddhist texts, Its collection of halls, pavilions and towers now surround the Lesser Wild Goose Pagoda, to give its name a more formal translation. The temple is not functional, many of the buildings now simply being shops, and while the two towers at the south end still actually contain their drum and bell, this is so you can be charged for striking them—supposedly bringing good luck.

The pagoda is a smaller and more slender version of its counterpart, but not in such a good state of repair. It’s a gently tapering 15-tier tower of plain brick built between AD 707 and 709, deprived of its top by an earthquake in 1556. A narrow internal stair­case mounts it, which is not to be attempted on a busy day. Enjoyment of the views from the tiny platform at the top is spoilt both by a pestering salesman with binoculars for hire and the usual pollution.

Great Mosque 

Originally founded during the Tang dynasty in AD 742, the mosque was extended and reconstructed in several subsequent dynasties and suffered surprisingly limited damage in the Cultural Revolution (1966—76). Some of the buildings remain in a slightly distressed state, and are actually more appealing to look at than other heavily restored temples.

Beyond a magnificent Míng entrance gate, there’s a ball on the right full of ancient furniture and rubbings. The rooms on the left are used as residences, with much fine marquetry on view, particularly in the panels of the doors. A second stone gate has Arabic script both on itself and attendant stelae, which record the mosque’s history. The central courtyard has a triple-layer, blue-tiled, octagonal pagoda with green dragons, for use as a minaret, although no muezzin is allowed to call. The main buildings are clustered together at the rear.

The Memorial Museum of the Eighth Route Army Xi’an Office

One of the few memorial events in China’s modern history is genuinely worth seeing. It has a whiff of the heroism of the Long March period rather than the propagandist posturing, which followed. From 1936 to 1946, this collection of low gray and white buildings was first a secret communist base, then the liaison office for work with the Nationalists on the anti-Japanese front, following the Xi’an Incident. Time has been stopped at 10 am on 10 Sept 1946, when the communists abandoned the office following the defeat of Japan and the resumption of hostilities with the Nationalists. It is as if the staff had only just left, right down to period furniture and equipment, and a secret radio transmitter in the basement. Many communist leaders visited, stayed or worked here, as did their foreign supporters and chroniclers, such as American journalist Edgar Snow and Canadian doctor Norman Bethune, and labels in English tell you who was who and who stayed where. There are many photographs from the period on display, including a pictorial history of China’s involvement in the Second World War and of the civil war, which returned after the expulsion of the Japanese.

Around Xi’an

The plains around Xi’an are acned with the burial mounds of Qin, Hin, Suí, and Tang emperors, their family members and honored courtiers, as well as innumerable temples. Some can be visited using ordinary public transport, but most hotels offer tours by car or taxi, with four possible routes, of which two are the most popular:

The East Route includes the Bànpo Neolithic Village, Qin Shi Huangdi’s Tomb, the Museum of the Terracotta Warriors, and Huanqing Hot Springs.

The West Route, which includes the Xianyang Museum, Tang tombs, and Famen Si (temple).

The general speed of the tours is brisk but not excessively so.

East Route (Dong Xian)

The Museum of Terracotta Warriors and Horses of Qin Shi Huangdi

Qin Shi Huangdi played toy soldiers on a megalomaniac scale. Peasants digging a well discovered the first soldiers in March 1974. Excavations began in 1976, and were kept largely secret until the first exhibition hail was opened in 1979. More and more finds were made until it became clear that several units of an entire army were deployed on the plain around the burial mound itself. At their most impressive in the largest hail, Pit 1, they stand eerily impas­sive, row upon row, with a solemnity that can reduce even Chinese tour groups to whispers. Despite the ‘Eighth Wonder of the World’ hype, and the widespread availability of photographs, few are disappointed by what has become an attraction to equal the Great Wall itself.

The King of the Gin state, having defeated six other states and unified them into the first version of China in 221 BC, named himself Qin Shi Huangdi, the first emperor. It is from this first imperial dynasty, the Gin, that we derive the word ‘China’. Traditionally characterized as a book-burner and persecutor of scholars (although several subsequent dynasties and the communists themselves would qualify for the same label), who used cruel and severe punish­ments to enforce his draconian laws, Qin Shi Huangdi also conducted a European Union-style standardization of weights and measures, adopted a single currency, and enforced a single written standard for Chinese characters. Such actions established a Chinese identity, and although the Gin dynasty disintegrated in 207 BC, a mere three years after Shi Huangdi’s death, central control was revived under the Han dynasty five years later.

As China finally wakes up to the value of its archaeological heritage, other spectacular finds are coming to light. Another large set of pottery figures was recently discovered in Jiangsu Province along with a substantial underground tomb complex belonging to a king of the Western Han dynasty of 206 BC--AD 24. Much of northwestern China is covered in a thick yellow dust blown in from the Gobi, which has formed a fertile soil technically called bess, and more commonly known as ‘Yellow Earth’. In Gansù and Shanxi it lies up to 30m deep, and has the remarkable quality of preserving the images of wooden items buried by it long after the wood has rotted. The presence of this soil is thus fortunate both for local farmers and for archaeologists, but not for the Chinese as a whole. This is the same soil that washes so easily away, makes the Yellow River yellow and, carried downstream, contributes to the abrupt changes of course and flooding that have killed millions over the centuries.

Bànpo Bowuguan (Bànpo Neolithic Village)

The Bànpo site was discovered in 1953 and opened as a museum in 1958, surprising given that China was in the throes of the disastrous Great Leap Forward. Its rapid opening was no doubt aided by its interpretation as evidence of a proto-communist society and thus that Communism had quite naturally come into existence some 6000 years ago. What was discovered was the remainder of a village of houses made from wattle-and-daub, partially sunk into the ground and surrounded by a moat and stockade. Dating from around 5000 BC onwards the village belonged to the Yangsháo culture, which was quite widespread across the Yellow River valley.

Huaqing Chi (Huaqing Hot Springs)

This over-rated Chinese fun palace is a collection of halls, pavilions and walkways arranged around a number of pools and thermal springs. Its history is more interesting than the place itself.  There were buildings here possibly as early as the Western Zhou (1050—771 BC), and a tradi­tional story has Qin Shi Huangdi (reigned 221—210 BC) encountering a fairy, who in response to his approaches gave him a plague of boils, subsequently curing him with water from the spring. The Tang Emperor Xuanzong (reigned AD 712—56) expanded the facilities consider­ably. His reign marked the high point of Tang culture and political power until, in the mid-740s; he became infatuated with a minor concubine, Yang Guifei. The Jiulong Tang (Nine Dragon Pool) and the Guifei Chi were supposedly the sites at which they respectively bathed. Xuanzong’s dalliance and his appointment of Yang family members to important posts led to factional fighting and a rebellion in which Cháng’an was taken, forcing Xuanzdong to flee to Sichuan. En route his soldiers mutinied and forced him to have both Yang Guifei and her cousin, now chief minister, executed. The civil war raged on until 763 at the cost of millions of lives, to which the springs, despite elaborate claims of their health-giving properties, might be said to have contributed.

Nor was that their only involvement in affairs of state. In 1936 the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) was using Huaqing as his headquarters in a campaign to destroy the communists in Shanxi before moving to deal with the Japanese invasion. He refused proposals from the communists that they should put their differences aside and form a united front against the invaders, despite support for that suggestion from some of his own generals, and student protests in Xi’an itself. On December 9, in what came to be known as the Xi’an Incident, one of his generals, the warlord Zhang Xueliang, took matters into his own hands and at dawn units under his control stormed the Huaqing compound where Chiang was staying, killing many bodyguards in a small fire fight. Chiang, convinced he was about to die, climbed over the rear wall, but was caught shivering on the hillside nearby. Zhang’s purpose, however, was to force consideration of a united front against the Japanese. But the commu­nists waited for advice from Stalin, which was that only Chiang had the prestige to lead a combined assault on the Japanese. To prove his loyalty Zhang went to Nanjing with Chiang, was court-martialed and sentenced to ten years in prison, although this was quickly commuted to house arrest. The Nationalists again refused to make a commitment to a united front, but the pressure was taken off the communists’ northern Shanxi stronghold, and more attention turned to the Japanese.

West Route (Xi Xian)           

Longer and less popular, this nonetheless worthwhile tour has views of the lush                  and well-irrigated wheat and cotton fields around Xi’an, booming peasant industries, and an unexpected neo-Gothic church standing in fields. Stops may include the Shengpingguan— halls of appallingly garish and stilted tableaux depicting scenes from the life of the Empress Wu.

Xi’anyang Bowuguan (Xianyang Museum)

One of China’s friendliest; it’s housed in a Confucian temple of 1371, although most of the buildings are more recent. There are signs of the temple’s original function in an older court­yard to the rear. Altogether seven exhibition rooms hold around 5000 exhibits, if you count all the figurines. The post-unification Gin capital and some of its pre-unification sites from around 350 BC were near Xianyang and much of the collection is of Gin origin. It includes jade ware, jewelery, architectural fragments and pottery figures, as well as an edict on copper said to have been written by Gin Shi Huangdi himself. Items have good labels in English, and supporting charts show Gin military movements, genealogy, and the unification of Chinese weights, measures, coins and written characters.

However, the stars of the show are the figurines discovered in 1965 in a village called Yangjiawan, 20km to the east of Xianyang. There are altogether 583 horsemen and 1965 standing figurine warriors, complete with pottery shields and miniature weapons, probably the burial articles of a high-ranking general of the early western Han dynasty. These are half-meter-tall versions of their more famous counterparts, discovered ten years later. Both mounted and foot soldiers come in light and heavy armor varieties. Their wooden weapons have disappeared, but the front row have their pottery shields rewired to their bodies, others lying stacked to the front and side of the display cabinets. Many figurines have patches of their original red and blue colors, and signs of detailed painting of bridles and saddles. Photographs show the unearthing of figurines, and informative explanations neither tell you what you can see for yourself nor how you feel. A few figurines can also be seen in Beijing’s History Museum, and the museum at the Maiji Shan caves outside Tianshui.

Tang Qian Ling (Tang Qian Tomb)

This is the joint tomb of the Tang Emperor Giozong (AD 628—683) and the Empress Wu Zetien (624—705). Under Gaozong China went through one of its periods of expansion, and its borders were pushed further west to the Ferghana Valley. However, the costs of main­taining control, and an increasing military threat from both Tibetans and Turki tribes, led to a crisis at the end of his reign. Giozong was physically weak, and the country was effectively ruled for much of his reign by his second empress, Wu Zetian. She began as a consort of Giozong’s father, became a nun, and then became a minor consort of Giozong himself. An astute intriguer and political manipulator, she succeeded in replacing the legitimate empress, having her murdered. Following Giozong’s death his heir, Zhongzong, proved too indepen­dent-minded, and Wu replaced him with his brother Ruizong, who was her puppet. In 690, she usurped the throne, establishing a new dynasty, the Zhou, and became the only overt female ruler in Chinese history. Others such as Cixi of the Qing ruled quite effectively without title.

A broad imperial avenue or ‘spirit way’ runs between tower-topped hills, and imposing stone guardians: animals both mythical and real, two groups of headless figures, two large stone lions and twin stelae to the tomb mound, which remains unexcavated. The headless figures are political, representing the tribes on China’s borders and representatives of foreign powers supposedly paying homage. Little changes in China; the headless state of the figures is said to be down to peasants who blamed the malevolent influence of the foreigners for local crop failures.

Of the two stelae, the left-hand one records Gaozong’s achievements, while the right-hand one, despite being covered in characters, is known as the ‘blank stele’. Wu Zetian decided that history should judge her, and the remarks now on view were added in the Song (AD 960—1279) and Jin (1115—1234) dynasties. Wu Zetian’s bloody hands, somewhat arbitrary methods of government and, particularly in later life, the excesses of her personal favorites are decried now, but official communist histories tend to overlook these foibles due to Wu’s promotion of meritocracy within the civil service. Wu recruited an elite through the state examinations, which had begun during the Suí, and was astute in choosing good ministers, whose influence lasted after her death. She decided that the Tang should resume power and had already nominated Zhongzong as her heir, when at an advanced age she was herself removed and her plans carried our sooner than she might have wished.

Zhanghuai Taizi Mu (Tomb of Prince Zhanghuai)

Prince Zhanghuai, Empress Wu’s second son, spent a period in the hazardous post of heir-apparent, before she suspected him of plotting a coup, and banished him to Sichuan. When she took the throne for herself, Wei sent an official to re-interrogate the prince, and he either exceeded his orders, or carried them out, in forcing him to commit suicide at the age of 32. Wu punished the official and rehabilitated her son. He was reburied in this tomb not far from his mother one year after her death.

A steep ramp with wall paintings leads down to the tomb chamber. The originals from higher up the passage are currently in the basement of the Shanxi History Museum and the lower glass-covered ones are in poor condition. The most famous and often reproduced show a polo game, possibly another Silk Route import and popular amongst the Tang aris­tocracy, and a group of maidens watching birds and catching cicadas. An initial domed chamber has further paintings of attendants, courtiers and diplomats, and a short passage through a low carved black stone door leads to the burial chamber with a vast black stone tomb. Although the tomb was robbed, several hundred burial objects were recovered.

Yongtai Gongzhu Mu (Tomb of Princess Yongtai)

Yongtai was a granddaughter of Gaozong and Wu, who fell out of favor with her grand­mother. She was put to death, along with her husband, in about AD 701, aged 17. A daughter of Zhongzong, she was granted her title after he took the throne, and reburied along with her husband in the Qian Ling area.

Famen Si

The temple was originally named the Ashoka Temple, after the Ghandaran King Ashoka (272—236 BC), who, following his conversion to Buddhism in 262 BC, arranged a distribution of relics of the Sakyamuni Buddha to various sites, including 19 in China. The morsels received by Famen Si were four slivers of finger bone. Having frequently been disin­terred for viewing by various emperors, they lay forgotten for around 1100 years beneath the pagoda built to house them. The crypt houses a miniature stupa with a glass window where you kneel to view the main reliquary. Other sumptuous relics such as the bejeweled ten-layer casket in which one of the finger bones was found are on display too. Visitors can bow to a Buddha statue, having first paid money to a monk, after which a small gong is struck. The Chinese giggle self-consciously and dare each other to try this. Away from the tour groups, monks sit outside a standard residence block with an ornate roof, telling their rosaries, obliv­ious to anything else.

Xingjiao Si

The temple is an important destination for Buddhists; housing at it does the remains of the expeditionary scholar-monk Xuanzang. He continued traveling even after his death, going through several reburials, until his remains were finally brought to Xingjiao Si in AD 669. To he right as you enter and slightly uphill does the Japanese present a new stele marking Sino-Japanese friendship together with cherry trees. They have also paid for a new building it the rear of the center of the complex, built in 1993 to contain a 10m sleeping Buddha. Of most interest is the five-story pagoda housing Xuanzang’s remains and two smaller flanking pagodas housing those of two assistants, all pleasingly constructed of plain brick and restored n the Nationalist period. Climbing the hillside behind the temple gives pleasant views across a valley and down on the temple itself.