Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Trip to Xi An

Students didn't have either Taichi practice or language classes on July 4. It was not because it was the Independence Day, but because we were flying to Xi An on this Friday. I told students that I will try to find some firework, so that we can celebrate this US national holiday. However, it turned out that private firework is prohibited in XiAn.

We first visited the Terra Cotta Museum. Last time, when I came here in 2000, our bus drove directly to the parking lot in front of the museum. Now, the government built a park around the park to prevent pollution, and all visitors need to walk through a park full of persimmons trees. I welcome this change!



The entrance of the museum complex. The building of "Pit no. 1" is in the background.

We took yet another group picture before leaving the museum complex. The next stop was Hua Qing hot spring (华清池), where the famous Yang Gui Fei (杨贵妃) took her bath.




After breathing the fresh air at the foot of Li Shan (骊山) mountain range, we went back to Xi An City and payed a visit to Taichi Grand Mater Chen Quan Zhong (陈全中大师) and his school. They prepared a set of performance for us and gave each one of our students a T-shirt.




After dinner, we went to a music water show in front of the pagoda(大雁塔), where Buddhist Monk Xuan Zhuang (玄奘) translated sutra from Sunkist to Chinese. The view of the ancient pagoda with the colorful water show, generated by modern technology, was extremely beautiful. It was such a great delight to see thousands of people enjoy the show together, while many young people danced under the water and got soaked wet. To our surprise, there was a firework display after the water show. We had the delayed 4th of July celebration after all!





In the morning of the last day in XiAn, we rode bicycle on the city wall. It took us about 45 minutes to bite through the 17 Km long wall, which is the best kept city wall in China.


Before boarding train to return to Tianjin, we also visited a mosque. I learned that even in China, these Muslim (回教徒) have to study the Koan (可兰经) in Arabic language.
The pavilion below in the mosque is called Phoenix Pavilion (凤凰阁) because of the spread-out wings. Since it is my name sake, I need to take a picture!

The train trip back to Tianjin, which took us more than 18 hours, was really an experience. I am sure that in the discussion class on Wednesday, we will have enough to talk about. In a way, we saw the side of China we never saw- high density of population in the station, low quality of traveling condition, etc.. I am glad our students were among the most regular people in that train instead of getting VIP treatments.


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