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14-28APR2004  I flew into the Beijing International Airport and decided to go directly to the Monkeyshine office to get my Russian visa underway.  It was expensive to take a taxi from the airport so I took a shuttlebus and with the friendly help of some passengers got out at an unremarkable looking taxi stand and then traveled the rest of the way by cab.  It only cost about a third of the price that way.

It took an hour or so to complete the onerous Russian visa application.  Not only did they want to know the name of the university where I graduated but the phone number and address (Do you know the phone number of your university?).  I'm surprised they didn't ask for a transcript.  All this for a two week trip through Russia!

At the hostel, I'm sharing a room with a man from Guanzhou who is in Beijing to interview for a scholarship to a university in Germany.  He speaks some English and spent most of the time studying for the interview.  I don't know how you study for an interview but he did.

The next day I visited The Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square with another backpacker from the hote.  Ary is from Rio de Janeiro and loves to have his picture taken in front of every tomb and tree.  We had fun taking city buses and with much help from local people made it both ways without too much difficulty.

"Where are you from?" were the opening lines of the sales pitch.  Everywhere there were young people trying to persuade you to come view the artwork from their college.  They had rooms in the Forbidden City and in the National Museum.  Apparently various colleges get a one month crack at selling stuff to foreign visitors.  Most of the stuff was similar to the quality of paintings you see at tourist traps around the world although there were some good pieces.  Alexander from Xian was fun to talk to and kindly gave me a sample of his calligraphy with his name, my name, and Beijing 2004.  

And on Tiananmen square I was surrounded by vendors with all sorts of souvenirs.  Thier persistance reminded me of Borobadur in Indonesia.  I had fun trying to sell them used tickets to the Forbidden City.  They didn't buy anything and neither did I.

The palace was great but I must confess that I'm getting "templed-out".  Today I'm resting and tomorrow I plan to see the great wall.  According to Lonely Planet, Nixon said, "It sure is a great wall" during his visit in 1972.  I wonder what my reaction will be.

The Great Wall is amazing.  I was not feeling energetic enough to take the 10k trek, so I just rode the bus to the place where the other trekkers would arrive.  I decided to take the short trip to the wall.  First I rode a chairlift, then an incline railroad, then I walked the remaining distance uphill to the wall.  By the time I got to the top I was really tired.  Nevertheless, I tromped up to White Cloud Tower and took in the spectacular view.  Then I began the walk back down to the bus park.  About 4,000 steps and a kilometer or two of winding path I arrived to watch the other trekkers straggle in.  The bus had a flat tire on the way back to the hostel so we arrived late. 

I decided to take the train to Xian with a stop in Ping Yao.  I tried to find a daylight trian to Ping Yao but it was just not possible.  So, I boarded the hard sleeper for Ping Yao.  There I was assigned the top berth.  In a Chinese hard sleeper there is a bottom middle and top berth on each side of the compartment for a total of six people.  I climbed to the top and was lucky to find an English speaking software engineer to chat with.  Wang Yang was on a business trip to Taiyun and worked and lived in Beijing. 

The next morning I was picked up at the railway station by the hostel in Ping Yao.  I stayed at the Tian Yuan Kui Guesthouse  in Ping Yao and it was teriffic.  www.pytyk.com   They had a good cafe and a Ming Dynasty style couryard with clean, well equipped rooms.  I ran into Bart(Florida) who was uploading and downloading a bunch of mp3s.  So, we exchanged a bit of music and I enhanced my mp3 selections considerably.  Bart spoke pretty good Chinese and so he had lots of interesting insights about his time in China.  Ping Yao is a beautiful town that was by-passed by much of the 20th century.  Consequently, the exteriors of the building are very much like they were at the end of the Ming Dynasty.  Very interesting walking.

My left knee has been hurting for some time.  The more I walk the more it has been hurting.  So, I decided to try accupuncturel.  First the doctor took my pulse...both left and right arm...and then told me that I had stomach problems.  I thanked him but said it was my knee that hurt.  After cleaning the needles, he put one in my head, two in my left knee, and one really deep one in my right hand.  It was not a sharp pain...almost like the pain of a sore muscle and the needles had to stay in for 30 minutes.  He removed the needles and said my knee would feel better in the morning.  It did.  The cost  was about $10. 

I also had foot massage.  There was a really sore spot on my foot.  I asked what that spot represented and the masseur said that it was related to the stomach.  Two separate opinions pointing to stomach problems.  Should I be worried? 

I wanted to travel by day train to Xian so the guesthouse booked me with a third class hard seat.  Hard seat is a perfect description.  There is a half inch of padding on a wooden bench with a ninety degree back.  On most of the trip the seats were all full and I was the only Westerner on the train.  After 10 funfilled, scenic hours I arrived in Xian exhausted.  I was booked at IYH hostel but no one met me and a tout from the nearby Shang De Hotel said he would discount my deposit and it was only a short walk to the hotel.  When will I ever learn?  So, I booked in after looking at the room.  But I should have looked further.  The room was in the basement behind a blast door...maybe it was a bomb shelter.  The shower, however, was up two floors and would have been better if there was a nozzle.  The toilets were conveniently located down the hall but search as I might I could only find squat toilets.  Exhaustion did provide a sound sleep.  I was looking forward to breakfast in the Western style cafe.   After carefully reading the menu I ordered toast and coffee.  The toast was untoasted and there was no butter only some kind of jam and the coffee came only with cream and sugar included. 

Undeterred, I booked a tourist bus to the Terracotta Warriors.  And I waited.  When I asked at the front desk they said they knew nothing about it.   I said that was funny because I had booked it at their desk with the person who had shown me to the hotel.  They said he was employed by a travel agency and not the hotel.  Then they explained that I couldnt just book the bus but needed to book the whole tour.  OK.  I sheled out some more money.  And waited.  And waited.  And waited.  Finally I started murmuring the words fraud, police, big trouble, etc.  My agent showed up and said the bus would leave very soon.  So, I waited.  And waited.

While twiddling my thumbs waiting for my tour, I started chatting with Rina, a traveler from UK.  She was planning to see the warriors, too and was going to take the local bus.  I suggested that we go together and I would cancel my tour and get my money back.  It worked out to be no problem.  I got my money and we took bus number 306 directly to the museum site for about one tenth of the cost of the tour bus.

The Terracotta warriors were worth all the hassle of Xian.  There were thousands of warriors each with a different face.  Some were whole, some were shattered but all were interesting.  The museum was very nicely done with enough English signs to make it interesting.  After a video preview we visited all of the buildings and then tracked down a very nice lunch at street stall at the end of the end of all the souvenir stalls. 

I returned to the Shang De Dump and went on a walking tour of downtown Xian followed by a great street snack with beer.

The next day I caught the night train back to Beijing.  On the way to the train, I ran into Thomas(French Guiana).  I had shared a room with him at the Hostel in Beijing and he had just arrived in Xian.  I was happy I could warn him about the infamous Shang De.

The trip to Xian involved two trains and took 21 hours but the night express back to Beijing only took 11 hours.  I took a taxi back to the hostel.   I spent my remaining time in Bejing getting prepared for the TransSiberian.   Washed my clothes, ate some pizza, etc.

The MonkeyShrine guide picked us up at the hostel and herded the group onto the train without incident.  I was excited.  I have been anticipating this rail journey for a long time.  And it got off to a great start.  About an hour after the train left the station we started seeing parts of the Great Wall.  Eventually we went through a tunnel under the wall.  As we went north through China toward the Mongolian border the landscape became drier and there were fewer trees.  As the sun was setting the view from the window looked very different from the other parts of China I had seen.

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