China! Day 3: Xi'an

As the price of our hotel in Xi'an did not include breakfast, we decided to go out in search of some. It was seven in the morning, but it does not seem an especially early-rising sort of town. The Starbucks was still closed. We rambled around the Drum Tower. Some shops were just starting to open, but nothing food-related. Pocket of Bolts saw a woman eating something as we walked by. He said, Whatever she has looks really good. I hadn't seen it clearly, so I decided to go back and ask her. She was not a young woman, and not a wealthy one. She grinned at me with very bad teeth and said something of which I understood barely a word. By her gestures, though, I gathered that one could buy the kind of thing she was eating in the alley behind the Drum Tower: go straight down there and turn left, something like that. She seemed tickled that we had so much interest in her breakfast.

The narrow streets behind the Drum Tower did indeed turn out wonderful. We ended up with two youtiao ("oil-sticks", rather like deep-fried croissants), two of the things the woman had been eating, which proved to be jiabing (kind of like a pita sandwich but deep-fried, and containing vegetables and meat and glass noodles), a cup of sour plum juice, a sticky rice ball that was not all the way warm so I ate part of it and threw it away, and a large bag of peanuts fried with red peppers. When we were buying the youtiao, I asked in Chinese for "two sticks" and the guy selling them laughed. I said "two pieces?" and he laughed more. The woman standing by considered the question seriously and pronounced: either one is fine.

Later in the morning, we went up the city wall of Xi'an.


It was a grey, windy day, pleasantly cool. We thought we'd just walk a bit, take in the sights, not worry about going all the way around.





After a while, though, we were tempted by one of the bike rental places. It was interesting biking on the rough cobbly wall. Pocket of Bolts, who was a little too big for his bicycle, complained of a sore ass. Meanwhile I, who have been suffering a bit of tendonitis in my wrists, started to get itchy all over my arms from the vibration. Peculiar.



Nonetheless, it was really fun and we saw many interesting sites.




One of these was a lone half-demolished house in a field of rubble. In front of the house, there was a man taking a dump.


We made it all the way around the wall in the 100 minutes for which we'd rented the bikes. Then we headed down. We were heading for a lunch place recommended by the guidebook, First Noodle Under the Sun. On the way, we happened to stumble on a wonderful little street, which Pocket of Bolts dubbed "Scholar Street"--or perhaps "Culture Alley." It was a marvelous place.


Here are some birdcages hanging up near there.


A grave, dignified fellow doing calligraphy.


I was quite distracted from my hunger. Scholar Street eventually petered out into a more ordinary little street. Ordinary people walking along it. One man dropped a pack of cigarettes on the ground. We and an old woman saw it at the same time. I picked it up. It was empty. "It's empty," I told her in Chinese, showing her the pack. "Too bad!" She laughed and said, "I think so too!" It was a random interaction but amusing somehow.

We had a very noodly lunch at First Noodle Under the Sun. The starch o.d. made us sleepy and we went back to the hotel for an afternoon nap--on vacation after all...