Xian is not my favorite place. It doesn't deserve all the blame, but ever since we came here it has been one travel disaster after another. Some of that has to do with the flooding in Zhengzhou and the typhoon in Shanghai. And not to diminish the tragedy of those, especially Zhengzhou, but they have added to a mess of a holiday.

It began before we left, that our train was cancelled despite us not going to the flooded area. But the train would after, so bye bye train, hello frantic last minute rebooking. And then after arriving in Xian, our hotel said despite saying so online, they don't allow foreigners. I know that sounds weird, but some provinces make hotels require foreigner certificates to accept them. Most places have them, maybe 75% or so. Except in Shaanxi Province apparently, because we spent about an hour calling around before finding a not-so-great place.

I'm complaining too much, so here's a cute cat.

Now calling a car to get to our new place, our driver was kind of nuts. I think he was having lunch when we got on the app, because his GPS didn't change for about 10 minutes, which he said was traffic. Then he drove crazy aggressively, which we would learn is par for the course for everyone in Xian. I'd be concerned for my safety if the traffic didn't keep the top speed to about 30 kph. That put us off from Didis, but the metro is only marginally better. You have to scan a QR code every time you go in for a health check, and they're intense about checking you actually did it. Shanghai does this too, but uses phone towers to keep track of things, so it's pretty seamless. Xian's just creates bottlenecks of people at every check point you have to fight past. Ugh, just move to the side until you're ready to walk through.

The mess doesn't stop there, but let's put a pin in it to talk about the city. We were pretty excited to see the Shaanxi  History Museum, as it is apparently one of the best. I have to assume that is so because they have no tickets available for weeks. <sigh> We had lots of other stops scheduled around the city though, so we spent the whole day out and about. And honestly, I'm not that impressed. We tried the Xian Museum (meh), the Xian Art Museum (actually quite good, but very small), the Xian Provincial Art Museum (just bad... sorry artists) and the Xingshang Temple (actually pretty good for a temple, but it's a temple). After a day of being fairly disappointed, we called it early to rest up for the Terracotta Soldiers the next day.

So, here we go, the big sight to see in Xian, and perhaps all of China. The Terracotta Soldiers are about 2 hours away from downtown, which we took the metro to get 80% of the way. When you get out at the closest station, the touts are super aggressive to get you to hop on their bus. We had read stories online of those buses going to a fake Terracotta Soldier museum pretty close to the real one. Which is objectively terrible to scam people on their holiday, but also sort of hilarious that such a thing can exist. If not for how scummy it is, I'd almost like to see it. But to avoid any doubt we got our own car for the remaining 5km. The place was crowded, but honestly not bad. Everything moved pretty smoothly, and was no sweat. The compound has 3 pits, the first one being the super big, stadium sized place you see in all the photos. Another is about a quarter the size, and the final about the size of a house. We got a guide, which did help a little bit to appreciate some stuff I never knew. The first is that the site is very much a WIP. The statues they have are pieced together from fragments, which I imagine is quite a laborious process. Also, all the statues are (were) painted. Except that when they dig them up, the paint cracks and falls off a few moments later. To top it off, old writings say the crazy Emperor who organized this thing decided his tomb should have rivers of mercury, because of course it should. Turns out they might be right, because and they've used radar to find underground caverns with higher levels of mercury. So all together, they've kind of decided to just stop digging up new things, until they can figure out a way to safely preserve what's there. Which I do appreciate, but I also think they should be more up front with that, I guess? But my thoughts on the whole thing are pretty similar to The Great Wall - it's an amazingly impressive place. But more so than any one object, it's the scale of things that is noteworthy. Up close, the statues are fine, I guess. This madlad made so many of them though, it's hard to not appreciate them.

Also, as a sidenote, when learning about this place for the trip, I found out that 15 years ago, a German art student studying in China dressed up as one of the soldiers, jumped down in the pit, and played the most hilarious game of hide and seek ever. Turns out he was not deported or arrested, and only got a stern talking to.

Just thought you'd like to know.

The last bit of stuff to see in Xian was the Muslim district, walking streets more akin to something out of India than China. Crazy, hectic, noisy, and packed full of food and trinkets, it was a cool place to get lost in the various alleys. We ate a lot, walked a lot, and even climbed bell and clock towers. We topped it off with a walk along Xian's City Wall, which surrounds the center of the city. It's actually pretty cool they kept that wall there, because it and the area around it serves as a park and recreation area. And this is no small thing either, it's a square around the perimeter of the city, about 4km on each side. They do marathons on it, and you can even bike around the whole thing. At night it lights up, which is pretty, but in the end, it's just a park. And that, "It's okay, but..." kind of summarizes my opinion of Xian. True it was soured from the start, but I found it a bit less interesting than many other places in China. I'm glad to have seen it for myself to tick it off the list, but... meh. I'd rather be somewhere else.

But Xian had other plans.

As we've learned, me complaining = cats.

With an early train in the morning, we were just getting to sleep when we learned our train was cancelled due to the typhoon. We quickly tried to find another, but learned that wouldn't be an option as all train and plane service in Shanghai was cancelled. We thought about taking a train partway, and then spending a half day in some other, more interesting place. But everything was all booked up. With the following day also cancelled, we were stuck. We got a train 2 days later, which means 2 more days killing time in a city neither of us were really thrilled about.

But finally, our luck was to turn around. We found a hostel nearby which is one of those amazing hostels where you meet lots of interesting people and have a great time. Also it had Settlers of Catan and two cats for Ella. To top it off, some friends of ours were going back to Shanghai the same day we were. But they got diverted for two days to... yup, Xian. So we had some company to sit around and wait with, and honestly the two days flew by. Hilariously, the curse of Xian wasn't done with them, as right around bedtime the night before leaving, their train about an hour before ours was cancelled. Who knows why, but they managed to get a flight. Now that our train is moving and I'm writing this, I finally feel at ease that I escaped Xian. I'm definitely ready to go home.