Day 8 - Biking the Wall

This morning we went out to the buffet breakfast, meeting up at 7:55am and eating at 8:00am. It’s a western style breakfast buffet. (It has food for vegans!) It’s odd at breakfast because the people that clean up stare at you like vultures waiting for you to finish the last crumb so they can clean it up. It’s so hard to eat with them staring so intensely! We went to our rooms again to prepare for the day, brushing our teeth, etc. Tatiana and I brushed our teeth while watching a movie on HBO. No idea what the name was, but it was a movie that had hockey in it. A fire Marshall went to save his hostage daughter, who was being kept with the Vice President of the U.S. He was being threatened for the whole treasury. Crazy stuff! We met up again at 8:45 to head off to visit Xi’an’s ancient city wall. The wall was built when it was the capital 600years ago. Only the Imperial family was allowed to reside within the walls, along with the Unix servants and concubines. (As well as officials). Four hundred years ago the wall was rebuilt, when the capital was moved. The reason for the move was that there was a new emperor, who was the son in a peasant family. He came to power by leading a revolt and winning. However, in ancient China it was said that to be an emperor, you had to have a dragon spirit, which only those of royal blood possessed. The peasant emperor did not have royal blood, and feared the spirits of the past emperors would make his rule short. To keep this from happening, he rebuilt the city wall to trap the spirits, and moved the capital of his empire to Beijing.

We rode bikes on this wall, the rent of a bike costing 20 RMB. We had a blast, though a few accidents revolving around one person. Fernando not only fell, a big crash and burn, he lost a bike peddle as well. It was kind of comical in a way. The wall was a nice ride, but was riddled with holes, bumps, and inclines. It was very tiring! I originally rode solo, but switched bikes with Savanna, who learned how to ride a bike on an ancient city wall in the middle of China. It was also the first time some of us rode tandem. Savanna switched from tandem with Antonio to my solo bike, and I rode tandem on the back for the first time ever, along with Antonio and many of the teachers, and other students. Very tempted to sing out “Daisy, Daisy”, but I was out of breath. The air here is very humid and thick!

After the wall, we visited the Forest of Steles, or the Stone Tablet Museum. It was ancient scriptures, carved into stone, hanging from ancient scriptures, carved into stone, hanging from ancient Chinese characters, to the more modern ones. In one room alone, there were 114 double sided tablets that contained over 600,000 Chinese characters. In the third room there were turtle like creatures holding up the tablets. These were the “Sons of the Dragon”. If you rubbed his head, you would have good luck. If you rubbed him from head to tail, you would have life long good luck.

Many of the tablets contained Confucius’s teachings. His disciples wrote them into a book on the stone tablets, which were huge, taller than me, a 5 foot 2 inch girl, and wide. They were filled from top to bottom with writing. Confucianism was originally just teachings to live by, not a religion. Many of his lessons are still followed today. Thank goodness we don’t still follow his view on women though! In ancient times, women were meant to serve and obey their husbands.

The tablets also combined governing information, which government official hopefuls had to copy down on rice paper with ink, word for word, and memorize it all. There was a fancy fountain at the entrance that they washed their brushes in. The entrance also had three gates. Originally, the middle door, the largest, was for the emperor, the right gate for his concubines, and the left for his officials. This changed, the middle gate becoming one that good spirits passed through, and the side gates were for evil spirits. After the museum, we went to lunch at a local restaurant. It did not look like much on the outside, but on the inside it was extremely fancy! I felt so underdressed! The place had the nicest bathrooms we have seen the whole trip. Very pretty sinks, and the soap used was dispensed from an actual tea pot.

After lunch, we went to the Wild Goose Pagoda, which was a large Buddhist temple. It is called the Wild Goose Pagoda, because there had been a meat famine going on, and the monks were hungry, so they brayed to Buddha. Afterwards, a flock of geese flew overhead, and the leader of the flock suddenly dropped dead and landed in front of the monks. It was a gift of food from Buddha. (The vegan term of Chinese Buddhism is the Maha Yama sect by the way.) The temple was very beautiful, plenty of old buildings and plants. There were many different types of statues of Buddha in the temple grounds, each from a different sect of the religion (which are in many different groups). Sadly, we didn’t see any monks.

After visiting the temple, we went to the night market, which is basically a huge maze of streets, venders, and shops packed in an enclosed space. It was crazy and crowded! The people on scooters kept beeping and driving past at a crazy speed, and they seemed a bit reckless for some. I nearly got ran over a few times. It was cool, but you had to protect your belongings. The vendors were very stubborn too, and would walk away from you!

After the market, we went to the hotel to freshen up, and then headed out to dinner. It was dinner and a show. The Tang Dynasty Palace gave a show of the Tang Dynasty dance and music. It was very colorful, and some of the dances were pretty, others cool. The third song played during the performance was written by an emperor, who was better at art, calligraphy, and music than he was at governing. That was the Tang Emperor GaoZong.

Following dinner, we went back to the hotel for sleep. The students helped Savanna with her next day’s speech and we all prepared for our Biotechnology experiments.

This was a compilation of Tatiana’s and Taryn’s experience for today.