xi'an.

I so anticipated the impending trip to the States that I failed to venerate, in a timely manner, the nicest few days of my travels.
On the morning I left Tibet, I was starting to feel a little weary of the road. Two days spent retracing bumpy tire tracks from the Nepalese border back to Lhasa and the prospect of another fifty hours in a hard sleeper train were, together, draining. I decided to break the trip into two segments - a thirty-six hours detour to Xi'An in small ShaanXi Province, chased by two days of recuperation before taking a sixteen-hour train from Xi'An to Shanghai.
Xi'An, the ancient capital of terracotta-warriors-fame, can be analogized to the American Pacific Northwest, in that everybody in China loves it, but nobody (relatively) actually lives there. It's famously livable - a sleepy two million neighbors keep it cosmopolitan to a practical, but not overwhelming degree. An independent artistic stronghold, its film and music scenes are singular in a country where Taiwanese-imported hip-pop blare monotonously from every stereo, iPod, nightclub, commercial break. Easy access to the same bordering mountainous zones that made Xi'An an attractive capital for eary emperors maintain its people's modern-day reputation for being adventurous, athletic, environmentally-minded. Centuries of Muslim influence are evident in Xi'An's architecture, and, more eminently, its renowned cuisine.
I knew about all this in a vague sense from living in Shanghai, and, more explicitly, from the last few weeks of travel. Xi'An, for most backpackers, is the east-west prelude to Chengdu, which is the gateway to Tibet, XinJiang, YuNan. Still, I thought of Xi'An as just another Chinese city - a convenient rest stop, as opposed to a destination.
As it turned out, I ended up lingering for four full days in Xi'An. It was a place that, upon first viewing it from the train station situated underneath the Ming-dynasty parapets that defined Xi'An's first proper borders (the city has since bled out from under them to over twice its original geographic size), it was impossible not to like. Some of the sentiment was admittedly relief - neon lights, fruit vendors, bus stops and a panoply of drug stores reassured me that I was in China proper, again - but the rest lay in the ineffable sense of comfort I felt as I boarded a south-bound bus to my hostel. It wasn't dauntingly exotic or sophisticated. It was clean, bustling, well-lit, amiable. I thought of individuals who I had liked on impact; Xi'An was the first place to exude comparable charm and warmth.
It was Friday night when I arrived. My hostel was located near to the Big Goose Pagoda, one of Xi'An's four major tourism spots. It was only a short walk from the local bus station, but it took me nearly thirty fascinated minutes to cross through the Pagoda square and the adjacent park. Dim, tasteful paper lanterns lined elegant, well-preened walkways. Sporadic streams of water illuminated by subterranean colored bulbs shot up in grass and concrete clearings, to the delight of shrieking children. Late-night vendors sold steaming paper cups of cilantro-flavored stew, glazed candied fruits and roasted chestnuts. And music! I passed a live garage band of teenagers playing at a small crowd with no discernible age demographic. An old woman chortled falsetto Chinese opera, while a make-shift band of tired saxophonists and drummers swayed around her. I was most amazed, when, following the sound of traditional xun and flute melodies backed by thumping bass beats, I discovered, like some fairy bacchanal, a packed plaza of middle-aged Xi'Anese doing the electric slide in time to the music, which was coming from a stereo set duct-taped to a bicycle.
I was in high spirits when I checked into the Square Youth Hostel, and in even higher spirits when it became evident that the owners didn't have a strong grasp on the concept of a hostel, and had instead built a brand-new, luxurious hostel-priced apartment complex. My six-bed 'dorm', for instance (which remained unoccupied by anyone else during my stay) boasted a balcony, washing unit, and fluffy feather comforters. It was nearing midnight then; I strolled back through the park, sat down, and enjoyed the warm night air, full of fragrant scents and music.



After a restful night's sleep, I spent my first day knocking off the terracotta warrior museum, situated about an hour outside of Xi'An. Here, stoic stone figures stood guard in menacing formation in vaulted showrooms (just like in my seventh grade textbook insets!) The tomb of the megalomaniac Qin ShiHuang, China's self-declared first emperor, located about twenty kilometers from the warriors, remains unexcavated.