Xian is best known as the gateway to the Army of Terracotta
Warriors, one of the world’s premier archaeological finds, just a short distance
away . Thus, the city is firmly on the China circuit for western tourists. But
Xian was also the eastern end of the old Silk Route, former capital of China as
Chang’An, and once the world’s largest city, competing with Rome for the honor
of being the first city in history with a population over one million. With a
Ming Dynasty era wall that surrounds the old city, a crowded Muslim Quarter
with narrow streets and a historic mosque complex, a few good museums covering
the area’s archaology, and major monuments like the Bell Tower, Drum Tower, and
Great White Goose Pagoda, Xian would be worth a visit even if it weren’t for
Terracotta Army find.

I was also in Xian in 2006 on my Silk Road trip with
Dragoman, so (like everywhere in China) it was interesting to see the changes
over a relatively short period of time. If you travel around the U.S. or Europe
and see a place eight years after you first saw it, there are likely to not be
too many changes. In China, though, everything is vastly more developed than it
was in 2006 with new high rise developments and circular ring expressways
around the city. The first two lines of Xian’s new metro system, something
China is building in most of its significant cities, are also now open. Many of
the new high rise residential areas look like they are among China’s “ghost
cities”, huge developments built in anticipation of further migration from the
countryside to the cities but currently standing unoccupied .

In 2006 we stayed at the Bell Tower Hotel smack in the heart
of Xian, maybe the nicest hotel I’ve ever stayed in on a dragoman trip, and I
was in a room facing out towards the Bell Tower. Nowadays the Bell Tower Hotel would
probably blow a Dragoman trip’s kitty budget, but we stayed in the very nice
Xian Garden Hotel in a tourist and entertainment district some miles to the
southeast of the walled old city. The location was also actually pretty good
being quite close to the Great Wild Goose Pagoda and the Shaanxi (not to be
confused with Shanxi) Provincial Museum, two sights I didn’t get to in 2006
because they’re well away from the city center.

Xian was the terminus of this month-long Dragoman trip from
Kathmandu and also the end of my over six months of travel in Asia. We ended
our tour with a few celebratory events like a Beijing Duck dinner and a night
of KTV, what the Chinese call what the rest of the world knows as karaoke. In
China, though, KTV involves a group renting an equipped room for the group in an
entertainment complex that specializes in it rather than showing up in a public
space like a bar that has karaoke going on. Word got out that I sang “Barbie
Girl” at karaoke a couple times last year on South America, so I couldn’t get
of it.

I naturally felt a little sad in the taxi to the airport on
the morning of June 11^th, sad that my longest single trip ever was
finally coming to an end, and sad about leaving some of the friends I made
along the trip. On the other hand, I’ll always have fantastic memories and
great pictures of one of those trips of a lifetime.