Xi'an - The "Silk Road" Starts Here

It's one thing to read about the Silk Road back in middle school history class, it's another thing to be in the city where it started, and be able to envision a bit what life was like back then.


Trading on what became known as the Silk Road was started by the Han Dynasty shortly after the unification of China. Chinese silk, along with jade, satin, and other precious things were in high demand in central Asia and Europe, while China enjoyed building large money reserves (gold) in exchange... sounds similar to today, doesn't it -- the world's buys from China and China's money reserves have ballooned.


The main portion of the Silk Road was the 4,000 mile stretch between Xi'an (Chang An) and Constantinople (Istanbul), where products then shipped to Egypt and Europe.


The Silk road was started in the first century BC and lasted 1500 years before the shipping industry replaced land-based trading routes. Besides bringing an influx of wealth to China, the Silk Road also brought an influx of ideas into the country, chief of which was religion. The first 750 years brought Buddhism into China and the next 750 years brought Islam into the country. While Buddhism is prevalent throughout China, Islam is much more prevalent in the northwest portion of the country (including Xi'an) than in the the rest of the country.


During the 7th and 8th centuries, Xi'an is widely believed to have been the world's largest city with a population of over 1 million. Now Xi'an in "only" China's 17th largest city, with a population of a "mere" 7.5 million.


One of the amazing features of Xi'an is a perfect city wall. The city wall was built in 1370, has a 14 km perimeter, is 40 feet high and is 60 feet thick. The walls in-turn are surrounded by a moat. As impressive as these walls are and how big of an area is enclosed by them, the original city walls from the Tang Dynasty enclosed an area 7 times bigger than the current city center.
The Bell Tower and the Drum Tower were built in the 1300's, the Bell Tower was used in the morning and the Drum Tower to mark the evening.

Onto the pictures...

City wall pics...

A corner of the wall with a watch tower and the surrounding moat

A section of the wall by day...
and by night...

Again, this wall has a 14-kilometer perimeter, 40 feet high, and 60 feet thick

Bell Tower and Drum Tower pics...

The Bell Tower in the foreground and the Drum tower is behind in the left part of the picture. The Bell Tower is in the center of town at the roundabout at the intersection of the two main roads. It's busy here to say the least!

I happened to catch a wedding procession driving through the roundabout

I don't know what it is, but I love these pictures of beautiful places and McDonald's signs! You can see the big drums on the lower level of the building.

The Bell Tower at night...

A huge, really nice mall there on the roundabout...

This picture is for my Aunt Cheryl! She LOVES Louis Vuitton!! Hey Aunt Cheryl, you can even get your bags here while in Xi'an! I still haven't seen any Otis Spunkmeyer cookies in China though (her other love!)...

Another great feature of this city is that the building code apparently requires all of the buildings to be built in a traditional style with the typical Chinese rooftops. It just makes for a great atmosphere and you do really feel like you're in China where you're here (unlike the buildings in Shanghai).

I'm not sure what this helicopter was doing other than having a good time. He totally buzzed right over us, flew a circle around the Bell Tower, then flew south out of sight.

This was a fun couple that we met. We were taking pictures of the Bell Tower and the surrounding area and I could see them just watching my parents and me. They were just smiling, enjoying the great weather and watching us. So I took a picture of them as well. Then I went over and chatted with them for about 10 minutes. Oh yes, there's another McDonald's in the background...

The Big Goose Pagoda... one of the two big towers that are both over 1,000 years old. We didn't have a chance to go up and see the sights unfortunately...
A random picture. As we were driving around in our taxi outside of the city center we saw this in the middle of the intersection... a traffic cop who simply stood there at attention. We did see her turn 90 degrees to the left when the light changed. Who knows what the function really is, but obviously a permanent part of the intersection.

The Muslim Quarter in the city center:

The Mosque...

Entrance into the Muslim Quarter

I'm a sucker for flat breads, they're just so good....

Final note about Xi'an: we loved our time in this city, it was just so fascinating, amazing and different. However there was a one-minute period that just makes me sad to think about.

There are underground walkways at the Bell Tower intersection for pedestrians to use to cross the streets. This place is crowded, I mean really crowded. Getting bumped is just something that we've gotten used to because of all the people. Well when we came up out of the escalator my Dad got bumped and tripped. He kept his balance but just looked like I can't believe this place, it's crazy. About 30 seconds later he went to pull his camera out the carrying case he was wearing around his neck when he realized what had happened -- the bump and trip was a distraction by some pickpocketers and his camera was gone. It was too late, it was too crowded. Who knew where these suckers had taken off to.

The real tragedy in this is not the loss of the camera, that can be replaced. The real tragedy in this is all the pictures that Dad had taken with his camera in Beijing, of the the Terracotta Warriors, and there in the city of Xi'an, they were all gone. I had my camera so we still had something from the trip, but most of my pictures were "postcards," you know, without any family in the picture. We used Dad's camera for the "family pictures" since it's a point-and-shoot camera and much easier to give to other people when you ask them if they could take your picture. If those punks could have somehow left the memory card it would have been so much easier to take the loss.

So lesson learned... back up your digital pictures frequently to a computer. Back in the day of film, when a camera was lost or stolen you lost at most 36 pictures. Now you could (and we did)lose 100's or even 1000's of pictures with the loss of the camera.