Hanging around Xi’an

May 8, 2011

When we awoke Sunday morning it was hot in our room and noisy in the courtyard. This effectively killed any yearnings to stay in bed all day, so we checked out of our room, left our bags behind the front counter, and left for the day to explore Xi’an a little on foot. It was another blazingly hot day (made worse by my continuing fever) so we walked slowly and stayed on the shady sides of streets. We ended up in the Muslim Quarter, which is known for its good trinket shopping. I spent most of my time loitering in stalls with oscillating fans or hanging out under shade-providing trees. 

Finches for sale in Xian: decoration, pet, or food?

After walking for a bit, we stumbled upon a shadow puppet museum/theater. Shadow puppetry originated in Xi’an over 2000 years ago! We were invited in to see a show, and I have to admit I was pretty skeptical about how enjoyable the experience would be. I was sick, hot as hell, and have never been a fan of puppets. Megan and Ashley were really excited, however, so I relented (a couple of refreshing adult beverages helped with this) and we were ushered in to the small theater. I remained a skeptic for the first several minutes of the show, but it actually turned out to be pretty cool!

After the show, we wandered and shopped a little bit more, but were really dragging after our whirlwind tour of the sights the last few days. So even though we had several more hours to kill before we needed to head to the airport for our flight back to Beijing, we decided to call it quits on our Xi’an tour. We headed back to the hostel to hang out for the rest of the afternoon.

Hanging out at the hostel

The hostel staff advised us to get to the Xi’an airport about 2 hours early. Not knowing what to expect, we decided to take their advice. We hired a taxi to take us to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Checking in turned out to be a breeze, so we were there way, way too early. Still, we were in a well air conditioned place, so it wasn’t a horrible spot for our tired butts to hang out in for a bit. Sadly, it wasn’t long before we found out our flight to Beijing was going to be delayed. From the best we could gather, there had been some weather somewhere that screwed up air traffic control. Our flight was one of the last flights of the evening and we were already going to be getting to Beijing quite late, so we did our best to wait patiently, fervently hoping we would just get to Beijing sometime that night and not have to spend the night in the Xi’an airport.

We fit the requirements

I was feeling quite ill at that point and made several trips to the bathroom just to splash cold water on my face and neck. I wanted more than anything to be lying down in a bed somewhere! So we were very happy when our flight took off only 1.5 hours late! It turned out to be a fairly unpleasant flight – quite bad, but in a different way than my epic New York-Beijing flight. I spent the entire flight sweating like crazy and turning various shades of green. I have never before even come close to throwing up on a plane, but for this flight, I spent most of the time with a barf bag in my hands, ready to use if needed. There was a little bit of turbulence, but nothing too extreme, so I blame most of my problem on pre-existing sickness and exhaustion. Ashley suffered on the flight as well. She had some head congestion and one of her ears just wouldn’t pop – so while I held my stomach and moaned, Ash held the side of her head and tried not to cry. Thankfully, we managed to land without Ash’s head exploding or me barfing all over the place.

From the Beijing airport, we hailed a taxi to make two stops. We first headed towards downtown to pick up our large bags from the lobby of the Drum Tower hostel. We then headed back out to the boonies to check in to our new hotel where we would be staying for the acupuncture course. By the time we got to our new hotel, it was sometime around 2 am and we were very eager to climb into bed!

Sadly, our check in experience at the hotel was a nightmare. The staff did not speak English. (Yes, we were in China and all, but this hotel was chosen for us as a good place for 25 English-speaking Americans to stay. You’d think English would have been on the menu.) So fine, we’ll use our phrase books and the smattering of Mandarin we’d picked up over the last week. Except the front desk girl was also dumb as a box of rocks. We went round and round and round, trying to explain that we had a reservation already. Unfortunately, we didn’t know what name our rooms were reserved under: Our names? Our school? Our faculty advisor? Our Chinese host? We finally had a light bulb go off when we mentioned the name of the other student I would be sharing a room with during the course. She had checked in earlier that evening. So they took my information and gave me a key to my room. It was very late, and I didn’t want to wake my roomie, but we really needed help to get Megan and Ashley’s room sorted out. So I trekked off to my room to wake my roommate. Except my key wouldn’t work in the door. So I went back down to the front desk for help. The door man went back up to my room with me but he couldn’t get my key to work either. So he woke up the housekeeping man; his key also didn’t work! So we tried knocking on the door and calling the room – no response from my roommate, who the next day said she didn’t hear a thing!

Back down at the front desk, we finally accepted we weren’t going to get the whole “we have a reservation” thing through to the staff for Megan and Ashley’s room, and although I had a room, I couldn’t get in. So we booked one room for one night, and all three of us would sleep there. This baffled the staff, as the rooms are equipped with two single beds – not designed for an extra person. After repeated rounds of pantomiming sleeping on the floor and requesting an extra blanket and pillow, they finally got it and left the three of us in peace.

By then, it was 3:30 in the morning and we had no idea what time we needed to show up in the lobby for school the next day. We checked our email and our Chinese phones for messages from anyone in our school group, but there was no information to be found. So I slid a note under my roommate’s impenetrable door to wake us when she got up. To be safe, we set an alarm for 7 am. Utterly exhausted, we turned out the lights and conked out for our 3 hours of sleep.