Day 6 was our first day in Xi’an! I didn’t write a post for day 5 because it was basically just a travel day. On day 5, we took the bullet train from Beijing to Xi’an and it took us about 6 hours to get there. That was a way longer travel time than I expected. It was interesting to see all the scenery that we went past. At first the land was mostly flat with a bunch of farms with some clusters of random residential buildings every once in a while. About half way through, the land became much more mountainous with the usually random clusters of unexplained high rises (which there seem to be way too many of in this country).
After getting to Xi’an, we met another person from the Asia Institute named Liliana. We had to wait for our bus to get to the train station, so in the mean time we tried some Chinese burgers at a restaurant that was in the station. They were actually really delicious; I would recommend them. It took us about an hour to get to the hotel from the train station. The new hotel was pretty good, but I liked the hotel in Beijing better because the beds were more comfortable.
We went to go check out the Muslim Quarter after checking into the hotel. We weren’t there long, but we got to check out the main street and the Drum Tower which were both very interesting.
Day 6 started with a good breakfast, but not as good as the Beijing hotel’s breakfast. Still good though. We started the day by visiting the Sun Village in Xi’an which a place where children whose parents have been incarcerated can go live and get an education. They currently have 55 children in the Xi’an location, and I believe there are 6 locations altogether. We performed Baby Shark for the little kids which kind of cringy, not going to lie. After that, we played some basketball, soccer, and volleyball with some of the older kids which was actually really fun even though it was hard to communicate with them. We taught them how to play knockout and how to dap which was pretty funny.
Later, we ate some lunch with the kids. The lunch was good, and it was interesting to see all of the kids interact with each other. Finally, we got a picture with all of them and then we left to go visit the Wild Goose Pagoda. It took about another hour to get there. The Wild Goose Pagoda is a massive Buddhist temple I believe, and it was absolutely beautiful! We walked around for quite a bit, so I got to explore most of the temple. The main pagoda was deceptively tall, and it actually was the tallest building in Xi’an as late as 1980.
After exploring, we got take part in a little lesson on Chinese calligraphy. I decided to pay to get my name written in Chinese and I picked up a gift for my parents while I was at it. For dinner, Dr. Li was kind enough to take us out to a restaurant on him! The dinner was delicious as usual, but I’m starting to get a little tired of Chinese food at this point.
Lastly, we went back to the Muslim Quarter because we wanted to check out the flea market there. They sold a lot of fake street wear, so I wanted to get some because I might as well buy fake stuff while I’m in China. I bought a few fake Supreme shirts and a fake Champion shirt. Getting the right sizing was very hard though because sometimes the sizes are American and sometimes there are Chinese sizing. Joe, Jack, and I also got a lot of pictures with random people which is always cool. By the end of the day, I think I walked almost 11 miles and my feet and lower back were very sore from walking so much, so I went to bed pretty early that night.