西安

We had holiday from 14th to 16th of June, for Dragon Boat Festival. But before holiday, we had class in saturday and sunday.... :( But, well at least we will had holiday, and also I skip class on thursday and friday, because I went travelling with friends to Xi An 西安, and Luo Yang 洛阳. 

On Tuesday, 15th of June, we went to Xi An 西安 by train. It was the 2nd time I'm using sleeper train in China.

It was took about 14 hours to reach 西安, arrived in the morning, we directly continue to had a trip around city. The first place to go is HuaQing Hot Springs, it was the imperial bathing pool, and has been built for thousand years a go. It was said the Tang Emperor XuanZong built the bathing pool for Lady Yang, and spend the winter there.

The private bathing pool for Lady Yang

On the same place, there was memorial place for the "Xi An Incident", which had Nationalist Party and Communist Party involved, which also located there.

The highlight of trip is of course 兵马俑, the Terracotta Army, the soldiers and horses statue who build thousand years ago, and none of the soldiers have the same face. 

The place was so big, I never imagined it will be that big, and some places was still not complete researched yet and it's believed many pits still waiting to be discovered. The statue actually have coloured before, so it must be beautiful and luxurious when it was back then.

The 2nd day trip, we visit The Goose Pagoda, next to the fountain. Ok, I will admit that we have Chinese Guide, and with our basic chinese, we can't really understand what she was said. When we went to the Pagoda, what was in our mind was why she took us here, it just big fountain park. And after searching, that Pagoda behind it was the truly main attraction. 

It was said the pagoda was built as big library contained many books from India, and had successfully translated by one monk, who journey from China to India. (When I read these, I can't help but imagine the famous story of "Traveling to the West", about one monk travelling to the west with help of 3 friends, including monkey king. )

The 2nd tourism object was City Wall of Xi An, it was looked like defensive wall in Historic Chinese Battle, completed with many defensive weapon used then.

 

The last, we went to the local market, and we met local muslim people. It was the first time I saw Chinese people whose muslim. In Indonesia, Chinese was identical with Buddhist or Christian.