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So from where we left off, we visited the Forbidden City & Tiananmen Square as our last adventure in Beijing. The square is the largest public square in the world. The square has two huge Soviet styled buildings to its east and west flanks with the Forbidden City due South. On the south face of the square there are stands for the dignitaries to watch the country’s military fire power parades pass the square twice a year just as you see all the Communist Countries do on TV. 

The Forbidden City should be on Cribs! The size of the city is huge and each building has such intricate detail it is fascinating. It obliviously has a huge draw for tourists but you can always find a courtyard or garden behind the endless walls in the city to yourself. We visited the Great Hall of Clocks (Sara's idea) and the Jewellery exhibition. We toured the city for about four hours.  Oh we are still getting our pictures taken but we are finding that it is not like India where people kindly ask you first - people sneak up discretely or even walk right up to us turn around and smile for the picture without us knowing anything about it. 

From Beijing we travelled to Xian via a 12.5 hour sleeper train where we met two lovely people in our four bed sleeper cabin. One was a 35 year old Chinese girl who was travelling back to work and the other was a 53 year old Chinese man who was returning home after dropping his son at University (He was on a train prior to this one for 54 hours in a seat!). The lady spoke very good English and translated for the older man. As he was the oldest person in the carriage he felt as though it was his duty to look after the rest of us and he went off down the carraiges and bought us all snacks and beers - Chinese tradition (we hadn't drank in two days we had the shakes). They were extremely funny asking all manner of inquisitive questions. The girl explained to us that Chinese people will ask very personal questions upon meeting you such as how old are you, how much money do you make, do you want kids etc. I guess it's just different but we didn't mind. The man also thought we were siblings because we both have light hair I guess?!

Xian,

We arrived to rain (this wasn't part of the deal) and got collected by our hostel. Xian was the end of the Silk Road and formerly home to emperors. It has the last remaining fully intact city wall in China. This area is famous for the locals loving snacks and lonely planet directed us towards the Muslim quarter for the cities local cuisine. The area is an off shoot from medieval times with butchers chopping up cow carcasses on the street. We picked a restaurant which seemed popular to the locals and was some way clean. When we asked for the menu in our now skillful charade hand movements we were directed towards a small Chinese card so we gambled and picked a dish. The food was lovely but it nearly blew our heads off with the spice. Definitely cleared our heads and was by far the cheapest meal we have had. 

Terracotta Warriors 

We ventured on this tour ourselves using local buses guided by lonely planet and the Internet.  We successfully navigated our way there to see the Terracotta Warriors which in itself was a pretty impressive accomplishment when nobody speaks english and all the signs are in symbols! The warriors were found by local farmers digging a well. The area is huge and only 20% of the site has been excavated to date. The detail on each warrior is amazing and no two warriors are the same down to the tread pattern on their shoes and their facially expressions. To think the power the emperors had over the Kingdom to order 6,000+ warriors to be made for an afterlife battle plus his own buriel chambers is staggering. Also the fear/respect on the workers not to reveal the location is unbelievable. 

We are off to Chengdu next to see the Panda's and plan our trek to Tiger Leaping Gorge.

We hope you're all well and keeping safe and hopefully the boys in green beat USA to put last month behind them!!!!

Roy