![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/files\/2012\/05\/XIANB.jpg\")
<\/a>We left Xi\u2019an having done two of my favorite top five things to do in the former capital.\u00a0\u00a0One was the 14k bicycle ride around the top of the wall around the city. There\u2019re not a lot of old things to be seen from it, but there is a lot of reconstruction of the old, and construction of things that look old that abut the wall.\u00a0\u00a0One of the latter is \u201cantique street,\u201d made to look old, but housing the chain stores and hostels that have made China a tourist mecca (and in many cases one that is over the top; one thing I see more of , is the wide screen presentations, even in places like the Temple of Heaven, complete with advertisements\u2014oh, those marketers; they seem to be pushing the definition of gauche to new levels); one of the former is a temple in the corner of the city within the wall.<\/p>\nOutside of the wall, we went to a Buddhist temple that was the birthplace of a monk who founded one of the eight major sects of Buddhism (the most well known in the West is probably Chen, better known through its Japanese version, Zen, which had something to do with the art of motorcycle maintenance in my youth).\u00a0\u00a0What was distinctive about that temple was that there were elephant statues, and I had to confess that I\u2019ve never seen elephants in a The other top five thing to do in Xi\u2019an is to wander the Muslim quarter.\u00a0\u00a0Called the Hui nationality, one of the 50 some the Chinese recognize, the Muslims have an area that centers on the Great Mosque.\u00a0\u00a0I like the Mosque because it shows what happens if you stay in China long enough\u2014you become Chinese! There\u2019s a Chinese like gate at the entrance <\/p>\n Unfortunately, it was being renovated, but the minarets that look like pagodas were a dead giveaway that this was a mosque in China that had been here for centuries, ever since Muslims came to China on the Silk Road.\u00a0\u00a0The area is fun to wander for food (lots lamb kebabs), supplemented this week by a Malaysian food fair (yummy durian\u2014that\u2019s a joke for those who don\u2019t know that durian is supposed to be the fruit that smells like hell but tastes like heaven\u2014the former is certainly true), souvenirs including Muslim caps and calligraphy in Arabic, and the general run of copy everythings that are everywhere in China.<\/p>\n I think I\u2019d really like to come back to Xi\u2019an sometime and spend a week in the area, exploring the thousands of places that reflect the thousand years of Xi\u2019an\/Chang\u2019an. Building here is like building in Rome; you\u2019re likely to uncover something no matter where you build.\u00a0\u00a0A Han tomb was discovered near the airport, and for another, there\u2019s a temple about 90 miles from Xi\u2019an that houses a finger of the Lord Buddha; it\u2019s become kind of a theme park,\u00a0\u00a0I understand, but this is a piece the Buddha gave China.\u00a0\u00a0I understand he willed one body part to each of the Buddhist lands, so this is rare.<\/p>\n I\u2019d like to have the guide we had in Xi\u2019an again; her email handle is sunnyok, and that well described her willingness to share her knowledge and her love of Xi\u2019an with us.\u00a0\u00a0She told me that she was from Manchuria, and as I suspected, was half-Manchu, one of those 56 nationalities, the 8% who are not Han Chinese.\u00a0\u00a0As a minority, she says that she gets some privileges, including extra points on the college entrance exams, and the right to have two children. She said that in any case, she and her Han husband can have two children because they have no siblings, so the one child policy has relaxed somewhat.<\/p>\n I think I\u2019ll save my observations about Beijing for tomorrow, since I\u2019m planning to get up at 4:30 to view the raising of the flag in Tiananmen Square, which is about three blocks from our hotel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We\u2019re now 600 miles and over 1000 years removed from the Tang capital of Xi\u2019an (and a 13 hour train ride) in the capital of China (mostly) since the Mings moved back here to better combat the barbarians from the North. We\u2019re in Beijing, capital of the People\u2019s Republic of China, a city of 16-19 … Continue reading “From one capital to another”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mayterm-india"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1006"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9100,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006\/revisions\/9100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>Buddhist temple before; one of the guardians of the temple was riding an elephant, and another a lion.\u00a0It struck me that the temple was closer to Hindu temples (each of the major Hindu gods has an animal as a transporter, and of course, the elephant god, Ganesh, is one of the most popular of the Hindu pantheon).<\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a>(called a pailou) that is very Chinese.<\/p>\n