The old ancient city of Xi’an is one of the most frequently visited places in China. It’s world famous for the Terracotta Warriors and for the well-preserved city wall.
We have been in Xi’an for 5 days and it is a nice city to experience a lot of old history. We went by a sleeping train from Shanghai and it took about 17 hours:
The university compound was rather okay. Accomodation-wise I didn’t like the dorms because there was a big construction site in front of our dorms and with nothing surrounding, I felt like being back in a small hamlet in Vietnam back in the days… but since the coordinators explained that most of renovation work was done during summer break, I think I might complain too much. In China, things just work differently :) (So don’t wonder when people make internet access possible by drilling up your dorm wall for installing cables and then not cleaning up their mess)
The Tai Chi course was interesting though. They made us waking up at 7 every day to get food and attend the course at 7-8 before classes started. A nice experience which was way better than paper cutting which set us back to kindergarten a bit.
Our dormitory …too bad Chinese schools renote their dorms in summer. If we were two weeks later, they would have not been letting us live in such a construction site ;)
But I guess our pledging for internet they achieved to provide within 3 days was way more than other students could have been waiting for.
Supermarket in the compound
We had a opening ceremony and were treated very kind from all professors and staff
Felix held a small presentation as sent-in by his university.
Group picture:
As often, the culinary treatment was very delicious and fun also:
Some music performances
Our chefs making the skewers.
In the back of the university, you could see many skyscrapers.
Sightseeing
Goose Pagoda The good pagoda area is a famous tourist attraction, too. I heard that the area around the pagoda is partly fake though. Obviously I was more interested toward other things…
Huaqing pool area
Ancient City Wall If you have enough time, you can round the old city wall either by shuttle, by bike or just have a walk. We walked about a quarter of the route in 45 minutes.
Xi’an city wall:
Terracotta Army
The highlight of the city.
