China Redeux

Arrived in Qingdao very smoothly. Although they seem to keep examining Andy's beat-up passport, bending at the edge, in-between the laminate where the picture is. Smartly, Sarah has managed to keep hers pretty pristine. After much discussion with the custom guy's partner/superior to make sure it was legit, we were finally let through. After changing money and getting on the bus, you immediately notice China is a little rougher around the edges, but also less than half the price.

Caught a bus then walked and caught another bus to the downtown train station hoping to maybe even get a train that night to X'ian (SHEE-AHN). Ahh, hope, the wonderfully naive notion.


Andy waited in this seedy line outside (it was absolutely immovable inside and the 'Information' booth was in name only) -- it was the only way to find out anything. After tons of people staring at us in the line and one drunk guy up front occasionally beating off people that cut in front for tips, Andy managed enough broken Chinese to find out that there were no trains to X'ian that night and only hard seats the entire next day. It would be an all nighter packed on wooden seats - for 16hrs. Since we wanted to see other distant parts of China overland and still make it to Vietnam in time, we decided to check planes. Plus X'ian was just a two-day stop and there's no way we'd be rested after that train trip to make it worth it.

Out of desperation, some exhaustion and still getting used to the currency, etc., we checked in to perhaps the worst hotel of the trip. Without going into the sordid details, let's just say we learned our lesson fast about getting stuff sorted out beforehand.

Then we had to get plane tickets. We didn't even know if we could get on a flight the next day, much less how much it would be. We found a Chinese travel type place, they had the seats and the price was cheaper than in Korea, so great! But they would only take cash. So we found a Bank of China, and thus spawned another big problem that wouldn't manifest itself fully until later.

The buttons for the PIN code at the ATM not only didn't have the corresponding letters on the number keys (a first in our travels and this is how Andy always remembered his PIN), but also it was in reverse, making it difficult to even mimick it by spacial relations on the key pad. (We also learned quickly just to memorize the number as well as the letters.) After the third or fourth PIN entry failure, Andy's card locked up as the bank assumed it was a security breach. There was no hope for the card now without contacting the bank and who knew how long that would take. Sarah, tried her card a couple of times and also couldn't quite figure out the new keypad. So we wrote on a piece of paper a keypad with what the corresponding letters would be on it, then tried to figure out the numbers from there. We just couldn't remeber if Zero had any corresponding letters.

We also went to another bank machine just to be safe. This time, Sarah's PIN entry worked. We sighed a deep sigh and got the tickets. However, the bank problem would come back to haunt us later.

Tickets in hand for the next day, we caught bus #26 out to the Quindao (others might know it as 'Tsingtao') beer festival. It was a loud raucous night, but we did meet our first black person living and working in China. He was from Ghana and was manning one of the booths at the festival and spoke good English. He said there were probably 5 others from Ghana in the city and that they moved to China for economic reasons, but discovered it was just as bad as Africa, he said!

The next day we hit the 'beach.' It was really more like tepid polluted water, but we walked on the pier and we both tried to go in for a little bit but you couldn't really swim. Well, you could if you liked touching things the whole way.

Later, leaving for the airport, we couldn't figure out where exactly the private airport bus left from so we opted for the public bus then we thought we could take a cab from its end point. It went through some fascinating neighborhoods and one enourmous 'suburb' that must have had a million or so people. Finally, made it to the airport in plenty of time.

The flight to X'ian went incredibly smoothly, although for some reason on Chinese planes they seem to want to update you a lot. They keep giving information like, "Ladies and gentlemen, we are now ten minutes into the flight, we have 45 minutes of flying left." There was also a bizarre statement that sounded like, "Also, please be aware of the attacking mirrors" but we weren't sure what it was.

We were the only westerners on the flight, but that changed after we touched down. X'ian is a pretty big tourist draw. Our bus took us into town and we walked from the hotel from there.

We saw the X'ian History Museum, basically a nice, clear and 'concise' history of China and the dynasties, since X'ian was the ancient capital for so many years. Later, we realized the bank card thing was coming back to us. We were running out of valuable cash. The hotel wouldn't take credit cards or travelers check - and we needed to pay for our room, ongoing train tickets, and buy the tickets to the Terracotta Warriors the next day. We used the last of our cash to buy the train tickets to Chengdu, in the Southwest, in the province of Sichuan, because we had learned that you can only get the upgraded sleeper seats days in advance. And the train station in X'ian was even more of a madhouse than Qingdao.



Also, now we learned that even Sarah couldn't get money because her Citibank account was empty and she was having trouble transferring funds from her main bank to there. Andy finally had to try to call the bank about his card, while Sarah tried numerous PIN combinations and usernames she had forgotten to transfer the money from her main bank to her Citibank.

On the phone, Andy first tried to use the calling card he bought in Qingdao, but the PIN they gave him didn't work and he wasn't sure what other glitches there were to get past it, so that was pretty much a waste. Now he tried to use his original calling card from home. Luckily, the international access number worked and he got through. After 10 minutes and three or four levels of people who said we would have to either go back to Beijing or Shanghai and settle it there OR wait in the mail two weeks for a form to fill out to get a new PIN sent to the New York address, Andy finally got through to an emergency guy in Dallas who said this is 'not normal procedure, but we can reset your PIN over the phone.' Exactly what we needed to hear. He then said, he'd just have to wait till business hours ( 1.5 hours later) to have a second 'unidentified person' come on the line a do a 'dual key turn' to reset the PIN. After that, it would be another two or three hours before it cleared through the system and Andy could get cash. Andy said he would call back in an hour and a half.


He did, and after going through all the levels again, was transferred to a 'mystery woman' at the other end of the line that just said, "Go ahead..." Andy said the new PIN into the phone and that was it. There was not even a 'thank you' or repeating the PIN or anything. She just hung up. Like some kind of espionage scene in a movie or something. A couple of hours later he tried to get cash. No luck. We figured we'd just try in the morning. When we did, about 8 hours later, it finally worked. We were back in business.


The next morning, we paid our hotel bill, plus an extra night and set out on bus to see the Terracotta Warriors. The site was discovered by peasants digging a well in the 70's; there were no real written records of it, and it turned out to be one of the greatest archeological finds of the century. Constructed thousands of years ago to guard the Emperor in his tomb in the afterlife, this place was no joke. The massive first excavation yielded a 2 football field-sized plot with thousands of restored warriors there and many more waiting to be dug out. These are all life-sized warriors (and horses and chariots) made from terracotta clay from the region and baked into present form. No two warriors, however are alike, and each are said to reflect the unique facial features of the actual standing warriors at the time. Moreover, if the statues weren't perfectly executed by the artist, then the artist was. Killed that is. If that weren't enough, even the tomb's builders and architects were murdered and sealed into the tomb, enabling the secret to remain hidden until the mid seventies. Pretty brutal stuff. The originals were colored with a patina which apparently fades upon contact with oxygen, which is why they are delaying excavation of the thousands more warriors believed to be hidden in the new buildings, in hopes of developing the proper technology to preserve them.

The next day, we decided to rent bikes before boarding our 12pm train. X'ian is a crazy city, especially near the train station where we were. But along the city walls, it's actually quite peaceful and a great place to ride. We managed to ride around the inside of the entire city wall, about 15k in an hour until we were back in the bedlam of X'ian's train station. It was so bad, Andy looked back after looking away for 30 seconds and Sarah was gone. Granted Sarah would be the only blond hair in a sea of dark hair, but it just shows how many people there were! Andy retraced his route several times, even jumping over to the hotel. No luck. After 25 minutes and the boarding time to the train approaching rapidly, he figured she would be able to find the hotel and just meet him there. It turned out to be true. There she was, also finding it impossible to see Andy's brown hair in a sea of black! There was no time for small talk, however. We had to pack, check out, then barrel our way through the nightmare train station and it in time for departure or who knows how long we'd be stuck in X'ian because there's only one a day and it's almost impossible to get train tickets on short notice.