Terra Cotta Soldiers

Did you come to this page to see some pictures of the Terra Cotta Soldiers? We will get to that in a moment. Let me first relate a dining adventure.

Theresa surely enjoyed her professional visits, and I certainly enjoyed my guided cultural visit. However, I must admit that sometimes the best way to visit a city is simply to stroll down the streets and see the people, the stores, and restaurants. You can tell a lot about the city and its people simple by walking down some streets.

Tonight Theresa and I decided to walk along the main street in search of a restaurant for dinner. We walked past many stores and many people. Young men, old ladies. Students and professionals. People on vacation during the 7-day National Day started on Oct 1st. People working or even napping in their stores. Hair dressers that are shampooing and cutting hair. Chinese Muslim people cooking and serving in Chinese Muslim restaurants.

After walking past over twenty restaurants ranging from a two-table mom-and-pop place to a fancy, air-conditioned restaurant, we decided to check out this well-lit, clean restaurant. You can always tell how good the restaurant is by seeing how crowded it is. It's also a good indication of the freshness of the food. The government may be communistic, but the restaurant business is strictly democratic--people definitely vote with their feet! Frankly I really didn't know the specialty of this restaurant, but after exchanging a few words, I did get some good recommendations from the waitress who recommended that the local specialty is this spicy noodle soup. We happened to see some left-over soup--it was bright red--indicating HOT! stuff. We got chickened out so we ordered the soup without it being too spicy. We also ordered the Muslim Chinese version of a big Mac. Of course, this "Mouh" is much more tasty than a big Mac as it was filled with spicy beef. Together with two bottles of Sprits, our dinner bill came to a grand totol of 14 yuans--not even two US dollars! I had to confirm with the cashier twice to make sure that I did not hear it wrong. I guess food has to be cheap when the average yearly wage is about $500 per person.

Our first stop was a jade factory and store.

There was several workers working on drilling and polishing--transforming a jagged, dull stone into a work of art.

A really fine piece of jade art piece.

A slightly larger elephant.

A slightly smaller elaphant :-)

There were globes with in-laid jade of all sizes.

A little of power bargaining.

Frankly touching Buddha's lucky tummy.

Finally I saw a store sign that has the Intel logo on it.

A map of the province where Xi'an is located.

A display of the four horses.

Outside of the museum.

A little fun shopping at the museum store resulted a quick session of show-and-tell.

Street scene. Those taxi cabs are small but agile.

We had a fun lunch watching the shaved noodle and, in this case, the pulled noodel.

We arrived at the museum that has the terra cotta solidiers being excavated and preserved.

Delicious dinner. This is a "Mouh."

As I was surfing the Chinese TV shows I saw this one. Do you believe this was "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" in Chinese. I tell you, Regis never looked as pretty as this girl. :-)

Click the thumbnail to see the full image.

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