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Xian Day 3
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Third Day at Xi'an

10/07/2000

For the most part of today Theresa was on her professional visit, while I did the touristy thing.

Today our little group consisted of only 7 people. We just fit into this van.

We had an interesting visit at the mosque. Even though we always enjoyed having Chinese Muslim food at a couple of restaurants within thirty minutes of our home, this is the first time that we were in real Muslim Chinese area. There are actually plenty of men and women observing Muslim customs.

We also saw this couple who just got married. The woman was wearing a traditional western white wedding dress, and the groom was wearing a red cap in the Muslim tradition. What an interesting multi-cultural experience!

After lunch at the hotel, the guide took the group back to the city wall. It was a place that we actually visited a couple days ago. So I decided to go walking around downtown. Another guest, Teri, decided to tag along. So we walked along the streets. It was a very exotic trip, as we saw the gamut of fancy western items and traditional Chinese kitchen cookware. We visited a western-style department store and also strolled past street vendors selling carrots, mushrooms, apples, pomegranates, etc. There were sections of the city that have been fully remodeled, and there were sections that were old, dusty, and crumbling. It was an adventure. It was loud. It was dusty. It was smelly. It was exciting.

However, I swore that I will never cross a busy street in China with Teri again. Somehow she decided that the best way to cross a street is simply sprint across no matter how many cars and bicycles were zooming toward us. Well, God must be on my side. Somehow I survived and crossed the street without losing a limb nor causing a crash. Amazing.

I always like to say that the best part of having Chinese food is have the chance of eating something new each time I go to a new restaurant. I was not disappointed this evening at our farewell dinner. It was a dumpling banquet. We sampled tasty morsels of dumplings that are filled with shark, duck, spicy chicken, mushroom, shrimp, and even sweet ones with walnut. I don't remember everything that I had, but the guide later told us that we had 16 courses. Amazing, huh! We were told that some imperial dumpling banquet has 128 courses! No, I was not hungry after 2 hours.