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Xian Day 4
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Xi'an Day 4

10/08/2000 

I wish there is a faster way to go home. Oh well, the pain of international travel is the long and tedious flight. We are now stuck in Hong Kong airport for over 5 hours with nothing to do. This is a good time to catch up on my journal.

In the morning we visited the Tang Dynasty Art Museum. There was a professor who gave an informative and interesting overview of the Tang dynasty. However, how can one person cover hundred years of history and culture in just 15 minutes?

We then visited the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. This is still a working temple, so a few people in our group even lit a few candles and burn some incenses to pray for good fortunes and safe journey.

Despite the prior warning of our tour guide regarding the quality of Chinese food at the Silk Road restaurant in Xi'an airport, it was actually not too bad. I suppose to my taste buds the worst Chinese food is better than some other food. :-)

The highlight of the otherwise uneventful flight was that I got to read a few in-flight magazine's articles in simplified Chinese. By now, I can almost recognize over 50% of the simplified Chinese characters that I encountered.

Theresa and I are now starting to plan our return visit in 2001!