The cradle of Chinese civilisation: Xi’an [中华文化根源：西安]
Last month I took a trip to Xi’an, Shaanxi province, at the central north of China. Visiting China without seeing Xi’an is like going to Egypt but haven’t seen the pyramids, or going to Cambodia but not seeing the Ankor wats. I’ve always wanted to visit Xi’an since my first time visiting China at 2004. Together with Mary, we booked the ctrip semi-guided tour. I like their formula, flight ticket and hotel are included, they arrange transport to pick you up from/to airport, some major touristic sites, and then they leave you alone during the remaining time without dragging you into buying crappy souvenirs or local specialties that you don’t need.
Xi’an has been capital of China for about 2000 years, from 1100 B.C. to 900 A.D., thirteen dynasties, hundreds of emperors have chosen that region as their base. Visiting Xi’an is like reading a history book of ancien China, but it’s only amazing if you have some prior knowledge of Chinese history. If you have no idea of the chronology of Chinese history or no idea of the famous emperors, then you might not feel a “connection” with what you’re seeing, and you might not appreciate that much for seeing some broken bones and jars and terra-cotta soldiers. I think it’s very similar to visiting Greece without knowing antiquity history, you see some fallen rocks and walls, but there’s nothing fancy about that… As the tour guide put it, visiting Xi’an is 70% about listening and 30% about seeing, so next time you go there, make sure you book a tour that you can understand the language well. I see a lot of western tours where the guide barely speak English or French or German, very superficial, so they miss a lot of details.
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Four important dynasties have established at Xi’an and neighbor: Zhou [周], Qin [秦], Han [汉] and Tang [唐]. The Zhou Dynasty has been there for longest time, but there is no visible physical trace remaining. What it has left to Chinese was all the philosophers and their teachings, collectively called the Hundred Schools of Thoughts [诸子百家] which still remain firmly established in Chinese society today.
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Qin, Han and Tang have left very large physical footprint in the region, but they were all destroyed by their following dynasties, some rare religious establishments collapsed and were rebuilt during later time. Bottom line is, the best preserved physical traces of those eras the emperors’ tombs. Many of them have been rioted or robed, but even that, many were still secretedly preserved because they were well built hidden, so geniusly constructed that even with today’s modern ultra-sound and super-laser technologies we’re still not able to find the tomb’s entrance, nor do we feel confidently capable of preserving the shapes and colors of objects inside the tombs if we ever uncover them.
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Regarding the modern city of Xi’an, some noticeable things are the well preserved city wall that wraps around the central part of the city, the Bell Tower and Drum Tower at the middle of the city, and a lively street full of Hui ethnic restaurants and snacks. The rest is like any other cities of China, a few pagodas here and there, a museum, a shopping street, and so on. We didn’t go to the nearby Huashan [华山] because of the tight schedule.
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Overall, I’m very happy to have been to Xi’an finally, and having seen the Qin terra-cotta army is a long time dream of mine. There are many must-see sites in China, the Great Wall and this one are two of them.
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