Finally, Xian! The ancient capital city of some of the greatest Chinese dynasties, and home to the 9 km square loop of wall around the old city, constructed in 1370 during the Ming Dynasty and definitely a unique treasure unparalleled in all of China. Although it isn’t nearly large enough to encompass that much of the city, it still is an impressive structure, and does a nice job of encompassing most of the noticeable historic sites into a small, manageable area.
After we met our local guides, were settled at our hotel and had lunch on our own, everyone could either do one of three options that he or she had signed up for during the train ride the day before –
A) Tour the Taoist Temple of the Eight Immortals (Legendary beings who supposedly obtained immortality)
B) Visit the Forest of Steles / Art and Antique Street (a museum with thousands of ancient stone tablets)
C) Walk along the city wall (or bike on it, for a small rental fee)
After putting much consideration into the option, I decided to throw in my lot with the group touring the temple.
Now, while that was all genuinely quite interesting, that wasn’t what made the day memorable. As it turns out, the group finished the tour much quicker than was expected, leaving us considerable time until we met up with TBC Group A for a reunion dinner in the city. So, on the way back to the hotel, the guide with us offered us an option; the bus could stop at the South Gate of the city wall, and anyone who wanted to tour the wall was more than welcome to.
I pondered over my choices for approximately a fraction of a second before I made my decision. Thus, about ten minutes later, I found myself strolling right atop the considerably large wall, strolling alongside Daniel, a student from Loyola Marymont University in LA. Our walk though lasted for only about five minutes before a pack of TBC students sped by on rented bikes, and shortly after that sheer jealously got the best of us.
For 20 yuan, it was definitely worth it to zip atop those well-worn stones, with the wind in my face and a smile spreading from ear to ear and stopping only to take pictures.
I was atop nothing more than an old wall, but that afternoon I felt like I was on top of the world.
Now.... I supposed you're wondering where those photos of the wall are. Well, they're in my laptop and...um....
Interesting story; yesterday, while walking around the campus one of my backpack straps broke, and the whole backpack fell off my back. That in itself hardly qualifies as a disaster, I know, but the fact that my MacBook was in the backpack at the time was...y'know...
Long story short, the screen got so cracked that I can't see anything on it, while the rest of it is intact. Thankfully, there's a brand-new Apple Store In Beijing, which I promptly went to later last night and got some good news and bad news. The bad news is that they don't have the parts at that particular store to repair the screen, so it'll take at least a week for everything to be fixed. The good news came as quite a surprise just when it felt like nothing was going my way. For those who don't know, I recieved my computer from the financial aid office at Fairfield University, and apparently they had purchased Apple Care for it. So thankfully, I don't have to pay a cent for repairs, and hopefully at very worst I'll only be temporarily inconvenienced by all of this.
Let's just hope everything turns out okay!
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