Qin Up! What To See In Xi’an Apart From The Terracotta Warriors

Many people fly in to Xi’an with just enough time to rush around the Terracotta Warriors, grab a couple of selfies and fly out. But to spend so little time in a city that has so much to offer is to miss out – badly. Here’s the lowdown on what else to check out next time you’re in China’s ancient capital.

How Bazaar
Xi’an was the greatest city in China for over a thousand years after the First Emperor was buried with his Warriors in 221 BC. Indeed, at certain points in its history it could proudly claim to be a true worldbeater. During the Tang Dynasty (617-907AD), for example, Xi’an was known as Chang’an, and became the first city in in the world with a population of over a million people. It was a thriving Eurasian melting pot, and its position at the end of the Silk Road made it into a bustling traders’ paradise. Indeed, even the Chinese word ‘dongxi’ (东西), which literally means ‘East/West’, but has now come to mean ‘things’, is thought to derive from the huge markets that were located to the east and west of the city centre.
 
The vibrancy of China’s former capital can still be seen today in the city’s Hui Muslim District, with its busy markets, delicious foods and sudden oases of silence in its elaborately decorated Chinese-style mosques. To walk down the streets of the Muslim District is to see, feel and smell Xi’an at its most lively – it means passing innumerable stalls selling steaming fresh nang breads, meat pies, pao mo soup, peanut toffee, being hammered with mallets and flung backand-forth onto hooks, as well as anything imaginable you might want to take home as a gift. 
When the bustle of the Muslim District becomes too much, quietness can be found only moments away by turning into the traditional, serene Chinese household of the illustrious Gao Family, or the Dapiyuan and magisterial Grand Mosques, which blend Arabic and traditional Chinese styles to form a unique intermingling of cultures. The Grand Mosque is among only a few mosques in the world where Chinese pagodas work as minarets. It’s certainly the only one where devout, teetotal Muslims pray next to a tortoise statue hosting an engraved poem by the raging alcoholic, Mi Fu, on its shell!
Gao Fu Mansion: 10am to 10pm. RMB 15. 200 Bei Yuan Men Xi. Tel: 029 8723 2897 Great Mosque: 8am to 7:30pm. RMB 25. 30 Huajue Alley, Xincheng District.
 
Wall-To-Wall Fun
Even when no longer the capital, Xi’an was still one of the most important cities for China – and needed to be defended, especially from the vicious barbarians coming down from the north. Hence the city walls, which sit as a thick, tall edifice surrounding the city. There is nothing like cycling over their cobbles at dusk with the wall’s red lanterns lit and golden lights shining under the flying eaves of the gatehouses. Whether you cycle them or walk them, there are nuggets of strange history to stop by and look down on – the Guangren Monastery, for instance, designed for the seventh Dalai Lama on his visits to Beijing, but only after the Chinese had realised that the sixth Dalai Lama had actually been dead for sixteen years and the Tibetans had just not bothered to tell them.
Wancheng Gate Entrance To The City Wall: 1 to 30 April, 8am to 6pm. 1 May to 31 October, 8am to 7pm. RMB 54 for adults, RMB 27 for children, free for small children. Shuncheng Alley, Beilin District
Tang Buddhism – And The Tang-In-Cheek Novel It Inspired
Not only Islam, but also Buddhism thrived – and thrives - in Xi’an’s Guangren and Daxingshan temples, but above all in the city’s Wild Goose Pagodas. These are both monumental testimonies to the importance of Buddhism in the ancient capital – and the solemn chanting and wisps of incense that accompany you as you walk around them still have great allure. Each is an ancient relic, made smaller by war, over-ambitious engineering and earthquakes.
 
The Small Wild Goose Pagoda still displays damage from the 1557 Shaanxi earthquake, which snatched
several floors away from this giant Buddhist jenga set, and took more than 800,000 lives in what still remains the world’s most deadly earthquake.
 
The Great Wild Goose Pagoda on the other hand is the site to which the legendary monk, Xuanzang, returned after his sixteen years as a wandering monk across Central Asia and India. This inspired a tongue-in-cheek retelling of the real monk’s journey entitled Journey to the West, which enhances his adventures with the addition of the Monkey King, Pigsy and Sandy.
 
The Great Wild Goose Pagoda was the holiest site in Xi’an, and is also said to be the place where monk Xuanzang and the Monkey King rose to become Buddhas. Pigsy on the other hand was given a considerably lower position as the Cleaner of Altars because of his many acts of greed. However, since that makes him responsible for hoovering up the food and drink offerings left on the temple’s altars, one suspects he is more than happy with the soft drinks, fruits and other delectables at his disposal.
 
After supposedly battling water demons, defeating Daoist monks in trials of decapitation, boiling and competitive meditation, and restoring the spirit of a usurped king to its body, monk Xuanzang arrived back at the Great Wild Goosed Pagoda where he introduced a strange form of mystical Buddhism to China, which included extreme worship of the Bodhisattva Guanyin – with one monk ending up reciting a sutra dedicated to her 37,000 times over his career as a professional monk-cum-Guanyin-chanter.
Small Wild Goose Pagoda: Wednesday to Monday, 9am to 5pm. Free to enter temple, RMB 30 to ascend pagoda. 72 Youyi Xi Lu, Beilin District. Closest subway station: Nanshaomen Exit B2 Great Wild Goose Pagoda: Sunday to Saturday, 8am to 5pm. RMB 50, RMB 30 to ascend pagoda. Yanta Nan Lu, Yanta District. Closest bus station: Dayan Pagoda, lines 5, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27

Plumpness, Perfume And Putrefaction: The Shaanxi Museum!

Not to be missed either is Shaanxi Museum – an enormous collection of Chinese antiquities which rivals anything to be found in Beijing or Shanghai. Here you can see more examples of the Terracotta Warriors, and the fearsome stone armour that has been found near them – sets of putrefacient pebbles threaded together with wire to keep away those nasty demons that cause a corpse’s decay. Or, more charmingly, there are ornate goose-shaped lamps from the Tang dynasty, as well as sculptures of the famous camels that brought goods into the capital from Central Asia, and the sculptures of famously plump Tang Dynasty beauties. If that isn’t enough, then there is also the Xi’an Museum, just next door to the Small Wild Goose Pagoda: a collection which charts the glories of Xi’an across its hundreds of years as a capital.
Shaanxi Museum: Tuesday to Sunday, 8:30am to 9:30pm between March and November. Admission free; passport required. 91 Xiaozhai Dong Lu, Yanta District Xi’an Museum: Admission free; passport required. Wednesday to Monday, 9am to 5pm. 72 Youyi Xi Lu, Beilin District. Closest metro station: Nanshaomen, Exit A2

And Much, Much More

This is not to mention the numerous other jewels of the city: there are ancient remains of Banpo Village, with its burial customs as unfathomable as those of the First Emperor, complete with fire-making displays, rebuilt huts and even a totemic phallus! Then there are the stately steles in the Beilin ‘Forest of Steles’ Museum, including the first evidence of Christianity in the form of the Nestorian Stele, plus huge stone reliefs depicting the ‘great steeds’ of Emperor Li Shimin. And last but not least, there are the remains of the Tang Dynasty Daming Palace, which is an incredible four times the size of the Forbidden City in Beijing.All of the above, and many places besides, can be explored with an expert native English speaking Newman Tours’ guide. Their informative and entertaining tours include Monkey King Tours, Muslim District Tours, Terracotta Warrior Excursions, Shaanxi Museum Tours, Tang Dynasty (Daming Palace) Tours, Stone Forest Tours, and Banpo Neolithic Village Tours. In addition, they offer Tailored One Day and Two Day Xi'an Tours, Jack Greatrex leads Newman Tours in Xi'an.  
To find out more, please call 138 1777 0229, email [email protected] or check out www.newmantours.com.