Visiting Xi’an -- China’s Ancient, Ancient Capital

I just spent three days in Xi’an (西安).  This a city in north, central China – in the Shaanxi Province.  It is an old city. The capital of China for many of the early dynasties.  I visited there to see some of Xi’an’s historical sights, and to visit an English friend from Singapore who is also studying Mandarin in China for a few months.

Xi’an has its famous old city quarter – a large block of land still surrounded by ancient city walls.  These walls still enclose the famous Drum and Bell Towers, some temples, and the Muslim District.  I found it very interesting to be within such ancient walls.  I climbed the central Bell Tower on foot, and I rented a bicycle (with my friend David) and rode atop the entire perimeter of Xi’an’s city walls [pictured].  I tried to imagine the era when powerful capital cities had to be fortified by immense stone walls.  Climbing the towers and surveying the city below, I tried to envision bustling, ancient market places with low wooden houses and small muddy public squares.  I tried to imagine the ancient commerce and meeting grounds for one of the worlds most powerful and advanced civilizations at the time.  I tried to picture the ancient traders and story-tellers come to mingle in the city and renew legends of heroes, monsters, and great quests.  Aspects of Xi’an felt very old to me. 

 

And yet some aspects were quite modern.  The city is very crowded.  There is far too much traffic.  Buses are crowded.  Horns blare.  And the bus and train stations are maddeningly chaotic.  The air in Xi’an is quite hazy – whether from smog or surrounding country dust, I do not know.  Xi’an had a low, unplanned development of rude buildings and ugly concrete blocks.  There are some streets with glass shopping malls, but overall the scene decays into a less than inspiring belch from modern industrial development.  I enjoyed the historical suggestions in Xi’an, but I did not like the city. [Pictured is a smoggy view of the Drum Tower, taken from atop the Bell Tower in the centre of the old city.]

There is one place that I particularly enjoyed visiting though… It is the Big Goose Pagoda (or 大雁塔).  This is the site where the legendary monk, Tang Seng (唐僧) – also known as Xuanzang or Tripitaka – returned after his fabled Journey to the West.  I mentioned this story (with the Monkey King) in an earlier post.  Tang Seng is the monk who the Monkey King escorted on his quest to India.  After returning, it was in the Big Goose Pagoda that Tang Seng translated the Buddhist scriptures the he brought back from his journey.  For me, being such a fan of the story, it was very satisfying to see this historical place from the Tang Dynasty of China (note: while many of the fantastic events from Journey to the West may have been exaggerated for theatrical effect, the underlying story of a monk sent by the Tang Emperor to retrieve Buddhist scriptures from India is indeed true).

[Pictured below are the Big Goose Pagoda (left) and a statue of Tang Seng (right).]