Day Two

The next morning I went to breakfast while Adam and Will went to go find baozi, their breakfast of choice. Baozi are things wrapped in a steamed bun, usually meat. They’re quite tasty. While they were buying, I bought a breakfast and then Tim (non-dreads) came and joined me, having a coffee with his breakfast. The other Tim, Dread Tim, was exhausted from 8 days of straight travel, so we let him sleep in. When he’d woken up, we headed out to Muslim Street of Xi’an.

Muslim Street in Xi’an is great for bargaining. It reminds me more of Chinatown in New York than it does of the rest of China. Dread Tim was looking for souvenirs, so we walked through the stores. I bought some gloves, and Tim (non dread) was probably the best person to watch. If you didn’t know him, you’d think he was angry with the people who were trying to bargain with him.

“How much for this watch?”

“250.”

“Is it real?”

“Yes.”

“No it’s not. Look, I was here a few months ago and I got this watch for 150, so I’ll pay that price.”

Or in response to “I’ll give you a special discount,”: “It’s not special. Look, if I offer you this much, you’ll still get a nice profit on top.”

I’m pretty sure I could watch an entire three hours montage of Tim bargaining. It’s just too funny for the rest of us. On the upside, I’m much more comfortable with bargaining, even though it’s not that done in Kaifeng. I bought gloves and something else~. I spent probably 90 Yuan on bargaining. That’s about $13 USD. I feel so rich. In fact, Tim and Tim kept converting and yes, it’s hard to not picture yourself as rich. Also I learned “don’t touch things” because then store owners will flock to you from wherever they are. They could be in the bathroom, and they’d know. They’d know.

After the morning (Later we’d go back, for Tim said it was a completely different feel), we went to a museum. I’m convinced now all Chinese museums are similar with the collected bronze tips of axes, arrowheads, swords, pots for the ancestors, ect.- I’ll still go to them, because it is interesting and they usually have a Western toilet.

That probably makes me a bad person, but you know, not squatting was kind of a priority on this trip. Made me watch what I drank, how much I ate, where we were and how soon we’d get back to the hostel. The dudes usually had a urinal in their bathrooms of various places, however, I’ve still not mastered squatting, and pee on my leg is not exactly… anything good, actually.

So the museum was of Xi’an, with ancient dynasties. There was pottery and there were giant pots to burn things to give the ancestors. There are two really interesting things about Chinese museums that I’d like to point out- a lot of history was destroyed in the Cultural Revolution (about the 1950s).

1). A lot of the stuff in museums was found after all these items were destroyed. China has that much history that you can keep digging and keep finding more history. It reminds me of collecting arrowheads; they were used in a very historical sense, but they’re everywhere, and little kids like to go collect them without thinking about the history that put them in place there.

2). China likes to restore things. So even if a piece of pottery is in pieces and some are missing, they’ll restore the thing to what they think it looks like. In the past they would match the color, but more recent discoveries have different colors so you know what is the original and what’s not. Personally, this doesn’t bother me at all- I think it’s neat seeing the final picture, but I understand it is vastly different than how the west does it.

As we were leaving the museum, a woman came up to me and asked me to translate a letter from cursive. It was rather hard, and when she asked me a question about comprehension I had to point out that the author had used an unclear statement even in English, and it wasn’t her fault for not understanding. Then we left to go eat dinner.

Dinner was yet another Muslim restaurant, filled with skewers of meat like Shish-kabobs. We discovered the Australians have a different word for a kabob, but I have forgotten it. I did remember that they don’t have packets of coffee or instant flavor. They have sachets of them.

After the dinner we went back to bargain. I bought gloves, but Adam by far had the best bargaining of the day. I don’t quite remember the words, but she started him for buying 100 pairs (“I don’t want them”) and finally down to 5 pairs. Odd, because one normally bargains in money, not pairs of socks. They were fake Ralph Lauren socks, and she then wanted 65 kuai for them. Adam insisted he no longer wanted the socks and she went down to 5 kuai. He then bought them.

I think she might have been desperate, she kept trying to sell us stuff so long as we were amused. I managed to get Will out of a sweater by lying and saying he had a girlfriend who would be offended if he bought a sweater as the fake girlfriend had knitted him an ugly one.

I should probably stop lying to complete strangers. But it’s really fun inventing stories about people.

Then we went home! And we slept, for the next day we needed to be ready to go at 9am, as we were going to the Terracotta warriors!