A Journal, with Pictures

Xi’an is a mod­ern city  of eight mil­lion peo­ple includ­ing a mil­lion stu­dents attend­ing fifty uni­ver­si­ties. It is an agri­cul­ture cen­ter with both the Yel­low and Yangtze  rivers flow­ing through the area. It is most know for the Ter­ra­cot­ta War­riors, the 8,000 man army that Emper­or Qin had built to serve him in the after life. The Qin dynasty (259 BC) was piv­otal, as he was cred­it­ed with uni­fy­ing Chi­na into a sin­gle nation.  The Tomb and War­riors were dis­cov­ered in 1976 and now have become a major tourist attrac­tion in Chi­na. Xi’an was the place where the Silk Road began and today there remains a sig­nif­i­cant Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion. In addi­tion to the Ter­ra­cot­ta War­riors there is Shaanxi His­to­ry Muse­um, that fea­tures the Tang Dynasty murals. The city itself is inter­est­ing in that the four mile wall around the his­toric cen­tral city remains intact.

We had anoth­er cul­tur­al expe­ri­ence in Xi’an, learn­ing to make dumplings. We love Chi­nese dumpling, and now know that the Chi­nese should make the dumplings, but they are yum­my. We also toured one of the few City Walls to sur­vive the cul­tur­al revolution.

We toured the Mus­lim mar­ket and Mosque, a his­toric car­ry­over from the trade silk road trade route that ter­mi­nat­ed in Xi’an.

The Mosque is in the Mar­ket area and when we vis­it­ed there was a Mus­lim funer­al ser­vice in progress.