Photo Link:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/MDcSYsRdxqJuuB576
After Upper Mustang and a spare day or two in Pokhara and Kathmandu, I went back to Chennai for a few days. Spent some time with my grandma, saw a few relatives, and also caught the IPL final, which Chennai won for a 5th time in 10 title game appearances in only 14 or 15 total IPL seasons, which was pretty cool…it quite literally went down to the wire to the last two balls, so it was a very fun game to watch. One crazy fun fact – the IPL is actually the second most valuable sporting league in the world, after the NFL, on a dollar per game basis, even more than the English Premier League or La Liga. That actually blew my mind given that Cricket’s base is definitely smaller than the English speaking or Spanish speaking world’s soccer base.
I then caught a Singapore Airlines flight to Beijing. One of the best airlines out there, and their food is actually delicious. My 10 year China visa from 2019 was still valid, and I got all my other apps set up as well…Maps.Me for offline maps (a must wherever I go, but especially here where Google Maps basically doesn’t work. Apple maps does, however, so there is a distinct advantage for iPhone over Android in China), ExpressVPN for access to GMail/WhatsApp/social media when on wifi (TMobile roaming is not subject to the Great Firewall, but still), updated everything on DiDi (the Chinese uber) and WeChat (the Chinese do-it-all app, from texting to QR code payments for everything), offline Google Translate, and also got a new app called MetroMan which has subway connections for every major (and minor) Chinese city. Speaking of QR code payments, because of the ubiquity of those, credit cards are rarely accepted anywhere and you need to either use the QR code payment on your phone or cash.
Beijing was nice a very surprising city. It is the second largest Chinese city after Shanghai, but felt a lot more spread out and wasn’t quite the megacity that Shanghai was (the only city I’ve been to that is comparable to Shanghai in size and scope is honestly Tokyo, and to a much lesser extent Osaka – which is closer to NYC than it is to Shanghai/Tokyo). I think Beijing is just massive and way more spread out, so it doesn’t have quite that cramped and hectic feel to it. My hostel was in the central historic district, “walkable” to all the main temple sights and the Forbidden City, but I just used the super cheap (<50 US cents) and super easy subway to get around. It’s funny, when I first quit my job and went to east China I loved the refreshing lack of English everywhere as travel was more challenging, but now that I have come full circle and am back in China, I find it *very* English friendly. Obviously nowhere near as English friendly as Europe, let alone places like Latin America, India, sub-Saharan Africa, or southeast Asia. But certainly moreso than places like Central Asia or Iraq. Just funny to see how different my initial opinion of China was. I will say that food-wise, I found east China (and Xi’an! Which I visited after Beijing) to be a lot better than Beijing. Food was still very good here, but nowhere near the highs of all the dim sum and dumpling and stuffed whatever that I had down there, while here was more “generic” Chinese food in terms of curried meat and vegetables. Honestly the Chinese-adjacent food of Malaysia and Singapore was a good deal better too, but the food here in Beijing was still solidly good overall. One thing I really do appreciate about China is that they eat the whole animal, and nothing goes to waste. It’s much more humane and efficient to actually utilize the entire animal, and some of the best tasting parts are the things you don’t typically get in western cuisine (outside of notable exceptions like Lyon). Really the only negative of Chinese cuisine is the lack of desserts, especially when compared to the diversity of their culinary tradition. It is also probably the single least vegetarian friendly country that I have ever been to.
I guess the obvious and lazy comparison to make is to Japan. While Japanese cities have a very distinct block-like and chromatic modern architecture, I feel like it’s much more of a hodgepodge here in China. In east China you have the megopolis of Shanghai, and then Suzhou/Nanjing/Hangzhou all had gorgeous historic architecture but were forgettable for the modern stuff. Likewise, Beijing’s old stuff is genuinely very cool (as was Xian’s and Pingyao’s!), but beyond that I feel like it’s not as distinct as Japan. And it’s hard to verbalize, but there is also a clear difference in Chinese style versus Japanese style…I feel like the historic stuff in Japan is a bit “smoother” if that makes sense. China is obviously gorgeous, and as a country I like it more than Japan (if anything for the sheer diversity. It is up there with India in terms of stuff to see and do), but I do think Japan is overall more picturesque.
My first day in Beijing, I took a daytrip out to see the Great Wall. From some quick Googling (thank you VPN), I found out that you can see actual abandoned parts of the Great Wall, instead of the restored tourist drivel that is all over Instagram. A few key online blogs had very detailed instructions on how to take local transport there…basically took a subway from my hostel to a bus depot/train station, took a bus from there to a northern suburb of Beijing, and then switched busses (and stations) there to go to some rural hillside village. The entire wall is on a ridge of jagged hills…mountains is a strong word. But from the bus stop I walked about 20 mins through the village to get to the trail start point, where there was a big blue sign that said no entry was allowed. Next to this sign was a well-worn trail, and all the blogs I read said that this is a known hiking path. Funnily enough, these blogs all made this out to be some crazy difficult hike, while the whole experience was on par with the hike I did in Chiang Mai in Thailand…tough enough to be enjoyable but overall quite easy. Took about 40 minutes to go up 400ish meters, where I then saw a wooden ladder that was bolted onto the wall. Like a good Uruk-Hai, I then climbed the ladder to get on top of The Great Wall of China.
So the entire wall is like 2200+ years old, but everything you basically see nowadays is 600+ years old, as it was re-fortified then. Still old, and large stretches have had *a* wall for quite some time, but just to put it in perspective, it’s not like an OG Roman road or anything like that. Anyways, this was awesome. I was the literal only tourist here, and you could see a crumbling, magnificent wall going all over the green ridges on either side, with loose stones and steep slopes and trees and overgrowth and plants and shrubs all growing in the ruined wall. Such a cool, cool vibe. Spent about an hour climbing up and down this fun, destroyed wall – at one point I had to crab walk down as it was waaaaay too steep and slippery. After this hour, the path started to get a bit more evened out and maintained, and I then hit the tourist area. Not too crowded, but a big difference from the total solitude that I had before. I actually had to hop over the wall to enter the tourist area (again, this is a known thing from all the blogs), so I actually didn’t even pay the ~30USD entrance ticket. The tourist area was nice enough and had some cool views (especially since it was not too crowded at all), but honestly paled in comparison to the ruined part.
In terms of ruins, this was obviously nowhere near the peak of Cambodia and Chernobyl, nor even cooler stuff like Termessos in Turkey or some of the temples in India or Guatemala. I think I have now seen all of the “7 wonders of the world” and it is definitely one of the better ones. The Pyramids and the Taj Majal clearly rank ahead of this, while I would place the Great Wall well ahead of the Colosseum and ahead of Macchu Picchu as well. For wonders 6/7, I am not sure what is included between Angkor Wat, Petra, and the Acropolis, but I think that the Wall is behind Angkor (obviously) and Petra (primarily because of my Last Crusade nostalgia), while ahead of the Acropolis (in my opinion there’s plenty of cooler stuff in Greece). Overall, just really fun to have like a 6km stretch of totally ruined wall that is getting reclaimed by nature all to myself. Took a bus from the tourist area parking lot back to Beijing, and by then, due to the shit traffic, it was time to shower and eat dinner before crashing. Spent the next two days in Beijing proper.
So Beijing. In terms of a historic sightseeing city, I would place it well behind the highlights for me, like Rome and Delhi. Probably also behind places like Paris and London and Istanbul and Saint Petersburg and Moscow as well. But from a historic standpoint, definitely above any Latin American city, or really any European city not mentioned above, or any Asian city outside of Delhi and Uzbekistan. So definitely solid enough on that front. Again, while I found historic Japanese architecture more aesthetically pleasing (less going on and smoother), the stuff in Beijing was very cool. Aesthetically in terms of “royal” stuff I have seen, I think Beijing is behind Japan, Uzbekistan, Mughal stuff in India (Delhi/Lucknow), and Rajasthan, but ahead of basically everything in Europe (including Andalusia and Versailles) and well ahead of Latin America (I have always found Spain/LatAm the least interesting historically, I don’t know why). The vast majority of the stuff here was Ming and Qing era, so relatively recent by Chinese history standards.
The Forbidden City was the obvious highlight. I had to send an email to their official email address the evening prior to “reserve” my spot, which was just my passport information and name and date. Got to the ticket booth the next morning before it opened and got my ticket. It’s weird, literally every tourist site in requires a passport (or local ID for citizens)…I do not recall this level of tracking when I was in east China in 2019. Ditto for subway and train tickets. I suppose it is easy that you just scan your ID and everything goes through (honestly sort of like India, where the ubiquitous digital payments are linked to your ID. India and China are waaay ahead of the rest of the world here). But there are obvious privacy concerns here, and also security issues…if the network is hacked, does everything stop working? Curious how strong these ID/payment networks actually are, and how they’ll stand up if/when quantum computing eventually makes strides.
Even though I got to the Forbidden City well before the official open, there were still literal thousands of people (99.999% domestic tourists…in general barely saw any foreigners in China this go-round) there. One cool thing that was lowkey smart by all the domestic tourists here was using umbrellas as sun-shade. It is sunny as balls here and the heat really hits you. And there is an 80k cap per day, and I think on weekends especially they probably comfortably hit it. But even then, because the palace area (the Forbidden City is basically the giant palace grounds of the Ming Dynasty, which the Qing then used as well…the Qing were the last dynasty in China) is so massive, you were able to have some sense of solitude which I did appreciate. Not sure if that would have held true had I gone later in the day. The palace grounds were pretty cool…in a weird way, I would say it was like a more enjoyable and less gaudy version of the royal palace in Bangkok. One thing I really enjoyed in particular were the constant dragon motifs literally plastered everywhere in the Forbidden City (and really, everywhere in the historic sites in Beijing). There was also a garden here, which was cool enough, but honestly paled in comparison to the gardens of Shanghai and especially Suzhou.
Thinking back on east China…I think Shanghai was genuinely a world-class city with a lot going on, though maybe not the best historically beyond the small old-town area. Suzhou was genuinely beautiful, with amazing amazing gardens and historic architecture – one of the most photogenic places I have ever been to. Hangzhou and Nanjing were definitely cool but forgettable with their historic architecture and monuments and old town areas. But the food there was so so good, with tons of stuffed buns and dumplings and dimsum type foods. Definitely a regional thing because I didn’t notice too much of those types of foods up here.
Other cool sights in Beijing include the Temple of Heaven, which was a very picturesque tower that the Ming emperors would use to pray to the gods for a good harvest (so basically, a Tao temple. Taoism is basically China’s indigenous religioun along with (sort of) Confucianism), the Summer Palaces, which was like a lesser version of the Forbidden City, and a Confucian temple – something I didn’t realize, which is quite cool, is that Confucianism is basically like a religion in China, and even in parts of southeast Asia.
One thing that was interesting was that all of these places mentioned the damage that they had historically gone through, but all conveniently omitted the Cultural Revolution. It’s actually interesting how different societies deal with mass trauma and tragedy. Some, like China with the Cultural Revolution or the ex-USSR with the post-Soviet dissolvement or even the entire political world with COVID today, just apply willful amnesia to forgive and forget and move on. While others, like 9/11 in the US, are just beaten to death. I guess the way a society deals with tragedy is inherently political.
My final day in Beijing was a daytrip to the Yungang Grottoes, out west by the town/city of Datong. The previous night, I got Peking duck for dinner and then went rooftop bar hopping with a Bumble date who was from Kazakhstan and has been in Beijing for 5+ years, and we later met up with her Iranian and Nigerian friends who both also live in Beijing. I’ve always enjoyed meeting locals when traveling, but especially always love meeting immigrant locals. We were actually talking about this, but I genuinely think that these are almost always the most interesting people, because they have stories and reasons for being where they are. Weirdly reminded me of a big reason of why I love the book Shantaram…about foreigners (including Indians not from Mumbai) who have made Mumbai their home. I guess there’s also an element of that is how I see myself, especially since I don’t know if I’ll ever live in the US long-term.
Also, speaking of the Peking duck…amazing, and the best thing I had in Beijing by far. But weirdly enough, I don’t know if it was that much better than the Peking Duck at Chicago’s fantastic Sun Wah BBQ (much like how arguably the best Mexican food I’ve ever had is the goat tacos at Birreria Zaragoza in Chicago). Despite its’ many faults, Chicago is a genuine world-class food city…shame that almost all the top food options there are meat based, given that I am going to become vegetarian after retirement (no eggs as well, but baked goods/etc. made with eggs are fine)…I’ll break my vegetarianism for travel purposes (like more of China, for example) but when in “the west” I basically won’t break it at all.
Early next morning, I took a hungover train out to Datong. Was able to sleep most of the train ride which at least made things better. From there, I took a pair of local busses out west to the Yungang grottoes. These are a set of ~1500 year old Buddhist cave temples. VERY similar to what Bamyan would have been like pre-Taliban destruction, and also the Ajanta Buddhist caves in central India. Honestly, these were some of the coolest ruins I’ve ever seen. Much like Pompeii and Herculaneum in southern Italy, there were tons and tons of preserved color paintings in these cave temples which was absolutely awesome to see. Obviously the Yungang grottoes are a good deal younger than Pompeii and Herculaneum (to say nothing of the Egyptian stuff in Luxor), but still. Very cool ruins, and actually cooler than Ajanta which is quite impressive. In terms of rock-cut/cave-hewn monuments, I would still place the Ellora caves in India at #1, largely because I find Hindu architecture and motifs more interesting (and also because the Kailasha temple remains the single most architecturally impressive monument I have ever seen). But these were absolutely up there after that, even more impressive than stuff like Petra in my opinion (though obviously Petra gets the boost of being in The Last Crusade, arguably my favorite movie after LOTR and Goodfellas and maybe Anchorman). But yea, these temples also barely had any tourists in them, all of course domestic. Much like India, I feel like a lot of Chinese historic sights are crazy underrated both by the local population but especially by foreigners, especially due to the Europe-centric view of history that sort of permeates western culture. Some of these Buddhas were easily 20+ meters tall, all in various seated positions.
I took a local bus back to Datong city afterwards. Had a really good lunch, which was this sort of gelatin-like slippery noodle dish in a nice spicy curry with God knows what meat (I just point at the menu and eat with zero idea or translate, it makes life so much more fun). Lowkey better than anything I had in Beijing minus the Peking duck dish. The kind old man running the shop then offered to refill my water bottle for free, which I foolishly accepted…in China for some reason all free water refills are always piping hot water. In general, the people in China were some of the nicest I’ve met in my four years, especially the older folks. Zero English but we would communicate, usually where I’m from, how I’m enjoying China, etc. Tons of random people (again, usually older) would just smile and say “Ni Hao” to me while walking which I thought was very cool. Just a very welcoming country as a whole.
The next day, I took a high speed train from Beijing to Xi’an. Formerly known as Chang’an, Xi’an was one of the old imperial capitals of various Chinese dynasties, but probably the most famous one. China has the world’s most comprehensive high-speed rail network and it is legit amazing to get around, though I think Japan’s was better for two main reasons…free WiFi, and more importantly, bento box meals that you could get at any train station to eat on the train. On the train ride to Xi’an, we passed through numerous secondary and tertiary Chinese cities which, like Datong, all had depressing copy/paste apartment block architecture, almost like some kid lazily creating a city in a computer game. Also on the train ride, not sure where because for some reason my phone GPS specifically doesn’t work while inside high-speed Chinese trains, were these absolutely gorgeous mountains that were steep and cliff-like, and genuinely rose well over 1500 meters. These are the sort of mountains that would be plastered everywhere if they were in the US or Europe, while here they are seemingly not even a tourist attraction, so another reason why I think China is criminally underrated.
My hostel in Xi’an was legitimately wonderful. Same price as my super basic Beijing hostel (a bit under 20 USD a night) but this was legit luxury, with a rain shower, Japanese toilets, good free breakfast and free snacks, super comfy beds, etc. etc. Xi’an legitimately might also be some of the best food I have ever eaten, period. The noodles here are perfect…hand-pulled, and have the perfect texture and chewiness. And they all come with really nice and spicy meat sauces. Again, I almost never know what I am eating, but it is just oh so good here. Also the random stuffed breads with flavorful and spiced up meats. Every single random dive I went to for a meal was outstanding enough where I had to pause and take in the meal. A fitting namesake for NYC’s best Chinese restaurant, Xi’an Famous Foods. If you think that is great (which it genuinely is), Xi’an is even better. Xi’an has a sizeable Hui population, which is an ethnic minority within China that is largely Muslim, which is why there is a unique cuisine here. Xi’an was at the western terminus of the Silk Road so Islam did spread here a bit (moreso in northwestern China, like Xinjang). I have also gotten so good with chopsticks now…they genuinely are a far superior utensil than forks and spoons for noodles or sticky rice. And of course, Xi’an has wonderful and cheap public transport, like everywhere else in China.
My first day in Xi’an was actually spent on a daytrip out to see the medieval walled city of Pingyao. This was where China’s first banks were centered, and was sort of their first financial center/banking capital. Like much of Beijing, the entire walled city was of the Ming and subsequent Qing era. It was honestly pretty cool – like a larger and slightly more impressive version of the historic centers I saw in Hangzhou and Nanjing during my first foray to China. Or even a larger version of Takayama in Japan, though obviously the medieval Japanese architecture there was a bit different – all purely wooden, while here there was a good deal of stone used. I would say less cool than Khiva in Uzbekistan, which is the coolest walled city I have seen, but definitely on par with other really cool places like Jaisalmer in Rajasthan. A lot of the preserved buildings here reminded me a ton of the spruced up historic Chinese buildings in Malacca and Penang and Singapore acually, especially with the roof design, the paintings by the storefront signs under the roof, and the hanging lanterns.
The next day was a daytrip to the city of Luoyang, to see another set of Buddhist cave carvings/temples, the Longmen Grottoes. Same deal as with my other daytrips…subway to the rail station, get to the location, take a bus to the destination, and then same steps in reverse to get back to my hostel. This was also of a similar age to the Yungang grottoes (so 1500ish years old), but was also expanded upon by successive Chinese dynasties so was worked on for a few hundred years. The color here (obviously) paled in comparison to Yungang so overall it was slightly less impressive, but the best wall-cut sculptures here were honestly probably the best I have ever seen along with Abu Simbel in southern Egypt (though obviously Abu Simbel is like 2000 years older which I guess makes it more impressive), topping even some of the impressive massive Hindu gods of Ellora. Just really fascinating and complex, and the giant scale and ornate detail really drove home the impressiveness. There was a giant seated Buddha, some guardians next to him – a bald monk dude and a taller soldier dude, and then to the side were two demon/protector deities that looked so distinctly Chinese – one of them was even standing on a dwarf, which is a super common Hindu trope as well. Overall, again, not as cool as Yungang (the colors there really were extraordinary) but a very impressive spot nonetheless. There were tons and tons of caves here that honestly got a bit repetitive – same Buddha in each one, whereas at least the Ellora caves spruced it up a bit with various different Hindu gods in each cave (ditto for places like the Elephanta Caves and Mahabalipuram as well). And again, not too many tourists and outside of one older white couple I was the only other foreigner.
I actually learned a few things from the signboards here which was pretty cool. One is that the Chinese pagoda came from the Buddhist stupa, which originated in India as a mound to bury relics of the Buddha (genuinely wonder about the connection between a stupa and a Shiva linga). The other is that the Ajanta and Ellora caves are apparently the oldest cave carving structures in the world, so they directly influenced these Chinese cave structures as well as others like Bamyan in Afghanistan, as well as, again, caves like Elephanta and Mahabalipuram in India. Overall, I think the colors of Yungang and the best of the actual carvings here in Longmen are some of the coolest things I have ever seen. That said, I think the stone cut temples in Mahabalipuram and especially Ellora are still way more impressive, and that pushes Ellora specifically to the top for me.
The only negative of the day was my lunch. Genuinely the worst meal I have had in China (and probably my only sub-par meal in the country). The food here was genuinely like the worst of those shitty greasy wok Chinese-American restaurant food you get, that really is an insult to Chinese cuisine. Sort of reminded me of the godawful dinner I had in Agra because white people can’t handle spice and rated this genuine shithole as one of the best restaurants in the city (I had to leave them a 1* TripAdvisor review because that really was awful). But I did make the mistake here of eating right by the grottoes, but I figured that since it catered to domestic tourists that it wouldn’t be too bad…boy was I wrong.
The following day, I took a half-day trip out to see Xi’an’s most famous attraction, the terracotta warriors. The first emperor who truly unified much of what is modern day China, Qin Shi Huang Di (he was also the dude who first built the Great Wall), has his mausoleum about 30km or so northeast of Xi’an, so I took public transport (subway and then bus) out to the warriors. Honestly, all my public transporting around for these day-trips reminded me a bit of the way my dad and I were taking all these local bus transfers to see cool Roman ruins in southwestern Turkey. The mausoleum itself has still not been excavated as the Chinese want to wait for archaeological technology to be better before proceeding (for example, all the close to 10k warriors and horses and other figures that were found were all painted, but the color went away within a day of being exposed to the air when this was first discovered). The terracotta warriors were built to protect his tomb from evil spirits in the afterlife, and are positioned about 1-2 km outside of his mausoleum, which is apparently designed like a city *and* a palace within said city. Will be amazing to see when it is hopefully excavated later in my lifetime, but that’ll probably be well after 2029 when my current 10 year visa is up.
The whole complex, warriors included, are about 2200-2300 years old. This is another arguable “wonder of the world”, and honestly one of the coolest things I have ever seen. Despite the hordes and hordes of Chinese tourists (I saw one other foreigner), it really was something else. It legit looked like one of those AI powered robot armies you see in the movies, with just endless rows and rows of these life-sized terracotta warriors in a massive pit, all lined up like they are ready to be activated and fight. The number of soldiers arguably outnumbered the number of tourists, though both were in the thousands. And when you zoom in on the soldiers (I had my big camera zoom with me), the faces are all more or less unique, with different hairsyles, jaw shapes, mustache styles, goatee styles, noses, etc etc. Just really incredible stuff. And it is especially cool because these soldiers are basically “regular” people – all the existing Roman and Greek sculptures, to my knowledge, are either Gods or important politicians, so (don’t quote me here) these might be the oldest 3D and lifesize artistic impressions of everyday people. It was also cool because different sets of soldiers had different types of armor on, for charioteers/archers/foot soldiers/generals/etc. Very detailed and intricate. Speaking of charioteers – there were even terracotta horses and wheels out there! The terracotta weapons, however, were not “attached” to the soldiers, but you could sort of tell which soldier was holding what by the way their hands and arms were set.
Of course, my very first thought when entering the terracotta warrior complex was of Dr. Dorman’s 9th and 10th grade AP World history classes (technically 9th grade was “honors” but basically taught like an AP). Plus I self-studied AP Euro history in 11th grade with his help. He sadly passed away during my Afghanistan trip, and the first time I learned about the terracotta warriors was in his class – his PhD was actually on Chinese history, interestingly enough. I actually texted a few high school friends and acquaintances about the Dr. Dorman thought from the complex itself and they all agreed that it was the logical thought.The more I think about it, the more I genuinely think that my love of history largely stems from his class (he also did a great job of not being too euro-centric), and obviously my love of history is a BIG reason why I am into traveling, so I really do owe him. Wish I could have somehow told him before he passed away, but that’s life. I still remember how on the AP World exam, my friend Steve and I tried to race each other to finish the 90ish or whatever multiple choice questions, and he beat me by 30 seconds…we both finished it in like under 10 minutes. Of course we both got 5s…can’t fuck around like that unless you genuinely enjoy the subject matter and thus find it easy.
The following day was spent fully sightseeing in Xi’an itself. Pretty cool overall, though definitely not as cool as Beijing in terms of stuff to see. Saw a couple of 1400 year old pagodas just outside the city wall, that were originally a part of these giant Buddhist temple complexes that no longer exist. These were like OG pagodas in China…nowhere near as spruced up as the more stereotypical historic and modern ones (like the historic one in Pingyao), but you could see how these initial designs would evolve into what pagodas eventually would become, The smaller of the two pagodas had a very cool museum right by it, which highlighted Xi’an’s silk road history. Tons of cool stuff in here, from 1200+ year old ceramic figures of foreigners in Xi’an (tons of Muslim foreigners came here from Silk Road trade, from modern day Central Asia) to a Sogdian funerary tomb (very similar to the Roman stuff, though obviously the Roman tombs are 1000ish years older). A bit random, but I was reminded of the Larco Museum in Lima, which I think is probably the single best museum in the world that I have been to in terms of having localized content (obviously not counting things like the Met and British Museum here).
After this, I went over to the Muslim Quarter, which was culturally super reminiscent of Central Asia. Almost all the men here were wearing skullcaps and tons of women had light hijabs on. There was a super cool mosque here, about 1300 years old but constantly renovated under successive Chinese dynasties. It was really cool to see the mix of traditional Chinese architecture along with clearly Islamic architecture. Very unique. Unmistakably Muslim and unmistakably Chinese. It actually reminded me a bit of some of the wooden mosques that I saw in Central Asia that had a clear Chinese influence as well.
There were tons of cool tourist gift shops in the Muslim Quarter. They were selling a huge range of items, from Tibetan stuff to bronze dragons and Chinese symbols/figures to communist stuff – heroic posters of Mao and company, and even Mao’s little red book! Didn’t buy anything but definitely one of the coolest trinket shop areas I have been to…probably because China is still relatively “new” to me unlike Europe or India or Latin America. There was also good food here (like in the rest of Xi’an), the highlight being these mouthwatering cubes of pure white lamb fat that are grilled and spiced before you eat them off a stick. There were also tons of this really good nougat-like snack that I guess is a regional thing here? Also so many Chinese girls in Xi’an were dressed in traditional clothes for photo ops…more than I saw even in Hangzhou and Suzhou in eastern China 4 (!!!) years ago.
I ended my sightseeing day in Xi’an by seeing a local Tao temple, also around 1000+ years old. Honestly, Tao temples are quite similar to Shinto temples (Japan’s indigenous religion) in terms of the exterior appearance, though obviously there are a few key differences…Tao deities are represented in human form so you see statues of physical gods that look human in the temples, while Shintoism does not do this at all. Shintoism also has the inari gates and (from my experience) more of an animal presence in terms of sculptures/deities, and the buildings have less going on…Chinese architecture is much “busier” and looks less smooth/more complex than Japanese. Much like how Japanese Buddhist and Shinto temples are very similar, I also found Chinese Buddhist and Tao temples quite similar. Similar to southeast Asian Buddhism in terms of the “flash” of the temples, so for me not as cool as Tibetan or even Japanese Buddhist. And from my limited observations, Confucian temples largely look similar to Tao temples, but there are no physical deities inside of these ones.
Between the terracotta warriors, Great Wall, Forbidden City, the two buddhist cave grottoes, the old imperial capital of Xi’an, the medieval town center of Pingyao, and the more recent imperial capital of Beijing, this is probably the best historic trip I have taken after southern Italy. Other contenders would obviously be Greece, Turkey, and Egypt, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh in India, Uzbekistan (up there with Japan as the single most architecturally photogenic country I have ever been to) and the Cusco area in Peru. That said, I do think east China was more “classically” beautiful, especially Suzhou, but this probably trumps that due to the history. Overall an excellent, excellent trip. Xi’ans food is of course the cherry on top. I now have about ~36 hours of train travel to get to Tibet, where I will start a 2 week tour that I am *extremely* excited for. 12 hour overnight train from Xi’an to Xining, 3 hour “layover” in the train station, and then a 21 hour “overnight” train to Lhasa…overnight is a stretch, this is basically a full day and night train ride.The total cost of both of these trains was like 180 USD (in a soft sleeper, the highest sleeper train class) while a one-way flight from Xi’an to Lhasa was over 400 USD (plus would have needed to pay for two extra nights in Xi’an, though obviously the hostel rocked). The train is also by far the best way to acclimatize to Lhasa’s 3500m elevation, so I can hit the ground running easier once in Tibet.