We bid farewell to Beijing today and headed to the next stop on our tour, Xi’an. The flight was bumpy, but we reached our new city with no major miscues unless you considered my groups near death by stampede. Apparently, we were riding on the plane with a Chinese celebrity. We had no clue because she looked like an average Chinese punk rock teen. She's the one in the center that's wearing black. She departed the plane and rode the escalator to baggage claim with us. At first, I was so impressed with the turnout of Chinese teens on hand to welcome us to the city. Then, I noticed the huge crowd held posters that didn’t contain any of our faces. Not to mention, they were chanting a name that didn't belong to anyone in our group. The crowd behind the barricade started snapping photographs of her and getting autographs. She quietly soaked up the adoration of her fans while someone in her entourage got the luggage. Our group, on the other hand, pulled our own luggage and gathered on a wall away from the action. We found our new guide, Lily, and as she pulled us together to explain the plans, the barricades came open and the frenzied fans rushed in the direction of the the Chinese Idol or Super Girl as they call her. The fans rushed toward us screaming and yelling while the idol made her exit down a distant corridor. Unfortunate for us, her exit path was away from the fans. Her raging river of admirers had to come through our group to follow her. They weren't about to let a little group of Americans stop them from getting to their Super Girl. We quickly assessed the situation and retreated to another wall that granted us safety from the stampede. Luckily, no injuries or deaths from our group were reported.
On the drive into Xi’an from the airport, my first reaction was regret over leaving Beijing and it wasn’t because of the near stampede. I surveyed the faces in our group and I knew I wasn’t the only one. The landscape was rural and dry. Lily, our new tour guide, lacked the energy and fun personality of our Beijing tour guide, Sarah. Things did not look good. Lily taught us some history on the city and we visited the city wall, which turned out to be really cool. The city has a huge wall around it that is well preserved and fully intact. I learned that all Chinese cities had walls around them at one time, but most had deteriorated and/or been torn down. Xi’an had the best-preserved city wall in China. We began seeing signs of modernization as we approached the city wall in the form of skyscrapers and public transportation. Xi’an is a smaller city, by Chinese standards, of 8-10 million. It's relative because the larger cities such as Beijing have 19 million residents. I decided to give the city a chance. If I could make it in Beijing, I could make it here. It turned out that Xi’an was a contemporary city with plenty of character and traffic. Traffic was horrendous as we approached downtown during the rush hour. That gave me plenty of time to notice the cars and I concluded that Xi’an residents drove nicer cars than the Beijing residents.
Another observation on this day was that Chinese people had physical characteristics specific to their region. The Chinese in the northern region, where Xi’an was located, have Mongolian influence and tended to be taller and bigger than the Chinese people in Beijing. They also have elongated facial features. In my opinion, they are more attractive and trendier when it comes to fashion than the people in Beijing.
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