Day 3 - 28 August

Visited the great wall.....not the famous Great Wall of China but the Xian City Wall..... kena conned by my bro-in-law. He told us that it was a nice ride by bike. We ended up cycling for 2 hours and worse still, got a minor leg cramp. That took us all the way till 2 or 3 pm.

The Xian City Wall

The magnificent and grandiose Xian City Wall was constructed in the early Ming Dynasty on the basis of the Imperial City of Chang An (Everlasting Peace) of the Tang Dynasty. It is also a symbol of great significance of the famous historic cultural city of Xian. One of the features of the Xian Wall lies in the fact that it has been preserved intact, which is rarely seen in the world. The construction of the Xian City was formally started in the seventh year of Emperor Hongwu's reign (1374) and completed in the eleventh year of Hongwu's reign (1378). After its completion, the circumference of the city wall was 13.75 kilometers long in an oblong shape. Its height is 12 meters; its top is 12-14 meters wide and its base, 15-18 meters wide. At the four corners are watchtowers at each. Outside the wall are moats. There are four city gates, and to each of them are three tower entrances: sluice tower, embrasures watchtower and the main tower and in between are enceinte. There are 98 watching enemy platforms between the watchtowers and the city gates, protruding over the city wall, and on the platform the towers for watching the enemy are built, which is not only convenient for watching the enemy, but also to shoot them with bows and arrows from three sides and firing wooden cannon stones by taking the advantages between the position like two sides of a horse face and the city wall, inflicting casualties on the attacking enemy. There are 5984 crenels served as lookout posts, firing at the enemy and shield of protection. They formed a close engineering system of defense.
After repair and protection, the Xian City Wall now presents a three-dimensional distribution with the city wall, city moats, forest belt and city ring-routes combined into four-in-one grandeur in perfect harmony, each shining more brilliantly in the other.


After lunch we visited Shaanxi Historical Museum.

The Shaanxi Historical Museum

The Shaanxi Historical Museum, a large-scale modern State-class museum, is situated at the western side of the "Wild Goose Pagoda" in Xian City. It covers an area of about 70,000 square meters, the architectural area of which is 55,000 odd square meters. It was completed on June 20, 1991 and open to the public.
The Museum is divided into three main parts all for overall display, hall for temporary display and hall for display on special topics. There are over 3000 pieces of cultural relics on display; they are the cream of cultural relics selected from among the hundreds of thousands of cultural relics, the majority of which are worldly treasures.

Then we visited the Bell Tower and the Wild Goose Pagoda. Saw some performances there.....much like packed sardines and almost fainted and more exercise up the tower and the pagoda......at least the stairway is much roomier than the bell tower of a church in Christchurch where I nearly vomitted and almost had a "claustrophobic-attack".

Bell Tower

The Bell Tower is situated in Xian city, capital of Shaanxi Province. In the beginning it was constructed in the 17th year of Emperor Hong Wu reign of the Ming Dynasty (1384) at now Guangji street cross and in the 10th year of Wanli removed to the present site.
The construction of the three storeyed Bell Tower has multi-eaves, sunken cornices and pinnacles with turning corners. The building basement area is 1377.4 square meters with four gateways connecting four streets. Each of the four sides of the building pedestal is 35.5 m broad and 8.6 m high. The height of the building is 27.4 m while it is 36 m high from ground to top. The architecture is grand and the art is superb. Ascending the tower to look around, one can get the bird's-eye view of the whole panorama of the ancient Xian city.

Wild Goose Pagoda

The Wild Goose Pagoda is situated at the Benevolence Temple to the south of Xian City, Shaanxi Province. The temple was originally known as Wulou Temple (literally no leaking ) in the Sui dynasty. In the 21st year (647) of Emperor Zhenguan rein of Tang dynasty, Prince Li Zhi (who later succeeded to the thrown as Emperor Gaozhong) reconstructed the Temple into Grand Benevolence Temple in commemoration of his of his mother Empress Wan De.
When Xuanzhuang, the Tang Monk, after acquiring the scriptures of Buddhism from India, returned to his motherland, he was lodged in the grand Benevolence Temple for the translation of the scriptures. In the 3rd year of Emperor Yongwei's rein of the Tang Dynasty, the Pagoda was built after the style of the Western Regions for the storage of the translation version of Buddhist scriptures. It was a five storeyed building at the beginning and the built into 7 storeys when the Empress Wuzetian was in power. The Pagoda is square in shape, 64 meters high with spiral staircase leading up to the top. There are structural design and Bodhisattva image delicately carved on the lintels on four sides. At the lower part of the Pagoda are two stone tablets on which are engraved Preface of the Holy Teaching and the Narration Record of the Holy Teaching by Chu Suiliang, the calligrapher of the Tang dynasty and on the brim of the stone tablets are relief sculptures of musicians and dancers.
Xuanzhuang (602-664) generally known as the Master of the Law (Tripitaka of Buddhism), customarily called Tang Monk was the famous scholar of Buddhism and great traveler and the Founder of Benevolence and Philanthropy of Buddhism.

Ah.......dinner time.......never seen a much bigger bowl being used to serve food.....no you call that a basin not bowl. By then we were so tired from all the exercise the whole day.....we were ready to hit the bed b'cos tomorrow we were setting off 7 am to join the Eastline Tour or the Presidential Tour (b'cos most foreign dignitaries usually request to visit the same sites)