We started the day with breakfast
at the hotel, which was surprisingly good. Then, we walked over to the Bell Tower.
While the drums in the Drum Tower were used to played at sunset, the bell in
the Bell Tower would ring at dawn. It’s huge bell, made of around 30 molded
pieces. A bunch of people were standing in line to take a picture with the
bell, so it was impossible getting a picture of the bell on its own. Here’s a picture
with a random Chinese girl in front of it:
Inside the tower, there’s an exhibition
about teapots and pottery.
And outside it there are way too
many Chinese women who think that Ada is cold, or tired, or that we care about what
they think.
And then we decided to give everybody
a break and find a place for Ada to play. There’s a shopping mall across from the
Bell Tower, and in it we found a children’s clothing store that had a small
ball pit. That’s all that Ada needs to be happy:
Then we headed to the southern
gate of the wall. The wall surrounds the old city, and you can walk on it. The
wall is impressive, but other than walking on it, not much is going on. There
are some museums along the path, but you have to get out of the ticketed area,
and we’re pretty sure there’s no re-entry. All that didn’t matter. Julia was
still not feeling well, and Ada was antsy, so it took us forever to move just half
a mile from our starting point. I promised Julia that we’ll get off the wall at
the next gate which is just a little bit ahead. However, that gate was closed for
renovations. Rallied everybody for a pep talk, we pushed through and got to the
western gate where we could finally get off the wall.
It was almost 4pm, and we hadn’t had
any lunch yet. We walked for a bit until we got to the edge of the Muslim quarter,
and one restaurant that was just about to close invited us in. We had some dumplings
and the local style of noodles, which are served cold with a Tahini-like sauce.
Since we were already in the Muslim
quarter, we walked over to the central mosque. We thought it was supposed to be
a tourist attraction, but it’s not – it’s just a mosque, built with Chinese
architecture. It was a little strange for me to hear Chinese people greet each other
with “Salaam aleiqum”. Also, the Chinese Muslim appearance is interesting: they
look Chinese and Arab at the same time.
We went back to the hotel to
regroup for dinner, but then we got a text from Jiujiu – he’s coming to take us
to dinner. In fact, he’s on his way. However, we didn’t know when he was going
to show up, so we were stuck in the hotel waiting for him, with Ada getting fussy
as her bedtime was approaching. I did what any responsible father would do and went
to the bar to get whisky. The bartender was an apprentice, as her badge stated,
and she spoke no English. She also seemed generally clueless, so now, for a few
good minutes, she tried to read every single label on every single bottle, with
the hope that one of them would have text that looked familiar. It was amusing
and painful to watch at the same time, so eventually Julia went behind the bar
and showed her the right bottle.
Jiujiu finally showed up, with his
wife, who I’m supposed to call Jiuma. They decided to take us to the Muslim
quarter, because you can’t miss that if you’re touring Xi’an, even though they knew
we ate there yesterday.
Jiujiu was impressed by the five
words I can say in Mandarin and became very curious about me. He doesn’t speak
any English, like everybody else in China, so Julia had to translate everything. He said I look like a Hollywood actor, and I told Julia to tell him that I find
that racist, and that he looks to me like a martial arts movie star. She didn’t,
which was a good idea. I did tell him, however, that I’m Israeli, and not
American. Now he was even more curious. He said that Israelis are considered
smart so that must mean that I’m smart. I said that this is correct. He said
that Israelis are probably the smartest in the world, and I told him that he’s
right, and that Chinese people are second. He thinks I'm strong, because I pick up Ada in her stroller when we need to go up or down some stairs. He points at me as he announces "A-Yong!", my Chinese name, and I think he means something like "this guy!".
In the market, I got another one
of those skewers, and a piece of mutton that you buy by the pound. They take
the piece you choose, dump it in broth to heat up and cook, and then they give
it to you in a little paper box with a fantastic sauce for dipping and silly plastic
gloves for holding. It was all that I wanted and more – the “more” part referring
to the useless plastic gloves.
No comments:
Post a Comment