Beijing, Xian, and a visitor!

After Chengdu, we took a 33hour train ride to Beijing where we met Eva, my roommate from college who'd taken a week off from both school and work to come visit!

We did, however, have a few obstacles to overcome. The first was that while in Chengdu, I'd had an MRI... the aide holding my things came into the room a few times and my ATM cards (both chinese and american) were demagnetized by the machine. So. No money was the first problem. After a stressful few days, Peace Corps came through with an advance on our post-peace corps settling in allowance. In my quest to access that money in my China account though, I ran right into the phenomenol beauracracy of Bank of China. The employees were kind and apologetic to a fault but as it turned out, only my personal Lanzhou Bank of China branch could help me to do anything relating to my account. Including take out money. Okayyy.

Obstacle 2 was lunar calendar related. February 18 is the Chinese New Year this year... called Chun Jie, or Spring Festival. At this time of year, all of China picks up and goes home to be with their families. Mostly by train. And in China, you can really only get train tickets in the city you are departing from, slightly problematic if you arrive in Beijing on Thursday, want to leave on Saturday night, and tickets have already been on sale for 10 days during the biggest travel rush of the year in a country of 1.3billion people. It was touch and go for a while as to whether we'd get stuck, both in Beijing and Xi'an, but miracles happen and we pretty much stayed on schedule for Eva's Week in China.

Our first day in Beijing, before Eva arrived, Ben and I went to the Summer Palace, which was an imperial retreat, now on the outskirts of the city. The enormous man-made lake which dominates the landscape was very low and a little icy, but an early morning ethereal mist burned off to a beautiful blue sky. We spent a couple hours strolling around a large hill dotted with temples and pavilions and rock gardens. The next day, Eva in tow, we headed out to Simatai, a more remote and less re-constructed section of the Great Wall, about two hours outside of Beijing. Perfect weather and a morning to ourselves on the wall made our 6am bus totally worth it. That night we went out for some delicious Beijing Duck before crashing early.

Next day, nursing extremely sore legs from the Simatai hike, we scored onward tickets to Xi'an, wrassled with the Bank of China (we lost), and wandered Tian'anmen and the Forbidden City. Sadly, several of the major temples in the Forbidden City were undergoing some reconstruction and were wrapped up in netting, but we were still able to see a lot, even finding some courtyards and buildings which I'd missed on my first visit a few years ago. There is still a Starbucks inside the Forbidden City.

Ben left us for a foot massage while Eva and I squeezed in a last minute shopping trip before catching our train. I almost lost Eva (literally!) to the crazy purse sales ladies who just about tugged her arm off, and we left after an hour, totally dazed from the guantlet of buyers and sellers. We dashed back to the hostel to grab our luggage, and then headed to the [massive] Beijing train station. The only tickets we'd been able to get our hands on were softsleepers (rather than the cheaper hardsleeper we usually travel), and we took off for Xi'an in luxury.

In Xi'an we visited the terra cotta soldiers (now being hemmed in by a large "international plaza" for business and commercial use), walked through the temple complex at the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, hung out in the town square, and spent the early evening in the busy streets of the Muslim district.

We caught a train home to Lanzhou, and found that spring is peeking around the corner -- the sky is clear and blue (maybe the biggest miracle of all), and there is a warmth in the air. We also found the city dressed for the New Year, with red and gold lanterns hanging everywhere, and every bus and neighborhood decked out with flowers, lanterns, and pigs (2007 is the year of the pig). It was so nice to get home.

This morning Eva left to go back to the States, and this afternoon Ben and I are leaving for Tibet.

Go here (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2081308&id=1511004) for a few photos.