1978 National Geographic - China's Incredible Find

Qian and I went to an estate sale in our neighborhood yesterday. Qian saw an old box full of National Geographic magazines on sale for $5.00 and began thumbing through them. Once she saw the third issue in the pile, she called me over.

This is what she saw:



Knowing how big of a China nerd I am, she guessed correctly that this vintage account of China's terra cotta warrior discovery is something I'd want.

The terra cotta warriors were discovered an hour east of Xi'an in 1974. This 1978 National Geographic account highlights the initial progress that the Chinese were making with the discovery and gives the basic history of the warriors. It's a very interesting read. It's definitely worth the $.50 we paid for it.

I spent a few minutes this morning scanning all twenty pages of the story. My scans aren't that great and I'm not sure the best way to display these images on the confined spaces of this blog. I put together a collage of the story below anyways. I think they're worth posting as is:

Traffic

Xi'an's traffic is much worse now than it was when I left China in 2009. And it's multiple factors more intense than when I arrived in China in 2006.

Qian learned how to drive in the US last year. She hadn't been back to China since getting behind the wheel for the first time. Traffic was the first thing she commented on upon returning to her home. Switching lanes without looking or using a signal, stopping and reversing on the shoulder of a highway, those turning left going before those going straight at an intersection, etc. - she couldn't believe the audacity Chinese drivers possess given the tight spaces in which they have to operate.

Chinese cities, so dense when compared to western metropoli, are already so crowded. The addition of scores of personal automobiles to Chinese cities is causing serious gridlock. Unfortunately, there's really no solution to the problem of China's increasingly cramped traffic lanes.

China already has plenty of public transportation options - buses that constantly run, trains, subways, and a rapidly developing high-speed train network - and the masses use them. Several Chinese people I know who own cars often ride buses or trains. But there are just too many people who are beginning to accumulate wealth who want to own a car for the increasing traffic problems to go away.

In many respects, I think it's great that so many Chinese are getting to achieve their dreams of car ownership (the red blood flowing through my American veins just perked up as I typed this sentence on the morning of July 4th). Overall, though, I find China to be far less charming of a place to live the more congested its streets become.

Migrants in the Big City

There were two every-day experiences I had in Xi'an that I'm going to try to describe below. Both stories involve observing migrant workers in Xi'an. The episodes were nothing out-of-the-ordinary from every day life in China, but they struck me rather deeply.

*****

During our last week in Xi'an, Qian and I went out to eat with one of her old 同学 (classmates) and her classmate's husband. We had a wonderful seven course meal of 川菜 (Sichuan cuisine) together. The restaurant was 热闹 (lively), the conversation was flowing, the classmate's husband and I downed a few beers each, and all of us were content.

Despite being relatively early, just a little before 8:30PM, our friends had to go home since they had their three month-old baby at home with its grandma. We walked outside the restaurant, which was near the long-distance bus station in the 明德门 section of Xi'an, and determined that we needed to ride bus 18 to get back to Qian's parents' apartment.

We stood at the stop waiting for bus 18 for several minutes. One usually doesn't have to wait more than five minutes for a bus in China. So as we continued to wait and wait, I went over to the bus map/schedule displayed at the stop. I saw that the bus had stopped running at 20:30 and that it was now 20:38. I told Qian and her friends that we'd probably missed the bus. Unfazed, they suggested that we wait to see if there was one more bus on its way.

The sun had just set and the energy that permeates Chinese nights was building. The ground we stood upon was filthy, both from litter and from spilled oil from the motorbike repair shops that dotted the neighborhood. The air smelled of 孜然烤肉 (cumin and assorted herb-flavored BBQ meat skewers) and I could see groups of people eating food and drinking beer in half-full 川菜饭馆 (Sichuan restaurants) the size of rental storage spaces.

The area where we were standing was gritty, if one is being generous, or rundown, if one is being less charitable. We were on the edge of 八里村, one of Xi'an's biggest 城中村 (city villages). Nearly every store front around us had a neon flashing sign displayed out front with the characters 住宿. These characters were advertising a temporary place to live. 住宿 are kind of like a hotel. They are very cheap and of a very low standard, though. A middle-class Chinese person is not going to stay in a 住宿. The people in these 住宿 next to the bus station are migrants, hence their close proximity to the long-distance bus station.

8:44... 8:46...

As we stood there, I became less engaged in the conversation. Maybe I was growing tired of trying to keep up in Chinese. Maybe I was getting impatient. I stood a bit apart from them as they continued laughing and talking.

I turned towards the busy street in front of us and saw two young men speaking with a 电动车 (an electric motor bike the size of a Vespa) owner. The two men had obviously just stepped off of the long-distance bus in Xi'an. Each carried over-sized plastic rucksacks full of who knows what. Each appeared slight in physical appearance; they looked like thirteen year-olds in eighteen year-olds' bodies.

One sported an unsightly, thinly-grown mustache that was more a result of not shaving than a fashion statement. The other wore a loose-fitting suit that hardly fit his under-developed body. I could not figure out how old either of the two men were. I suppose my guess would be twenty-two years old, but that would be give or take five years in either direction.

It's normal for entrepreneurial-minded 电动车 owners to wait next to bus stops offering rides. The owners of these vehicles will exhort those waiting for the bus to quit waiting and just jump on the back of their vehicle. That's exactly what this 电动车 owner was doing with the two men. The 电动车 owner had a strong physical appearance and sported a 板寸 (a squarish haircut popular amongst middle-aged to older Chinese men).

8:48... 8:50...

I couldn't really hear what the two men (were they brothers? cousins? friends?) and the 电动车 owner were saying. Maybe they were speaking a dialect, maybe it was the noise on the street, or maybe my Chinese just isn't that good. But I wasn't processing what was being discussed. I didn't have to comprehend every word to know that the 电动车 rider was trying to convince them that they'd missed their bus, that he knew where the two guys wanted to go, and that they should jump on his bike.

There was a bit of resistance from the two men. They didn't want to pay this guy if they could just spend a couple RMB and get on a bus. They talked amongst themselves. They stared into the distance hoping to see that last bus roll in front of them. You could tell that they were helpless, though. Just as a salesman about to complete a deal, the 电动车 owner was dominating the conversation. They only lasted a few more moments before finally conceding. Their defeated body language showed that they didn't know their surroundings and needed to be taken away.

The men grunted a few noises to each other and then began handing their bags over to the 电动车 owner, now their ride. The thin man somehow lifted the bag that looked to be as heavy as him and put it on the front, flat platform that was between where the driver of the vehicle sits and the handle bars. It took several seconds for them to figure out how to get the huge sack loaded and balanced onto the bike. The man with the moustache then loaded his smaller bag on top of the first. The gaunt man then jumped onto the back of the bike. The driver took his position. Then the moustached man got onto the very back of the bike, nearly hanging off the edge of the bike, sandwiching his gaunt friend between himself and the driver and the driver between the gaunt man and the cargo up front.

电动车 are electric. They are not powerful. They are smaller than a motorcycle. It was quite a sight seeing this thing loaded up with three passengers and a significant amount of cargo up front.

The driver silently turned on the vehicle and it slowly started to pull away. After getting the bike's momentum up to a few miles per hour, the driver was in complete control.

Off into the night they went. I can only guess where those two men, fresh off a bus from the countryside finally in the big city, were heading and where they ended up.

*****

The next night after seeing the scene described above, Qian and I ate dinner at her parents' house. We then set out to the heart of the city for drinks just inside Xi'an's South Gate.

We headed out of her parents' apartment at about 7:45PM. It was a hot evening. We debated whether to spend the extra 1 RMB each to ride on an air-conditioned bus or whether we'd tough it out on the normal, open-air, bus. We decided that we'd just take the first one that came.

K800, the air-conditioned bus, came first. We boarded it to find that much of the bus was empty. We had seats to sit down upon. Air-conditioned buses are usually less crowded than normal buses because of their higher fare.

Qian and I sat across from each other on the parallel seats just behind the driver that are perpendicular to the rest of the riders, who are facing forward. I sat in the seat just behind the driver and Qian sat in the second of four seats on her bench.

I had my iPod Shuffle playing in my ears, which was often the case when out and about. Lost in the music, I took in the scenery we were driving by. I had to turn around from my seat to see the south city wall. I remember contorting my body to get a better view of the glorious sight that was the sun setting over one of China's most beautiful attractions.

As we moved along the outside of the city wall approaching the South Gate, the man sitting next to Qian in the first seat on her bench blurted out something to the driver. I hadn't noticed him before he made that noise. I was awaken from my aural and setting-induced trance and saw that Qian was sitting next to a shaggy man probably about thirty years-old (again, give or take) in the suit that every construction worker in China wears.

One of the first things I saw about him was that he only had four fingers on his left hand. That's not something I usually notice. I mean, who counts other people's fingers out on the street? I'm not sure how, given his clenched fist, I noticed this, but one of the first things I processed about the man was that he was missing a digit on his hand.

I missed what he'd shouted. I could tell it was something to the driver, though. The driver had apparently missed what he'd yelled too since all I heard from up front was a loud, "啥?!!" which is what a northern Chinese person slangily says for, "What?!!"

The nine-fingered man repeated himself. This time I caught it: "到交大电脑城了没?" or, "Are we at the Jiaoda Computer City yet?" I couldn't really make out what the driver said, but he surely said, "No, it's still several stops ahead" since the Jiaoda Computer City (a computer market) was still several stops in front of us.

The man paused for a few seconds. He put his weight onto his right foot and he held onto the support bar that was next to him. He was in between sitting and standing. He looked confused. After being in limbo for a few seconds, he stood up and started to walk to the back of the bus towards the exit.

Qian stopped him and said, "我们还没到。你还有几站。" or, "We're still not there yet. You still have a few stops to go."

The man then retraced his steps and sat back down next to Qian where he'd been sitting.

He spent the next several minutes, until we got off of the bus, holding onto the support bar that was next to his seat staring out the front of the bus perched between sitting and standing.

We got off of the bus before he did. I'll never know if he got off at Jiaoda Computer City or not.

*****

I can't say exactly what the meaning of these two stories are. I'm not sure why they struck me as they did or why I'm sharing them on my blog either.

I suppose it's just that the "migrant story" in China fascinates me. Tens of millions of people every year move from farm to factory or city. Hundreds of million have done so over the previous decades and hundreds of millions will over the coming decades. It's a remarkable story.

I'd been wanting to write this post for several days. I was even more inspired to get it done after reading the following piece: How I was treated on the subway when I was doing fieldwork as a migrant worker, a blog article by Tricia Wang (h/t @niubi). Tricia is an anthropologist/sociologist doing research on migrant workers in China. It is a really nice supplement to this post. Her writing, about being perceived as a migrant worker on a subway, fits in nicely with what I tried to describe above.

Night Shots

Qian and I agree that the thing we miss most about living in China is the night life. I'm not talking about clubs or bars or concerts, I'm talking about life, masses of people, outside on the streets, outside of their homes, after the sun goes down.

It frustrates us that there aren't any night markets or shopping areas or places besides bars that draw Americans (or at least Kansas Citians) out at night.

I wish I'd taken more, but the following are a few of my better night shots from Xi'an:


The Bell Tower - The Bell Tower is the heart of Xi'an. It stands epically in the middle of the city, both symbolically and figuratively.


The South Wall Moat at Dusk - The City Wall is just over the trees on the right. A great scene at sunset.


Sky Streak - I tried getting a few photos of a guy selling little toys that shot into the sky. I enjoy the photos I was able to get.


Out and About


Fountain - Kept the shutter open for a second on a small fountain near the Big Wild Goose Pagoda.


Red Reflections - Another shot from near the Big Wild Goose Pagoda

There were times during the day in Xi'an - on crowded buses or staring at smoggy polluted skies - that I didn't miss living in China at all. Night was a different story, though. Being back in America now, I already miss the night markets, old people dancing on the streets, and general laid back nature of life at night in the Middle Kingdom.

Random Observations from Xi'an

The following are some random observations I wrote down while in Xi'an:

- I could see nine construction cranes from the bedroom we stayed in at Qian's parents. NINE! Every morning at dawn, the sounds of hammers started echoing throughout the apartment blocks. Construction continues at an amazing clip in the Middle Kingdom.

- Related to the new construction, scores of old 城中村 (city villages or "primitive" neighborhoods) are being torn down at an amazing clip. Although there haven't been western journalists writing about the destruction of neighborhoods in Xi'an (like there have been on Beijing and Kashgar), Xi'an's old-time, low-income neighborhoods are disappearing quickly. New apartment blocks and luxury shopping centers are rising up from their rubble.

- Xi'an (and China in general) has gone nuts promoting the 2011 International Horticulture Expo that is in Xi'an this summer. I got annoyed with the hype of this event and I was only there for three weeks.

Qian and I went to the expo with her family. It was lame. Three hour waits to get into a greenhouse or climb a pagoda. We ended up just walking around the giant park that had minimal items of interest. There are free parks in Xi'an more interesting than this 100 to 150 RMB per ticket event. All of Qian's family agreed with this sentiment.

The greatest irony is that this green expo is in one of China's most polluted cities. The day we went to the expo, the pollution and smog in Xi'an were at an unfathomable scale.

- After mocking Xi'an and the expo, I do have to say that the pollution in Xi'an is getting better. It's still horrific and surely unhealthy, but it's light-years better than when I arrived in China the first time in 2006.

- Like Americans, the Chinese are drinking lots of vitamin water. "VC," or vitamin C, is something the Chinese have gotten into.

- Groceries are damn expensive. We've all heard about inflation in China. I can confirm from the ground that it is bad. Qian and I calculated that for many items, including a lot of varieties of fruit, that things are cheaper in the US (after translated into US dollars).

- Chinese people are incredibly scared of eating hot pot at restaurants these days. I had to beg Qian and her family to eat a proper Sichuan-style hot pot meal at a restaurant. I'd missed the news from the US, but beginning last year, there have been a score of reports on the unsanitary conditions at hot pot restaurants. The one accusation I kept hearing from people is that the restaurants re-use oil from one table's pot and then give it to the next people who come in. Don't get me wrong, that's absolutely disgusting. I find it hard to believe that it's impossible to find a clean hotpot restaurant, especially given the scrutiny the restaurants are under these days, though.

High Speed Rail

Things changed so much in Xi'an between 2006 and 2009 when I lived there. The pace of development is hard to comprehend. I know that when Qian and I go back to Xi'an this coming summer, after being gone for twenty months, there are going to be many parts of town that we won't recognize.

Reading a post from my friend, Richard, on his blog - Notes From Xi'an - I see that Xi'an has indeed added something major since I left: a high-speed rail station.


The Xi'an to Zhengzhou line high-speed rail station

Richard's post does a nice job giving basic information about the new "Xi'an North Station," highlighting the controversy surrounding the corruption of China's ousted high-speed rail minister, and discussing whether high-speed rail is really a wise investment. Check it out.

Road to Heaven

A couple months ago, the New York Times had an article about the rise of Daoism in China that I featured in a blog post. A few days after posting that article, I read a post on the excellent China Beat blog by the author of the NYT article, Ian Johnson, giving some reading suggestions for those interested in learning more about the history of Daoism.

I've never had a tremendous interest in Daoism, but figured it wouldn't hurt to better familiarize myself with the history of the religion a bit. I picked up the number one book on Johnson's list - The Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits by Bill Porter.



I got very excited about this book just a few moments after opening it. The following map is on the page after the table of contents:



I copied this on a copy machine and then scanned it. Doesn't look quite as good as it does in the actual book. If you can't tell, this is a map of where Porter goes searching for hermits: Xi'an and Qinling Mountains of Shaanxi Province (the Sian in the middle of the map is Xi'an). The setting of Porter's book is where I lived while I was in China.

I thoroughly enjoyed that this book takes place on my old stomping grounds in China. Visiting ancient temples, meeting Daoist hermits, climbing serene mountains - Xi'an and its surrounding area is just a surreal place. When it comes to history and culture - the birthplace of Daoism, the numerous dyasties, the terracotta warriors, the beginning of the Silk Road, etc. - Xi'an can't be beat.

Outside of my three climbs of Hua Shan, I hadn't been to any of the places that Porter writes about. But anyone who's read my blog before or has seen my travel recommendations knows that I'm crazy about Hua Shan and am very taken by the Daoist aspects of that mountain.

Porter goes to Hua Shan in the book and has an entire chapter on the mountain. He gives a thorough history of Daoism on the mountain. Here is the beginning section of his Hua Shan chapter - "Sound of the Crane" from page 60:

"The Road To Heaven" - A photo I took at Hua Shan in 2008

Very romantic stuff, this. Between this chapter in Road to Heaven and the chapter "The Hermit of Hua Shan" in China Road, I've been able to learn a lot about Hua Shan since leaving China.

Qian and I just bought tickets for a three week trip to China this summer. I'm hoping to consult the map at the beginning of this post and the pages of Porter's book as a guide for an off-the-beaten-path couple day excursion outside of Xi'an. I'm not expecting that I'll run into hermits or go searching for the history of Daoism like Porter did. But spending some time in the Qinling mountains at the heart of China's Daoist history is something I want to try to do on our trip.

While there were parts of Road to Heaven that I really appreciated, it is hard for me on the whole to endorse the book very enthusiastically. The book was only 220 pages, yet it took me several weeks to finish. Many of the stories, history, and interviews with hermits ran together badly by the middle of the book. I got stuck/bored for long periods of time.

If you don't know the difference between Buddhism and Daoism, are interested in China's folk religions, are planning a trip to Xi'an, or want to read the history of China's only major home-grown religion, Road to Heaven is something you may appreciate. I didn't love the book, but I'm glad I picked it up.

Shaanxi Pomegranates

Qian and I went to the Chinese super market near our house today to buy moon cakes (月饼) for the students Qian is teaching this fall. I enjoy shopping at this Chinese market. We can buy a lot of Chinese food products that I hadn't realize would be available in America before coming back. Every trip to the market is good listening practice for me too; there are always tons of Chinese people there speaking their native tongue (which, unfortunately for me, is usually incomprehensible southern dialects). It really is a nice little slice of China in the middle of suburban Kansas City.

One of the things we saw today was pomegranates. They were expensive - $2.70 for one. We didn't get any hoping that they'll drop in the next couple weeks as we fully enter pomegranate season. But even assuming that the pomegranates do get a bit more affordable, I'm sure the market will never offer the quality of pomegranates I had in China.



Xi'an is right next to one of the pomegranate-growing capitals of China - Lintong, Shaanxi. At this time of year in Xi'an, pomegranates straight from the farms are everywhere. They generally range in price from 1 to 5 kuai ($.18 - $.80) depending on the quality. Over the three falls I lived in Xi'an, I became accustomed to having copious amounts of insanely good pomegranates at my disposal.

Talking about my Chinese home town and one of its greatest flavors, I feel as though I should share this great article I saw recently on Twitter painting a picture of Xi'an and Shaanxi Province:

Resource-rich Shaanxi has seen significant developments in the past few years, as this most traditional of Chinese provinces enters a new century full of hope, promise and a gleaming makeover of its capital city, Xi’an.

Like the most attractive of China’s magnets for investment, Shaanxi can rely on more than one component part for attracting development and creating opportunities. Coal supplies are plentiful and of a high quality, while the province also has large reserves of natural gas and oil. While that does give it a more hardened feel to life here, the province also boasts a rich cultural history, and that, coupled with excellence in engineering academia, gives Shaanxi a fairly unique character not found elsewhere in China. From the historical perspective, Shaanxi is considered one of the cradles of Chinese civilization.

...

Shaanxi’s mineral reserves are ranked the highest of all the provinces in China, and particularly coal, oil, and natural gas. Communist-led education to exploit this over the years has also led to the province having a very strong pool of well educated workers, ranked third in the country, only after Beijing and Shanghai, while most of Shaanxi’s universities – over 50 of them – provide education in many different engineering disciplines from aviation, dam building to coal and gas extraction, much of it pioneering work. Shaanxi has an additional 2,000 science and technology research institutes, and these have taken a leading role in R&D in aerospace, equipment manufacturing, electronics, and agriculture.

Shaanxi’s GDP has been developing well over the last few years, growing at about 12.5 percent per annum since 2004, and with now the expanding secondary sector accounting for 54.9 percent of this figure. Shaanxi’s nominal GDP for 2009 was RMB818.7 billion (US$112 billion) while GDP per capita was RMB21,729 (US$43,179), ranking it 14th in the PRC. The minimum wage in Xi’an is RMB760.

Natural resources are crucial to Shaanxi’s development – the province ranks third in coal production, and fifth in oil production nationwide. A complete industrial system comprising high technology, fruit, animal husbandry, tourism, national defense, energy and chemical industries also developed and is well integrated. Large reserves of natural resources have been a spur to heavy industry such as oil drills, and equipment for mining, railways, petroleum, and chemical processing. In agriculture, the main produce is fruit and grain. Regulations are also in place to encourage investments in infrastructure, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, metallurgy, machinery, electronics, light industry, and building materials. Utilized foreign investment in the province was US$1.2 billion in 2009, and has proven sustainable at about this figure over the past decade.

Read On

Shaanxi Province is one of China's most interesting. It's the cradle of Chinese civilization. It's topography - largely mountains and loess plateau - is unique. And it's one of the poorest yet fastest-growing provinces in China.

Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi Province, is a place that I'd recommend to any foreigner traveling to China or wanting to live abroad. The pace of life for a big city is very relaxed. Another positive is that Xi'an is not as overrun with foreigners as it seems other coastal cities in China (not that having a thriving ex-pat scene is necessarily a bad thing). There are scores of universities and job opportunities there. And as evidenced by the above article, it's not a bad place to get familiarized with for business purposes.

I'm not sure exactly why I'm writing this post. I suppose seeing pomegranates at the Chinese supermarket reminded me of my Chinese 第二个故乡 (second home). I have such warm memories and such a positive impression of Xi'an and Shaanxi in my mind.

Man Made Marvels - Xi'an

Hopfrog, a frequent commenter on here, posted a link to a very worthwhile video in the comments of my last post.

The video is a program that on the Discovery Channel about ancient Chang'an and Xi'an. Chang'an is what Xi'an was known as for much of its history. For anyone who's every been to Xi'an or has any interest in the place, it is a must see.

I'm not sure the next time the program is going to air on TV. The schedule doesn't show when it'll run again (a program on the Leshan Buddha will run on Monday though). Below my summary, I've embedded the program from YouTube.

The show begins with the construction of ancient Chang'an during the Han Dynasty. This part particularly was enlightening to me. I'll admit that my Han era history is not good and learned a lot during this section.

The rebuilding of Chang'an during the Tang Dynasty is featured next. The Tang time period was the cultural apex of ancient China. The arts flourished and commerce boomed with the Silk Road during this era. Chang'an was indeed the biggest and most cosmopolitan city in the world then.

The Tang era is still celebrated a lot in Xi'an. I lived within walking distance of "Tang Paradise," a Tang-themed park with cultural shows and such. I actually taught some English classes to the tour guides at Tang Paradise when I lived in Xi'an. That was pretty cool.

My favorite part of the program was the section of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, also in the Tang Dynasty section of the show. I lived within a five minute walk from the pagoda for over three years. I either walked or rode my bike past it every day on my way to work. It has a very special place in my heart. Learning more about it just now was awesome.

And last was the section on the reconstruction of the city (again) during the Ming Dynasty. The Ming reconstruction is still the foundation for present-day Xi'an. The city walls are featured prominently during this section. As the program says, Xi'an's city walls are the largest and best preserved city walls in the world. They are a very unique aspect of life in Xi'an.

This program makes me very proud of my Chinese 故乡 (hometown) - Xi'an. It also makes me want to go back. I can't wait to go visit again.

Hopfrog, thank you so much for pointing this show out to me.

Below are the embeds of the video, split into five sections:











Edit - I just found this show on Youku for anyone reading this living in China:

Train Wreck

No, the title of this post isn't about my bachelor party. That went really well. As one of my friends reminded me yesterday, "what happens on the stag do stays on the stag do." So I'm not going to give away too much information. I'll just say that it involved copious amounts of baijiu, good times with friends, and me feeling absolutely wrecked the next day. So it was a complete success!

Yesterday while suffering a day-long hangover, I heard from a friend about a section of Xi'an's under-construction subway that collapsed this week and killed two construction workers. I hadn't caught this initially.

From CRIEnglish.com:

Firefighters used bare hands to retrieve two migrant workers trapped after a section of a subway station under construction in Xi'an collapsed on Sunday morning.

The two, who had been buried under 10 cubic meters of earth for over three hours, died later in hospital.

The accident occurred at 9:20am at the Sajinqiao section of subway line one, where an area over 20-meters-wide of the construction site gave way, trapping workers below.

China Railway NO.2 Engineering Group Co., Ltd., which is responsible for the section's construction, blamed continued rain and leaking sewage pipes for the collapse.

The cave-in became the fourth accident in subway construction in the capital city of northwest China's Shaanxi province in seven months, the Wenhui Daily reported.

A fire accident occurred at a line 2 construction site on December 30 last year. Luckily, the fire was extinguished one hour later and all 64 workers were evacuated safely.

Only 66 hours later, on January 2, another station on line 2 caught fire due to improper operation by workers. Then on May 26, a person suffered minor injuries from a fire during infrastructure work on line 1.

Following the third accident, the Xi'an Subway Construction Office, the department overseeing the subway projects, ordered the 21 construction companies to each hand in three million yuan as a production safety guarantee. The deposit will be confiscated if any further accidents occur due to negligence or other human factors from the construction and supervision parties.

However, the harsh measures and a series of penalties meted out apparently failed to stop more accidents.

Read On

This is really sad. Particularly because this is not new and there have been so many problems in the construction of this project.

Although I'm not a civil engineer, I found it troubling that rain is being given partial blame for the collapse of the tunnel. Is it just me, or does that seem pretty thin? It's not like it's monsoon season here.

Over the past few weeks, I've noticed that every time it rains at all, ponds of water start showing up everywhere on Xi'an's streets. Seriously, if it rains mildly for an hour or two, a street near my work completely floods over. And I'm talking about a section of road that was just built last year!

I'm not sure what about occasional rains makes Xi'an's streets turn into rivers and tunnels to collapse, but it's pretty disconcerting. China, in the west, has a reputation for being a country full of engineers. I suppose this might be true, there are a lot of engineering graduates, but what good are engineers if the things they build are done so poorly?

Over my last few weeks in Xi'an, I will try my best to take some pictures the next time it rains. It really is amazing.

Terracotta Expansion

Archaeologists are about to begin an expansion at Xi'an's terracotta army site.

From Xinhua News:

Photo from AP

XI'AN, June 9 (Xinhua) -- Chinese archaeologists will begin the third excavation of the famous terracotta army site on Saturday, hoping to find more clay figures and unravel some of the mysteries left behind by the "First Emperor".

Archaeologists hoped they might find a clay figure that appeared to be "in command" of the huge underground army, said Liu Zhancheng, head of the archeological team under the terracotta museum in Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi Province.

"We're hoping to find a clay figure that represented a high-ranking army officer, for example," he told Xinhua Tuesday.

Liu and his colleagues are also hoping to ascertain the success of decades of preservation efforts to keep the undiscovered terracotta figures intact and retain their original colors.

Richly colored clay figures were unearthed from the mausoleum of Qinshihuang, the first emperor of a united China, in previous excavations, but once they were exposed to the air they began to lose their luster and turn an oxidized grey.

The upcoming excavation into the first and largest of the three pits at the site would last at least a year, said Wu Yongqi, curator of the museum.

Read On

One of the most interesting things about the terracotta warrior site is how little of the site has actually been excavated. A significant amount of the site remains under earth, including Qin Shihuang's tomb.

Of the three pits of soldiers at the terracotta soldier museum, only one is really all that big - Pit 1. And even that one has a significant amount of unearthing going on at it. You can see what I'm talking about in the background of this picture:



Here is a closer up shot of the debris:



These pictures, one developed and one undeveloped, are from Pit 3:





This site should just get better in better with time. That is, of course, if they can survive the damage of being exposed to air and tourists.

Photos of the Week - Xi'an Park Musicians

Here are some photos of musicians playing in a park near Heping Men in Xi'an:









There is a fair amount of random playing like this in Xi'an. It's a very cool phenomenon.